intro to cultural studies
22/09/26
Study method (recommended):
- smoke weed
- watch punk documentaries / skate movies
- ???
- profit
EXAM
Based on the slides and classes, they are recorded. Bib links are purely informative - not expected to watch movies / books. Concepts are marked in bold listed at the end of slides.
Exam is a written exam, part open essay questions, part mcq.
Class 1: The Birmingham School
What is culture?
Culture is not merely “high culture”; art, heritage, literature… No single answer, subcultures, slang, everyday practices.
Raymond Williams: Keywords (1976)
Culture < Latin’cultura/colere’ meaning cultivation (as in agriculture)
Cultivating the mind like a spiritual and moral project — process
Historical Western Conceptions of Culture
- (18th century / Enlightenment) education, development and civilization
- (19th century / Romanticisim) shared/innate values, beliefs, practices and language of group of people.
- (20th century / Modernism) the most valuable artistic products of a given period and nation, what people have to offer, the arts / the cannon
Tensions
Learned/acquired versus innate
Universal (singular) versus national/regional cultures (plural)
Elite culture (art, canon) versus different social groups (alt groups and foenem)
William finds that culture is not a single thing, it is more than one thing. It is a concept that is ambivolent, it has internal contradictions.
All these conceptions continue to shape the 20th century. New ideas are added and continued to be added to this understanding of culture.
Historical Context
Alot of things have changed during the 19/20th century. Spread of literacy, access to education etc. made it so that not only the elites contribute to culture.
New disciplines are rising, national studies versus classics. Distinctions between studies are more clear.
Mass culture emerged, this refers to content produced by emerging cultural industries. Printing press, radio, film, photography, television and futaba channels. Targets large audiences because of its for profit nature. New genres.
New audiences, forms
Manipulation and propaganda
Culture and Civilization
Matthew Arnold (Culture and Anarchy, 1869)
Anarchy, chaos, political destruction could only be counteracted by culture. Not just any culture, but what Arnold refers to as study of perfection, an antidote to anarchy. It shows people the right way and keeps them from the dangers of society.
Culture was inexpicably linked to education.
F.R. Leavis (Mass Civilization and Minority Culture, 1930)
New modernist project of developing different teaching ways of literature.
This second idea of culture, culture is specific to nations and people. For Leavis it was necessary to study all sorts of culture and not only the best. It is important that culture is challenging and complex. Distinction between high culture versus low/popular/mass culture.
English culture would disappear under USA’s mass media production.
WWI & WWII
Failiure of Western civilization, the west has fallen, its joever, imperialism, colonialism and nationalism. A huge sense of failiure, specifically western civilization and culture.
This sets motion to political projects, one one hand the project of decolonization and also globaliation of culture. There is also the project of democratization of higher education. After the two world wars, there was a huge influx of trauma in society, it was necessary to give these people hope, a project, a role in society. Most European countries found the answer in democratization of higher education.
New concept of culture as a response to failure of elite culture was hopium for the people.
- William Hoggart
- Raymond Williams
- E.P. Thompson
They started from the fields of history, literature and published mumbers of groundbreaking rules.
Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy - Focuses on British working class community versus commercial mass media
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society - Culture as a “whole way of life” culture is ordinary. + The Long Revolution
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
Birmingham Centre for the Contemporary Studies (CCCS)
Richard Hoggard
First red brick university in major industrial cities in England, focuses on practical sciences and emphasises inclusivity. More accessible to people from the working class.
Funded by a grant from Penguin Books, following *D.H. Lawrence obscenity trial *(lol) french depiction of sex and other taboos
New definition of culture by Raymond Williams: Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in istitutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under land … We use the word culture in two senses: to mean a whole way of life - the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning - the special processes of discovery and creative effort. Some writers reserve the word for one or other of thsese senses; I insist on both, and on the significance of their conjunction. The questions I ask about our culture are questions about our general and common purposes, yet also questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.
Culture is for everybody. Its how we communicate and find common ground. This is a very humanist project. How do we find meaning? How do we value the culture of everybody? How do we not create distinctions?
Culturalism
Culture is independent and it has a primary importance for society. Its not just a biproduct or a luxury, its vital. We need to make sense of our world by generating science and meaning. It gives meaning to the world.
Language is one of the prime models of how we create meaning. But meaning is much more than language, everything we encounter is a sign, what we do is read the world according to certain codes. Some codes are univeral, i.e. the traffic codes, however there exists an arbitraryness, differences without any reason (duh).
Stuart Hall: The Heydays of CCCS
Went further than Raymond Williams.
Culture and Representation
Many changes in British society after the 50’s.
