Assignments
paper no -8 (Cultural study)
Topic – Origin, method and circuit of
cultural study
Prepared by – Shital D Italiya
Roll no- 31
M.A.Sem – 2
Submitted to – Smt.S.B.Gardy Department of
English M.K.University
Bhavnagar
Origin, method and circuit of
cultural study
Birth of cultural study-
Birmingham (the Birmingham
centre for contemporary cultural study) by Raymond Williams and Richard Hogarth
in 1964 the appellation adopted for this institution indicated at least four
point of departure from the erstwhile and learning, first, it was going to be a
center for a cultural and not cultural study with which the centere probably
hoped to cross the hurdles of the amorphous density attached with the noun ‘Culture’
by trying to study culture through its
various signifying elements. Second , it was going to be a centre where various
disciplines studies were going o be focused upon instead of one , there by
necessarily making the study inter cross disciplinary. Thirdly, the temporal
marker indicated that what constitud the amorphous present knowledge trends
finding in these various disciplines were equally if not more important than
the well formed past, in a kind challenging the canon.
This is in turn suggested the the centre was
established for the purpose of enquiring into the multidisciplinary domains of
knowledge called under the umbrella term cultural studies, rather than
establishing it self because of an already existing domain of knowledge like
literature. In other words, the Birmingham center for contemporary cultural
study indicates that it was in search of a discourse instead of a discourse
being in search of a centre or a department to house itself in.
According to Andrew Milner
“ contemporary cultural studies had
emerged from out of literary studies essentially by way of a very simple move:
by shifting attention from an exclusive focus on the canon of high literary
text to an in principle, inclusive focus on all cultural texts, William and
Hogarth attempted no more than to expand the subject matter of English
literature it self to include popular culture. Literary criticism had
constructed the popular, not as part of English however but as the discipline’s
excluded antithetical other. Almost by default then the popular culture became
the subject matter of something else, the new proto- discipline of cultural
study.”
But that was the mind 1960 prior to
certain new phenomena and second waves that were to impact the definition of
culture and forcing academicians in these disciplines to redraft their
epistemological blueprints. The remaining two sections would attempt an
understanding of this change.
Circuit of cultural studies
The five major cultural process which
the identifies
1)
Representation
2) Identity
3)
Production
4)
Consumption
5)
Regulation
Taken together they complete
a sort of circuit what we term the circuit of culture through which any
analysis of cultural text or artifact must pass if it is to be adequately
studied.
Web have separated
these parts of the circuit into distinct section but in the real worlds the
continually overlap and intertwine in complex and contigent ways. However they
are the elements which taken together are what we mean by doing a cultural
study of a particular object.
As our notion of the
cultural circuit suggests meaning making is an on going process. It does not
just end at a pre – ordained point. While producers attempt to encode product
with particular meanibg and association this is not the end of the story or
biography of a product because this tells us nothing about what those product
may came to mean for those using them. In other words, meanings are not just
sent by producers and received passively by consumers rather meanings are
actively made in consumption, through the use to which people put these product
in their everyday lives.
Methods of cultural studies
Cultural
studies adopts methods of analysis from various disciplines: media studies,
cultural anthropology, discourse analysis, popular culture, audience theory.
Most of these methods when appropriated by cultural study are heavily
influenced and informed by the theories outlined in the later chapter. They are
also gearned to political reading of various aspects of culture generatind
gender, race sexuality related interpretation that reveal the oppressive of
hegemony structure of society.
All cuktural
fprms are linked to institutions the market consumers and regularity bodies.
Cultural studies believes that we cannot read cultural artifact only within the
aesthetics realm. A novel must be read not only within its generic conventions
and the history of the novel but also in term of the publishing industry and
its profits the community of reviewers the academic field of literary criticism
the politics of awards and the hype and publicity machienary that sells the
book.
Media culture
Media culture clearly
reflects the multiple sides of contemporary debats and progrrame. It is for
this reason that any reading of the media must always be a political reading.
It helps rein force the hegemony and power of specific political, cultural and
economic groups. The representation in the media are-
Suggestive
Provocative
This means they suggests ideologies if
not alert imbibes. Media culture does not need to declare its position or
ideology openly; it only needs to suggest. Showing a film star guzzling coke in
a film, or using particular brands of clothing is not necessary a markrting
strategy for the product. But what it does is to suggest that atars wear
certain kinds of clothes and that their glamour is in part the effect of
clothes.
Media culture is provocative because
it sometimes asks us to rethink what we know or reinforce that we believe in. in
cuitural studies media culture is studied
through an analysis of popular media culture link films, tv serials,
advertisement rather than avowedly political programmes.
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