Key Concepts of Cultural Studies

Introduction to Anglophone Cultural Studies

Annika McPherson
12/17/2008

What is Cultural Studies?
Different (Hi)stories

Cultural Studies borrows
theories and methodologies
from...
Literary Studies
Sociology
Anthropology
Philosophy
Psychoanalysis
History
Geography
Sciences
...

Cultural Studies within...
American Studies
British Studies
Canadian Studies
Australian Studies
South Asian Cultural
Criticism
...
Links to Previous Sessions


What is/are Cultural Studies?
culture
Diasporas
Postcolonial
Economics
Class
Science, Technology and Knowledge Production
paradigms and paradigm shifts
Media and the Public
Encoding/Decoding
Representations of Justice
representations in movies

Culture(s)
Identity formations
Knowledge
Hybridity
Race, Class, Gender
Visual Culture(s)
Feminist Theory
Colonization/De-Colonization
Postcolonialism
Diaspora
Minority Literatures
Popular Culture
Globalization
Interculturality
Interdisciplinarity
Geopolitical space(s)
Multi-culturalism
History
Religion
Economics
Ideologies
Global culture(s) industry
Internet
Media
Social criticism
Cosmopolitanism
(Post)Modernity
Signifying Practices
Discourse
Encoding/(De)-Coding
Power relations
New English Literatures
Citizenship
Transnationality
Remember...?
Outline and Aims
Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity
The Role of Theory
American Studies, British Studies, Cultural Studies
Developments
Methods
Key Concepts
You should...
become familiar with some of the main concepts
employed in the analysis of social and cultural change
begin to consider different approaches to textual
analysis and (historical) contextualization in cultural
criticism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMo2uiRAf30
Remember...
The Production of Knowledge

knowledge production in historical perspective
the development of the modern university

the division of academic knowledge
how is knowledge organized into disciplines?



But...
Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of
you that all of this is simply one grand misunderstanding?
Since youre not here to learn anything, but to be taught so
you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so
that it can be taught and it has to be reduced to information so
it can be organized, do you follow that? In other words this
leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property
of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are
simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from the outside. In
fact its exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous
condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...
William Gaddis. JR. London: Jonathan Cape, 1976: 20. Quoted in Joe Moran.
Interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge, 2002: 1.

The Rise of Disciplines
a particular branch of learning or a particular body of knowledge
but also the maintenance of order and control
specialized, valued knowledge
classical division of knowledge:
Aristotle: theoretical, practical, and productive subjects
institutional change:
from medieval studia generalia to disciplines such as medicine,
law, theology
Enlightenment: project of ordering and classifying knowledge
(encyclopaedias)
Positivism (Auguste Comte, Hippolyte Taine)
early 19th century: secularized, state-controlled, research-oriented
university (Prussia)
Disciplines as Tribes?

Men of the sociological tribe rarely visit the land of
physicists and have little idea what they do over there. If
the sociologists were to step into the building occupied
by the English department, they would encounter the
cold stares if not the slingshots of the hostile natives ...
The disciplines exist as separate estates, with distinctive
subcultures.
B.R. Clark quoted in Tony Becher. Academic Tribes and Territories:
Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of the Disciplines. Milton Keyes:
Open University Press, 1989: 23.
Particular Types of Discourse

language as constructed and constrained by social
patterns or conventions
modes of thought, cultural practice or institutional
framework that makes sense of and structures the world,
often from the partial perspective of a particular interest
group
disciplines as discursive constructions permit certain
ways of thinking and operating while excluding others
Inter- (Multi-, Trans-, Post-,
Anti-) disciplinarity...

How is knowledge reorganized into new
configurations and alliances when old ways of
thinking have come to seem stale, irrelevant,
inflexible or exclusionary?

...a critical, pedagogical and institutional concept

...implies a critical awareness of the relationship between
knowledge and power

What is Theory?
Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
e.g. literary theory
a systematic account of the nature of literature and of the
methods for analysing it

Theory as an established set of propositions...
offers an explanation that is not obvious
is not easily confirmed or disproved
makes people think differently about their objects of study
shows that what we take for granted as common sense is
in fact a historical construction
Two Examples
Michel Foucault, The History
of Sexuality (1976-1984)
sex as a complex idea
produced by a range of
social practices,
investigations, talks and
writing, i.e. by discourses
or discursive practices
culturally or socially
produced groups of ideas
texts (signs and
codes)
representations (give
signs meaning)

Edward Said, Orientalism
(1978)

a theory of representation
Orient vs. Occident
a Western style for
dominating the Orient

Post-colonial theory

Theory is...
...intimidating?

interdisciplinary
analytical and
speculative
a critique of common
sense
reflexive
Area Studies
Interdisciplinary inquiries into a specific region, e.g.

