Cultural Studies
Stucturalism Summary
'A structuralist understanding of culture is concerned with the "systems of relations" of an underlying structure (usually language) and the grammar that makes meaning possible' (Barker and Jane 2016: 18). Culture is like a language... question of ideology is key 'the conception of "men" as bearers of the structures that speak and place them, rather than as active agents in the making of their own history; the emphasis on a structural rather than a historical "logic" (...) the recasting of history as a march of the structures: the structuralist "machine"' (Hall 1980: 66- 67)
Dick Hebdige on youth 2.0
'Dick Hebdige (1998) remarks that youth has been constructed within and across the discourses of "trouble" (...) and/or "fun" (...) youth has been associated with crime, violence and delinquency. Alternatively, youths have been represented as playful consumers of fashion, style and a range of leisure activities' (Barker and Jane 2016: 553)
Paul Willis on Homology
'Essentially (homology) is concerned with how far, in their structure and content, particular items parallel and reflect the structure, style, typical concerns, attitudes and feelings of the social group.' Paul Willis, 1978: 189 Culture is a language Signs have meaning(s
Gramsci, Hegemony and Ideology
'For Gramsci, hegemony implies a situation where a "historical bloc" of ruling-class factions exercises social authority and leadership over the subordinate class. This is achieved through a combination of force and, more importantly, consent.' (Barker and Jane 2016: 75; note consent v. silence, Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone, 1947) 'A hegemonic bloc never consists of a single socio-economic category. Rather, it is formed through a series of alliances in which one group takes on a position of leadership.' "Ideology is understood in terms of ideas, meanings and practices, which, while they purport to be universal truths, are maps of meaning that sustain powerful social groups. [...] ideology is rooted in day-to-day conditions' (Barker and Jane 2016: 76) The building, maintenance or subversion of 'common sense' involves an ideological struggle; criticism of a dominant ideology can lead to transformation - or consequences
Stuart Hall on Diasporic Identity
'an act of imaginary reunification (...) imposing an imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation, which is the history of all enforced diasporas.' (224) The diasporic relation to the past is always 'already after the break'; it is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth' (224) 'the instability, the permanent unsettlement, the lack of any final resolution' (228) T he two axes or vectors, which operate simultaneously: 1) The vector of similarity and continuity (some grounding, some continuity with the past) 2) The vector of difference and rupture (what the diasporic community shares is an experience of profound discontinuity)
First Class Takeaways ( ie Stuart Hall lecture)
'audiences are active creators of meaning in relation to texts. They bring previously acquired cultural competencies to bear on text so that differently constituted audiences will work with different meanings.' (Barker and Jane 2016: 41) Stuart Hall 'argues that the production of meaning does not ensure consumption of that meaning as the encoders might have intended.' (Barker and Jane 2016: 41)
Louis Althusser Ideology
, dominant ideology turned what was in fact political, partial and open to change into something seemingly 'natural', universal and eternal. We are sucked into ideology easily because it helps us make sense of the world (grow up, gender, religion, study, find work, find a partner, have children), to enter the 'symbolic order' (Jacques Lacan) and engage in power relations. We identify with ideology because we can picture ourselves as independent and strong within it (example: a speaker at school)
Discursive formation
A pattern of discursive events that brings into being a common object across a number of sites. They are regulated maps of meaning or ways of speaking through which objects and practices acquire meaning.
Motorbike boys
A subculture from the 1960s in England. Associated with roughness, power, camaraderie
Identity
A temporary stabilization of meaning or description of ourselves with which we emotionally identify. Identity is a becoming, rather than a fixed entity, involving the suturing or stitching together of the discursive "outside" with the "internal" processes of subjectivity. (Barker and Jane 2016: 640)
Skinheads
A working class subculture from England in the 1960s, commonly associated with close - cropped or shaven heads It emerged again in the 1980s and has seen various incarnations worldwide .
