Thinking Activity : Cultural Studies

What is Culture?

Is that true? Asking questions is a culture and religious thing?🤔🤔

Simply, Culture is the way of living life. When we found that one particular community followed a set of behavioural patterns, some values, beliefs, symbols, Food recipes, Clothes patterns is called  culture of that particular community. What is the worst and the best thing about the culture is that…

Culture is a Symbolic Communication which is accepted and imitated by people from generation to generation without thinking about it.

Let's have a look one very  simple example…

When we meet another person for any reason then there is a different kind of greeting pattern for different communities to say hello. And we are following these set patterns from generations without raising any question that why we should greet in  such manner rather than other, or why we even greet people? So greeting became culture or a kind of behaviour which we perform in front of society as a Cultural Human Being. Culture can be divided into two different parts….

• Material aspect of culture
• Non-Material aspect of culture

Material culture is composed of things which are made and used by humans. Infrastructure, Buildings, Roads, technological gadgets, Films,  Music, Literature, Arts, Clothing, Food etc. Aspects of Material culture are also referred to as Cultural Products.

Non-Material cultural aspects such as Values, beliefs, language, such behavioral practices which are shared commonly by a group of people. It also includes rules, norms, laws and morals that govern society. The words that we used, how we speak, how we used symbols to express meaning, concept or ideas. What we do, how we behave and perform also comes under the non-material culture.

These two aspects of culture are Interconnected. Both affect each other in their different ways. What we invent or make all depends on What we think, we believe and value. So All material aspects emerge or are shaped by the influence of Non-Material things. In a similar way Material culture can also influence or may change our belief or thinking pattern.

For Example:

If we see any Documentary Film(Material aspect of Culture) then possibilities of changing the dynamics of conventional ways of Human thinking  and Human Values. So this is how Materiality of Culture can affect the non-material prospect of culture. And Contradictory, Non-Material aspects like Values, beliefs, behavioural patterns and morals of culture also drive people to produce a set pattern of work of art like movies, serial or Documentaries.

Culture and Nature

"Nature as Culture and 

Culture is nature"

Which kinds of clothes we wear and what kind of food we eat is all dependent on which kind of nature we lived. So when talk about culture Nature is a prime focus. What we do under the name of culture is directly or indirectly based on in which kind of environment we live. There is mutual adaptation between humans and the environment. So therefore Nature and the Culture can not exist in their separate realism but both parallely affecting one another. NATURE AND CULTURE IS LIKE TWO OPPOSITE SIDE OF SAME COIN.

Culture as Everyday Life

When we look back in the past, what is said about culture during 19th century, then one may say according to Matthew Arnold..

"Culture is the study of perfection. What is best said and thought in the world."

So this idea tries to look culture in a diachronic way, But today when we looked culture, than we can say Today Culture is the study of Everyday life. What Matthew Arnold keeps on insisting Oneness and Perfection can't be possible because culture itself is full of diversity and variety. So Everyday life became more significant for studying culture.

"What we think and what we believe is totally different from what we do."

What is Cultural Studies?

Cultural Study as a field established in 1964 at University of Birmingham called Center for Contemporary cultural Studies with scholars like..

• Richard Hoggart
• Stuart Hall
• Raymond Williams

Cultural study can be divided into two parts….

• Theoretical body of thought
• Methodological model for applying culture

Without knowing culture or personal experience one may not understand culture deeply. So by applying Cultural theories in Culture or society cultural study try to find where there is a problem. It opens the loophole and vacuum in society which creates…

• Community
• Cause Division or Alienation

So, Cultural Studies are an Innovative or Interdisciplinary form which borrowed ideas from different fields and tries to apply it on Cultural Studies. For example…

• Roland Barthes - Nature of Literary language
• Claude Levi-Strauss - Anthropology
• Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
• Jacques Derrida - Deconstruction

Deconstructions or Hierarchical oppositions enables Cultural critics to erase boundaries between high and low culture."

• Jacques Lacan - Psychoanalytic
• Michel Foucault - Power Structure

So, Cultural Studies is all about applying different theories on the cultural reading of Society. The main concern of Cultural study is to analyze and understand how culture is constructed and developed in human society and how with changing erena how it is going to be changed.

Four Goals of Cultural Study

1) Cultural Studies transcend the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history.

Cultural study is not only limited to literature but it goes beyond literary criticism and is engaged with social, political, economical interests and addresses many struggles and problems within that.

2) Cultural study is politically engaged.

Cultural study is deeply connected with politics. Which provides a new insight to look at culture and politics from different angles. Cultural Critics see themselves as Oppositional. They are more interested in making Oppositional reading and find inequality in that. How power structure creates the Majority or Minority consciously or sometimes unconsciously. So cultural critics are interested in findings like how power structure construct or shapes people's political thoughts also.

3) Cultural Studies denies the separation of 'high' and 'low'...

Dominant	Under dominant
Elite, Rich	Popular Culture, Ordinary people
Highbrow	Everyday life
White-Superior	Worldwide domination of other races, especially Asians by White-Cultured people.

The very concept of "Popular Culture" is changing with the passing of time. Before Popular Culture stood for the culture of only elite class or rich class culture. But after World war ii the great Valley between High and Low culture is making a shift and Every day life of ordinary people is considered as 'Mass Culture'.

4) Cultural study analyses not only the cultural work, but also the means of production.

Cultural study not only stuck to analyses work of art critically but also more focusing on how means of production is working. There are some Visible as well as invisible forces which control the production and its consumption by consumers. If we see a very simple example of book selling and mass of buyers then several points which are going to affect it are like…

• Who is the writer?
• Who publishes his or her books?
• Who buys books?
• Who is literate or illiterate?

So these are some of the factors which affect the production market. 

Cultural studies is not merely focusing on humanism or the Humanities but it also has concern for social reasons.

Power is at Center in Cultural Studies

Every action performed by Human beings is directly or indirectly connected with power. Power is a hidden criteria which we are not able to see consciously. But Still it affects either or in either way. Power is working in every organization.. For example Industry, Religion, Society, Economy and particularly in Politics. POwer is all about creating norms and implementation of those norms on Powerless people and they are going to follow that rules. Robert Dahl in his "A Preface to Democratic theory" defines power as…

"A type of relationship in respect of Capability and Control."

Let's try to understand this definition with a very simple example. A and B are two men, A is capable of controlling B then A has power to Control another person. So Power Politics works like Power has ability to make other people do what one wants to do. Authority and Power goes simultaneously. One who has authority automatically achieves power to do work from others. Power is generally an individual's ability to influence others or control. While Authority is Legal and Formal right to give order or command or control. There are 3 kinds of Authority..

• Traditional Authority
• Charismatic Authority
• Legal-Rational Authority

Culture itself is an organisation of power. Who is at the center or in power applies their culture to the dominant. When Britishers are ruling all other countries they try to forcefully apply their ideas and thoughts on colonization, So this is how Power structure is working in Culture. 

When we interpret what Cultural Studies are doing against power, they enable one to…

• Read against Power
• Write against Power
• Question against Power

And One other fact is that Culture itself is Power. Culture so try to control people from. So Like Culture is not Static in the same manner Power is also not Static. Both change the priorities of people.

Thank You….