ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΙΩΑΝΝΙΝΩΝ
ΑΝΟΙΚΤΑ ΑΚΑΔΗΜΑΪΚΑ ΜΑΘΗΜΑΤΑ
Εισαγωγή στην Ανθρωπολογία
της Τέχνης
Πολιτισμικές σπουδές (Cultural Studies) και
ανθρωπιστικές επιστήμες
(CULTURE,CULTURAL STUDIES, RACE, ETHNICITY)
Διδάσκων: Καθηγητής Χρήστος Α. Δερμεντζόπουλος
Άδειες Χρήσης

Το παρόν εκπαιδευτικό υλικό υπόκειται σε άδειες
χρήσης Creative Commons.

Για εκπαιδευτικό υλικό, όπως εικόνες, που υπόκειται
σε άλλου τύπου άδειας χρήσης, η άδεια χρήσης
αναφέρεται ρητώς.
Culture (high, low, popular,
and mass), Cultural Studies,
race and ethnicity
September 25-27, 2006
3
This week’s lens: Cultural
Studies
 Academic
movement started in UK in 1960s.
 Spread quickly: Europe, US, Australia.
 Combines aspects of
 Media studies.
- Political science.
 Comm’n studies.
- Sociology.
 Linguistics.
- Gender studies.
 Anthropology.
- Literary criticism.
4
Key concerns of Cultural
Studies
 Relations
of culture and power
 Particularly, power inequalities related to
race, class, gender, colonialism.
 Role
of symbols (language, visual images) in
creating meaning
 Particularly as related to power issues.
5
Key concerns of CS (ctd.)
 Representation:
 how
forms of communication (spoken and
written language; music, TV, print media,
etc.) present, represent, shape, and distort
cultural meaning.
 Political
economy of media—and relationship
to messages and meanings:
 How ownership of cultural production
6
affects products and interpretations.
Key concerns of CS (ctd.)
 Texts
and audiences
 What possible meanings do we draw out of
(media) texts?
 How do (media) audiences interpret texts
differently—and why?
 Cultural (and personal) identity
 How do we identify ourselves and others?
 How do cultural/media “products”
contribute to identification?
7
Definitions of “culture”
 Classical
(British 19th and 20th century)
literary definitions.
 Anthropological tradition’s definition.
 Newer,
CS-oriented definitions
 Rejected literary.
 Built on and expanded anthropological.
8
Culture in the classical literary
tradition
 “Culture”
was linked to “cultivation”
 Agriculture.
 Growing (crops).
 The “cultivated” mind (properly “trained)
and the “cultured” person.
9
Matthew Arnold’s influence
 19th-century
UK poet and cultural critic.
 Arnold’s definition of “culture”
 The best that has been thought and said in
the world.
 Belief that reading, thinking, and observing
(human “cultivation”) would bring about
moral perfection
 A “better,” more civilized, social world.
10
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888),
English poet and cultural critic
11
Implications of Arnold’s
view
 The
world can be divided into the “cultured”
and the “uncultured”
 Or the civilized and the uncivilized.
 “Culture” and “civilization”—the domains of
the educated (and wealthy)—are superior to
the “anarchy” of the “raw and uncultivated
masses”.
 Thus, “culture” is class-dependent
 And only available to the upper classes.
12
Expanding Arnold: Leavisism
 1930s:
literary critics Frank Raymond Leavis
(1895-1978) and Queenie Roth Leavis (19061981).

Among their famous writings: “Mass
Civilization and Minority Culture”
 Culture is “high point” of civilization.
 Culture is the concern of the educated
minority.
13
Leavisism’s claims
 Elite
classes have certain obligations
 Define—and defend—the “best” of culture
(literary, musical, artistic).
 Criticize—and, arguably, eliminate—the
worst of mass culture
Advertising, movies, popular fiction.
14
Culture in the anthropological
tradition
 An
entire—and distinctive—way of life.
 In other words: lived experience.
15
Enter Cultural Studies
(1960s)
 Direct
reaction against views of Arnold and
Leavises; adaptation of anthropological.
 Raymond Williams (1921-1988), CS pioneer:
anti-elitist.
 Re-visioned culture as “a whole way of
life”.
 Concerned especially with working class’s
experience
And how working class people actively
16
construct their own cultures.
Culture as redefined by CS
 As
a “whole way of life,”
 It includes everyday practices AND learning,
arts, and other expressive aspects
 How we dress, our holidays, our daily
rituals.
 Our everyday meanings and values.
 Our norms.
 How we express ourselves.
 In short, “culture is ordinary” (Williams).
17
Result of CS’s re-definition
 Studying
or talking about a group’s “culture”
could include.
 Everyday practices.
 Arts, media, entertainment modes previously
dismissed as “low” or “mass” were studied
with respect and even sympathy
 Newspapers, television, boxing matches,
soap operas, NASCAR, romance novels,
prom dresses.
18
In other words…
 Everyday
culture—including the culture of
non-elite classes within our own
societies—was given legitimacy.
 Scholars
(and cultural critics) began to value
the shared traditions of “ordinary” people
 Not only the elite classes.
19
Williams’s paradoxical claims
A
of
group’s (re-defined) culture is its complex
 Meanings
generated by ordinary
individuals.
 Lived experiences of its members.
 Texts and practices engaged in by people
as they lead their lives…
20
…BUT…
 “Culture
does not float free of the material
conditions of life…
 “Meanings and practices are enacted on
terrain not of our own making even as
we struggle to creatively shape our lives”
What did Williams mean by this?
21
To address this paradox…
 We
must detour into other key CS concepts
 Then we’ll circle back to issues of
 high vs. low culture.
 mass, folk, and popular culture.
22
Other key CS concepts relevant to
ICC (including mass comm)










Ideology.
Hegemony.
Race, racialization, and racisms.
Ethnicity.
The nation-state.
The imagined community.
Hybridity.
Identity.
Subject position.
And how all of these relate to POWER.
23
Ideology exercise
Divide into groups.
 Each group discusses (lists) ONE question
 How does one class justify dominating another?
 How does one race justify dominating another?
 How does one sex justify dominating another?
 How does one nation justify dominating
another?
 Provide examples from popular culture.

