Week 2: What is Culture? 11, 13, 15 Sept Readings: CMST 2BB3 Lecture Notes Judy Giles and Tim Middleton. What is Culture, Studying Culture: A Practical Introduction pp. 9-29 Stuart Hall. The Centrality of Culture: Notes on the Cultural Revolutions of Our Time, Media, Cultural Regulations, pp. 220-236 Key Concepts from Communication, Cultural and Media Studies to read: * Culture * Modern/Modernism/Modernity * Popular/Popular Culture Monday 11 Sept 06 KEY POINTS 1) Definitions of culture 2) Historical timeline for contextualization 3) Modern/Modernism/Modernity(including high culture ) 4) Popular/Popular Culture 1) Definitions of Culture Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. (Raymond Williams, Keywords) Cultura (Latin): to inhabit (colony); honour with worship (cult) - cultivation or tending (crops or animals) - cultivation of animals: husbandry - in the 16 th c. (as early capitalism was developing) this notion of cultivation was first addressed to humans
Bacon in 1605 wrote about the culture and manurance of minds - the cultivation of minds Why? What is a basic difference between feudalism and capitalism? - Great Chain of Being 2) Historical Timeline for Contextualization Middle Ages (Medieval times) - from late-5 th c. (end of the Roman Empire in 476) to about the mid 15 th c. (Gutenberg s printing press in 1455) Renaissance - Italian city states (Florence, Genoa, Venice, Bologna) - mid 14 th c. to 16 th c. (after the Black Plague of 1346 to Protestant Reformation of the 1520s) Enlightenment - mid-17 th c. (philosophy of Spinoza in the 1650s) to end of 18 th c. (French Revolution of 1789) - also the time of the rise of modernity - by 1800, capitalism (modern market economy) has become the dominant social and economic system - culture has now become strongly associated with the development of the individual - also as a multiple; different kinds of cultures within a society (today in Canada we have an official policy of multiculturalism ) Culture, then, is that which differentiates; deploys different systems of meaning The production and circulation of meaning and consciousness. The sphere of meaning which unifies the spheres of production (economics) and social relations (politics) culture is the sphere of reproduction not of goods but of life. 3) Modern/Modernism/Modernity Modernity is a period Modernism is an ideological attitude of that period - capitalism; the nation state; science; secularism;
Timeline Economic modernity - Italian city-states of the 1400s (banking, joint-stock companies, international trade) Technological modernity - the plough (agriculture), compass (travel-colonialism-trade), gunpowder (war), printing press (culture and communication) Literary modernity - secular dramas written for profit (Shakespeare) Scientific modernity - Galileo (rationality and empiricism vs. religion) Philosophy - Spinoza (rational thought over religion); Descartes (conceptualizing the individual) Political modernity - Treaty of Westphalia (1648) recognizes the principle of the sovereignty of autonomous nation states (international relations; international law) Industrial modernity - industrial revolution beginning in the late 18 th c. Cultural modernity - the above forms of modernity come together [Features of modernity include] great metropolitan cities, rapid communication systems, industrial workforces, popular entertainments, and the beginnings of media, tourism, department stores and mechanised warfare. Note the importance of large urban centres (i.e. cities), and improved communication technology as key factors in the development of modern culture. [Modernism is] the pursuit of modern ideals reason, truth, progress, science, secularism, popular sovereignty, open society, technology, and communication.
Modernism and high culture Part of modernism is the notion of high culture (the opposite of low culture or popular culture) Matthew Arnold (great literature, fine art, and serious music) was a Poetry professor at Oxford and a champion of Victorian high culture - for Arnold and other Victorians, culture is a matter of taste and discrimination est. a canon NB. Think about this when we do cultural capital, cool hunting and the relationship b/n culture-identity-consumption This helps us understand how culture is a means of distinction. High culture is a way of distinguishing the social and economic elite from the masses. Thus culture is central to the reproduction of asymmetrical (unequal) relations (social, economic) 4) Popular/Popular Culture - of and for the people in general - (NB. Arnold) historically popular in relation to culture meant 'bad (high/low culture - still talk of the dumbing-down effect of popular culture - remember this when we read the Frankfurt School in a few weeks Questions 1. Is popular culture imposed from above (by major media corporations) or is it an expression of people s everyday experiences? 2. Is popular culture an expression of powerlessness and subordinate class position or an autonomous and potentially liberating source? The study of popular culture cannot get very far without some attempt to relate the social production and reproduction of meanings to the economic and political divisions and antagonisms of class.
