DIWAKAR EDUCATION HUB

Cultural Studies-Unit-7
UGC NET English Literature
DIWAKAR EDUCATION HUB

2020

THE LEARN WITH EXPERTISE

 Cultural Studies-Unit-7

Cultural Studies
Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960-s, Cultural Studies is an academic discipline which combines political
economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film studies, cultural
anthropology, philosophy, art history/ criticism etc. to study cultural phenomena in various societies. Cultural
Studies researches often focus on how a particular phenomenon relates matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity,
social class and gender.

Discussion on Cultural Studies have gained currency with the publication of Richard Hoggart‘s Use of Literacy
(1957) and Raymond Williams‘ Culture and Society (1958), and with the establishment of Birmingham Centre for is
Contemporary Cultural Studies in England in 1968.
Since culture is now considered as the source of art and literature, cultural criticism has gained ground, and
therefore, Raymond Williams’ term “cultural materialism”, Stephen Greenblatt‘s “cultural poetics” and Bakhtin‘s
term “cultural prosaic”, have become significant in the field of Cultural Studies and cultural criticism.
The works of Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart with the Birmingham Centre, later expanded through the writings
of David Morley, Tony Bennett and others. Cultural Studies is interested in the process by which power relations
organize cultural artefacts (food habits, music, cinema, sport events etc.). It looks at popular culture and everyday
life, which had hitherto been dismissed as “inferior” and unworthy of academic study. Cultural Studies’ approaches
1) transcend the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history 2) are politically engaged 3)
reject the distinction between “high” and “low” art or “elite” and “popular” culture 4) analyse not only the cultural
works but also the means of production.

In order to understand the changing political circumstances of class, politics and culture in the UK, scholars at the
CCCS turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci who modified classical Marxism in seeing culture as a key instrument
of political and social control. In his view, capitalists are not only brute force (police, prison, 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. Edgar and Sedgwick point out that the theory of hegemony was pivotal to the
development of British Cultural Studies. It facilitated analysis of the ways in which subaltern groups actively resist
and respond to political and economic domination.

The approach of Raymond Williams and CCCS was clearly marxIst and poststructuralist, and held subject identities
and relationships as textual, constructed out of discourse. Cultural Studies believes that we cannot “read” cultural
artefacts only within the aesthetic realm, rather they must be studied within the social and material perspectives; i.e.,
a novel must be read not only within the generic conventions and history of the novel, but also in terms of the
publishing industry and its profit, its reviewers, its academic field of criticism, the politics of awards and the hype of
publicity machinery that sells the book. Cultural Studies regards the cultural artefact like the tricolour or Gandhi
Jayanti as a political sign, that is part of the “disourse” of India, as reinforcing certain ideological values, and
concealing oppressive conditions of patriarchal ideas of the nation, nationalism and national identity.

In Cultural Studies, representation is a key concept and denotes a language in which all objects and relationships get
defined, a language related to issues of class, power and ideology, and situated within the context of “discourse”.
The cultural practice of giving dolls to girls can be read within the patriarchal discourse of femininity that girls are
weaker and delicate and need to be given soft things, and that grooming, care etc. are feminine duties which dolls
will help them learn. This discourse of femininity is itself related to the discourse of masculinity and the larger
context of power relations in culture. Identity, for Culture Studies, is constituted through experience, which involves
representation – the consumption of signs, the making of meaning from signs and the knowledge of meaning.

Cultural Studies views everyday life as fragmented, multiple, where meanings are hybridized and contested; i.e.,
identities that were more or less homogeneous in terms of ethnicities and patterns of consumption, are now
completely hybrid, especially in the metropolis. With the globalization of urban spaces, local cultures are linked to
global economies, markets and needs, and hence any study of contemporary culture has to examine the role of a

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non-local market/ money which requires a postcolonial awareness of the exploitative relationship between the First
World and the Third World even today.

Cultural Studies is interested in lifestyle because lifestyle 1) is about everyday life 2) defines identity 3) influences
social relations 4) bestows meaning and value to artefacts in a culture. In India, after economic liberalization,
consumption has been seen as a marker of identity. Commodities are signs of identity and lifestyle and consumption
begins before the actual act of shopping; it begins with the consumption of the signs of the commodity.

