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CULTURALISM Chapter 3 – Cultural theory and Popular culture

CULTURALISM Chapter 3 – Cultural theory and Popular culture . LA SALLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCIENCES BA IN SPANISH, ENGLISH, AND FRENCH. INTRODUCTION.

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CULTURALISM Chapter 3 – Cultural theory and Popular culture

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  1. CULTURALISMChapter 3 – Cultural theory and Popular culture LA SALLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCIENCES BA IN SPANISH, ENGLISH, AND FRENCH

  2. INTRODUCTION • Theterm ‘culturalism’ wascoinedto describe Thompson'swork, and thework of Hoggart and Williams, byone of theformerdirectors of the Centre forContemporary Cultural Studies, Richard Johnson (1979). • Johnson uses thetermtoindicatethepresence of a body of theoreticalconcernsconnectingthework of thethreetheorists. Each, in hisdifferentway, breakswithkeyaspects of thetradition he inherits. Hoggart and Williams break withLeavisism; Thompson breakswithmechanistic and economisticversions of Marxism. • Whatunitesthemisanapproachwhichinsiststhatbyanalysingtheculture of a society – the textual forms and documentedpractices of a culture – itispossibletoreconstitutethepatternedbehaviour and constellations of ideas sharedbythemen and womenwho produce and consume thetexts and practices of thatsociety. Itisa perspectivethatstresses ‘humanagency’, the active production of culture, ratherthanitspassiveconsumption.

  3. Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy • The uses of literacy is divided in two parts: • The older order (30’s): Working class culture. • The new order (50’s): Mass culture. • Threat from new forms of mass entertainment together with decline in moral seriousness. • Working class’ ability to resist manipulations of mass culture. • 30’s – The rich full life = A strong sense of community / Self-made entertainment / Working class’ appreciation of popular songs. • 50’s – A candy-floss world = Everything is now far too thin and insipid / Manipulative power of the culture industries (Commercial culture) evident by the success of the radio and soap operas / The jube-box (A sign of obediently receptive passivity) • Good past / bad past binary opposition

  4. Raymond Williams: ‘The analysis of culture’ • For Williams, culture expresses meanings and values (structure of feeling) and through cultural analysis it is possible to clarify them. • Cultural analysis is a method for understanding what a culture is expressing by analyzing its cultural expressions and therefore reconstructing and interpreting a particular way of life. There are 3 types: • Culture ideal = discovery and description. • Documentary = critical assessment. • Social = Clarification of meanings and values. • Cultural analyses want a common culture not a hierarchical culture / Distinction between commodities available by culture industries and what people make of them. • He talks about 3 levels of culture: • Lived culture: Experienced by people in their day-to-day life in a specific place and at a particular time / Access through the documentary record of the culture. • Period culture: It is the recorded culture which includes products and daily facts from a culture. • Culture of the selective tradition: It is the one that connects the previous types of culture. Many factors such us interests and values of the dominant class influenced the selection of the texts chosen for understanding the lived culture.

  5. E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class • The making of the English working class is a historical phenomenon. It is not a structure or a category, but a historical relationship of unity and difference. • Working class is a result of common experiences (inherited or shared) based on people’s identity and interests. Those experiences mean culture. • The making of the English working class was related to three different perspectives: 1. Political and cultural transitions from the 18th century: religious dissent, popular discontent, and influence of the French revolution. 2. Social and cultural experience of the industrial revolution: artisans, cotton spinners and weavers. 3. Growth of working class consciousness. • The making of the English working class is an example of “history from below”. This history is the experience of men that make their own history based on circumstances from the past. Working class as conscious agents of their own making.

  6. Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel: The Popular Arts • Hall and Whanneldeveloped an approach for handling problems of value and evaluation in the study of POPULAR CULTURE. POPULAR CULTURE • Their first concern was to replace the misleading generalizations that facilitate popular discrimination. Rejecting Leavisism’sarguments that high culture is good and all popular culture is bad. • They reject two common teaching strategies when the popular culture is intr in the classroom. a. Defensive Strategy: When, the popular culture is condemn it as a second-rate culture. b. Opportunity Strategy: When, the popular tastes of students are embraces to lead them to better things. • They help people become a more demanding audience. We must judge texts and practices on their own terms / Not a question of superiority or inferiority but a question of different kinds of satisfaction.

  7. Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel: The Popular Arts POPULAR ART • Art which operates within the confines of the popular. A popular art for the people. • Good popular culture is able to re-establish the relationship between performer and audience. It re-states values and attitudes already known. It has in common with folk art, but it is individualized art. • Mass art is a corrupt version of popular art. / Formulaic, escapist, aesthetically worthless, unrewarding. YOUTH CULTURE: • Pop music culture establishes a sense of identity among youth. • They identify with those collective representations and use them as guiding fictions, which compose their mental picture of the world. • But, it is a contradictory mixture of the authentic and manufactured. It is self-expression for the young and pasture for commercial providers.

  8. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies • Hoggart established the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the Universityof Birmingham. • Culturalists study cultural texts and practices in order to reconstitute or reconstruct the experiences, values, etc. – the ‘structure of feeling’ of particular groups or classes or whole societies, in order to better understand the lives of those who lived the culture. • Williams’ssocial definition of culture, Thompson’s act of historical rescue, Hall and Whannel’s ‘democratic’ extension of Leavisismargue that popular culture (defined as the lived culture of ordinary men and women) is worth studying. It is on the basis of these and other assumptions of culturalism, channelled through the traditions of English, sociology and history, that British cultural studies began.

  9. Bibliography • Storey, John (2009). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. AnIntroduction (5th edition). London: Pearson-Longman. www.pearsoned.co.uk/storey

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