Welcome to
Cultural Studies
Mike Nix
Faculty of Law
Why study culture?
• Why do you think is it interesting or useful to
study culture?
• What do you think we can learn from
studying culture?
Why study culture?
Culture and civilisation tradition (教養）: to learn about
“the best that has been thought and said” (Matthew
Arnold, 1867) in literature, art, philosophy, etc
Cultural anthropology (文化人類学）& intercultural (異
文化）approaches: to learn about the social relationships,
roles and ways thinking of specific societies and the
differences between them
Cultural studies approach (カルチュラル・スタディーズ): to
learn about why certain relationships, roles and ways of
thinking are dominant/powerful in specific societies (and
to try to change them)
What is culture?
• What differences do you notice between the following
definitions of culture?
• Which approaches to the study of culture do you think
they come from?
• Which do you think are interesting or useful?
What is culture?
1. “Everything that is produced by human beings as
distinct from all that is part of nature?” (A Dictionary of Cultural
and Critical Theory)
2. “The arts and other….human intellectual achievement; a
refined understanding of this; intellectual
development” (Oxford English Dictionary)
3. “Culture is…particular way of life, which expresses
certain meanings and values not only in art and
learning but also in institutions and ordinary
behaviour” (Raymond Williams)
What is culture?
4. “Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which
human beings interpret their experience and guide their
action” (Clifford Geertz)
5. “Culture is the way the social relations of a group are
structured and shaped; but is also the way those shapes
are experienced, understood and interpreted” (Working papers in
Cultural Studies 7 & 8)
6. Culture is “the site of negotiation, conflict, innovation
and resistance within the social relations of societies
dominated by power and fractured by divisions of gender,
class and ‘race’” (A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory)
What is culture?
1.“Everything that is produced by human beings as distinct
from all that is part of nature?” (A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory)
= CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY & CULTURAL STUDIES
2. “The arts and other….human intellectual achievement; a
refined understanding of this; intellectual development”
(Oxford English Dictionary)
= CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION
3. “Culture is…particular way of life, which expresses
certain meanings and values not only in art and learning
but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour” (Raymond
Williams)
= CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY & CULTURAL STUDIES
What is culture?
4. “Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which
human beings interpret their experience and guide their
action” (Clifford Geertz)
= CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY & CULTURAL STUDIES
5. “Culture is the way the social relations of a group are
structured and shaped; but is also the way those shapes
are experienced, understood and interpreted” (Working papers in
Cultural Studies 7 & 8)
= CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY & CULTURAL STUDIES
6. Culture is “the site of negotiation, conflict, innovation
and resistance within the social relations of societies
dominated by power and fractured by divisions of gender,
class and ‘race’” (A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory)
= CULTURAL STUDIES
Cultural Studies is concerned
with….
Culture
• The ideas and values expressed in art, literature,
philosophy, etc, but also in ordinary life, popular culture,
and the mass media
• Ways of thinking and interpreting the world, but also
social relationships, roles and institutions
And politics
• Which ideas and ways of thinking are powerful or
dominant in a society, but also which groups of people
(gender, class, ‘race’, etc) are powerful or dominant in a
society, and why?
Cultural Studies is very
interested in….
• Identities:
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sex (female/male)
gender (femininity/masculinity)
sexuality (homosexuality/heterosexuality)
age/generation (child/adult;teenager/middle-aged/old)
social class (working class/middle class/upper class)
nationality (Japanese, Korean, British, etc)
ethnicity (Japanese, Ainu, Okinawan, Korean, British, etc)
race (African/Caucasian/Asian, etc)
• How they are represented (in images, stereotypes and
discourses) in the mass media and popular culture
• How this shapes our understanding of what is ‘normal’ or
‘natural’ for different identities
Cultural Studies looks at
how….
• Representations of identity can reproduce traditional and
dominant ideas about identity as well as challenge them or
play with them
• Identity tends to be represented in terms of differences
between binary opposites (e.g. men and women are
represented as different) and relationships of superiority
and inferiority between groups
• Different identities are combined together in
representations (e.g. masculinity and heterosexuality)
What do these images
represent about identity?
What do these images
represent about identity?
What do these images
represent about identity?
What do these images
represent about identity?
For Cultural Studies….
• Identities are social & cultural - we learn our identities as
we grow up in society and from the culture of those
societies, but
• We often confuse cultural and biological aspects of
identity (e.g. sex and gender), and
• Representations often make identities seem natural by
repeatedly showing them in certain ways or by associating
social and biological aspects of identity, so
• We need to keep showing that identities are learnt, not
given, social/cultural not biological/natural and therefore
can be changed.
Your interests in identity and
representation…
• What is interesting for you about identity and
representation?
• Which identities are you interested in thinking about?
• Which kinds of representations would you like to think
about?
• Which kinds of mass media or popular culture would you
like to look at?