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Week 5 / How to think about
power?
LECTURE
Same materialist framework, different modes of thinkings
Key concepts:
Culture
Materialism
Practices
(Productive) Power
Raymond Williams (1921-1988)
“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English
language.” (p. 49)
Welsh writer, politician, intellectual
Concerned with the issues of culture
He was a marxist
How to study culture from a materialist perspective?
Week 5 / How to think about power? 1
, “Any modern approach to a Marxist theory of culture must
begin by considering the proposition of a determining base
and a determined superstructure.” (p. 1)
Marx thinks that culture is only a reflection of what the base is
In any society, humans “inevitably enter into concrete
relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The
totality of these relations of production constitutes the
economic [infra]structure of society, the real foundation, on
Week 5 / How to think about power? 2
Week 5 / How to think about
power?
LECTURE
Same materialist framework, different modes of thinkings
Key concepts:
Culture
Materialism
Practices
(Productive) Power
Raymond Williams (1921-1988)
“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English
language.” (p. 49)
Welsh writer, politician, intellectual
Concerned with the issues of culture
He was a marxist
How to study culture from a materialist perspective?
Week 5 / How to think about power? 1
, “Any modern approach to a Marxist theory of culture must
begin by considering the proposition of a determining base
and a determined superstructure.” (p. 1)
Marx thinks that culture is only a reflection of what the base is
In any society, humans “inevitably enter into concrete
relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The
totality of these relations of production constitutes the
economic [infra]structure of society, the real foundation, on
Week 5 / How to think about power? 2
