Scope, Aim and Method in Cultural Studies

Assignment Topic: Scope, Aim and Method in Cultural Studies

Name: Jinal B. Parmar

Roll no.:13

M.A. Semester: 2

Paper no.: 8 – Cultural Studies

Submitted to: Department of English

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Maharaja Krishna kumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Scope, Aim and Method

What is Cultural Studies?

                Cultural studies is an academic field of critical theory and literary criticism initially introduced by British academies in 1964 and subsequently adopted by allied academies throughout the world.

               Cultural studies combines feminist theory, political theory, history philosophy, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, communication studies, political economy, translation studies, museum studies and art history criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies.

Popular Culture:

                In Popular culture is entirely about ideas, perspectives, attitudes, image and other phenomena that are come within the culture. Popular culture is connected with our society and our everyday lives. Culture means which is something that make by the elite class people of the society they makes new rules and regulation which are the connected with the our society and it’s create many differences and make use of new thing and idea to the society.

                 The term “Popular culture” was coined in the 19^th century or earlier. This term has denoted the education and general “culturedness” of the lower classes, as opposed to the lower classes, as opposed to the “official culture” and higher or the education emanated by the dominant classes.

                  Popular culture is which include our everyday life use of the things. There are four main types of popular culture analysis they are:

1.     Production analysis

2.     Textual  analysis

3.     Audience analysis

4.     Historical analysis

                These analyses seek to get beneath the surface meaning and examine more implicit social meanings.

                 Such forms of arts as comic strips or the detective novel are made by the people for themselves, as Raymond Williams pointed out popular culture is, for cultural studies, the set of beliefs, values and practices that are widely shared.

The Production and Consumption of Culture:

                The production and consumption of culture it means that culture is not a natural thing but it produced. Culture is produced by the elite people of the society. Cultural studies is very much interested in the production and consumption of culture, it’s linked to:

·        Matters of class

·        Matters of economy

·        Matters of representation

               This production and consumption of culture says about the different classes and economy. Culture can only produced by the powerful class and who has identity. It’s defines one’s identity but it depends on the ability to do so and the way in which these artifacts have been marketed and sold culture is a product that is: made, marketed and consumed.

Birmingham centre for contemporary cultural studies and Stuart Hall:

                  This centre for contemporary cultural studies was a research centre at the University of Birmingham in England. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director; its object of study was the then new field of cultural studies.

                  Stuart Hall was a cultural theorist and socialist and along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British of cultural studies or the Birmingham school of cultural studies. Hall has joined the BCCS in 1964. Hall is credited with playing a role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to deal with race and gender.

                  Stuart Hall has written one essay in 1980 ‘Cultural studies: Two Paradigms’ set the tone for the interrogation of the concept of culture. Hall suggested that subjects were not expressions are both determined by structure of social signification. This structure is hegemony the ideological structure that enables the dominant classes to legitimize, naturalize and retain power.

Method, Methodology:

                   In Cultural studies there are various methods and it adapts method of analysis from various disciplines: media studies, cultural anthropology, discourse analysis, popular culture studies and audience studies.

                  Method is the technique employed by the researcher to frame questions, collect and organize data. Thus ‘method’ refers to the actual fieldwork, questionnaires, databases, identifying sources.

                  Methodology refers to the political position and the interpretive strategies used by the researcher. This refers to the epistemological approach, and concerns the philosophical, political approach of the researcher, where soutinizes her/his own location. Methodology is the critical approach used to interpret the data collection.

The Circuit of Culture:

                 “The Circuit of Culture is a theory or framework used in the area of cultural studies. It was devised in 1997 by a group of theorists when studying the walkman cassette player.”

                 This theory suggests that in studying a cultural text or artifacts it has five elements:

1.     Representation

2.     Identity

3.     Production

4.     Consumption

5.     Regulation

 

 

               These elements present is a process through which every cultural artifacts, object or event must pass. The elements work in tandem, and are closely linked with each other and this process had been called ‘articulation’.

                     To understand the ‘Circuit of Culture’ there is an example of television and through this example it can be easily to understand the concept.

·        Television and Representation

·        Television and Identity

·        Television and Production

·        Television and Consumption

·        Television and Regulation

                  The ‘Circuit of Culture’ includes within it several smaller components and modes of analysis; it adopts certain key areas and method to understand the modes of meaning production.

·        Language, discourse

·        Identity

·        Everyday life

·        Ethnography

·        Media studies

·        Reception/audience studies

·        Cultural intermediaries

Identity:

                The identity of any person based on their behavior. Identity is very important thing for every person. In cultural studies its judge the person’s identity.

