Introduction to Cultural and Regional Studies Guided Workshop

Introduction to Cultural and Regional Studies Guided Workshop (VK) Summer term 2008 Mag. Klaus Heissenberger

Culture: examples Task: What is “cultural” in your life? Theater, music, food, traditions, books, habits, TV, beliefs, attitudes/points of view, religion, language, education, clothes, law, family, art, advertising, origin, traveling, stereotypes, hairstyles, everything, economic aspects, corporate culture, buildings, --------------------------------------Not „cultural“: ? ? ?

Cultural studies Talk about culture Talk about talking about culture

Culture: examples “ ________ culture”: Which words can be found in the blank space? youth high subculture heritage mass pop / popular black culture / African American English / British/. . .

Culture: examples definition produced through exclusion = through what it‘s not ! e. g. “high culture”

Culture Raymond Williams: “culture” = one of the most complex and complicated words in the English language

Culture Raymond Williams: “culture” = one of the most complex and complicated words in the English language definitions and concepts of “culture”: narrow (exclusive) ones vs. broad ones (inclusive ones) always implicit: what it’s not!

Culture example: Matthew Arnold (Great Britain, 19 th century) culture = the “best that has been thought and said”

Culture example: Raymond Williams (1950 s-1980 s, Great Britain): “To speak of popular culture usually means to mobilize the second and third meanings of the word ‘culture. ’ The second meaning — culture as a particular way of life — would allow us to speak of such practices as the seaside holiday, the celebration of Christmas, and youth subcultures. These are usually referred to as lived cultures or cultural practices. ” (John Storey, “Understanding Popular Culture”)

Culture example: Raymond Williams (1950 s-1980 s, Great Britain): “The third meaning — culture as signifying practices — would allow us to speak of soap opera, pop music, and comics, as examples of culture. These are usually referred to as cultural texts. ” (John Storey, “Understanding Popular Culture”)

Culture: common usage of the term - cultural products: “high” culture: opera, concerts, literature, . . . mass culture: Hollywood, pop music, pulp fiction, . . . “low” culture popular culture - culture as a process (the cultivation of something; a development) - intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic activity/processes/products - a particular way of life of: - … a particular historical period - … a country (nation) - … groups within a country/society/nation etc.

Example: food and eating If we consider food and eating to be “culture, ” what do we mean by that? Which definitions from the readings would apply to this as a kind of “culture”?

Example: food and eating If we consider food and eating to be “culture, ” what do we mean by that? Which definitions from the readings would apply to this as a kind of “culture”? social practice; cultural practice economic/class aspects values+meanings: encoding and decoding

Culture shared > communities, groups (“cultures”) > mankind as a whole (“culture” vs. “nature”) “signification”: “cultural texts” and “cultural practices” “signify” “meanings” and “values” “conventions” + “shared codes” language as a model (the “linguistic turn”)

Culture: common usage of the term - range from broad, inclusive concepts vs. narrow, exclusive concepts - What constitutes or does not constitute a particular culture is never defined once and for all, but is always struggled over!

Cultural studies: definitions of culture Raymond Williams: “culture is a description of a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behavior. ” (qtd. in Paul du Gay, “What is ‘culture’? ”)

Cultural studies: definitions of culture Raymond Williams: “culture is a description of a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behavior. ” (qtd. in Paul du Gay, “What is ‘culture’? ”) BUT: is there ONE whole way of life, in any given society?

Cultural studies: definitions of culture Raymond Williams: ”The analysis of culture. . . is the clarification of the meanings and values implicit and explicit in particular ways of life, a particular ‘culture’. ” (or: particular cultures) (qtd. in Paul du Gay, “What is ‘culture’? ”)

Cultural studies: definitions of culture Reader p. 6 “… the shared practices of a group, community or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural, and textual world of representations. ” (Sturken and Cartwright 3) “… the production and exchange of meanings, the gving and taking of meaning, between members of a society or group. ” (Sturken and Cartwright 4)

Meaning and representation How are “meanings” made? Where do they “come from”? “representation, ” “to represent”

Meaning and representation How are “meanings” made? Where do they “come from”? “representation, ” “to represent” language as a model: arbitrariness, conventions and codes, signifiers, signifieds, differentiation and difference, . . . see reader!

Recommended Introductions: Judy Giles and Tim Middleton. Studying Culture. A Practical Introduction. Blackwell, 1999.