Thinking Activity : Unit 1: Cultural Study
Here is my blog on Cultural Study as a thinking activity unit one culture study. Task is given by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. So, here are some questions on Cultural Study.
1) What is Culture ?
According to Matthew Arnold, culture is a study in perfection, in making things better than they are, moved by the moral and social passion for doing good. He notes that religion suggests that the kingdom of God is within you, so culture places perfection in an internal condition.
2) What is Cultural studies?
Cultural studies is hard to define. As was also the case Elaine Showalter's cultural model of feminism difference, " Cultural studies" is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices. As Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out, Cultural studies is not a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda but a loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues and questions.
Cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, feminism, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture and postcolonial studies, those fields that concentrate on social and cultural force that either create community or cause division and alienation.
Arnold spends a lot of space explaining his idea of culture and how it differs from that of his critics'. According to Matthew Arnold culture is a study in perfection, in making things better than they are, moved by the moral and social passion for doing good.
3)Four goals of cultural studies?
Cultural studies approaches generally share four goals.
1 ) Cultural studies transcends the confuss of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history :- Cultural studies involves scrutinizing the Cultural phenomenon of a text for example Italian opera, a Lantino telenovela. Cultural studies is not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about "art".
2 ) Cultural studies is politically engaged :- Cultural studies is politically engaged with power. Cultural critics see themselves as oppositional not only with disciplines but to many of the power structures of society.
3 ) Cultural studies denies the separation of high and low or elite and popular culture :- Cultural critics today work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture, popular, folk or urban. Jean baudrillard and Anddreas Huyssen, Cultural critics argue that after World War second the distinction among high , low and mass culture collapsed and they cite other theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Dick Hebdige on how " good taste " often only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power bases.
4 ) Cultural studies analyzes not only the Cultural work but also the means of production :- A well known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway's study of the American romance novel and it's reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular literature which is literature demonstrate the textual effects of the publishing industry's decisions about books that will minimize it's financial risks.
4)How is understanding 'power' at the center of cultural studies.?
Power at the center of Cultural studies. We do not have the power of choice. Power comes from how it is exercised what you can do.
Definition : Power is the ability to make others do what you would have them do.
According to Michel Foucault, the nation that power is a whole complex of forces, it is which produces what happens.
Power is unity, action and choice.
Power has six civic arena.
- physical force
- State action - example democracy
- Social norms
- Ideas
- Numbers
How does power operate?
- Power is never static
- Power is life water - it make policy and political
- Power compounds - power gets more power.
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