Thinking Activity: Cultural Studies

Welcome Readers!

This blog is designed in the form of answer sheet- a thinking task assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir on the recently emerged field of study that is Cultural Studies.

Click here to read Sir’s blog on Cultural Studies.

1. What is Culture? Raymond Williams in his book titled “Keywords” finds that ‘Culture’ is the two or three most complicated words in the English language.  The definition or meaning of culture in this sense varies from one discourse to another discourse. Simply, culture means ‘Sanskriti’, which normally people out of the MA class may believe. The customs and civilization practiced by a group of people at a particular time can be called a culture. Perhaps, here the word culture is located in a different discourse. To understand the word more clearly, here are some definitions- "Culture is a set of rules or standards that, when acted upon by the members of a society, produce behavior that falls within a range of variance the members consider proper and acceptable." -William A. Haviland  (an anthropologist) “Culture is a whole way of life, or a structure of feeling.” -Raymond Williams (cultural historian) The word culture has also a connection with the elite class where those with nobility, wealth and different and rich taste, particularly those possess a high social rank were called ‘cultured’ or ‘civilized’. Here the word culture is located in the discourse of the nineteenth century Europe. Well, in the new academic field of Cultural Studies, culture is seen as a tool that generates ideas, a tool which provides the scope to penetrate deeper and deeper into the controlling forces of society, nation, power or politics covering the vast field of a variety of studies and the structures of this ‘controlling domain’ become debatable in different forms.

2. What is Cultural Studies? Cultural Studies is composed of elements of Marxism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, feminism, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture studies, and postcolonial studies: those fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation. (A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature) It can be said that because of the word "culture" itself is so difficult to pin down, "cultural studies" is hard to define. According to P. K. Nayar, “Cultural Studies is interested in the process by which power relations between and within groups of human beings organize cultural artifacts (such as food habits, music, cinema, sports, events and celebrity culture) and their meanings.” Cultural Studies, in this way, focuses on how social elites use their economic power to gain control over and exploit media institutions.

3. Four Goals of Cultural Studies- The approaches of cultural studies generally share four goals-      a.  Cultural studies transcend the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary subject which connects or integrates all the disciplines and is not limited to literature or by the borders of a single text. It connects itself with various possibly connected aspects to interpret or analyze deeper structures.       b.Cultural studies is politically engage Cultural Studies identify the power and provide a contrasting view of dominant culture. It views all relations as power relations. It questions the authority and doubts the dominance of the corporate world.      c. Cultural studies denies the separation of "high' and "low" or elite and popular culture The term ‘high’ culture was derived by Matthew Arnold in the Victorian age referring to paintings or cinema by the acknowledged masters, classical music or dance and writing that has been established as canons. The opposite of this is ‘low’ culture and Cultural Studies tries to reveal the political, economic reasons why a certain cultural product is more valued at certain times than others.               d. Cultural studies analyzes not only the cultural work, but also the means of production Cultural Studies peep into the very nature of writer and market or how the texts go through fluctuations of popularity and canonicity.

The basic aim of Cultural Studies is that it shows how power works- how it operates within the area and how it can be recognized. The major aspect which is vital to be observed is the conditioning or the very construction of a notion that is conditioned or is so naturalized that it can hardly be inquired or questioned from a contrasting point of view. 

For example, before studying cultural studies, we were unknowingly considering the education system to be the most ideal system of expression that provides the youth a platform to display their skills but now after studying the very concept of Althusser, Ideological State Apparatus, the earlier myth is broken and I came to know how the power is working, it may be because there is maximum power with the youth and if they would be engaged with their education then there would be less chance for them to think about the country and the political dynamics which is presently ruining the nation or is making amendments which are literally a threat to humanity. 

This way, cultural studies opens up a new way of looking at the actual reality.

References-

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. 2ndedition. Fontana: London. 1983.

Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford University Press, 2011.