Wednesday 13 Sept 06 KEY POINTS 1) Summary from Monday 2) More definitions of culture(mass culture and social definitions) 1) SUMMARY FROM MONDAY Culture Culture differentiates; each culture develops its own system of meaning Culture is the sphere of reproduction of life Culture helps us establish who w are in relation to them Culture tends to reproduce unequal (asymmetrical) relations Modernity and culture With the emergence of modernity (from the Middle Ages) there also emerged a new definition of culture the progress and development of individual character Modernity as a period saw the emergence of capitalism, the nation state, and scientific practices Modernism as an ideological attitude of that period believed in reason, science, secularism, progress, empiricism, communication and fixed meaning Modernism also saw the rise of popular culture and the split between high and low culture High culture Remember Matthew Arnold: Victorian high culture pursuit and becoming of perfection ( the pursuit of sweetness and light ) Arnold and other such high-minded Victorians believed that industrialization, urbanization and market economics would result in anarchy (culture vs. anarchy) He wrote extensively about culture two years after working-class men were allowed to vote for the first time (Hyde Park Riots)(
He also strongly supported bloody and oppressive colonial practices (massacres in Jamaica and Ireland) He wanted to establish a canon of the best culture available. WHY? (gatekeeper) The study of popular culture cannot get very far without some attempt to relate the social production and reproduction of meanings to the economic and political divisions and antagonisms of class. Today 2) More definitions of culture 1) General process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development 2) A way of life (of a people, period, group, or humanity in general) 3) The works and practices of artistic and intellectual activity Culture as commodity: from opera to literature to painting and sculpture; from radio to movies to television List of high/low culture High: Shakespeare; sculpture, opera Low: American Idol, RAW, Pimp my Ride Mass culture ICT has facilitated an unprecedented proliferation of culture (especially in commodity form) It has also rendered much cultural activity to acts of consumption Folk culture: an autonomous expression of the people participatory Mass culture: imposed from above by the culture industry passive consumption Read Hoggart in class (p. 9/17) Social definitions of culture Culture is not the exclusive sphere as described by Arnold ( the best that has been known and thought
Rather, culture is a more inclusive sphere of a particular way of life; that is, culture is the arts and learning, but it is also the shared meaning of a whole way of life Culture is ordinary reading: (p. 12/20) Culture as a structure of feeling which facilitates CMNS; the link b/n culture, language, and meaning Culture and power (to be covered later) - domination from above - resistance from below - discourse and narratives
Friday 13 Sept 06 Key Points 1) The Centrality of Culture 2) Culture and Power 3) Culture and Political Economy 4) Culture and Identity 5) The Cultural Turn: The Disciplinary Impact 6) Disciplinary Map Today Culture is what gives meaning to social action Culture = the sum of different classificatory systems and discursive formations (systems of meaning) it draws upon to construct meaning The following all can all fall under culture: the study of language, literatures, art forms, philosophical ideas, moral and religious belief systems Material and symbolic: Material/practice/institutions/nondiscursive Symbolic/culture/meaning 1) Centrality of culture Stuart Hall is a very important scholar who helped to establish the Birmingham School The 20 th c. has seen, at an ever-accelerating pace and explosion of culture: a) as activities, institutions, and practices b) in its significance in the structure and organization of society (and in the eco. and material resources it takes up) We can no longer make a meaningful distinction b/n an economic base and a cultural (ideological) superstructure if we ever could What is new about culture (that makes it so central)? a) global scope and scale
b) breadth of its impact on everyday life c) democratic and popular character What else is new? digital culture a) shrinks time-space b) thus creates new global cultural spheres What does this do to the locality of folk culture? What happens to the idea of place in such a cultural context? What about the World Cup as a case study for the changing role of culture? - attachment to place is expressed in sport and mediated on a global scale - culture and Imagined Community Do these new global cultural spheres lead to cultural homogenization? Or does this new global flow allow for an even greater proliferation of difference i.e. new kinds of cultural mixing (a new local ; a new global hybrid alternatives) What happens to cultural purity? The conservative cultural response: a) a return to roots or cultural purity b) an othering of the new, the hybrid, the different c) seeking homogeneity over difference; tradition over innovation Culture and Power Does popular culture function as form of domination from above or as an expression of resistance from below? Or do we see a mixture of such discourses and narratives? What about culture and politics? The centrality of culture means power struggles are increasingly symbolic Egs. Hezbollah: Made in USA Harper gov t: 911 address; Condoleezza Rice and Peter MacKay in a Tim Horton s; Bush and aircraft carrier ( we won ) Culture and Political Economy The number of global media conglomerates decreases The size of global media conglomerates increases
Questions? 1) Is culture a reflection of eco. and soc. conditions? 2) Does culture construct and constitute social and economic relations? Culture and Identity - remember that identity is never complete or finished - nor does any given cultural sphere fully represented someone s identity Identities (or subjectivity) as culturally formed Identity emerges not in the inner core of one s true self but is produced in cultural Petri dish That is, identity is produced in dialogue with, and in relation to the meanings and definitions which are represented to us by the discourses of cultures Thus social identities are constructed within representation and through culture Subjectivity as discursively produced in dialogue with systems of meaning surrounding us The cultural turn : the disciplinary impact the changing understanding of meaning in culture - there has been a major conceptual revolution regarding our understanding of culture -a shift in contemporary social analysis - culture is increasingly being understood as constitutive of social life - language is being reconsidered: the relationship between language and reality So we now ask Do objects exist objectively? What about the construction of, and struggle over meaning? How does this relate to the disciplinary division b/n Humanities and Science? NB. Meaning systems classify, distinguishing one object from another Thus assumptions or things we take for granted are increasingly open to question Also, we question the fixed or given nature and essence of things Thus there is a gap b/n the existence and the meaning of an object Remember modernism: science as objective knowledge/representation of the world
Culture applied to institutions and practices All social practices have a cultural dimension All practice relates to meaning Every social practice has a discursive dimension Social and political practices depend on meaning (discursive formations) in order to function Disciplinary map (growing scholarly importance of culture) Structuralism and semiotics Ferdinand Saussure Claude Levis-Strauss Roland Barthes Cultural Studies Raymond Williams Richard Hoggart Critical Theory Frankfurt School (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin) Antonio Gramsci (hegemony; ideology) Contemporary social theory (Poststructuralist) Michel Foucault (meaning, power, and the subject)