Name : Anjali M. Rathod
Enrollment no. : 4069206420220024
Roll no. : 02
Batch : M.A. Sem. 3 (2022-24)
Paper no. : 205 A - Cultural Studies
Email Address: rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : Smt. S.B. Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar - 364002
Cultural Studies and its important features
What is Culture ?
Culture is a complex and multifaceted concept that encompasses the shared beliefs, values, customs, practices, symbols, language, and artifacts that characterize a particular group of people. It is the cumulative product of human socialization and interaction within a specific community, shaping the way individuals perceive the world and interact with one another. Understanding and studying culture is crucial for comprehending human societies and fostering cross-cultural awareness. It plays a significant role in shaping individuals' identities, influencing social interactions, and contributing to the richness and diversity of the global human experience.
What is Cultural studies ?
Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field of academic study that explores the ways in which culture, including media, literature, art, language, and everyday practices, shapes and is shaped by society. It emerged in the mid-20th century as a response to traditional academic disciplines, seeking to understand culture as a complex and dynamic system of meanings.
Cultural studies often draws on theories and methods from various disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, literary theory, media studies, and philosophy. It examines how power relations, identities, and social structures are produced and reproduced through cultural practices and representations.
Cultural studies is characterized by its commitment to understanding culture as a site of struggle, negotiation, and contestation, where meanings are contested and social change can be initiated. It has been influential in fields such as communication, literature, sociology, and media studies, contributing to a more holistic and critical understanding of the role of culture in society.
THE PARAMETERS OF CULTURAL STUDIES
There is a difference between the study of culture and institutionally located cultural studies. The study of culture has taken place in a variety of academic disciplines: sociology, anthropology, English literature, etc. And in a range of geographical and institutional spaces. However, this is not to be understood as cultural studies. The study of culture has no origins, and to locate one is to exclude other possible starting points. Nevertheless this does not mean that cultural studies cannot be named and its key concepts identified.
Cultural studies is a discursive formation, that is, ‘a cluster or formation of ideas,
images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and conduct associated with, a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society’. Cultural studies is constituted by a regulated way of speaking about objects
which it brings into view and coheres around key concepts, ideas and concerns. Further,cultural studies had a moment at which it named itself, even though that naming marks only a cut or snapshot of an ever-evolving intellectual project.
Key Concepts :
Cultural studies is mainly concerned with eight key concepts namely: signifying practices, representation, materialism and non-reductionism, articulation, power, popular culture, texts and readers, subjectivity and identity. Writers are constantly in debate about how to deploy these key concepts and which is the most significant one. The theories from which the concepts are drawn from will be discussed after briefly introducing each of the concepts.
1. Culture and signifying practices are focusing on the production of meaning in order to make sense of the world. Here the importance of language becomes apparent as language is a way to produce signs and hence, meaning.
2. Representation refers to the construction of meanings through several means such as images or sounds. However, meanings are connected to specific social contexts and are therefore understood differently according to distinct circumstances.
3. Materialism and non-reductionism are two interrelated concepts in cultural studies. Materialism is tied to the production of cultural meanings. At this point several questions arise such as who controls the production, how it is distributed and how does that affect the cultural environment. Hence, as already mentioned before, cultural meanings are related to a specific context with its own particularities. Such meanings cannot be reduced to what is described as non-reductionism.
4. Articulation describes the relation of several elements in cultural studies. Hence, certain subjects are constructed through other subjects which are context dependent.
5. Power stands central in cultural studies as it highly influences, generates and determines social relationships.
6. Popular culture includes the concept of power generated through ideology and consent which results in hegemony. Ideology invisibly maintains power by presenting certain norms and values as universal truths. If a large group of people consents to a certain structure in society, hegemony is created which reproduces certain meanings and practices as forms of power over the subordinated group.
7. Texts and readers are culturally constructed such as sounds, images or practices and can generate power through produced ideology and hegemony. Hence, as people consume such cultural texts, they create meanings which again depends on the environment and context the people are currently in.
8. Subjectivity is related to identity as subjectivity refers to the person itself, whereas identity refers to how it feels to be such a person. Hence, we humans are not essential, existing subjects but are influenced by our surroundings and are constructed through it. This argument is also described as anti-essentialism.
Features of cultural studies is that it share four goals:
1) Cultural Studies transcends the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history.
2) Cultural Studies is politically engaged as we discussed above the power relation which is related with political things. Cultural critics see themselves as ‘‘oppositional,’’ not only within their own disciplines but to many of the power structures of society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and ‘‘minority’’ or ‘‘subaltern’’ discourses.
3) Cultural Studies denies the separation of ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ or elite and popular culture.
4) Cultural Studies analyzes not only the cultural work, but also the means of production.
Conclusion :
Cultural studies, interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of social institutions in the shaping of culture. Cultural studies emerged in Britain in the late 1950s and subsequently spread internationally, notably to the United States and Australia. Originally identified with the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (founded 1964) and with such scholars as Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams, cultural studies later became a well-established field in many academic institutions, and it has since had broad influence in sociology, anthropology, historiography, literary criticism, philosophy, and art criticism. Among its central concerns are the place of race or ethnicity, class, and gender in the production of cultural knowledge.
References :
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "cultural studies". Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Jul. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/cultural-studies. Accessed 9 December 2023.
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