Week 5: 6 October Cultural Studies as a Scholarly Discipline Reading: Storey, Chapter 3: Culturalism [T]he chains of cultural subordination are both easier to wear and harder to strike away than those of economic subordination. (Hoggart,The Uses of Literacy) [T]here is a social definition of culture, in which culture is a description of a particular way of life. (Williams, The analysis of culture ) Key Themes and Concepts 1) Concluding remarks on civilization and culture paradigm 2) Capitalist consumption and mass production: a changing socioeconomic reality for popular culture 3) Culturalism a) Hoggart b) Williams 1) Concluding remarks on the culture and civilization paradigm Culture and civilization : the dominant paradigm for studying popular culture for nearly a century 1870s to 1960s That paradigm still informs much of the common sense in public debates about culture Yet this thesis impedes a meaningful analysis of popular culture because it makes these problematic assumptions: i) Symptomatic popular culture is only a symptom social problems cultural decline and political disorder ii) Uncultured popular culture is only frowned upon by a cultured elite from above who saw only an uncultured mess iii) unknown other popular culture was not worthy of close study, only condemnation Summarizing the culture and civilization paradigm popular culture is seen as an expression of social crisis/decline popular culture is devoid of any value, worthy only dismissal or containment popular culture as little more than a problematic other to be either contained or ignored
2) Capitalist consumption and mass production: a changing socioeconomic reality for popular culture There were changing social and economic realities which altered the culture and civilization debate especially in North America In Canada and the US, there was a shift from the civilization and culture paradigm to mass culture In the UK, the shift was to culturalism Two factors brought about this shift i) capitalist consumption increasingly popular culture became a commodity that was purchased rather than activities in people s everyday lives ii) mass production cultural producers thus shift the focus of their work now they must aim at an average of tastes this average is nothing more than a statistical composite Mass taste then, is a strategy for constructing a mass audience and a function of capitalist consumption not necessarily reflective form of cultural expression (i.e. what people do and want) Mass culture and capitalist consumption The predominance of these new market-based factors especially capitalist consumption solidifies the position of mass culture in society The field of cultural consumption is both expanded and differentiated (into high and low/mass cultural forms) there are no new calls for a return to working class subordination and deference to high culture the working class need no longer be trained to appreciate high culture instead, mass culture becomes a mark of class difference In short, capitalist consumption of culture results in the reinscription of hierarchy as it marks class difference
Furthermore, the political content of culture is obscured and expressions of agitation are softened 3) Culturalism Cultural Studies, as an academic discipline, arose in part as a critical response to the culture and civilization thesis Culturalism is the name given to this new disciplinary paradigm and it became the theoretical foundation of early Cultural Studies Culturalism arose in post-wwii England and marked the break with civilization and culture (Arnold and Leavis) Who were the early practitioners of culturalism? Richard Hoggart Raymond Williams E.P. Thompson Stuart Hall They were the key thinkers behind the rise of Cultural Studies as a discipline Shared ideas of culturalism (Hoggart, et. al.) a clear rejection of the culture and civilization thesis an emphasis on the active production of culture as opposed to passive consumption a broader definition of culture including everyday experience that everyday culture is crucial for understanding the present that culture was not just a rarefied thing to be studied and honoured rather it is the space in which we struggle over how we can understand ourselves and the world around us By the end of the 1960s, culturalism became sedimented in the university The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was established at the University of Birmingham Hoggart was the first director Hall would also become director a) Hoggart: Yielding place to new Hoggart contrasts i) his personal experiences of the 1930s with ii) his academic research on 1950s culture i) traditional lived culture of the 1930s ii) yielding place to new cultural decline of the 1950s
Hoggart later acknowledged the effects of nostalgia on his thesis thus he separates that which is really part of a continuum Hoggart: the corrosive effects of market-based culture In the 1930s largely, popular culture was communal and self-made (DIY) there was an urban culture of the people along with a strong sense of community In the 1950s culture becomes an escape, as something enjoyed [while] real life goes on elsewhere Hoggart sees a decline in the moral seriousness of culture the sense of community is being destroyed Having a good time becomes the most important thing (a candyfloss world ). Thus, Hoggart sees a corrosive effect of culture based on capitalist consumption It results in the move away from a culture of the people to a world where things are done for people Also, people are living in a myth world which they take to be American life Hoggart s insight (foundational to Cultural Studies) Hoggart did not merely reproduce Leavisism with a left-wing slant His key insight: people appropriate the commodities of the culture industry for their own purposes, and on their own terms In other words, in their everyday lives people are not necessarily passive dupes mindlessly consuming commercial cultural commodities Yet Hoggart seemingly contradicts himself he only saw this happening in the 30s and did not recognize it in the 50s He was especially harsh on 50s youth, calling some of them less intelligent more exposed than others to the debilitating mass trends of the day