History
Political science
Sociology
Cultural studies
Languages
Geography
Literature(s)
Different (Hi)stories
American Studies as the
interdisciplinary study of
American history and
culture
economic
social
political
cultural
developments
(self-)perceptions
interpretations
American
exceptionalism?
From the Myth and
Symbol School to Cold
War contexts
Cultural Studies within
American Studies
traditions
e.g. Chicago School of
Sociology
American Studies
and/as Cultural Studies
http://www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/tm/i
ndex.html
Different (Hi)stories
British Cultural Studies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyUYG1J3tKI

From New Criticism via Structuralism and Post-
Structuralism to New Historicism and Cultural Studies
from High Culture to the culture of everyday life
theory in practice
Texts in History
http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-
wiss/intro-to-literature/2007-02-06/2007-20c-
lit-hist.html

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-
wiss/pre/bm1-lit-theory-timeline-2.pdf
Anglophone Cultural Studies...
American Cultural Studies
mass culture and audience studies
Canadian Cultural Studies
technology and society
Australian Cultural Studies
cultural policy
South African Cultural Studies
from resistance to cultural politics
...
Characteristics and aims of
Cultural Studies...

study cultural practices and their relation to power
social and political contexts within which culture
manifests itself
culture as the location of political criticism and action
reconcile intuitive and objective forms of knowledge
moral evaluation of modern society
aims to understand and change structures of
dominance


Cultural Theory in Practice:
Key Methodologies
Textual Approaches
Interpretive Analysis
Content Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Media Analysis
Historical Approaches
Memory and History

Ethnography
Qualitative research
Lives and Lived
Experiences
Experience and Stories
Reception Studies
Audience Analysis
Production and
Consumption

Central Problems...
Language, Practice and the Material
Truth, Science and Ideology
Culture as a Way of Life
Subjects and Agency
Identity, Equality and Difference
Global Culture/Media Culture
Transforming Capitalism
Cultural Politics
Approaches to Studying
Popular Culture...
Film
Music
Sports
Comix
Fashion
Television
Advertising
Cyberculture

http://www.wsu.edu/~amers
tu/pop/
Race
Class
Gender
Sexuality
Censorship
Imperialism

http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?
v=zQUuHFKP-9s
Intellectual Strands of
Cultural Studies
Marxism
the centrality of class
Culturalism and Structuralism
culture is ordinary
culture as like a language
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism
the instability of language
discursive practices
Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity
The Politics of Difference
Feminism, Race, and Postcolonial Theory

Concepts as a Methodological Basis
of Interdisciplinarity
Cultural studies has, if nothing else, forced the academy to realize its
collusion with an elitist white-male politics of exclusion and its
subsequent intellectual closure.
Mieke Bal. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2002: 6.

Concepts travel from systematic theory into cultural
analysis as tools with which to study cultural objects
on their own terms.


Summary: Concepts of Culture and
Cultural Concepts
Culture and signifying
practices
Representation
Articulation
Power
Popular culture
Texts and Readers

Subjectivity and Identity
Ethnicity, Race and Nation
Sex, Subjectivity and
Representation
Television, Texts and
Audiences
Cultural Space and Urban
Place
Youth, Style and Resistance
Cultural Politics and Cultural
Policy
Genealogies of Cultural Studies

Social Enquiry
Marxist and Critical Theory
British Studies
Language Theories
Cultural Feminism
Postmodernism
Audiences
Sex, Subjectivity and
Representation
gender vs. sex
cultural assumptions and practices governing the
social construction and social relations of men
and women
a matter of representation and performance
feminist cultural politics
queer theory



Floating Signifiers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMo2uiRAf30




Study Questions
Explain the revised notion of culture within
cultural studies


Lewis-Genealogy2.pdf
Keywords-Barker.pdf
Glossary-Barker2.pdf

Keywords.
Culture
Discourse
Identity
Representation
Theory

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-wiss/intro-
to-literature/2007-02-06/2007-20c-lit-hist.html

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/anglistik/lit-
wiss/pre/bm1-lit-theory-timeline-2.pdf


Race
Class
Gender
Ethnicity
Diaspora

Consult:
Chris Barker, Keywords and
Glossary
Sources
Chris Barker. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice.
London: Sage, 2000.
Chris Barker. Making Sense of Cultural Studies:
Central Problems and Critical Debates. London:
Sage, 2002.
Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory: A Very Short
Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Joe Moran. Interdisciplinarity. London and New York:
Routledge, 2002.