Cultural Studies/Birmingham School

1. Cultural Studies/Birmingham School

-often concerned with articulation and intervention (making sense of the broader context of a social phenomenon, and attempting to alter it if it reveals an unjust power structure)

-also often centre around studies of ethnicity, gender, socialization

-the popular conception of the term began with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, under the direction of Stuart Hall

-began with the phenomenon of lower classes voting for Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government, which went against their own best interest. Their aim was to articulate the contextual reasons behind this and to intervene critically

• Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. For example, a study of a subculture (such as white working class youth in London) would consider the social practices of the youth as they relate to the dominant classes.
• It has the objective of understanding culture in all its complex forms and of analyzing the social and political context in which culture manifests itself.
• It is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action. For example, not only would a cultural studies scholar study an object, but she/he would connect this study to a larger, progressive political project.
• It attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit cultural knowledge and objective (universal) forms of knowledge.
• It has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political action.

2. Hebdige

• Studied subcultures and “the meaning of style”

• Clothing, style, trends as being representative of larger context

• Ie: punk clothes in late 70s (safety pins, mohawks, etc)

• He stated that it represented a protest against the dominant ideals, protest against lack of jobs, opportunities

-Do you think that subculture style can be explained as a response to cultural repression or disenchantment? Goth, skateboarder – what do they say?

3. Critiques

• Jargon-laden; distances it from culture it’s commenting on: “fashionable nonsense”

• Sokal’s Hoax

• No real structure or methodology: arbitrary

4. Gramsci

-renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society.

- Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie became the 'common sense' values of all. Thus a consensus culture developed in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.

-Values of dominant class become values of all; working class assimilates these ideals, even if not in best interest

-manufacture of consent

5. Hall

-People as agents when consuming a text: actively negotiating meaning: reception theory

-Encoding and Decoding: Purposeful, but not direct; Decoding as active, dynamic

-Politics of Representation (ads, self)

6. Culture Jamming

-representation of the ideals of cultural studies in action: questioning dominant power structures, attempting to actively reshape

-Kalle Lasn – Culture Jam. Buy Nothing Day: do you think that these forms of resistance are effective? Why or why not?