Cultural Studies , II MA

Prepared by Jolsy Abraham

The Analysis of Culture- Raymond Williams

“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”.

Raymond Williams

Introduction

 Welsh Marxist critic; novelist and theorist; working class background; Cambridge educated;
member of the Communist Party; Joined the British army during WWII— resulting in lapsed
membership of the Party
 Important figure within the New Left
 Made important contributions to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Along with Richard
Hoggart and EP Thompson, he was instrumental in founding the field of cultural studies.
 Formulated cultural materialism as an approach.
 Notable works- Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961), Television: Technology
and Cultural Form (1974), Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976, 1983)

Origins of British Cultural Studies

• Influences:

-- Criticism of culture and mass culture

-- Critique of the ‘Great Tradition’ of English life and culture

-- Parallels with the Frankfurt School

-- Documentation and positive assessment of working class cultures and modes of resistance and
subversion

• Important pioneering theorists:

-- Richard Hoggart, Founder of CCCS in 1964

-- E.P. Thompson

-- Raymond Williams

The Analysis of Culture

 An extract from the 1961 academic book ‘The Long Revolution’

 Raymond Williams develops ‘Analysis of Culture’ -- To answer ‘What is Culture?’
 Understand culture by analyzing the various expressive cultural forms
Cultural Studies , II MA
Prepared by Jolsy Abraham

 Involves interpretation and reconstruction of ways of life --Outlines ‘three general categories in
the definition of culture’

 Looks at the interrelationships between these 3 forms, each of these definitions present
important references about the culture, therefore any theory of culture must include all three,
though cultural history should be more than a sum of these elements.
 For ideal definition, it is difficult to to identify the process of human perfection with the
discovery of 'absolute' values, as these have been ordinarily defined. Instead of human
perfection the process can be called human evolution, the process of general human growth of
man.
 Documentary analysis of culture can yield specific evidence about the whole organization within
which it was expressed. But it cannot claim to know the society although a great deal of history
has been written. There is a need for selection of particular activities for emphasis.
 Cultural history must be more than the sum of the particular histories, for it is with the relations
between them, the particular forms of the whole organization, that it is especially concerned.
 The theory of culture as the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life.
 The analysis of culture is the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the
complex of these relationships.
 Social Character - a valued system of behaviour and attitudes - is taught formally and informally;
it is both an ideal and a mode.
 The 'pattern of culture' is a selection and configuration of interests and activities, and a
particular valuation of them, producing a distinct organization, a 'way of life'.
Cultural Studies , II MA
Prepared by Jolsy Abraham

 Culture articulates meanings, attitudes and values and Williams terms it “structure of feeling”
 This structure of feeling does not seem to be learned and is not possessed in the same way by
the many individuals in the community.
 One can understand society’s development and evolution as ‘the structure of feeling’ –Young
generation respond to the existing ‘structure of feeling’ and in the process, new values,
meanings and identities are created
 It can be learnt by looking at the documentary culture, as it shows life in direct terms.
 Culture always exists on three levels:
1. Lived culture: Experienced by people in their day-to-day existence in a particular place
and at a particular moment in time
2. Period culture: the recorded culture, of every kind, from art to the most everyday facts (
3. Culture of the selective tradition: The factor connecting lived culture and period cultures
 About the selectivity of cultural traditions: There will always be a tendency for this process of
selection to be related to and even governed be the interests of the class that is dominant
 The cultural tradition is not only a selection but also an interpretation
 Williams is insistent that we distinguish between the commodities made available by the culture
industries and what people make of these commodities