Introduction to Literature and Visual Culture The Concept

Introduction to Literature and Visual Culture The Concept of Culture

Approaches / definitions • 1: Traditional humanist approach (eg. Matthew Arnold): „The best that has been thought and said in the world. ” Culture is an ideal of human refinement, development. (Bildung in German philosophy. ) • Thus, culture is to be learned, acquired. • 2: Modern Cultural Studies Approach: A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. • Thus, culture can be questioned, analysed, compared to other cultures

Some key concepts • Cultural determinism: The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members of society determine human nature. People are what they learn. • Cultural relativism: Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is no scientific standards for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another. • Cultural ethnocentrism: The belief that one's own culture is superior to that of other cultures. It is a form of reductionism that reduces the "other way" of life to a distorted version of one's own.