Cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies. Political economy originally was the term for studying production buying and selling and their relations with law custom and government Communication is the process of conveying information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium in which the communicated information is understood the same way Sociology (from Latin: socius "companion" and the suffix -ology "the study of" from Greek λόγος lógos "knowledge" Social theory is an essential tool used by scholars in the analysis of society through the use of theoretical frameworks social structures and phenomena are analyzed and placed in context Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of Literature and of the methods for analyzing literature In Psychology, Communication theory and Sociology, media influence or media effects refers to the theories about the ways the Mass media Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to Reality, the other Arts individual Cultural anthropology is one of four fields of Anthropology (the holistic study of humanity) as it developed in the United States. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Museology (also called museum studies) is the study of how to organize and manage Museums and museum collections. Art history is the Academic study of objects of Art in their Historical development and stylistic contexts i Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual Art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of Aesthetics or the theory of Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics Nationality is a relationship between a Person and their State of Origin, Culture, association Affiliation and/or Loyalty Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions (or stratification) between individuals or groups in Societies or Cultures. Gender comprises a range of differences between men and women extending from the biological to the social [1]
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The term was coined by Richard Hoggart in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. Herbert Richard Hoggart (born 24 September 1918) is a British Academic and Public figure, whose career has covered the fields of The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Stuart Hall (born February 3 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican cultural theorist and Sociologist who has lived
From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with his colleagues Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie, created an international intellectual movement. Paul Willis is a leading British cultural theorist. He was born in Wolverhampton and received his education at the University of Cambridge and at the Dick Hebdige (born 1951 is an expatriate British media theorist and Sociologist, most commonly associated with the study of Subcultures and its resistance Many cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis, exploring the relationships between cultural forms (the superstructure) and that of the political economy (the base). By the 1970s, however, the politically formidable British working classes were in decline. Britain's manufacturing industries were fading and union rolls were shrinking. Yet, millions of working class Britons backed the rise of Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Hilda Thatcher Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS (born 13 October 1925 For Stuart Hall and other Marxist theorists, this shift in loyalty from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party was antithetical to the interests of the working class and had to be explained in terms of cultural politics. The Labour Party is a Political party in the United Kingdom. Founded at the start of the 20th century it has been since the 1920s the principal party of the The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative and Unionist Party) is a Political party in the United Kingdom.
In order to understand the changing political circumstances of class, politics, and culture in the United Kingdom, scholars at the CCCS turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci ('ɡramʃi ( January 23, 1891 &ndash April 27, 1937) was an Italian Philosopher, Writer, Gramsci had been concerned with similar issues: why would Italian laborers and peasants vote for fascists? Why, in other words, would working people vote to give more control to corporations, and see their own rights and freedoms abrogated? Gramsci updated classical Marxism in seeing culture as a key instrument of political and social control. In this view, capitalists use not only brute force (police, prisons, repression, military) to maintain control, but also penetrate the everyday culture of working people. Thus, the key rubric for Gramsci and for cultural studies is that of cultural hegemony. Cultural hegemony is a Concept coined by Marxist Philosopher Antonio Gramsci.
Scott Lash writes,
| “ | In the work of Hall, Hebdige and McRobbie, popular culture came to the fore. Scott Lash is a professor of Sociology and Cultural studies at Goldsmiths College University of London. . . What Gramsci gave to this was the importance of consent and culture. If the fundamental Marxists saw power in terms of class versus class, then Gramsci gave to us a question of class alliance. The rise of cultural studies itself was based on the decline of the prominence of fundamental class-versus-class politics. [2] | ” |
Write Edgar and Sedgwick:
The theory of hegemony was of central importance to the development of British cultural studies [particularly the CCCS]. It facilitated analysis of the ways in which subordinate groups actively resist and respond to political and economic domination. The subordinate groups need not be seen merely as the passive dupes of the dominant class and its ideology. [3]
This line of thinking opened up fruitful work exploring agency; a theoretical outlook which reinserted the active, critical capacities of all people. The debate surrounding the influence of structure and agency on human thought and behaviour is one of the central issues in Sociology and other Social sciences In Notions of agency have supplanted much scholarly emphasis on groups of people (e. g. the working class, primitives, colonized peoples, women) whose political consciousness and scope of action was generally limited to their position within certain economic and political structures. The politics of consciousness Consciousness typically refers to the idea of a being who is self-aware In other words, many economists, sociologists, political scientists, and historians have traditionally deprived everyday people of a role in shaping their world or outlook, although anthropologists since the 1960s have foregrounded the power of agents to contest structure, first in the work of transactionalists like Fredrik Barth, and then in works inspired by resistance theory and post-colonial theory. Fredrik Barth (born 1928 is a Norwegian social anthropologist who has published several ethnographic books with a clear formalistic view
At times, cultural studies' romance with agency nearly excluded the possibility of oppression, overlooks the fact that the subaltern have their own politics, and romanticizes agency, overblowing its potentiality and pervasiveness. In work of this kind, popular in the 1990s, many cultural studies scholars discovered in consumers ways of creatively using and subverting commodities and dominant ideologies. This orientation has come under fire for a variety of reasons.
Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. A personal and cultural value is a Relative ethic value, an assumption upon which implementation can be extrapolated Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. In any given practice, people use various objects (such as iPods or handguns). iPod is a popular brand of Portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc Hence, this field studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Recently, as capitalism has spread throughout the world (a process called globalization), cultural studies has begun to critique local and global forms of resistance to Western hegemony. Capitalism is the Economic system in which the Means of production are owned by private Persons and operated for Profit and where Globalization (or globalisation) in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones
In his book Introducing Cultural Studies, Ziauddin Sardar lists the following five main characteristics of cultural studies:
Since cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field, its practitioners draw a diverse array of theories and practices.
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field's inception in the late 1970s. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located The United States of America —commonly referred to as the This article is about the Decade 1970-1979 For the Year 1970 see 1970. The British version of cultural studies was developed in the 1950s and 1960s mainly under the influence first of Richard Hoggart, E. P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams, and later Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Edward Palmer Thompson ( February 3, 1924, Oxford &ndash August 28, 1993, Worcester) was an English historian Raymond Henry Williams ( 31 August 1921 &ndash 26 January 1988) was a Welsh academic Novelist and Critic. The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a British red brick University located in the city of Birmingham This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as 'capitalist' mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i. Popular culture (or pop culture) is the Culture — patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance — Popular culture (or pop culture) is the Culture — patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance — The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist Critical theory, Social research, and Philosophy. Culture industry is a term coined by Theodor Adorno (1903-1969 and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973 who argued that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy. Paul Gilroy (born February 16, 1956) is a Professor at the London School of Economics.
In contrast, the American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. Popular culture (or pop culture) is the Culture — patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance — Fandom (from the noun fan and the affix -dom, as in kingdom, dukedom, etc The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded.
In Canada, cultural studies has sometimes focused on issues of technology and society, continuing the emphasis in the work of Marshall McLuhan and others. Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page In Australia, there has sometimes been a special emphasis on cultural policy. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. Operational Definition Cultural Policy is the area of Public policy -making that governs activities related to The arts and Culture. In South Africa, human rights and Third World issues are among the topics treated. Human rights refers to the "basic Rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled Third World is a name given to nations that are generally considered to be underdeveloped economically There were a number of exchanges between Birmingham and Italy, resulting in work on Italian leftism, and theories of postmodernism. Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement' While " Modern " itself refers to something "related to the present" the movement of modernism On the other hand, there is a debate in Latin America about the relevance of cultural studies, with some researchers calling for more action-oriented research. Cultural Studies is relatively undeveloped in France, where there is a stronger tradition of semiotics, as in the writings of Roland Barthes. This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis or signification and communication signs and Symbols both Roland Barthes ( November 12, 1915 &ndash March 25, 1980) (ʀɔlɑ̃ baʀt was a French Literary critic, literary Also in Germany it is undeveloped, probably due to the continued influence of the Frankfurt School, which has developed a body of writing on such topics as mass culture, modern art and music. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist Critical theory, Social research, and Philosophy.
Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist Critical theory, Social research, and Philosophy. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. A personal and cultural value is a Relative ethic value, an assumption upon which implementation can be extrapolated This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. A cultural artifact is a human-made object which gives information about the Culture of its creator and users In a Marxist view, those who control the means of production (the economic base) essentially control a culture. Means Of Production is a compilation of Aim 's early 12" and EP releases recorded between 1995 and 1998
Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view is best exemplified by the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Case of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. Griselda Pollock (born 1949) is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst and a world-renowned scholar of international post-colonial feminist studies in the Art history is the Academic study of objects of Art in their Historical development and stylistic contexts i Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior The writer Julia Kristeva and the artist Bracha L. Ettinger, are influential voices in the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism. Julia Kristeva (Юлия Кръстева (born 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian - French Philosopher, Literary critic, Bracha L Ettinger (born 1951 also known as Bracha Ettinger, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Hebrew ברכה אטינגר, ברכה ליכטנברג-אטינגר Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate
Ultimately, this perspective criticizes the traditional view assuming a passive consumer, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive, and interpret cultural texts. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively reject, or challenge the meaning of a product. These different approaches have shifted the focus away from the production of items. Instead, they argue that consumption plays an equally important role, since the way consumers consume a product gives meaning to an item. Some closely link the act of consuming with cultural identity. Cultural identity is the (feeling of identity of a group or Culture, or of an Individual as far as he or she is influenced by her belonging to a group Stuart Hall and John Fiske have become influential in these developments.
In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. TEXT is the band founded by Kristofer Steen David Sandström Fredrik Bäckström and Jon F Brännström Photography (fә'tɒgrәfi or fә'tɑːgrәfi (from Greek φωτο and γραφία is the process and Art of recording pictures by means of capturing Fashion refers to styles of dress (but can also include cuisine literature art architecture and general comportment that are popular in a culture at any given time Haircut redirects here For the financial term see Haircut (finance. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of "culture". "Culture" for a cultural studies researcher not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups)[4] and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. High culture is a term now used in a number of different ways in Academic discourse whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products mainly in the The term ruling class refers to the Social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy In Sociology, a group can be defined as two or more Humans that interact with one another accept expectations and obligations as members of the group and share a Popular culture (or pop culture) is the Culture — patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance — The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the discipline of comparative literature and cultural studies. Comparative Cultural Studies is the study of a culture and all of its products and processes with the focus being on the theory method and application of the study process(es rather Comparative literature (sometimes abbreviated "Comp lit" is critical scholarship dealing with the Literature of two or more different Linguistic
Cultural studies is not a unified theory but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches, methods, and academic perspectives; as in any academic discipline, cultural studies academics frequently debate among themselves. However, some academics from other fields have criticised the discipline as a whole. It has been popular to dismiss cultural studies as an academic fad. Yale literature professor Harold Bloom has been an outspoken critic of the cultural studies model of literary studies. Harold Bloom' (born July 11, 1930) is a Literary critic. Bloom defended 19th-century Romantic poets at a time when their reputations Critics such as Bloom see cultural studies as it applies to literary scholarship as a vehicle of careerism by academics, instead promoting essentialist theories of culture, mobilising arguments that scholars should promote the public interest by studying what makes beautiful literary works beautiful.
Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN's Booknotes:
| “ | [T]here are two enemies of reading now in the world, not just in the English-speaking world. One [is] the lunatic destruction of literary studies. . . and its replacement by what is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is. I mean, the. . . now-weary phrase 'political correctness' remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in the English-speaking world, who really do represent a treason of the intellectuals, I think, a 'betrayal of the clerks'. "[5] | ” |
Literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies theory like Bloom, but has criticised certain aspects of it, highlighting what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory (2003). Terence Francis Eagleton (born 22 February, 1943, Salford then in Lancashire) is regarded by many as Britain's most influential living Literary For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about the "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential. Culture theory is the branch of Anthropology, Semiotics, and other related social science disciplines (e
One of the most sensationalized critiques of cultural studies came from physicist Alan Sokal, who submitted an article to a cultural-studies journal, Social Text. Alan David Sokal (born 1955) is a professor of Physics and faculty member of the physics department at New York University. Social Text is a postmodernist Cultural studies Journal published by Duke University Press. This article was what Sokal thought would be a parody of what he perceived to be the "fashionable nonsense" of postmodernists working in cultural studies. Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement' While " Modern " itself refers to something "related to the present" the movement of modernism As the paper was coming out, Sokal published an article in a self-described "academic gossip" magazine Lingua Franca, revealing the hoax. Lingua Franca was an American magazine about intellectual and literary life in Academia. His explanation for doing this was:
| “ | Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful -- not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of many "progressive" or "leftist" academic humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about "the social construction of reality" won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity. [6] | ” |
The reaction from cultural-studies scholars argues that Sokal bases his critique on a misunderstanding of the aims the discipline, as well as those of cultural critique in general. No one, for example, has reasonably argued that cultural studies is a substitute for efforts to find the cure for AIDS, any more than Sokal himself, as a physicist, should be expected to search for this cure. But what cultural studies can do is to demonstrate the way in which finding the cure for AIDS is embedded in a political context, in which representations, metaphors, and other semiotic processes come to have enormous power, so that (to further this particular example) in the US Ronald Reagan did not authorize funding for HIV research until years after the epidemic began, and people around the globe are marginalized (or worse) for having the stigma of HIV. These are the dynamics that cultural studies aims to analyze.
