PEOPLE CULTURAL MEDIA STUDIES
Raymond Williams Suggests 3 definitions of culture:
1) A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic
development
There is the "ideal" = state of human perfection, culture of
selective tradition.
2) A way of life (connected to place, time and communities)
There is the "social" definition of culture = lived culture.
3) Products and practices of intellectual and artistic activity
There is the 'documentary/ record: the surviving texts and
practices of a culture.
Suggests 4 meanings of ‘popular’:
1) 'Well-liked by many people'
2) 'Inferior kinds of work’
3) 'Work deliberately setting out to win favor with the people'
4) ‘Culture actually made by the people for themselves'
He suggests that we can identify different moments within a popular text or
practice (what he calls 'dominant', 'emergent' and 'residual') each pulling the
text in a different direction.
Williams & Hoggaert - Develop positions in response to Leavisism (the
leavisities) opened up an educational space in Britain for the study of popular
culture.
‘The structure of feeling’ = By structure of feeling, he means the shared
values of a particular group, class, or society. The term is used to describe a
discursive structure that works like a collective cultural unconscious.
Graeme Turner “Ideology is the most important conceptual category in cultural studies.”
James Caret “British cultural studies could be described just as easily and perhaps more
accurately as ideological studies.”
Karl Marx “The way a society organizes the means of its material production will have a
determining effect on the type of culture that society produces or makes
possible.”
Stuart Hall Culture = a site where 'collective social understandings are created': a terrain
on which 'the politics of signification' are played out in attempts to win
people to particular ways of seeing the world.
He argues that popular culture is a contested site for political constructions of
'the people' and their relation to 'the power bloc'.
“Postmodernism 'is about how the world dreams itself to be American'.”
Roland Barthes “Ideology (or 'myth' as Barthes himself calls it) operates mainly at the level of
connotations, the secondary, often unconscious, meanings that texts and
1
PEOPLE CULTURAL MEDIA STUDIES
, practices carry, or can be made to cany.”
Mythologies = a collection of essays on French popular culture.
Primary signification Secondary signification (see CONCEPTS p. 8)
Structural description = a reading position that seeks to determine the
means of ideological production of the image, its transformation of history
into nature.
Louis Althusser Ideology =
1) Ideology is a practice through which men and women live their
relations to the real conditions of existence.
2) Ideology is seen no longer as only a body of ideas, but as a lived,
material practice.
He has in mind the way in which certain rituals and customs have the effect
of binding us to the social order: a social order that is marked by enormous
inequalities of wealth, status and power.
According to Althusser, a social formation consists of three practices: the
economic, the political and the ideological.
The relationship between the base and the superstructure is not one of
expression, i.e. the superstructure being an expression or passive reflection
of the base, but rather the superstructure is seen as necessary to the
existence of the base. The model allows for the relative autonomy of the
superstructure.
“People are still determined by economic relations. But the core of the
dominance happens in the formation of ideas, concepts, ‘ways of life’, etc.
ideology”.
Pierre Bourdieu Distinctions (1979): “Our cultural taste communicates our social positions,
supporting class distinctions and it also creates an hierarchy”
Three forms of ‘capital’:
1. Economic capital: These are simple things like money or real-estate.
You have economic capital If you have money or you have some
houses for you.
2. Cultural capital: This is knowledge, skills and education. If you are
educated or higher educated. If you have doctors, you have very high
cultural capital.
3. Social capital: Which consists of relationships or networks.
Social reproduction (see CONCEPTS p. 9)
Luciano Pavarotti Luciano Pavarotti's recording of Puccini's 'Nessun Dorma' is a recent example
of cultural traffic moving in the other direction.
2
PEOPLE CULTURAL MEDIA STUDIES
Raymond Williams Suggests 3 definitions of culture:
1) A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic
development
There is the "ideal" = state of human perfection, culture of
selective tradition.
2) A way of life (connected to place, time and communities)
There is the "social" definition of culture = lived culture.
3) Products and practices of intellectual and artistic activity
There is the 'documentary/ record: the surviving texts and
practices of a culture.
Suggests 4 meanings of ‘popular’:
1) 'Well-liked by many people'
2) 'Inferior kinds of work’
3) 'Work deliberately setting out to win favor with the people'
4) ‘Culture actually made by the people for themselves'
He suggests that we can identify different moments within a popular text or
practice (what he calls 'dominant', 'emergent' and 'residual') each pulling the
text in a different direction.
Williams & Hoggaert - Develop positions in response to Leavisism (the
leavisities) opened up an educational space in Britain for the study of popular
culture.
‘The structure of feeling’ = By structure of feeling, he means the shared
values of a particular group, class, or society. The term is used to describe a
discursive structure that works like a collective cultural unconscious.
Graeme Turner “Ideology is the most important conceptual category in cultural studies.”
James Caret “British cultural studies could be described just as easily and perhaps more
accurately as ideological studies.”
Karl Marx “The way a society organizes the means of its material production will have a
determining effect on the type of culture that society produces or makes
possible.”
Stuart Hall Culture = a site where 'collective social understandings are created': a terrain
on which 'the politics of signification' are played out in attempts to win
people to particular ways of seeing the world.
He argues that popular culture is a contested site for political constructions of
'the people' and their relation to 'the power bloc'.
“Postmodernism 'is about how the world dreams itself to be American'.”
Roland Barthes “Ideology (or 'myth' as Barthes himself calls it) operates mainly at the level of
connotations, the secondary, often unconscious, meanings that texts and
1
PEOPLE CULTURAL MEDIA STUDIES
, practices carry, or can be made to cany.”
Mythologies = a collection of essays on French popular culture.
Primary signification Secondary signification (see CONCEPTS p. 8)
Structural description = a reading position that seeks to determine the
means of ideological production of the image, its transformation of history
into nature.
Louis Althusser Ideology =
1) Ideology is a practice through which men and women live their
relations to the real conditions of existence.
2) Ideology is seen no longer as only a body of ideas, but as a lived,
material practice.
He has in mind the way in which certain rituals and customs have the effect
of binding us to the social order: a social order that is marked by enormous
inequalities of wealth, status and power.
According to Althusser, a social formation consists of three practices: the
economic, the political and the ideological.
The relationship between the base and the superstructure is not one of
expression, i.e. the superstructure being an expression or passive reflection
of the base, but rather the superstructure is seen as necessary to the
existence of the base. The model allows for the relative autonomy of the
superstructure.
“People are still determined by economic relations. But the core of the
dominance happens in the formation of ideas, concepts, ‘ways of life’, etc.
ideology”.
Pierre Bourdieu Distinctions (1979): “Our cultural taste communicates our social positions,
supporting class distinctions and it also creates an hierarchy”
Three forms of ‘capital’:
1. Economic capital: These are simple things like money or real-estate.
You have economic capital If you have money or you have some
houses for you.
2. Cultural capital: This is knowledge, skills and education. If you are
educated or higher educated. If you have doctors, you have very high
cultural capital.
3. Social capital: Which consists of relationships or networks.
Social reproduction (see CONCEPTS p. 9)
Luciano Pavarotti Luciano Pavarotti's recording of Puccini's 'Nessun Dorma' is a recent example
of cultural traffic moving in the other direction.
2
PEOPLE CULTURAL MEDIA STUDIES