Aluche Skinheads
Aluche Skinheads is a crew of friends founded in February 2012 to combat fascism, capitalism and repression in our neighbourhood. We are organised young people with sound and well -defined ideas. We won't permit any fascist or racist attitudes in our streets, because Aluche is a working -class and anti -fascist neighbourhood .
Cultural code example
An example from daily life could be that of a traffic light: The colours red, amber and green have no intrinsic reason why they should mean stop, prepare to stop and go. The meaning, or cultural code, lies in the relation between the colours - and how this connects to the response expected of the car's driver.
Signifying system
Any system of signs, made up of signifiers and signifieds, is a signifying system. A signifier is the form or medium of signs, such as sound, image or word. The signified is to be understood in terms of concepts and meanings.
Discourse Definition
Any type of communication and representation (verbal or non-verbal) that is conditioned and constrained by a set of explicit and implicit rules. An activity is both enabled and limited at the same time; Discourse structures the way we perceive reality and defines our possibilities of representation; discourse is a socio-historical product; It can be both positive (liberating) and negative (limiting/controlling/repressive); Discourse shapes identity, thought processes and everyday life.
Culturalism
Centers on values (abstract ideals0, norms (definite principles or rules) and material/symbolic goods Stresses "ordinariness" of culture and the active, creative capacity of common people to construct and share meaningful practices
Raymond Williams/Richard Hoggart/Edward Thompson on culture
Culture is seen as an everyday lived process and is not confined to high culture; culture is to be explored in context of its material conditions of production and reception
Barthes two systems of signification
Denotation: the descriptive and literal level of meaning shared by virtually all members of a culture. Connotation: meanings that are generated by connecting signifiers to wider cultural concerns.
Foucault on Discourse
Discourse constructs, defines and produces the objects of knowledge in a regulated and intelligible way. At the same time, discourse excludes other forms of reasoning as unintelligible. (Barker and Jane 2016: 636; example from Cuban revolution) For Foucault, knowledge is produced and regulated through language, and this gives meaning to both material objects and social practices (example 'husband and wife'). • Discourse is both associated with a sociohistorical context and evolves over time to reflect the changes in society and thought.
Base and superstructure continued
ECONOMIC BASE - productive force, machines, trains, workforce - the MEANS of production, class relations that arise as a consequence of the means of production (i.e., a proletariat worker and his capitalist boss); class; who does what work, etc. - HOW LABOUR is divided, the conditions that make a capitalist society possible = the MATERIAL reality BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE • IDEOLOGICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE - ideas, norms and relationships related to religion, politics, etc., of a particular time or period; art, philosophy, that only exist once our basic needs of food, work, shelter are met. This is the cultural and ideological part of society.
Semiotics
Ferdinand de Saussure... the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation
Dick Hebdige
For Dick Hebdige (Subculture: The meaning of style, 1979) style is a signifying practice. It is a fabricated display of codes of meaning which acts as a form of semiotic resistance to dominant order. Through the signification of difference, styles constitutes a group identity
Language Theory from Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972)
Foucault argues against theories of language that conceive of it as an autonomous system with its own rules and functions. He believes that 'language develops and generates meaning under specific material and historical conditions"
Michel Foucault
French philosopher and theorist whose work on power, knowledge and discourse has been influential in many theories of culture, art and literature. very influenced by Structuralism and thinkers such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes - but he disagreed with the structuralist concept of the arbitrary nature of language (see other Quizlet cards for more info). He is interested in describing and analysing the surfaces of discourse and their effects under the material and historical conditions that produce them. Material objects and social practices are given meaning or made visible by language; it is for this reason that Foucault believes that they are formed "discursively".
Culturalist Vs Structuralist in context of picture of African kids playing soccer
From a culturalist perspective, it shows boys from a particular part of Kenyan society who have been gathered to share their enjoyment of football and to play as a group. It shows the capacity of people to create and share meaningful practices in everyday life. It shows the value of community, friendship and (making an assumption here) neighbours. Someone following a structuralist frame of thought would say that this game of football can be explained as the product of social structures the socioeconomic and class structures that exist in Kenya the role and location of the slum...outside the city, on the border the connotations of the image the range of experiences and possibilities available to these children are determined by the place they occupy in society
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) on Power Struggle
Gramsci looked at the struggles of the working class and the peasants and realized that popular struggle was more than just an attempt to increase socioeconomic status. It was a site of ideological struggle. In other words, it was a clash of values, outlooks on life and meaning. This does not only apply to class struggle. It can apply to competing ideologies too. A character can also be used as a site of ideological struggle by a writer.
