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Summary 'theme cultural history'
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- Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RuG)
Summary of the course 'theme cultural history'
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Exam for the plenary lectures (3 ECTS): because of the COVID-19 measures the exam will be different fromprevious years, details will follow near the end of the course. The assessment will be a written exam on the basis
of literature and lectures. Persons and concepts must be placed within their historical contexts and the student
should be available to cite the most important cultural theories, including an example in which their application
is made relevant. Answers are written in essay form, as a coherent and well-organized response (English and/or
Dutch).
1. Compulsory: B.S. Hellemans, Understanding Culture. A Handbook for Students in the Humanities
(Amsterdam University Press 2017). Also available in Dutch (Denken over Cultuur).
Lecture 1
What is culture?
There is not one definition!
How can you think about culture in different ways and what does it say about the person who defines
the word (discipline and background of this person)
Hypothesis or statements
1. Culture belongs to being human and is part of human exitance (it means that you have
to be human, can you escape from culture, are we all prisoners. Not just a kind of
class, of part of society, culture Is everywhere, you can’t escape!)
2. Culture and nature: opposites? Culture would be everything that is controlled by
human beings, part of the civilized mind, to tame the wild. Now a days, we come back
again on how nature goes, with the ecological disasters happening and we see that;
culture has influence on nature and nature strikes back. So we can’t really separate
both.
3. Is culture the same as civilization? Is civilization a kind of society where people
behave according to civility or is related to the French revolution, boursoi maybe? Or
is civilization the variety of people living on the planet with their own customs? Is
every civilization different and do you need to study them differently?
4. Cultural interpretation changes throughout history (it is not static, culture has different
faces.
Culture as a concept is impossible to define, it is an observation of a question with several
outcomes.
(this lecture was about reflecting on these question, with the help of all kinds of views and opinions)
Culture as a metaphor
Where does the word ‘culture’ come from- field of study of etymology (how language
develops through time). The oldest notion of culture comes from antiquity. It is seen as a
philosophy as education of the self (we try to cultivate our mind throughout our life, the
notion of being cultivated is also the fact that it can never finish, could also be seen as a kind
of humanistic idea.
,Why hellemans thinks it is very closely attached to nature, is that even the vocabulary is close
to nature. What Cicero called the Culture Animi; Cultivating the mind like a field of crops.
(you have to nourish it, look after if because otherwise it dies)
Raymond Williams; Culture and society (1958)
He tried to give a definition to Culture.
The history of culture (so not from a culture anthropologist point of view but from a historical
point of view) reveals the interplay of several overlapping meanings, and since the 18th
century culture has denoted:
1) A general process of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual developments; (in the Geist
(mind)
2) A specific ways of life, be it in a group, a period, or humanity in general.
3) The work and practices of intellectual and artistic activity. (artist and music)
Very much the history of the mind, how the mind works, how thinking works and changes
and is directly connected to the way we communicate. Which will be discussed in lecture 2.
Geertz; Cultural semiotics
Culture semiotics; culture is a historically transmitted pattern of meanings (so meaning with a
history) embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conception expressed in symbolic forms
by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about
attitudes towards life. what he points out here is the way we communicate, use symbols,
and the way we refer to symbols and language, give them meaning by words, gestures and
rituals. It all has a history, it goes back to something in the past. We can’t understand each
other without a kind of transmitted knowledge either through books, parents, educational
systems. There is a history we teach and there are expectations of both the students and the
teachers. This is all culture. Culture id bound to we all understanding that we are in a kind of
rule bound situation, where f.ex the teacher is expected to deliver lectures and students are to
get good grades. So many things we do are not explicit are implicit.
So when studying culture trough history; we you are removed in time from a specific kind of
culture, where there was a specific way of communicating (words, gestures and rituals) (f.ex
clothes, colors). So when reading sources a lot of things are not explicit, and we often only
see a very small portion of the culture of the past because we miss many of the implicit parts
we simple do not understand.
Keyword for studying culture:
Semiotics
(language)
Semiotics, also called semiology, the study of signs and sign-using behavior. It was defined
by one of its founders, the swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of ‘the life of
signs within society.’
Apple = laptop brand
,When language and a symbol are falling apart. You are appropriating symbols and place
them in a different concepts. Language and symbols need to be in a harmony together
otherwise we as human beings and our communication are completely lost. And when we
can’t talks anymore, we become frustrated. Because it is the core of being human,
communicating and understanding each other.
Artifact
An usually simple object (such as a tool or ornament) showing human workmanship or
modification as distinguished from a natural object especially an object remaining from a
particular period. In cultural history written sources (all genres and all kinds) are also artifacts
What are sources that informs us about culture?
- Landscapes
- Socials structures/laws
- Buildings/architecture
- Written texts
- Art objects
- Tools
- Language/rituals/clothes
Nature of culture? Three observations
Q1:Is this nature of culture?
Q2:What is the interest or motivation of the person who determines ‘culture’: is the intention
of the maker of an object or artifact always explicit and conscious?
Q3:what are the codes and norms that are limited to a specific geographical area and/or time?
(Lectures showed videos and ask us to answer the questions above)
1. Ex. The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living
When we define is as a material object what we see is;
- A shark
- Glass
- Steel
- Silicones
, - Monofilament
- Formaldehyde solution
It is almost as if you would put in in a natural museum, but is not. The difference is that he is
floating. As if he were still alive and swimming, but he is dead.
The massage (the semiotics) and the object itself. the title really creates a connection
between itself and the object. As if he wants to cast the moment, this is a cultural moment
you would not be able to retell (the shark would have killed you) but now he is dead.
The signifier and signified are doing something together that makes this very entreging.
2. Ex. Stil leven
Questioning the meaning of culture in the past. Showing what they found ‘important.’
Definition of cultural history
According to Perter Burke; Cultural history is about…
1. …certain categories of objects (products of culture) (notion of the artifact)
2. …how people tried to give meaning to these objects in the past (how it was
used in the past and how give meaning to it in the present)
3. …the ways people have understood themselves and the world in a specific
time/region
Accommodation or contrarian
You can add all kinds of layers of interpretation to the objects, the semiotic massage you try
to understand from a specific period. One of the things to do is to see if it culture or nature
but another one is to see whether this message from specific culture in point in time is trying
to accommodate and show a representation of that time or if it is contrarian to that time.
Ex. coca cola add with African Americans vs. white people.
Humanistic ideals in the West
Humanistic interpretation: personal cultivation and improvement (in that time especially for
men and higher society)
Becoming a civilized man of woman
19th century ideal of cultivating groups: children, the ‘wild man’
At the beginning of cultural history = this is how you should behave, this is civilized.
(changes after WW2 Notion of cultivating the mind became something to maintain peace)
Aftermath WWII: UNESCO
UN branch of preserving culture but also preserving diversity of culture, to not become Coco
Cola people lol.
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