- Mass immigration
- Youth culture, pop music, sub cultres - the notion of leisure, the idea that we have free time.
- Growing role of mass media
→ Centrality of images and representations, images are becoming more important.
Representation for Stuart Hall is a process, not a fixed meaning: meaning is created in the process of bringing together a representation and an idea, it has no essence or independent reality.
Culture is primary: it is how we create and communicate meaning. Being part of a culture is being able to decipher its codes and read the signs. The more you’re part of an alt culture, the more you understand the code.
Culture is divided: along the lines of race, class, gender, age… who create their own systems of reading. They are formed by sharing signs and codes.
Stuart Hall put in the vocabulary “subculture” or “counterculture” - emphasis on culture as a site of struggle.
Culture is not neutral, its always a site of struggle
Battleground for power, meaning and control
Who controls the narrative, the public opinion, the doxa?
**Hegemony **= the way in which dominant narratives can be established and maintained, not by force but by consent
Cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination, it is never a zero-sum cultural game; it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relation of culture; it is always about changing the dispositions and the configurations of cultural power, not getting out of it. —Stuart Hall
Things can continuously change,
You can not step outside of a specific culture, you can resist it
Culture as Resistance
Power is omnipresent in society, (see also, Pierre Bourdieu) its not just negative
Power can also be a force of social action and protest. A site of resistance where hegemony, the dominant opinion, can be challenged.
Articulation
Culture is not homogenous, but it is a complex interaction between different representations.
To articulate is to speak, using language to express yourself. Also, the idea to connect things. Through representations we link different things together, at first they may seem contradictory like being a gay religious republican. There is no default way one thing should be connected to something else.
Conjuncture
Contemporary culture is not an established fact, it is a conjuncture, different elements in constant flux that are influenced by economic factors, socio-political shifts and technological developments come together.
Going back to Raymond Williams, he makes a difference between dominant, residual and emergent.
Culture is not just contemporary, ideas are simultaneously present.
- **Dominant: **hegemony, doxa, ideology eg. democracy.
- **Residual: **older ideas that are still present, Monarchy in democratic countries
- **Emergent: **express new ideas or conceptions but not yet in a coheren, rational way → experiences, feelings, moods eg. Rise of fascists notions and the climate of anxiety that they generate.
From research centre to interdisciplinary field of study
Stuart Hall was director of CCCS 1968 - 1979, attracted many interesting scholars.
Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy
Their books remain topical today.
Resistance through ritual - Stuart hall & tony Jefferson
Policing the crisis - Stuart hall
Feminism for girls - Angela Mcrobbie
learning to labor - Paul willis
subculture - Dick Hebdige
there ain’t no black in the union jack - Paul Gilroy
Interdisciplinarity as Method
How does CS research stand out?
Qualitative methods
Rigorous methods to study the meaning of new, contemporary subjects
Importance of positionality
Researches are implicated in the phenomena they study
Researches are coming from different backgrounds than traditional elite institutions.
Their implication in culture and their background determine the lens through which they look at culture.
Activism
Very important journal: New Left Review, found by Stuart Hall.
CS & The Media
Neither blind adoration, nor complete rejection of mass media and popular culture.
Using them to reach large audiences - novels, films, television
Involvement with adult education and Open University → you could graduate university just through television.
Connection to youth culture, art, music, film makers
Media as an outlet for new types of intellectuals.
P.S. bunch of links in the lesson slide for fun
https://youtu.be/8wxRxSfhw6I
https://youtu.be/DV1krEyCgCM
black audio collective, john akomfrah,
https://youtu.be/IM9eZYLvzTc
Cultural Studies as an Academic Programme
ironic, cs is a project of critique of hegemonic culture, including the university.
Plea for inclusion and diversity
The research centre in Birmingham closed in 2002
Meanwhile in other places in the UK and other countries, cultural studies developed into full programs,
Different emphases in different countries TO BE DISCUSSED
They have different accents.
Australia, UK and Asia: focus on creative industry and cultural policy.
US: pop culture and continental philosophy, performance.
Europe: has its own traditions of studying everyday life and popular culture, cs research is still being imported today.
New Societal Challenges and Thinkers
Ecological crisis, the notion of anthropocene
Technology and post-humanism (gen ai)
New stages of capitalism
Growing inequality and new waves of migration
Rise of fascism and authotorian regimes
…
Key Concepts and Thinkers included in slides
Three Books Presented:
50 Key Terms in Contemporary Cultural Theory - Leuven book stores
Cultural Studies Theory and Practice, 5th edition
Frederik Dhaenens - REPRESENT!