Example of mass culture
Hard Times is the shortest novel by Charles Dickens, yet it explores a variety of complex notions from: how the industrial revolution has deprived people of all classes the ability to retain their humanity, to proper Victorian femininity, the importance of fancy, the fault of utilitarianism, the vice of pride, and a criticism of social inequality. When a proper analysis of Hard Times is conducted these points will be found as central to understanding the telos of the work.
Antonio Gramsci
He wrote his most influential work while he was a prisoner in a fascist prison (1926-1935); The Prison Notebooks. He developed a Marxist way of thinking that explored meanings and ideas as developmental forces that were not explicable in economic terms alone; hence his significance to left-wing thinkers who were interested in culture. Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony describes the way a ruling class is able to maintain power because the values which support its continued dominance circulate as common sense. 'Hegemony' basically means 'dominance'. The 'people' weren't merely subordinated by a dominant ruling class; they also CONSENT to being dominated, because the values and ideologies of the DOMINANT class circulate in society as TRUTH. Force and consent BALANCE each other, so that neither one predominates.
Hegemoni Instability
Hegemony is a temporary settlement and series of alliances which is won and not given. It needs to be constantly re-won and re-negotiated. Hegemony is 'a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria...between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups ... equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point' (Gramsci, 1968. Prison Notebooks, 182)
High Culture and Low Culture
High culture most commonly refers to the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture. It is the culture of an elite such as the aristocracy or intelligentsia, and is contrasted with the low culture of the less well-educated, barbarians, Philistines, or the masses.
Raymond Williams' Anthropological Perspective
His concept of culture was anthropological because it centers on everyday meanings: values (abstract ideals), norms (definitive principles or rules) and material/symbolic goods . "A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions... We use 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 (...) Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind."
Structuralism
If culturalism makes human experience and human agency key, structuralism insists that human agency must be considered within the context of pre-existing conditions (example gender reveal) theoretical approach that identifies patterns in social arrangements, mostly notably language. (example hierarchies) 'Structuralism insisted that "experience" could not, by definition, be the ground of anything, since one could only "live" and experience one's conditions in and through the categories, classifications and frameworks of the culture. These categories, however, did not arise from or in experience: rather, experience was their effect.' (Stuart Hall; example: not in unmediated contact with the world) 'Structuralism speaks of signifying practices that generate meaning as an outcome of structures or predictable regularities that lie outside of any given person' (Barker and Jane 2016: 18; example, Catholicism) We need to ask what constraining patterns in culture and social life there are that can influence, limit or govern culture. Structuralism points to culture as an expression of deep structures of language that lie outside of the intentions of the actors and constrain them.
Style
In cultural studies, this is not just the type of clothes, accessories, hairstyles or make-up an individual uses to reflect their taste and identity. When we talk about subcultures, style means an active organisation of objects with activities and attitudes through the modes of dress, music, ritual and language.
