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.

A Glossary of selected literary terms: 1. Feminist Criticism 2. Psychoanalytical Criticism 3. New Historicism 4. Eco-Criticism 5. Queer Theory

                         Assignment Topic: A Glossary of selected literary terms:

1.   Feminist Criticism

2.   Psychoanalytical Criticism

3.    New Historicism

4.   Eco-Criticism

5.   Queer Theory

Name: Jinal B. Parmar

Roll no.: 13

Paper no.: 7 – Literary Theory and Criticism

M.A. Sem.:2

Submitted to: Department of English

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Maharaja Krishna kumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

                        A Glossary of selected Literary Terms

Feminist Criticism

Psychoanalytical Criticism

Eco-Criticism

Definition of Criticism :

                “Criticism is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something or someone in an intelligible way.”

“Another meaning of Criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature, artwork, film and social trends.”

   1.)   Feminist Criticism:

“Re-vision the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a mew critical direction-is for women far more than a chapter in cultural history, it is an act of survival.”

                                                                                               -Adrienne Rich

                Feminist Criticism is a type of literary criticism, which may study and advocate the rights of women. As Judith Fetterley says, “Feminism Criticism is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read.” In the most general and simple terms , feminist literary criticism before the 1970 in the first and second  waves of feminism was largly concerned  with the politics of women’s  authorship and the representation of women’s  condition with in literature, this includes the depiction of fictional female characters.  There is a three Waves of Feminism.

§  Three waves of Feminism:

1)  First Wave Feminism:- Late 1700s- early 1900s

                “First wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19^th and early 20^th century throughout the world, particularly in the U.K., Canada, the United States. It focused on de jure inequalities, primarily on gaining women’ suffrage. This term was coined in the 1970s.”

                  Writers like Mary Wollstonecraft in her work “A Vindication of Rights of Women” highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the Women’s suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the 19^th Amendment.

2)  Second Wave Feminism:- early 1960s- late 1970s

               “Second wave feminism is a period of feminist activity that first begun in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the early 1980s .”

                 Building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women, formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.

3)  Third Wave Feminism:-s early 1990s- Present:

             “Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but are often marked as beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present.”

                Resisting the perceived essentialist ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform" (Tyson 97).

                The mainly feminist concern with representation and politics of women’s lives has continued to play an active role in criticism. More specifically, modern feminist criticism deals with those issues related to the patriarchal programming with in key aspects of society including politics, education and to the  forceful work.

                   Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as:

 (1) To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing,

 (2) To interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view,

 (3) To rediscover old texts,

 (4) To analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective,

(5) To resist sexism in literature, and

 (6) To increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style.

                    

  Feminist Literary Critic:

               There are many Feminist Critic who write about the problems of women in society. Prominent feminist Literary Critics include Virginia Woolf, Isobel Armstrong, Nancy Armstrong, Barbara   Bowen, Laura Brown, Sandra Gilbert, etc. 

  History of Feminist Criticism:

                 The major role of feminist criticism is to expose the problems and situation of women which they suffer from their male dominated society. Throughout the 1970s, this feminist criticism played a vital role to expose the cultural ‘mind-set’ within society which sexual inequality. In feminist criticism where women as the object of their writing. It is about the  male dominated society.

 2.) Psychoanalytical Criticism:

             “Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism refers to literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.”  Psychoanalysis begun with Freud, who wrote literary criticism as well as psychoanalytic theory. Freud developed a language that described, a model that explained and a theory that encompassed human psychology. His theories are directly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind.

              Some of the psycholytical theorist has gave their idea about what they think about human mind, human nature , human behavior and their psyche like,

·         Sigmund Freud - has given concept about Id, Ego, and Superego.

·         Jacques Lacan – Unconscious is structured like language

·         Carl Jung – Archetype

·         Karen Horney – Womb envy

               In this theory, Freud explains that each person’s personality is formed of three parts: Id, Ego, and Superego. Psychoanalysis is the process of using what we know about these three parts of someone’s personality to analyze the ways that person behaves. Literary critics sometimes analyze the actions of literary characters using the three personality structures that Freud identified. As critics explore the ego, superego, and id of characters in a work, they focus on the ways that these parts of the characters’ personalities influence the work as a whole. This process is called psychoanalytic criticism. Following there is explanation of these three personalities:

1.)   Id: "...the location of the drives" or libido

                     The id is the part of the personality that contains our primitive impulses—such as thirst, anger, hunger—and the desire for instant gratification or release. According to Freud, we are born with our id. The id is an important part of our personality because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the id is based on our pleasure principle. The id wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the other circumstances of the situation. The id is sometimes represented by a devil sitting on someone’s shoulder. As this devil sits there, he tells the ego to base behavior on how the action will influence the self, specifically how it will bring the self pleasure.

