BRIRISH CULTURAL STUDIES
What
is culture? As we know that, culture often define as arts, customs and habits
that characterize a particular society or nation, same time it calls as the
beliefs, values, behavior and material objects that constitute a people’s way
of life. But these ideas of ‘culture’ did not be the way in which culture is
understood in the domain cultural studies.
Today,
culture is defined as a mode of generating meaning and ideas, and it is
ordinary and democratized. In cultural studies meaning are governed by power
relation. Simply, so called elite class and their culture controls modes and
ways meaning generating process. Their views were considered as ‘mass’ and
‘widely accepted’ while lower classes were marginalized, rejected and their
culture considers as ‘tasteless’ and ‘useless’ by who controls whole base and
superstructure. What happened that, lower classes were excluded in meaning
making process, but these lower classes were to be followed and included in the
audience that these elite, high art texts are attracted.
As mentioned above, cultural studies are more democratized and more
attached to the everyday life. So they always look at mass or popular culture.
For a very long time, the term ‘mass culture’ was used indiscriminately to
denote whole section of society. They considered art cinemas, classical music
and art galleries are something that represent whole part of the society. But
later this idea of ‘mass culture’ is replaced by ‘popular culture’ which
considers comic book, mass cinema, popular music, sports and open and public
spaces of the cities are the real symbols of ‘culture’.
As we know that, these elite classes were minorities, but their culture
celebrated as superior, mass and claimed that their culture is true to society.
So, in surface level we could see only this so called elite mass culture and
its products like ‘great works of art’ and ‘classical authors’. But they did
not know that these ‘great works of art’ and ‘classical texts’ were unknown to
the common people who constitutes majority in population. So in fact, the
standard of judgment and ideas of tastes were formed by elite through their own
modes and methodology. When we contextualize it, we can put forward examples
like paintings by M.F Hussain, writings of Rabindranath Tagore and William Shakespeare
had gained standardization and considered to analyze the society which they
belonged. But critics blinded towards the popular arts and writings which
celebrated than these so called literary giant’s. Finally this situation and
subjugation prompted a change.
In 1950s and 1960s we could see a rethinking in this way of looking and
judging the culture. Academicians and scholars started to dig further into
unexplored parts of the society and culture.
When people from lower class began to enter into university education
they found that the culture and cultural theory they have to learn from curriculum
says nothing about them, but at the same time it had been projected as mass
culture. Actually their arrival has broken this dichotomy. This ‘rethinking’
was initiated by Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, both of them had
working-class background.
BIRMINGHAM CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL
STUDIES
As we know that aftereffects of World War II had made a far reaching
consequences in British society. Suez Canal crisis, Cuban Missile crisis, cold
war tension and nuclear arm race had made a pessimistic approach on the people
towards future. They thought that, culture and mode of generating meaning and
ideas that had been controlled by elite class of society could lead only to
disaster. By the decline of colonialism followed by World War II, working class
got an opportunity speaks for them. Gradually this socio-political condition
paved war for the social progress, prosperity, conservatism, labour shortage,
changes from service based industries and so on, all this transmissions con tributed to a vastly increased demand for education
and educators. The new generation academicians and scholars who brought up
through these social conditions brought forward new ideas and solution which
could resolve the reasons that had led to World War II. Aforementioned, they
began to question age old tradition of mass culture and meaning generating
process. This new way of thinking set on new approach to the ‘culture’ as
academic discipline, critical thinking and education.
But what we have to recall here is that, there had a marginal interest
in the study of working lower class culture and heritage. But they had excluded
from the mainstream cultural productions. But the set up of The Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham in 1964 accelerated and unified ‘cultural
studies’ as academic discipline. It tried to give an egalitarian approach to
the culture and valorised
popular culture as the most important social expression. Even though, Richard
Hoggart was the first director of the centre; it remained under the influence
of Raymond Williams and its second director Stuart Hall.
Richard Hoggart was the first
director of BCCA. He was more interested in industrial and urbanized working
class experience. According to many critics, his working class background and
his experience in teaching literature to adult from his own social background
helped him to analyze and to be touch with condition and culture of his class.
Raymond Williams considered as one of the pioneers in cultural studies.
His magnum opus Culture and Society
published in 1958 is one of the important books in the development of British
cultural studies. Williams developed a new way of close reading by being
conscious about the context within which the literary texts functions. He was
so sensitive to the ideological and institutional process that contributed the
creation and generation of texts and textual meaning. The meaning produces in
these texts are important and contribute to the construction of culture as a
way of life.
Stuart Hall is another important
figure in cultural studies. His work has prompted and inaugurated cultural
studies as a literary field in Britain. His famous essay, Decoding/Encoding in the television discourses, published in 1973 put
forward a cultural studies of the media. Through this essay he states how
messages are produced and disseminated. According to him, meanings within the
texts are organized through the operation of certain ‘codes’. For this
operation he suggests four stage theories of communication, production,
circulation, and reproduction. Each stage has an autonomous power in meaning
generation but interdependent. No matter who encodes the message. Here,
audience has a unique power in decoding message. Member decodes or interpret
message based on his or her cultural and political context and personal
experiences.
Bibliography
Lewis, J. (2008). Cultural Studies The Basics.
London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Nair, P. (2008). An
Introduction to Cultural Stusies. New Delhi: Viva Book Pvt.Ltd.
Turner, G. (2003). British
Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
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