A more serious criticism comes from the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, who has also written on topics such as photography, art museums, and modern literature. Pierre Bourdieu ( August 1, 1930 – January 23, 2002) was an acclaimed French Sociologist and writer known for his Bourdieu's point is that cultural studies lacks scientific method. His own work makes innovative use of statistics and in-depth interviews. Cultural studies is relatively unstructured as an academic field. It is difficult to hold researchers accountable for their claims because there is no agreement on method and validity.
Conversely, cultural studies scholars have criticized more traditional academic disciplines such as literary criticism, science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and art history. Literary criticism is the study discussion evaluation and interpretation of Literature. Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning " Knowledge " or "knowing" is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding Economics is the social science that studies the production distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Sociology (from Latin: socius "companion" and the suffix -ology "the study of" from Greek λόγος lógos "knowledge" Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/ from Greek grc ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos, "human" -λογία -logia) is the study of Art history is the Academic study of objects of Art in their Historical development and stylistic contexts i
Though a young discipline, cultural studies has established a firm footing in many universities around the globe. With steadily rising enrollments, expanding numbers of departments, and a robust publishing field, cultural studies steps into the 21st century as a young yet successful discipline. The "discipline," if it can be called that (and there is considerable debate among scholars to this effect) is filled with discussions about its future directions, methods, and purposes.
Sociologist Scott Lash has recently put forth the idea that cultural studies is entering a new phase. Arguing that the political and economic milieu has fundamentally altered from that of the 1970s, he writes, "I want to suggest that power now. . . is largely post-hegemonic. . . Hegemony was the concept that de facto crystallized cultural studies as a discipline. Hegemony means domination through consent as much as coercion. It has meant domination through ideology or discourse. . . " [7] He writes that the flow of power is becoming more internalized, that there has been "a shift in power from the hegemonic mode of 'power over' to an intensive notion of power from within (including domination from within) and power as a generative force. "[8] Resistance to power, in other words, becomes complicated when power and domination are increasingly (re)produced within oneself, within subaltern groups, within exploited people.
In response, however, Richard Johnson argues that Lash appears to have misunderstood the most basic concept of the discipline [9]. 'Hegemony', even in the writings of Antonio Gramsci, is not understood as a mode of domination at all, but as a form of political leadership which involves a complex set of relationships between various groups and individuals and which always proceeds from the immanence of power to all social relations. This complex understanding has been taken much further in the work of Stuart Hall and that of political theorist Ernesto Laclau, who has had some influence on Cultural Studies. Ernesto Laclau (b1935 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine political theorist often described as post-Marxist. It is therefore unclear as to why Lash claims that Cultural Studies has understood hegemony as a form of domination, or where the originality of his theory of power is actually thought to lie.
This illustrates the extent to which Cultural Studies remains a highly contested field of intellectual debate and self-revision.
Institutionally, the discipline has undergone major shifts. The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies closed in 2002, marking the end - arguably - of the particular conception of cultural studies - focussed almost exclusively on the study of contemporary, popular culture - that it promoted. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. Meanwhile, the London Consortium - formed in 1993 - was propagating a very different conception of the discipline, one that was tied neither to the contemporary, nor to the popular. The London Consortium is a graduate school in the UK offering multidisciplinary Masters and Doctoral programs in the Humanities and Cultural studies at the University As a postgraduate course run as a collaboration between Tate the ICA, Birkbeck, University of London, the Architectural Association and the Science Museum, the Consortium also places a primary importance on the cultural institutions that are involved in the production, dissemination and consumption of culture. Tate is the United Kingdom 's national museum of British and Modern Art and is a network of four art galleries in England: Tate Britain (opened in Birkbeck University of London, sometimes referred to by its former (and still legal name Birkbeck College or by the abbreviation BBK, is a constituent college Former students Will Alsop Herbert Baker Geoffrey Bawa Ben van Berkel For science museums in general check out Science museum. The Science Museum on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London is part Similar approaches are observable at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis: such postgraduate institutions will determine to a large extent the future of the discipline, if it has one.