Base vs Superstructure
In order to understand society, Marx divides it into the BASE and the SUPERSTRUCTURE. The base has to exist in order for the superstructure to exist. The superstructure reflects the conditions of the base and also helps to reinforce those conditions. EXAMPLE - capitalist society requires workers to sell their labour and compete for good jobs; it also is designed so that very few achieve large economic success. In the SUPERSTRUCTURE, we can see this in the concept of hyper-individualism - we are told to put ourselves first, to achieve the most we can, to seek our interests, to fight for what we want. This in turn solidifies the the base
Culturalism Summary
It defines "culture" as both the meanings and values which arise amongst distinctive social groups and classes, on the basis of their given historical conditions of existence; and as the lived traditions and practices through which those "understandings" are expressed and in which they are embodied.' (Hall 1980: 63) It focuses on role of human beings in constructing, communicating and sharing culture It is daily life, a LIVED culture; it is the way we interact with and understand the world around us, as well as the way in which we convey and consume culture. It is the production of meaning by human actors in a historical context
Summary of Language/Meaning
Language is a central concern of cultural studies because it is the means and medium for generating meaning. The concept of meaning is central to understanding and analysing culture. To study culture is to explore how meaning is produced symbolically - through language, gestures, etc. Meaning is generated through difference (the relation between one signifier and other signifiers), rather than by reference to fixed entities in an independent object world. Culture can be regarded as regulated and shared maps of meaning.
Mass culture (popular culture)
Mass culture refers to how culture is produced, marketed and circulated; popular culture is how culture is consumed. Culture becomes a commodity. Commodification is the process associated with capitalism by which objects, qualities and signs are turned into objects whose prime purpose is to be sold Examples include films, television programmes and series, popular books, newpapers, magazines, mechanically - reproduced art. Mass culture can be considered unauthentic, because it ' s not produced by people; manipulative because its main purpose is to be sold; unsatisfying because it is relatively easy to produce and consume, and therefore doesn ' t enrich the minds of the consumers. This is the view of conservative critics, such as Leavis, as well as critics from the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno, who was inspired by Marxism - Mass culture is criticised by both the right and the left. I wonder what else they agree on...?
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Master Slave Dialect: most social relationships int he world were based on the model in which master becomes as dependent on the slave as the slave is on the master "Knechtschaft" in German is not necessarily slavery, but Hegel's bondsman has no rights and no contract with his master. The master-servant dialectic is an internal struggle of self-consciousness that initially appears to be a struggle between freedom and unfreedom. The relation between a master and a servant is the result of a struggle at the end of which one gives in to the position of the servant. Once the two roles are established, a dialectic unfolds, where the master seeks recognition from the servant. He soon realises, however, that being recognised from someone inferior like his bondsman does not offer the recognition he is seeking. In turn, the servant has the freedom to recognise the master despite his own bondage, which ironically makes the servant more free than the master. In addition, the servant realises how much the master depends on him. While the master can will things, the servant is needed to do the work and to execute that will. Therefore, the master remains in the dependence on the servant's existence and work and thus of his own bondage to the servant. He is ultimately less free than his servant. The question Hegel is tackling here is whether we are conscious of ourselves as a person or someone else as a person much the same way as we are conscious of objects in the world. The master uses the slave as an instrument to control something for his own purposes (not for the slave's), and the slave submits to the situation. This means that the master's self-consciousness demands recognition from a degraded and distorted consciousness. What the master sees in the slave, or what the slave sees in the master is not what either sees in himself. The master therefore paradoxically depends for his masterhood on the slave's self-consciousness. Essentially, the two self-consciousnesses are constituted insofar as each is recognised as self-conscious by the other; lordship makes the recognition the lord seeks impossible, since the bondsman, in this state, is not free to offer it.
Cultural code
Over time, the way that signs are organised becomes what we call a CULTURAL CODE. We organise signs differently in different cultures. An example of a cultural code for dog could be: this is a loyal, fun pet to have in our home. this is an animal that works on my farm and helps me to control the sheep. this is a source of protein in my meal
Counter-Hegemonic Movements
Passive revolution = 'the steady build-up of forces at the level of civil society' brings about a 'slow and transformational change', rather than a violent rupture or revolution. (Barker and Jane 2016
reflective/mimetic approach to representation
Plato, Aristotle, mimesis... assumes that meaning already exists in the world and when we create language we are using language to depict what we see and hear.
