What is culture? What are the issues and problems in the study of culture? How can culture be theorised?
Any book on cultural studies worth its mettle will tackle these questions by providing a simple definition of "culture." For instance, Bobbie Kalman defines it as "...the way we live. It is the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the languages we speak, the stories we tell, and the ways we celebrate. It is the way we show our imaginations through art, music, and writing. Culture is all about our roots. Where did our ancestors come from?... What do we believe? What makes our lives different from the lives of others?" (2009, p. 4) Alternately, Ralph Waldo Emerson states that "Culture opens the sense of beauty" giving culture an aesthetic touch. The definition is then aided by a direct reference to Raymond Williams' seminal work, "Culture is Ordinary" which holds the highest position in the discipline of Cultural Studies, with the essay, in many ways, being responsible for the genesis of the discipline itself. In his essay, Williams talks about culture in a very subjective manner, taking examples from his personal life:
A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning the special processes of discovery and creative effort. (McGuigan, 2014, p. 3)
But before anyone is able to tackle Williams' take on culture or delve into a thorough study of the discipline of Cultural Studies, they require a lesson in the nature-nurture debate undertaken by Locke and Leibniz, they also need to study the relationship between Culture and Civilisation with John Storey and Matthew Arnold, read about culture and religion with TS Eliot, and culture and science with CP Snow and FR Leavis. Apart from Williams, the seminal works of Stuart Hall and Edward Said also challenged conventional notions of culture for being too static and monolithic. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche, with his radical critique of morality and culture, challenged conventional norms and values, arguing for a revaluation of all values based on individual creativity and self-expression. His most famous quote is a testament to the same: You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty. Slavoj Zizek explored the interplay of ideology, desire, and fantasy in contemporary culture, drawing on psychoanalysis and Marxism which he expressed beautifully through the question: What if culture itself is nothing but a halt, a break, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarity. As a consequence, he unveiled the hidden mechanisms of power and control that nurture social order.
Moving on to the discipline of Cultural Studies. Simply put, "Cultural Studies is an important and contemporary way of engaging in the study of culture." (Longhurst et al., 2017, p. 3) The different ways mentioned above relate to the academic subjects of anthropology, history, literary studies, human geography and sociology, along with the disciplines of economics, politics and psychology which have given rise to the "cultural turn" in social sciences and humanities. Thus, the main aim of a researcher in Cultural Studies is to investigate cultural practices in terms of wider systems of power associated with, or operating through social phenomena, in turn, allowing the researcher to employ a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices.
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