                  He called the predominantly passional, irrational, unknown, and unconscious part of the psyche the id, or "it."

2.)   Superego:  the area of the unconscious that houses Judgment (of self and others) and "...which begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex" (Richter 1015-1016)

               The superego is the part of the personality that represents the conscience, the moral part of us. The superego develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers. It dictates our belief of right and wrong. The superego is sometimes represented by an angel sitting on someone’s shoulder, telling the ego to base behavior on how the action will influence society.

                Another aspect of the psyche, which he called the superego, is really a projection of the ego. The superego almost seems to be outside of the self, making moral judgments, telling us to make sacrifices for good causes even though self-sacrifice may not be quite logical or rational. And, in a sense, the superego is "outside," since much of what it tells us to do or think we have learned from our parents, our schools,. or our religious institutions.

3.)   Ego:  "...one of the major defenses against the power of the drives..." and home of the defenses listed above

                   The ego is the part of the personality that maintains a balance between our impulses (our id) and our conscience (our superego). The ego is based on the reality principle. The ego understands that other people have needs and desires and that sometimes being impulsive or selfish can hurt us in the end. It is the ego’s job to meet the needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality of the situation. The ego works, in other words, to balance the id and superego. The ego is represented by a person, with a devil (the id) on one shoulder and an angel (the superego) on the other.

                The ego, or "I," was his term for the predominantly rational, logical, orderly, conscious part.

                Another psychoanalytical theorist Jacques Lacan focused on language and language related issues. Lacan    treats the unconscious as a language; consequently, he views the dream not as Freud did (that is, as a form and symptom of repression) but rather as a form of discourse. Thus we may study dreams psychoanalytically in order to learn about literature, even as we may study literature in order to learn more about the unconscious. Lacan also revised Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex—the childhood wish to displace the parent of one’s own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex—by relating it to the issue of language.

3.) Eco-Criticism:

         “Eco Criticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyse the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation.”

             The term Eco criticism is related to the our surrounding environment which also come in literature. The word eco criticism is a semi neologism. Eco is short of ecology, which is concerned with the relationships between living organisms in their natural environment as well as their relationships with that environment. By analogy, eco criticism is concerned with the relationships between literature and environment or how man’s relationships with his physical environment are reflected in literature.  Eco criticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works both published in the mid- 1990s: ‘The Ecocriticism Reader’, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and ‘The Environment Imagination’ by Lawrence Buell.

              In the United States, eco criticism is often associated with the ‘Association for the Study of Literature and Environment’ which hosts biennial meeting for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature. Eco criticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including “Green Studies”, “Ecopoetics”, and “Environmental Literary Criticism”.

             William Rueckert may have been the first person to use the term eco criticism. In 1978 Rueckert published an essay titled Literature and ecology: An Experiment in Eco criticism. His intent was to focus on “the application of ecology and ecological concept to the study of literature”. Glotfelty's working definition in The Ecocriticism Reader is that "ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment" and one of the implicit goals of the approach is to recoup professional dignity for what Glotfelty calls the "undervalued genre of nature writing". Lawrence Buell defines ‘ecocriticism’ ... as [a] study of the relationship between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis”.

             Eco criticism appropriate stress that it was only in the 1990s that eco criticism emerged as a separate discipline although it is a fact that the relationship between man and his physical environment had always been interesting to literary critics.3 This interest, both at the basic scientific level and in the metaphorical form in literature, can be explained in two ways: 1. man always exists within some natural environment or, according to Buell, there cannot be is without where,4 and 2.  the last decade of the twentieth century was the time when it became obvious that the greatest problem of the twenty-first century would be the survival of the Earth.

              The first explanation is concerned with man's essential quest for personal identity or with his need and failure to find his roots. That is the reason why he is a life-long wanderer, on the one hand, and why he is always identified with the familiar physical and cultural environment, on the other.5 The latter explanation results from the fact that man feels vitally threatened in the ecologically degraded world.