Power/Knowledge (Foucault)
Power is everywhere' and 'comes from everywhere' so in this sense is neither an agency nor a structure. Instead it is a kind of 'regime of truth' that pervades society, and which is in constant flux and negotiation. Foucault uses this to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and 'truth'. Power is based on knowledge and makes use of knowledge; on the other hand, power reproduces knowledge by shaping it in accordance with its intentions. Foucault, contrary to realist analyses of power, thinks this is not necessarily a bad thing. He highlights that power is both constrictive and productive since power, for Foucault, is never temporally, spatially, or indeed materially, fixed, but rather emerges both in, and out of social encounters.
Roland Barthes and Polysemic signs
Rather than having one stable, denotive meaning, Barthes saw signs as POLYSEMIC. This means that they carry many potential meanings. Likewise, cultural texts can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Meaning requires the active involvement of readers and the cultural context they bring into the picture as they read.
Consent in Hegemony
Refer to Picture
Counter - Hegemony Example
Refer to Picture - Death of Mahsa Amini
Dick Hebdige continued on youth and subculture
Refer to picture
Wrap up on Homology
Refer to picturer
Stuart Hall- Representation
Representation is the production of meaning through language, with language defined in its broadest sense as a *system of signs* • the idea that the relationship between concepts and signs is governed by codes
Sarah Thornton argument against subculture theory
Sarah Thornton argues against subcultural theory because she thinks that: •Youth cultural difference isn't necessarily resistance • Differences are classifications of power and distinctions of taste • Youth cultures aren't formed outside and opposed to the media; they are formed within and through the media • Subcultural theory relies on unsustainable binaries (i.e., mainstream/ subculture; resistance/submission; dominant/subordinate) • Youth cultures are not all unified; there are internal differences
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913)
Saussure explains the generation of meaning by reference to a system of structured differences in language. He distinguishes between langue (the rules and conventions that organise language) and parole (the specific utterances that individuals use in everyday life). Cultural meaning is structured and produced 'like a language'. i.e., using structures, rules, signs, etc. in order to exchange meaning. Saussure felt that language didn't reflect a preexistent and external reality of independent objects; he felt that a sign system like language constructs meaning from within itself through a series of conceptual and phonic differences - example mountain Meaning isn't generated because an object has an essential and intrinsic meaning. It is produced because signs are different from each other.
Jamaican Society at end of slavery
See picture
constructionist theory
Semiotics; The material world is not equivalent to the symbolic practices and processes through which we represent it
Stuart Hall on Cultural Identity
Several ways of thinking about cultural identity: 1) Cultural identity is defined in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective 'one true self' [...] which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common'. 2) Cultural identity is a matter of 'becoming' as well as 'being'. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. Like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous 'play' of history, power and culture. 3) Cultural identity is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth.
Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (1976) in Resistance Through Rituals
Subcultures don't exist as authentic objects; they have been brought into being by subculture theorists We should not ask what a subculture 'is', but how the term has been used • SUBCULTURE for cultural studies = a 'whole way of life', or 'map of meaning', which makes the world intelligible to its members in a way that is distinct or different from dominant or mainstream society 'SUB' can also connote subaltern or subterranean (Sarah Thornton, 1995)... A space for deviant cultures to renegotiate their position or win a space for themselves. I.e., RESISTANCE to the dominant culture. In the 'in-between' space, youth subcultures offer understanding, shared principles, shared tastes in music and style, shared recreational activities, and a place to define a different identity independent from childhood and the family home
Dick Hebdige on subcultures
Subcultures represent 'noise' (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media. We should therefore not underestimate the signifying power of the spectacular subculture not only as a metaphor for potential anarchy 'out there', but as an actual mechanism for semantic disorder; a kind of temporary blockage in the system of representation.'
Subculture in context of class
Subcultures were seen as magical or symbolic solutions to the structural problems of class (...) subcultures arise as attempts to resolve collectively experienced problems resulting from contractions in the social structure... they generate a form of collective identity from which an individual identity can be achieved outside that ascribed by class, education and occupation'. (Barker and Jane 2016: 555)
Identity/Subjectivity
Subjectivity is the condition of being a person and the process by which we become a person; that is, how we are constituted as cultural subjects and how we experience ourselves.