                  Identity is constituted through experience, and representation is a significant part of experience. Experience includes the consumption of signs, the making of meaning from signs, the making of meaning from signs and the knowledge of meaning.

                  Cultural studies believe that experience also masks the connections between different structures in society. Identity is thus socially produced closely related to the theme of identity in cultural studies is the question of agency. Agency the capacity and power to determine one’s actions and life is also socially produced.

                     Representation is the generation of meaning and constitutes identity. Identity determines the degree of agency one possesses or does not possess. Agency is therefore the consequence of representation too.

Everyday life:

                   In cultural studies and contemporary cultural studies takes everyday life very seriously. Everyday life, especially in metropolises and unfortunately cultural studies seems to be interested mainly in metropolitan culture.

                    Cultural studies interest in everyday life proceeds from what Raymond Williams called ‘lived cultures’, where culture is produced through everyday living. Culture is not some distinct realm produced elsewhere to be consumed by the people. It is the consequences of experience and responses it is in the everyday that culture is made. Cultural studies investigate this process of making culture.

                   Everyday life today is a hybrid of the local and the global no pure local culture exists in metropolises any more even where local ethnic chic is marketed. It is part of a global consumer market. Everyday life is fiercely contested where the meaning of global cultural artifacts are re-invented, re-inscribed by native cultures.

Post colonialism and cultural studies:

                   Globalization has a sustained engagement with and influence on local cultures some of the critics have argued that we need to address the role of globalization through the post colonial lens.

                   Contemporary globalization is also a mode of cultural exchange, appropriation and marketing. Contemporary cultural studies therefore examines the role of globalizing finances and markets in the formation of cultures, shared economics in globalization influence cultural modes, and this is what cultural studies is interested in.

                   Even though globalization produces ‘hybrid’ products and cultural value, the question of economics gain must under write our analysis of even these products. This analysis therefore is firmly rooted in a post colonial perspective.

Cultural  Intermediaries:

                  The term ‘Culture  Intermediaries’ was introduced by French cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu in his work on the sociology of taste and distinction cultural intermediaries are those that mediate between the production of a cultural product and its consumer.

                   It is also possible that cultural intermediaries have little knowledge of the actual processes of cultural production. A film magazine columnist does not need to know the process of production. The film’s advertising agency does not need to know the financial, social, structural backgrounds to the film.

                   Cultural studies is interested in the role played and make representation of the product. Media and advertising are one of the profitable businesses today. Now-a-days media is on the top because of the various news and provide it to the people. Media has got fame because it has provided so many things to people and through media culture became popular.

Media Culture and Cultural Studies:

                   Media culture is means which is something related with the communication, language, discourse and representation. Media is one of the important thing and its increases the cultural value. Many of the films, daily soaps and advertisements which are represent our culture. Through the media any type of reality can be expressed.

                     Media is one of the large economies because now-a-days money is the everything, everywhere money is the first then the other. In the section on cultural intermediaries we have seen how marketing and advertising generate a desire for cultural objects and are thus central to the production – consumption patterns of culture.

                    Cultural studies of the media with the assumption that media culture and here we are speaking of media from print to the internet is political and ideological.

                    Media culture is provocative because it sometimes asks us to rethink what we know, or reinforce what we believe in. some of the films which has some negative or positive effect on the people and they sometimes takes it positive or in a negative way.

                  A contemporary cultural study of media culture explores what is being called ‘media ecologies’. Media is the intersection of information and communication of information and communications technologies organizational behavior and human interaction.

Audience/Reception studies:

                Cultural studies is interested in the way in which audiences receive the message how they respond to it, and the effect the message generates. A major component of cultural studies is therefore audience studies or reception studies.

                  The audience study means that any of the advertisement, serials or any news it says that how we respond to all this media program and it is effect on our mind or not. ‘Audience includes readers, listeners, viewer’s kinds of image and representations.  

                  Reception is the use of meditated cultural texts by the audience. That is, reception is the way in which we react to, internalize representations. Some of the advertisements, films and other things present some wrong image of society or anything its effect to the people and society and effected in our culture.

                 One of the audience studies example is what David Morley’s path-breaking work on television audiences in Britain is an one of the example that how people responses to television, serials, films and sports. It is about the audience and reception studies.

                     So, there are the many way of cultural studies it has many different points to study the culture. Cultural studies is one of the important subject through which we can get know about the media, communication and so many things.

                     Cultural studies is the study of culture through which people can much aware about their surroundings. It is teach us that how elite class of people governed rule over to the middle class people. It has a many way to study the culture.