Introduction to Cultural Studies

Introduction to Cultural Studies

• Cultural studies provide a new way of studying culture
• Academic subjects like anthropology, history, and sociology have historically studied culture
• Cultural studies crosses disciplinary boundaries, offering new insights into human cultures
• Cultural studies is a growing field of intellectual inquiry
• The term 'culture' itself has a complex history, making cultural studies an enormous area
• This first chapter will cover: definitions of culture, core issues, theoretical accounts, and an outline of cultural studies

What is Culture?

• 'Culture' has a complex history, with diverse meanings
• Culture can refer to various elements, from Shakespeare to Superman comics
• Culture exists in people's everyday lives and around the world
• Various definitions of culture raise complex issues for analysis

Culture as a "Way of Life"

• In human sciences, culture refers to creation and use of symbols
• Symbols distinguish ways of life for people, periods, groups, or humanity
• Creating and transmitting culture relies on symbols, a key human capacity
• Symbols represent ideas, objects, or feelings through shared agreement
• Shared ideas are symbolically expressed, defining culture
• A symbol can mean multiple things
• A flag might represent a country and patriotism
• Culture is studied by examining the meaning behind things
• Meanings behind dress styles, manners, places, languages, beliefs, or architecture
• Humans acquire culture by living together and learning from each other
• Edward Tylor defined culture as a complex whole: knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other habits
• Some consider culture exclusively as "arts and artistic activity," excluding other institutions

Raymond Williams' Influence

• Raymond Williams, a Welsh cultural analyst and literary critic, was an important influence
• He gave "serious" attention to "ordinary culture"
• Regarded as a founding figure in the development of cultural studies
• Williams' work examined the formation of culture as a response to industrialism
• He advocated for socialist transformation and cultural democracy, distancing himself from elitist views
• Williams introduced the concept of "flow" in media analysis in his book, "Television: Technology and Cultural Form"
• His book: "The Country and the City" greatly influenced subsequent interdisciplinary work on space and place
• Williams' overall approach – cultural materialism and emphasis, rather than detailed analyses, had a large impact
• His commitment to socialism, combined with a desire for communication and democracy, was very attractive to leftists

How People are Part of Culture

• Culture is not naturally absorbed, it is taught and learned
• Anthropology calls the process acculturation or enculturation
• Psychology calls it conditioning
• Sociology calls the process socialisation.
• Anthony Giddens defines socialisation as the process where an infant becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable human skilled in the culture's ways
• Primary socialisation occurs within a family or family-like group and involves language acquisition and gender identity
• Secondary socialisation includes subsequent life experiences
• Psychoanalysis focuses on childhood and the conditioning that relates to gender and sexuality acquisition
• Gender is the social roles different societies define as masculine or feminine
• Sexuality refers to desires and sexual orientation

Psychoanalysis Concepts

• Concepts developed by Sigmund Freud
• Freud used it to interpret literature and art
• Psychoanalytic theory developed into multiple schools, influencing feminist, postcolonial, Marxist, and postmodernist criticism
• Freud developed how symbols in dreams represent condensed/displaced meanings, revealing fears and desires
• Freud developed a tripartite method for the mind
  • Id/unconscious
  • Ego, which adjusts the mind to external reality
• Superego, incorporating moral sense
• Freud's psychoanalysis posits a understanding of desire and attachment
• Jacques Lacan said unconscious is structured
• Lacan says culture matters more than biology and uses the Oedipus complex
• The context of feminine sexuality differs from the masculine
• Men and women enter relationships with the symbolic order through the Oedipus complex
• Jacques Lacan states feminist psychoanalytic criticism helps context of feminine sexuality
• In cultural studies, theory of the subconscious allows a understanding of the relation between power and subjectivity

Interpreting Meaning

• Anthropology and some sociology view meaningful action as cultural
• Shared understandings within groups are cultural
• Knowledge of the world is socially constructed through social locations and interactions
• Views are partial because understandings are structured by locations
• Views mean knowledge of the world is inevitably perspectival
• Perspectival view complements cultural relativism
• Cultural relativism stresses that thoughts direct understandings
• Understanding is built upon the examination of our social location

Past Perspective

• England sees their culture as a historic tradtion
• Tradition is conceived in English in terms of influence
• English studies question values of texts and previously neglected texts have been introduced
• Culture is not objective but rather constructed and reconstructed
• Kilts shows how the meanings are constantly changing within society

Can Other Cultures Be Understood?

• Reliability examples are difficult to know percisely like wearing a kilt
• Historical relativism raises issue of the degree that we dwell in a world different than our predescessors
• The example of someone adpating to highland dress; difficult to know what the other middle class persons mind were then

Further cultural examples

• consulting of oracles, and the conceptions of time
• Describing the ways of life of different groups in their own society

How to Have Effective Cultures

• The Hollis and Lukes include cultural relativism under the heading of perception and argue there is two different ways of examinging
• Looking or seeking to understand; do we see the name thing in another person
• Percepetion relying on language; student think from our postion by thinking about who we are and what we are studying

Understanding Relationships

• Viewing cultures as blocks that interface along a boudary with zones of other
• Describing culture in terms and their disappearance is limted becuase it implies one culture replaces another
• Culture is also by age, gender, and class; all means which you position yourself
• Second Culture operates in terms of more culture estorying weaker ones; changes are adapated
• Relationship for instance, is better thought of as overlapping webs

How Do Some Cultures Value More

• High art, artistic activities, and literature have all been taken for selection of worthy study
• Exclusion of certain forms of writing are trash. mass culture
• Canons or traditons are structed; Hawkins has mantained things often shared themes
• An example of Opera used may show a difference from other social classes than entertainment

Relationship Between Culture and Power

• Influence stems when the discussions lead from the book to our understanding of culture and power
• All societies are organized within power and authority
• Those relationships will affect and change our culture
• A culture in which the groups do affects their interests
• Is through constructions of traditions and their powers through the groups.
• Tradition by British Parliamentary vs Demorcracy is an argument against certain powerfuls
• Those like, Trash or popular culture may be seen to influence groups

Negotiate and Resisted

• It is invetable that social groups may make attitudes
• Cultural resistence occurs in many areas of life as
• Areas of stuggle are: Gender, race, class, and age - for these social categories
• What it means to be a man or woman points out the ways we are to behave socially
• A political idea of Rights. Equality implies commonalities
• The thought of differnces is complicated by the rejection of equality
• Culture gives shape over what who we are

How Does It Give Shape

• Examples are shown for questions over particular culture
• Literary texts in the nineteen centery are designed to give school children a sense of identity
• National cultures, with cultures being untreatically part of it, or left out
• Infuse a pride during Empire

Side Story

• Achbe cites and criticizes aspects in Joseph Conrand's novel, being partially based for representation of African
• Constructed in African with is based on constructing

Summary Point

• Identities or aspects is how we know ourselves

Summary Examples

• Family: understanding family comes from examining relationships, one being adults who have children
• Looking to the western family reminds us of the dangers to know one is in the same over the world

Example: Shakespere

• Teaching shakepeare brings out a lesson of english-ness. A form of othering cultures
• Cultural studies, not taking the position for granted and ask questions instead
• Shakespeares power is a political notion
• And can we understand plays?