CUST 235 Lecture Notes Session 2: 21 September How Can We Critically Question the Role of Media in Society?

Alan O’Connor and John Downing, ‘Culture and Communication’ in Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction, John Downing ,Ali Mohammadi, and Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi (eds.) pp. 3-22

Culture is the sphere of the reproduction of life

• the production and circulation of sense, meaning, and consciousness

• bringing together the sphere of production (economic) and social relations (political)

Culture as both:

• a) a social process—i.e. a set of practices • b) a product

In short, culture entails both things and things we do

We can consider culture in relation to the following:

i) as a differentiated concept • i.e as something multiply defined

ii) as a differentiating concept • ‘us’ in r/n to ‘them’

iii) power • how do culture and power interrelate?

iv) cultural codes that allow us to communicate v) modernity 1: civilization vi) modernity 2: the nation-state vii) modernity 3: popular and mass culture viii) popular culture and mass culture ix) culture and hegemony x) ideology xi) semiology xii) cultural capital

i) Culture as a differentiated concept There are many different definitions of culture. For an anthropologist

• culture describes pretty much everything we do

For a biologist • culture is something you find in a Petri dish (i.e. bacterial

culture) For some social/cultural theorists

• there is a clear distinction b/n high and low culture In Cultural Studies, we take a rather broad perspective on what is culture, similar to anthropologists, except for the fact that we tend to focus more on contemporary culture ii) Culture as a differentiating concept

a) Culture differentiates; each culture develops its own system of meaning b) Culture is the sphere of the reproduction of life c) Culture helps us establish who ‘we’ are in relation to ‘them’ d) Culture tends to reproduce unequal (asymmetrical) relations (see culture and power)

iii) Culture and Power There are myriad ways in which we can think about culture in r/n to power

a) Foucault: power/knowledge Michel Foucault is an important 20th c. French social and political philosopher

• he challenges the notion that there are ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ spaces in which knowledge is formed

• instead, there is always an interplay of power and knowledge • thus challenges the idea of neutral and objective ‘truth’

b) Gramsci: hegemony

Italian Marxist from the early 20th c. (1920-30s) who focused on the role of culture in relation to state power

• he inquired as to how one group dominates society—force and consent

• this forces us to ask what are the ramifications when we accept the dominant meaning inscribed in cultural texts?

• i.e. what kind of power elations get reproduced • thus culture is a site of struggle over meaning

N.B. hegemony is an ongoing process and can always be resisted and reversed

c) Frankfurt School: ‘culture industry’ Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and many others were affiliated with the Frankfurt School of Social Research, most prominently in the 1930-40s

• Adorno and Horkheimer wrote The Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947

• therein they formed the concept of the ‘culture industry’ Adorno and Horkheimer use multiple methodologies:

i) political economy • culture as an industry—‘bottom line’ is to construct profitable

audiences ii) ideology critique

What are the key messages in popular culture • how does its political-economic structure (i.e. corporate

ownership; mass production techniques) impact upon the content produced?

iv) Cultural codes are what allow us to communicate Culture is what gives life shape and meaning

We always communicate with each other inside cultural codes.

It is the very process of social communication that cultures change and mutate.

v) Culture and Modernity 1: civilization Why did ‘culture’ become such a contested word with the onset of modernity? Before looking at the modern use and meaning of the term ‘culture’, let’s look at some older usages

Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. (Raymond Williams, Keywords)

Cultura (Latin): to inhabit (colony); honour with worship (cult)

• cultivation or tending (crops or animals) • cultivation of animals: husbandry • in the 16th c. (as early capitalism was developing) this notion of

cultivation was first addressed to humans

Francis Bacon in 1605 wrote about “the culture and manurance of minds” Bacon, like many social and political theorist of the 17th c. were very concerned about ‘the cultivation of minds’ Why did ‘culture’ become such an important word (and one whose meaning continued to change?? Under feudalism, society was ordered around ‘the Great Chain of Being’ From the mid-1600s onward, there is a general shift in the ‘mode of production’ form feudalism to capitalism Those in the dominant classes (landowning aristocracy) were troubled by the change in the social order of things Where there were once ‘grateful peasants’ there were now ‘surly and aggressive factory workers’—which had become a ‘dangerous class’ Francis Bacon identified the new urban poor ‘working class’ as part of ‘Many- Headed Hydra’ (drawing on Greek mythology (claiming they were ‘subhuman’) Bacon seems to be saying that if their minds could not be ‘cultivated’ then their heads should be cut off In short:

• we can see why ‘culture’ became so important—a means to control and mold this new ‘dangerous class’

• the link b/n culture and civilization can thus be historically situated

vi) Culture and Modernity 2: the nation-state In the 18th c. the modern nation-state was beginning to take form (N.B. European countries like Germany and Italy were not formed until about 130 years ago Thus culture came to be identified with nation This notion of culture did two things:

1) used internally to strengthen the idea of a nation 2) used externally to justify colonialism and inscribe racial hierarchy

Once again, we can see how culture is used in situations of power and conflict in order to support and justify the claims of one side vii) Culture and Modernity 3: popular and mass culture We will discuss this in detail in the coming weeks. Popular culture as things people do

• often outside market r/ns • thus not culture as ‘product’ or, more specifically, commodity

For now, note that it is the Frankfurt School that makes use of the notion of ‘mass culture’ when they analyze popular culture as an industry In this case, culture is considered in r/n to economics. power, and meaning ix) culture and hegemony C.F. Gramsci x) ideology A concept for examining an organized and systematic set of meanings which typically reflect particular interests

• typically considered to be either ‘biased’ or ‘wrong’ or at least problematic

• often a Marxist term—therein refers to the ideas f the dominant economic class

• also used in liberal theory as a dismissive term—‘You are ideological’

xi) semiology From Linguistics, it denotes the study of the underlying patterns and structures of meaning For semiotics, meaning is not from the fixed essence of things—i.e. it does not ‘represent’ an objective world ‘out there’

• meaning comes through a structured system of difference—i.e. up I not down, day is not night, etc.

In popular culture there are often deep structures underlying the text

• i.e. Hollywood westerns where good/bad = Cowboys/’Indians’ Semiology treats meaning as something that can be studied as a science

Some concluding remarks Culture is an interactive (and hence communicative) process w/ social, economic, and power dimensions Communication and culture are sites of multiple contestations; thus ever- changing processes