Homology
Synchronic relationship by which social structures, social values and cultural symbols are said to 'fit' together. That is, the way in which the structure and meanings of symbols and objects parallel and reflect the concerns of a group.
Self-identity
The conceptions we hold about ourselves and our emotional identification with those selfdescriptions. (Barker and Jane 2016: 260)
Barthes Example
The cover of the French magazine, Paris Match; a young male saluting the French flag in what was French military uniform at the time. Denotation: a young soldier salutes. Connotation: for Barthes in the 1970s: the image undermines criticism of French imperialism, because it shows that the youth, and more importantly, the black youth, is part of a great empire and honours the French flag and nation.
Social identity
The expectations and opinions that others have of us.
Fernando Ortiz - Contrapunteo Cubano del tabaco y el azúcar
The history of the Americas cannot be understood without knowing the history of all the ethnic essences that have blended in this continent, or without analysing what has been the real result of the reciprocal transculturation.
Identity Project
The ongoing creation of narratives of self-identity relating to our perception of the past, present and hope for the future. (Barker and Jane 2016: 640)
Identification
The process of forming contingent and temporary points of attachment or emotional investment, which, through fantasy, partially suture or stitch together discourses and psychic/emotional forces. (Barker and Jane 2016: 640)
Diasporic Identity
The process through which identity in relation to place is constructed, imagined and understood as a result of dispersal or displacement (voluntary or involuntary); as a result of rupture and continuity
Bricolage
The rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signifying objects to produce new meanings in fresh contexts. A process of resignification by which cultural signs with established meanings are reorganised into new codes of meaning. Bricolage can be seen a stylised form of resistance to hegemonic culture.
British History in understanding culturalism
The threat to (and eventual disappearance of) traditional working-class life was crucial for the early development of Cultural Studies. Before the Second World War, the British economy was dominated by unemployment (never less than one million people unemployed between 1920 and 1940). By the late 1950s, jobs moved into the state sector; small plants were replaced by larger 'Fordist' ones (i.e. the production line) - labour became increasingly deskilled. At the same time, the differential between lower-paid white collar and blue collar workers was decreasing and immigration from the colonies meant that others took less desirable jobs. Workers became increasingly affluent and able to buy cars, clothing, electronics and television sets. Compulsory military service ended in 1958. There was a state rehousing programme. There was also educational reform which made higher education available to part of the working class.
Motorbike boys/skinhead group examples
There was a particular reason, or reasons, why these subcultures emerged; A particular catalyst in mainstream society. They all had distinctive ways of dressing that identified them to others as part of a particular subculture • They all had particular beliefs, ideologies and principles that united them, and that they stood up for and defended. They often used accessories as part of their identity, such as particular weapons, a motorcycle, round glasses (hippies), drugs, etc.
Discursive practice
This is when knowledge is produced according to a specific set of rules that are tied into history and culture
Bricolage example
Through bricolage, safety pins and chains are given a different meaning when worn by a Punk in combination with a particular hairstyle, type of clothing and type of footwear. This is a stylistic, symbolic bricolage.
Commodification
When the style of a subculture becomes commodified, or mainstream, it loses its power as resistance. Commodification is the process by which objects, qualities and signs are produced to be sold in the marketplace. 15
Barthes on Connotation
Where connotations have become naturalised, that is, accepted as "normal" and "natural", they act as conceptual maps of meaning by which to make sense of the world. These are what Barthes calls myths. (Barker and Jane 2016: 90). Though myths are cultural constructions, they may appear to be pre-given universal truths embedded in common sense. Myths are thus akin to the concept of ideology, which, it is argued, works at the level of connotation.' (Barker and Jane 2016: 89). 'Barthes sought to expose the arbitrary nature of cultural phenomena, to uncover the latent meanings of an everyday life which, to all intents and purposes, was perfectly natural. (...) Barthes was not concerned with distinguishing the good from the bad in modern mass culture, but rather with showing how all the apparently spontaneous forms and rituals of contemporary bourgeois societies are subject to a systematic distortion, liable at any moment to be dehistoricized, naturalized, converted into myth'.