Mall Culture
Mall is a space of display where goods are displayed for maximum visual display in such a fashion that they are
attractive enough to instill desire. Spectacle, attention- holding and desire are central elements of shopping
experience in the mall. Hence mall emerges primarily as a site of gazing and secondarily as a site of shopping. The
mall presents a spectacle of a fantasy world created by the presence of models and posters, compounded by the
experience of being surrounded by attractive men and women, cosy families and vibrant youth — which altogether
entice us to unleash the possibilities of donning a better identity, by trying out / consuming global brands and
cosmopolitan fashion.

The mall invites for participating in the fantasy of future possibilities. Thus, the spectacle turns into a performance
that the customer/ consumer imitates and participates in. It is also a theatrical performance that is interactive, in
which the spectacle comes alive with the potential consumer. The encircling vistas, long-spread balconies and
viewing points at every floor add to the spectacle, by providing a “prospect” of shopping.

Eclecticism is yet another feature of the mall, where, “the world is under one roof”- where a “Kalanjali” or “Mann
Mantra” share space with “Shoppers Stop” or “Life Style” and “Madras Mail” shares space with “McDonald’s” and
multiplexes, imparting a cosmopolitan experience. Thus eclecticism and a mixing of products, styles and traditions
are a central feature of the mall and consumer experience.

Further, “the mall is a hyperreal, ahistorical, secure, postmodern-secular, uniform space of escape that takes the
streets of the city into itself in a tightly controlled environment where time, weather, season do not matter where the
“natural” is made through artificial lighting and horticulture, and ensuring that this public space resembles the city
but offers more security and choice”

Media Culture
Media studies and its role in the construction of cultural values, circulation of symbolic values, and its production of
desire are central to Cultural Studies today. Cultural Studies of the media begins with the assumption that media
culture is political and ideological, and it reproduces existing social values, oppression and inequalities. Media
culture clearly reflects the multiple sides of contemporary debates and problems. Media culture helps to reinforce
the hegemony and power of specific economic, cultural and political groups by suggesting ideologies that the
audience, if not alert, imbibes. Media culture is also provocative because it sometimes asks us to rethink what we
know or believe in. In Cultural Studies, media culture is studied through an analysis of popular media culture like
films, TV serials, advertisements etc.- as Cultural Studies believes in the power of the popular cultural forms as tools
of ideological and political power.

Cultural Studies of popular media culture involves an analysis of the forms of representation, such as film; the
political ideology of these representations; an examination of the financial sources/sponsors of these representations
(propaganda advertisements by Coke after the report on pesticides in Coca Cola); an examination of the roles played

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by other objects / people in the propagating ideology (Amir Khan in the Coca Cola ad, after patriotic films like
Lagaan, Mangal Pandey and Rang de Basanti). Culturat in Studies also analyses whether the medium (say, film),
presents an oppressive/unequal nature of institutions, like family; education etc. or glorify them; the possible
resistance to such oppressive ideologies; the audience’s response to such representation and the economic benefits
and the beneficiaries of such representations.

Contemporary Culture Studies of media culture explores what is called “media ecologies”, the environment of
human culture created by the intersection of information and communications technologies, organizational
behaviour and human interaction.

Literary and Cultural Studies

Literary and Cultural Studies gives you access to historical and emergent traditions of literature,
culture and thought. Through critical interpretation and dialogue, we can see how language
mediated through texts arranges and allows different ways of knowing and living. In the process you
will read some of the greatest wordsmiths and thinkers in the English language.

The study of literature and culture provides you with invaluable skills in writing, thinking and
expression. These proficiencies in communication and perception are powerfully flexible and
adaptable, preparing you to think creatively and innovate across diverse scenarios.

What is the Subject in Cultural Studies ?

Not surprisingly, cultural studies does not habe a clear defined subject area. Its starting point is a very
broad and all inclusive notion of culture that is used to describe and study a whole range of practices.
This makes cultural studies radically different from such conventional disciplines as physics or sociology
or philosophy, each of which has its own clearly demarcated subject area or object of study. Apart from
the ambiguous nature of its subject area, cultural studies also lacks its own principles, theories and
methods. But it does have its own very distinct and distinctive history. If cultural studies does not have
its own theories or methodology, how does it actually function ?

Cultural studies functions by borrowing freely from social science disciplines and all branches of
humanities and the arts. It appropriates theories and methodologies from anthropology, psychology,
lingustics, literary criticism, musicology, philosophy, political science and art theory. Almost any mathod
from textual analysis, ethnography and psychoanalysis to survey research can be used to do cultural
studies. Cultural studies takes whatever it needs from any discipline and adopts it tosuit its own
purposes.

