Culture I & II (GS)

Question 1

Briefly describe the history of the word culture

Answer 1

Originally: cultivation of crops and/or animals

> 18th C.: Cultivation as in spiritual and moral progress of humanity

> 19th C.: cultures in the plural

> 20th C.: cultural anthropology, whole way of life

Question 2

Name the three broad categories of defining culture

Answer 2

Ideal
Social
Documentary

Question 3

Name some of the main points of Matthew Arnold’s view on culture

Answer 3

• the best that has been thought and known
• culture through education
• mass culture = anarchy
• culture does away with classes
  > emphasis on high culture through education

Question 4

Briefly outline the history of the Mass Culture debate

Answer 4

• gathered momentum in 1920’s and 30’s
• continued throughout 40’s and 50’s
• 20th C.: mass culture due to technology as threat to liberalism and pluralism

Question 5

Explain FR Leavis and QD Leavis’ view on mass culture and high culture

Answer 5

Mass:

• addictive
• inferior

High:

• only for minority
• passed on to successors
• finest human experience
• finer living of an age

Question 6

Describe Dwight MacDonald’s view on folk art and mass culture

Answer 6

Mass culture:

• imposed from above
• debased form of high culture
• addictive
• dehumanized mass man

Folk art:

• grows from below
• creates sense of community

Question 7

Explain Richard Hoggart’s view on mass culture

Answer 7

• anti-life
• harder for people without intellectual bend to become wise in their own way
  > education as means to stem cultural decline

Question 8

Explain Richard Hoggart’s view on culture

Answer 8

Includes all activities, practices and intellectual processes that make culture of a specific group at a particular time
> culture is ordinary

Question 9

Explain Raymond Williams’ definition of culture

Answer 9

System by which meanings and ideas are expressed in art, learning and ordinary behaviour, structures of family, institutions of a society

Question 10

Explain the concept of ‘structure of feeling’

Answer 10

• introduced by Raymond Williams
• enables communication
• also: shared values, common understandings

Question 11

Briefly explain the importance of the cathedral example

Answer 11

It explains clearly that meaning depends on point of view, use, conventions
> culture as set of shared meanings, as meaning-maker

Question 12

Explain the difference between Raymond Williams’ and contemporary theories of culture

Answer 12

Contemporary

• creates, constructs and constitutes social and economic relations
• production of meaning through language

Williams
- culture as reflection of economic and social relations

Question 13

Explain the relationship between culture and power

Answer 13

Culture constructs, sustains and reproduces structures and relations of power

Question 14

Explain Edward Said’s concept of power

Answer 14

• source of identity
• creates narrations / narratives
• sustains imperialism

Question 15

Explain Sherry Ortner’s “Is female to male as nature to culture?”

Answer 15

• universal secondary status of women in society

- local cultural / historical variations

Question 16

What does Sherry Ortner want us to be aware of?

Answer 16

Awareness of WHAT is being explained

Question 17

Describe Hall’s concept of culture

Answer 17

Culture as production and circulation of meaning
- permeates all of society 
- crucial role of symbolic domain
- culture as process, set of practices
- marks out and maintains identity
- regulates and organizes conduct and practices
> cultural circuit
- formation of discourse

Cultural Circuit:

• representation
• production
• identity
• regulation
• consumption

Question 18

Explain the difference between the semiotic and the discursive approach

Answer 18

Semiotic
- how of representation
- how language produces meaning
> poetics

Discursive
- effects and consequences of representation
- connection with power, representation, construction of identity etc
> politics

Question 19

Name the main concepts of cultural studies after the cultural turn

Answer 19

• social phenomenon
• subject to change
• plural
• sign system
• giving and taking of meanings
• set of practices
• variety of media and institutions