Introduction to Cultural and Regional Studies Guided Workshop (VK)

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

2. 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 ???

3. Cultural studies • Talk about culture • Talk about talking about culture

4. 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/ ...

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

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

7. 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!

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

9. Culture example: Raymond Williams (1950s-1980s, Great Britain): “To speak of popular culture usually means tomobilize the second and third meanings ofthe word ‘culture.’ The second meaning —culture as a particular way of life —wouldallow us to speak of such practices as theseaside holiday, the celebration ofChristmas, and youth subcultures.Theseare usually referred to as lived cultures orcultural practices.” (John Storey, “Understanding Popular Culture”)

10. Culture example: Raymond Williams (1950s-1980s, Great Britain): “The third meaning— culture assignifying practices —would allow usto speak of soap opera, pop music, andcomics, as examples of culture. Theseare usually referred to as cultural texts.” (John Storey, “Understanding Popular Culture”)

11. 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.

12. 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”?

13. 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

14. 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”)

15. 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!

16. 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’?”)

17. 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?

18. 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’?”)

19. 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)

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

21. 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!

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