All this makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to agree on any basic definition of the nature of the
beast that is cultural studies. Cultural studies is not one thing, it is many things. It straddles the
intellectual and academic landscape from old established disciplines to new political movements,
intelectual practices and modes of inquiry such as Marxism, post-colonialism, feminism and post

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structuralism. It moves from discipline to discipline, methodology to methodology, according to its own
concerns and motivations.

This is why cultural studies is often described as an “anti-discipline” – a mode of inquiry that does not
subscribe to the straitjacket of institutionalized disciplines.

Characteristics of Cultural Studies

Just because cultural studies is practically impossible to define, it does not mean that anything can be
cultural studies or cultural studies can be anything. The history of cultural studies has provided it with
certain distinguishable characteristics that can often be identified in terms of what cultural studies aims
to do.

1. Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to
power. Its constant goal is to expose power relationships and examine how these relationships influence
and shape cultural practices.

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2. Cultural studies is not simply the study of culture as though it was a discrete entitiy divorced from its
social or political context. Its objective is to understand culture in all its complex forms and to analyse
the social and political context within which it manifests itself.

3. Culture in cultural studies always performs two functions: it is both the object of study and the
location of political criticism and action. Cultural studies aims to be both an intellectual and a pragmatic
enterprise

4. cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split
between tacit (that is, intuitive knowledge based on local cultures) and objective (so-called universal)
forms of knowledge. It assumes a common identity and common interest between the knower and the
known, between the observer and what is being observed.

5. Cultural studies is commited to a moral evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political
action. The tradition of cultural studies is not one of value-free scholarship but one commited to social
reconstruction by critical political involvement. Thus cultural studies aims to understand and change the
structures of dominance everywhere, but in industrial capitalist societies in particular.

Culture

It is clear that cultural studies involves studying culture, what may not be nearly so obvious is just what
culture is. The ambiguity of the concept of culture is notorious. Some anthropologists consider culture to
be social behaviour. For others, it is not behaviour at all, but an abstraction from behaviour. To some,
stone axes and pottery, dance and music, fashion and style constitute culture; while no material object
can be culture to others. Yet still for others, culture exists only in the mind.

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One definition given by the British antropologist, Sir E.B.Tylor (1832-1917) in the opening lines of his
book, Primitive Cultures (1871):

” Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other
capabilities and habit acquired by man as a member of society” (Introducing Cultural Studies, p4)

What is culture from others’ definitions ?

American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) says that :

” Culture is the learned behaviour of a society or a subgroup”

Raymond Williams (1921-1988), one of the founders of cultural studies says that

” Culture includes the organization of production, the structure of the family, the structure of the
institutions which express or govern social relationships, the characteristic forms through which
members of the society communicate”

Clifford Geertz (b. 1962), Professor of Social Science at Princeton University says that

“Culture is simply the ensamble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves”

We conclude that :

Culture is the ensemble of social processes by which meanings are produced, circulated and
exchanged.

On the basis of these definitions, culture seems to be (almost) everything and cultural studies the study
of (almost) everything !

Culture is that aspect of the social which is concerned with meanings. There are many other aspects of
the social, with many concerns but in some cases culture would seem to be very basic. Culture is the site
of the production of meanings, not the expression of meanings, which exist elsewhere. Meaning comes
about in and through social relations, those among people, groups, classes, institutions, structures, and
things. And because they are produced, circulated and are exchanged within the social world, these
meanings are never entirely fixed.

Some meanings may be quite stable, of course, but others may be highly and rapidly variable. This
means that although meanings always come about in a social context, we must also say that they are
never wholly determined by the original context.

Meanings migrate from one context to another, sometimes ending up very far from where it
was started.they are always gettting displaced, diverted, reworked, and exchanged. This is not
something which goes wrong in the transmission of meanings. Rather, it is itself the very process of
meaning. Thus, meaning is ever free from context. All it means is that a knowledge of the author or the
sitters provides a different sort of context.

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Last, we should add that culture is not a single unified process, but an ensemble of processes. They may
work together tightly , but in other cases they may be in considerable conflict with one another. We
shall have to keep the disparate nature of cultural processes clearly in mind as we proceed.