S. Redhead argues on youth that
Youth cultures are increasingly fragmented. The idea of a grass-roots, media-free authentic subculture cannot be sustained
Indigenismo
a political ideology in several Latin American countries emphasizing the relation between the nation state and Indigenous nations and indigenous minorities.
Cultural Syncretism
a seamless, comfortable merging of the cultures.
Tertiam quid
a third, unidentified element that cannot be classified into either of the two groups from which it originates; to which it is related
Creolization
an example of hybridity. Creolization means the process in which creole cultures emerge in the New World; the new cultural identities, and the cases of some countries, the new languages that result from the complex historical past and ethnic and cultural hybridity of the region. Creolization is used especially in the context of linguistics, where Creole languages - such as the Créole spoken in Haiti, St Lucia, Martinique and Guadeloupe; the Papiamento spoken in the Dutch overseas territories just north of Venezuela - are the preferred means of communication amongst the people who live there.
Intentional approach to representation
assumes that meaning is created through the intentional language of an author/creator. The author "intentionally" communicates through specific language, but, to be shared and understood by the general population people must share a conceptual map.
Transculturation
convey more accurately the different phases of the transition from one culture to another, because this term doesn't solely consist in acquiring a new and different culture, which is what is suggested by the term acculturation. Rather, the phases of transition also implies the loss of, or uprooting from, a preceding culture, which we could call deculturation and, moreover, it implies the consequent creation of new cultural phenomena, which we can call neoculturation.
Rise and success of popular culture
has challenged notions of a mutually exclusive high/low culture; it has transgressed the boundaries of cultural power by showing that culture can be POPULAR, i.e. common to all people - and ORDINARY, i.e. part of our daily lives. • The rise of technology and telecommunications has increased its range of impact - think of Netflix, Amazon Prime...the TV series that are produced and consumed all over the world. So for some thinkers, such as Leavis, pop culture refers to what is 'left over' after the canon of high culture has been defined. It is the watering down of culture, the levelling down of culture since the Industrial Revolution, since the second world War with the increase in Television sets, etc. • Popular culture was traditionally, therefore, culture not worth studying in an academic environment.
Cultural Identity
how we relate our self-identity to the key elements of cultural meaning. Cultural identity can also be understood as A SHARED CULTURE, a COLLECTIVE 'one true self', which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common.
Imposed culture vs authentic/autochthonous (this is a real word and means indigenous blake) culture
in many other countries of the Americas - particularly in the Caribbean islands - the indigenous people and their cultures were almost entirely wiped out and African slaves were imported (10.7 million survived the Middle Passage). This binary opposition of course, focuses on the cultural - what culture should dominate? How to we reconcile the imposed, imperial culture with the culture of those who have been uprooted from their homelands (or those who were made subjects within their own homelands)? And can a postcolonial culture be defined after independence? How to we reconcile this cultural hybridity? Where does a Latin American culture come from? What is a Latin American culture?
Saussure on meaning
meaning is produced through the selection and combination of signs along the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axis. The syntagmatic axis = the linear combination of signs that form sentences. The paradigmatic axis = the field of signs (i.e. synonyms) from which any given sign is selected.
Youth from common sense perspective
natural marker of a biologically-detemined age
Ascendant strand of meaning
one that competes for dominance and gains power and influence... The process of making and maintaining an authoritative set of meanings and practices is called hegemony This is connected to the Marxist concern with trying to understand why workers weren't resisting and rebelling against capitalism even though it was known to be a system that was oppressing them.