Nonetheless, he was not a Leavisite: Hoggart retained a commitment to working class culture remember that the working class culture of the 30s he celebrates and waxes nostalgia over, is the very culture that Leavis attacks Yet he nonetheless continues the Leavisite tradition of bemoaning a cultural decline One final insight: [T]he chains of cultural subordination are both easier to wear and harder to strike away than those of economic subordination b) Williams: the social definition of culture as a way of life Williams goes well beyond the bounds of what was traditionally thought of as culture He is not limited to describing the best and brightest but is looking for general laws and trends of social and cultural dvlpmt Williams gives three definitions to culture: i) ideal (Arnold and Leavis) cultural analysis as the discovery and description of timeless works which reference the universal human condition ii) documentary record cultural analysis as a critical assessment of surviving texts and practices of a previous age (intellectual and imaginative work) iii) a particular way of life this includes everyday activities and popular culture a social definition of culture The social definition of culture a.k.a. culturalism William s social definition of culture is foundational to the very notion of culturalism
The social definition introduces three new ways of thinking about culture: i) anthropological culture as a description of a particular way of life ii) meaning/value culture expresses meaning and ascribes value iii) clarifying builds on the first two cultural analysis clarifies the meaning and value implicit in a particular way of life Williams thus contributes to the broad methodological orientation for what would become the discipline of Cultural Studies i) culture as a particular way of life ii) culture as an expression of a particular way of life iii) cultural analysis as a means of reconstituting a particular way of life These elements are all mutually constitutive; part of the complex organization of culture Culture as a structure of feeling Together they comprise what Williams calls a structure of feeling In short, how we feel i.e. how we understand ourselves and the world around us is culturally conditioned It is the task of cultural analysis (iii above) to read the structure of feeling thru. the documentary record Methodological difficulties: limitations of the documentary record It is not necessarily easy, however, to read the structure of feeling off the documentary record Williams realized there were distinct levels of culture a) lived culture our day-to-day existence to actually experience a lived culture is the only way one can have full access to that particular structure of feeling b) recorded culture artifacts of a cultural period not everything of a given cultural period survives what survives and does not is both contingent and intentional
c) culture of the selective tradition this is what we are left to work with after the fact this is a highly contested terrain thus what is presented as traditional culture is not natural but constructed thru. competing interests The documentary record fragments under the process of the selective tradition Much is lost b/n the actual lived culture and its reconstitution (i.e. by cultural analysis) Cultural traditions are always selective although they are typically presented as being absolute Inscribed into any cultural tradition is a process of forgetting, largely governed by dominant interests i.e. class, race, gender, ethnicity, etc. where power processes what is retained as the documentary record of culture Key Points: Cultural tradition is not only a selection but an interpretation there are always historical alternatives to contemporary interpretations of a given cultural tradition A Break with Leavisism a) Art holds no special place; while important it is just another human activity which comprises culture in other words, culture is the lived experience of ordinary women and men b) Working class culture is positively differentiated form middle class culture not a symptom of social and economic problems c) a democratic definition of culture i.e. a common culture not a hierarchical culture of difference and deference this is the most decisive break with Leavisism (and the entire culture and civilization tradition) This does not mean that Williams does not recognize how bad most popular culture is But he does not criticize it from a superior place of certainty, policed by the older formula: enlightened minority, degraded mass
Culture and capitalism Williams makes an important observation: we cannot equate commercial popular culture with working class culture commercial popular culture is instituted, financed, produced, and operated by corporate capitalism also, like Hoggart, Williams realizes the need to distinguish b/n the production of cultural commodities and what people make of these commodities In conclusion, both Hoggart and Williams make important contributions which clears the way for a non-leavisite study of popular culture. This does not mean that the culture and civilization tradition is dead; just that there are new alternatives to the understanding of culture Summarizing the disciplinary significance of Culturalism Culturalism moved decisively beyond the Arnoldian/Leavisite tradition of the best and brightest in minority keeping Culture is not longer regarded merely a rarefied set of privileged texts Culture is the systems of meaning embedded in all social practices Thus the collective experience of those social practices is the authenticating source through which to understand culture Key elements of culturalism a) culture as interwoven in all social practices b) those social practices include common forms of human activity c) opposed to the base/superstructure model d) both social being and social consciousness are interrelated e) culture includes both meaning and values and lived traditions and practices