             Eco criticism is one of the term and one of the way where everyone can fight for the world.  The reflection of that difficult struggle in the area of culture and spirit speaks for the urgency of action or the urgent need to do something in this respect. The interdisciplinary combination of the physical and the spiritual can be seen in some of the terms used in ecology and eco criticism, which both have the same aim. Two different and distinct disciplines, ecology and literary criticism, are combined in order to restore the earth’s health, which was lost owing to man’s wrongdoing. There is table of Ecological terms as a source of Eco criticism and language study:

Ecological Terms as a Source of Ecocriticism and Language Study:

Ecology	Eco criticism and language study
ecology	Deep ecology
Physical environment	Environmental Imagination Reimagination
Biodiversity	Global Environmental Culture environmental Unconscious
Endangered Species	Eco cultural habitat
Pollution	Toxic discourse literary hazards Language Pollution

               Ecology is the science that studies the relationships between living organisms and their physical environment. In other words, ecology is concerned with the living organisms in their natural environment.  Greg Garrard has dubbed 'pastoral ecology' the notion that nature undisturbed is balanced and harmonious, while Dana Phillips has criticised the literary quality and scientific accuracy of nature writing in "The Truth of Ecology". Similarly, there has been a call to recognize the place of the Environmental Justice movement in redefining ecocritical discourse.

             Through this term Eco criticism some of the critics who write about the environment and our surrounding nature in literature and its played a vital role to aware the readers through their writing mainly on ecology and environment. 

4.)  New Historicism:

                  

“The term ‘new historicism’ was coined by the American critic Stephan Greenblatt. New Historicism is a school of literary theory which consolidates critical theory into easier forms of practice for academic literary theorists of the 1990s. It first developed in the 1980s and gained widespread influence in the following decade”.

‘New Historicism’ is one of the term through this term New historicists aim simultaneously to understand intellectual history through the literature. This should be the studied and interpreted within the context of the both the history of author and the history of the critic’s life. Based on the literary criticism of Stephen Greenblatt and influenced by the philosophy of Michel Foucault, New Historicism acknowledges not only that a work of literature is influenced by its author's times and circumstances, but that the critic's response to that work is also influenced by his environment, beliefs, and prejudices. A new historicist looks in a literature in wider historical context, examined both the writer’s time of writing and how it’s affected and reflects writer’s life.

For example, in the study of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, one critic comes to the question of whether the play shows Shakespeare to be anti-Semitic. This work must be judged in the context in which it was written; in turn, cultural history can be revealed by studying the work — especially, say New Historicists, by studying the use and dispersion of power and the marginalization of social classes within the work. Studying the history reveals more about the text; studying the text reveals and tells more about the history.

So, the New historicism is the theory through which the critic can get the history of writer’s time. New Historicism acknowledges and embraces the ideas that, as times change, so will our understanding of great literature.

5.)  Queer Theory:

“Queer Theory is also can be the “Gender Studies”. This is one of the theory which is the studies the gender issues in the society through the literature. Queer study is the field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the 1990s out of the field of Queer studies and women’s studies”. 

This is the study of LGBT – Lesbian, Gay, Bi – Sexual, and Trans sexual. One of gender activist Gopi Shankar wrote a book on queer language in Tamil and he coined the regional terms for gender queer people in Tamil. He said that apart from male and female, there are the more than the 20 types of genders such as, transwomen, transmen , trigender, pangender, etc,. After English, Tamil is the only language that has been given names for all the genders identified so far.

In Queer theory there is  commitment to deconstruction makes it nearly impossible to speak of a "lesbian" or "gay" subject, since all social categories are denaturalized and reduced to discourse. Another criticism is that queer theory, in part because it typically has recourse to a very technical jargon, is written by a narrow elite for that narrow elite.

The criticism of queer theory can be divided in three main ideas:

·         It has a failing itineration, the "subjectless critique" of queer studies

·         The unsustainable analysis of this failing self

·         The methodological implication that scholars of sexuality end up reiterating and consolidating social categories

This is the Queer theory which is the issue of the of the gender and about homosexual. Queer theory rejects an ‘essentialism’ of identity politics and the binary opposition of homosexual in favor of a more fluid, and impermanent nature of the same. Queer theory put stresses on the luminal nature of identity. They stress the gay-lesbian identity as a ‘crossing-over’.

The work of Judith Butler is crucial here because it offers a new way of dealing with the problem of identity. Butler begins with the assumption that identity is not a stable entity. Gender identity is ‘performed’, and is performed repeatedly, Butler argues that feminism has presupposed the category of women as a stable and unitary subject. Feminism,by treating the very fact of being a woman as the defining factor of identity, ignores other equally crucial factor of identity such as class, race or sexuality. Butler is suggesting that even feminist theory cannot assume that being ‘female’ or ‘male’ creates certain kind of identities.

Queer theory is kind of theory which gave the some of the identity of gay and lesbian and their relation to each other and it has new way in literature. Through literature this theory of same gender gave some light on the gender issue in the society.