Hybridity
postcolonial societies were preoccupied with defining and establishing their national identity. In that context, the connotation of hybridity is "How do we unite all of this - past and present, empire and colony, coloniser and colonised, imposed culture and authentic culture, along with all the different racial and social groups - into one solid, coherent national identity that does not embody and propagate the inequalities of colonial society
popular culture
regarded as the meanings and practices produced by popular audiences at the moment of consumption; focuses on the uses to which commodities are put. Examples include widespread and common public texts. Historically, the policing and upholding of the boundaries of a canon of 'good' cultural texts led to the exclusion of POPULAR culture. • This is largely because judgements of quality have derived from an institutionalized and class -based hierarchy of cultural taste • Beauty, form, quality, and other similar criteria for judging a cultural text are CULTURALLY relative; they are not objective and universal • A cultural object - be it a painting by Rubens or an elaborate piece of political graffiti - is a product of work. It is a human transformation of the material environment through labour.
Subculture
term we use to refer to groups of persons who share distinct values and norms, and which are considered to be distinct from dominant/mainstream society
Civilisation/barbarism
the dichotomy between "civilisation" and "barbarism" is similar to the dichotomy between the cultured and the uncultured, as well as the European versus the non European. This binary opposite is associated with the Argentinian thinker Sarmiento, in his book about the Argentinian pampas shortly after Argentina obtained independence in 1816.
Imperial centre and colonised territories
the terms imperial centre and colonised territories inherently contain and establish a relation of power; specifically, a relation in which a more powerful, more developed nation controls another, more developing nation, which exists in terms of its overseas, subservient status to the imperial centre.
Field of Cultural studies
theorists believed that conceptualizing "youth" as a homogenous group was to be rejected in favour of analysing class differences and their articulation with the values of the dominant or mainstream culture.
social constructionism
theory that knowledge and many aspects of the world around us are not real in and of themselves. They only exist because we give them reality through social agreement. Things like nations, books, even money don't exist in the absence of human society.
Coloniser and colonised
this is the enactment of the binary opposition of imperial centre and colony on the level of the individuals who compose colonial society. It is a reproduction of imperial centre versus empire on a microcosmic scale.
Centre Periphery
when Latin American intellectuals observed in the 1960s that modernisation theory (developing societies would modernise after contact with Western European and North American societies) did not apply to the underdeveloped 'Third World', they proposed that developing countries are structurally different and needed different paths to modernisation. This became dependency theory: the periphery of the international economy is being economically exploited (drained) by the centre; market forces perpetuate the dominance between centre and periphery.
Frantz Fanon Theory
when black people in colonies internalize their oppression as a personal failure, this is when an inferiority complex arises. It is also constantly reinforced in everyday life in racist societies, because black people are constantly reminded they are black first and people second. In other words, people are first reduced to their race, before being seen as unique human individuals.
Mimicry
when the colonised imitates the language, culture, behaviour and beliefs of the colonised. This mimicry results in a certain degree of appropriation. However, mimicry can also be subversive.
Dick Hebdige on youth
youth has been constructed within and across the discourses of fun and trouble; it also forms part of the VALIDATION of popular culture in the face of high cultural disdain
Talcott Parsons on Youth
youth isn't an age group. It is a changing social and cultural construct that appeared at a particular moment of time under definitive conditions; the concept or social category of 'youth' emerged with the changing family roles generated by the development of capitalism. Youth is considered a structured irresponsibility between childhood and adulthood As a cultural construct, the meaning of youth changes across time and space, and according to who is being addressed and by whom Young people have invested in youth as a privileged site in which to foreground their own sense of difference. Youth = an ideological signifier charged with utopian images of the future, BUT ALSO Youth = a potential threat to existing norms and regulations
Cultural Studies Summary
➢ Culture is seen as a whole way of life. ➢ Popular culture is considered worthy of analysis. ➢ Cultural Studies rejects elitist notions of high/low culture and the critiques of mass culture. ➢ Meanings are generated not be individuals alone, but by collectives. Thus, the idea of culture refers to shared meanings. ➢ Culture depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them and making sense of the world.
Issues with Althusser Approach
➢ It doesn't give enough space or the individual or community to act on the world one their own terms. It doesn't give them the agency to generate their own meanings and effects. It is very based in theory, which means that it didn't take local differences much into account. Its focus on structure and ideology means that it didn't pay much attention to the actual techniques and practices used by individuals to construct themselves and their lives.
