Mina Macarena Essay

Cultural Studies- Raymond Day 10/07/14

The best which has been thought and said To what extent do you
believe that this definition of 'culture' should be the focus of cultural
studies?

To the question what is culture? there is a very wide diversity of possible answers. It is a
term that has a plurality of meanings. There is a common-sense definition of culture which
may be the way of living shared by a certain society (its beliefs, thoughts, values,
language, etc.) However, culture is much more than just that. In the field of Cultural
Studies, theorists have come up with a variety of definitions which differ according to their
opinion about what the focus of Cultural Studies should be. The term being so broad, it is
hard to find an agreed line of thought within the main theorists and scholars.

From the 1870s on, for many decades, the term culture had two main distinct meanings,
each with its supporters and detractors.

On the one hand, there is a definition provided by Matthew Arnold in his book Culture and
anarchy (1869), which was also referred to as High Culture: The best which has been
thought and said in the world; by which he basically meant classical poetry and German
philosophy. Arnold was an English poet who believed culture was the pursuit of perfection,
light, and sweetness. He made a contrast between Culture and anarchy: Culture being the
pursuit of the greater good by following ones reason; and anarchy being disorder, based
on the idea of every man for himself and materialism. By cultivating ones mind and
working for the greater good, anarchy could be avoided.

Arnold was greatly criticized for this conception of culture for being elitist. He was said to
make a distinction between high and low culture which excluded mass or popular culture.
His work has also been said to be a reaction to the threat that low/popular cultures
emergence represented at the time in England. For the poet, that may have meant a sign
of anarchy so order needed to be established.

Nonetheless, much of the criticism towards Arnold comes from a misconception of his
work. The author was interested in the cultivation of the mind through valuable resources.
He did not exclude the masses from his theory. In fact, he was widely read by the working
class in Britain and he supported education for the masses. It is true that his theory might
have been misused. A clear example of this is the fact that the supporters of colonialism
and imperialism found a justification for their practices in Arnolds theory. Imperialism was
said to be about bringing high culture to those who had not been able to cultivate their
minds (mainly European culture brought to South America and Africa).

Another criticism attached to Arnolds definition of culture is the fact that it is seen as an
assumption of knowing what the best is. This raises a number of controversial questions
such as: who decides what the best is? Is consensus needed to state what should be
taken as culture?
Mina Macarena Essay
Cultural Studies- Raymond Day 10/07/14

A very different scope to what the focus of cultural studies should be also exists: The
anthropologists view of culture, represented mainly by the thoughts of Edward Burnett
Tylor in his book Primitive Culture (1871). This definition has many supporters as it is
seen as much more inclusive than Arnolds conception of culture.

Tylor is one of the main pillars of modern anthropology. He wrote the book Primitive
Culture two years after Arnolds Culture and anarchy. His definition of culture differs
greatly from the one given by Matthew Arnold: That complex whole which includes
knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities acquired by men
as a member of society. This anthropologists view of culture relies on the fact that there
is something that human beings inherit through the years aside from the genetic and
biological factors. Culture is cumulative and grows from generation to generation. Tylor
uses the term Culture in the same way as he uses the word Civilization.

The main criticism made to this definition is that culture becomes everything acquired not
biologically. This concept is very broad and it brings problems when comes to studying it
as an academic discipline, that is, cultural studies.

Cultural Studies is a very broad field of study. As Stuart Hall has written Culture is not a
practice () It is threaded thought all social practices, and it is the sum of that relationship
(Cultural studies: the two paradigms). Due to this, it becomes harder to determine what the
focus of study should be. The main problem with the definition given by Matthew Arnold is
that it seems to exclude many other areas of culture which should be taken into an
account like the beliefs and traditions shared by a certain community. On the other hand,
the anthropologists view of what culture is seems to include everything and exclude little,
which is also controversial as the focus of an academic discipline because the field of
study can take infinite views and focus on many different aspects of culture. It would very
hard, if not impossible, to find a definition of culture with which all theorists of the field
agreed. Therefore, the scope of study is still open for debate.
Mina Macarena Essay
Cultural Studies- Raymond Day 10/07/14

Bibliography

Arnold, Matthew (1869) Culture and Anarchy. Ed. Samuel Lipman. New York: Yale
University Press, 1994. Orig. pub. 1869.
Hall, Stuart (1980) Cultural Studies: two paradigms. (Media, Culture and Society).
vol.2, pp. 5772. Retrieved from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR2/hall_1.pdf
The value of culture. BBC radio 4 series (2013) Retrieved from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tvoc
Tylor, Edward Burnett (1971) Primitive Culture. 6TH edition. Retrieved from
https://archive.org/details/primitiveculture01tylouoft