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:
???
Nature, climate
???

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 its 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 its not!

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

Culture
example:
Raymond Williams (1950s-1980s, 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 (1950s-1980s, 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,
signs, signifiers, signifieds, differentiation and difference, ...
see reader!

Recommended Introductions:

Judy Giles and Tim Middleton. Studying Culture. A

Practical Introduction. Blackwell, 1999.