24
Ideology
 What
does this word mean to you?
 What is an ideology?
 The term ideology was coined (by a 19thcentury French philosopher) to mean “the
science of ideas”.
 Since then, has taken on many other
meanings.
 Here are some of the most common.
25
#1. Value-neutral
conception
 Systematic
body of ideas—a worldview—
articulated by a particular group of people
 “Pattern of ideas, belief systems, or
interpretive schemes found in a society or
among a specific social group” (Hall).
26
What this implies
 an
individual doesn’t have an ideology.
 but an individual may reflect the ideology of
the group she’s a member of.
27
#2. Karl Marx’s definition
 “False
consciousness”: a masking, distortion,
or concealment
 The way some cultural texts and practices
present distorted images of reality.
 Ideology works in interest of the powerful
and AGAINST interests of the powerless.
28
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
29
Results of ideological
distortion, in Marx’s view
 Conceals
reality of domination from those in
power:
 dominant class do not see themselves as
exploiters.
 Conceals
reality of domination from the
powerless:
 they don’t see themselves as exploited.
30
#3: focus on “ideological
forms”
 Texts
(mediated) always present a
particular picture of the world, always take
sides, thus reflect producer’s ideology.
 All
texts are ultimately political: they offer
one view or another (but not a multiplicity of
views!) of how the world is.
 Differing
ideological significations of reality
compete with one another.
31
#4: ideology as “material
practice”
 French
Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser
(1918-1990) said
 Ideology isn’t simply a body of ideas, but
rather “material practice”.
 Ideology is encountered in practices of
everyday life.
32
Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
33
Examples of “material
practice” that reflects ideology
 Rituals
and customs that bind us to the
social order, a social order marked by
enormous inequalities of wealth, status,
and power
 Examples: taking summer vacations,
giving gifts at Christmas.
34
Yes, Althusser would say…
 These
things give us pleasure, release
tensions.
 But ultimately they return us to our places
in the social order
 Because they reproduce the social
conditions necessary for capitalism to
continue.
35
What produces and maintains
(dominant) ideology in society?
 Althusser
talked about “ideological state
apparatuses” (ISAs)
 Family.
 Education system.
 Church.
 Mass media.
 These ISAs “train” us to follow and
perpetuate the values and rules of the
dominant classes.
36
ISAs vs. RSA


Althusser: because of the power (and willingness)
of the ISAs to do the work of the powerful…
The Repressive State Apparatus (government,
military, courts) don’t have to resort to force
 The ISAs do their jobs.
 And make us into good, law-abiding students,
family members, citizens, church members,
capitalists.
 Who don’t complain, don’t try to overthrow the
government, don’t try to overthrow the
corporation heads (and our bosses).
37
As a result…
 Ideology
(worldview maintained and “taught”
to us by the ISAs) comes to be seen as
 natural (as opposed to constructed).
 universal (as opposed to particular).
 complete (as opposed to incomplete).
 neutral (as opposed to partial/biased).
 legitimate (as opposed to illegitimate).
 “common sense” (as opposed to a
particular, chosen, preferred sense).
38
#5: ideology as myth
 French
social philosopher Roland Barthes.
 Called ideologies the “myths” of our
culture/society.
 In this sense, myth isn’t (necessarily)
fictional
 But it’s a story we tell ourselves about
ourselves.
 What are some American myths (in Barthes’s
sense)?
39
Roland Barthes (19151980)
40
In all of these definitions
(except #1), ideology is
 Meaning
in the service of power
 not just a value-neutral set or system of
ideas.
 Rather, a system that underlies, supports,
and justifies a group’s
 Exercise of power.
 Maintenance of power.
 Struggles for power.
41
Is this clear?
 Maybe
Antonio Gramsci can help.
42
Antonio Gramsci (1930s):
“Hegemony”
 Kind
of power that arises from ideological
tendencies of mass media to support
established power system
 and exclude opposition and competing
values.
 Not
imposed via coercion.
 But constantly sought after, struggled
over, negotiated, and re-negotiated.
43
Antonio Gramsci (18911937)
44
Key insight of Gramsci’s
hegemony theory
 The
ruling classes in capitalist society (unlike
Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s USSR) don’t
HAVE to resort to physical force, violence, or
martial law
 Direct coercion is unnecessary!
 And, in fact, is LESS effective in the long
term for maintaining social power.
45
Hegemony (ctd.)
 In
hegemonic systems, dominance of
ruling group is STRENGTHENED because
people (non-dominant) consent to their
own submission!
 We
come to accept existing (and unequal)
power relationships as normal, natural,
“common sense,” the only way.
46
How?
 The
ruling class doesn’t directly force us to
accept its will.
 Rather, the dominant present themselves
(often through the media) as the group best
equipped to meet our needs
 and we come to agree (for a while…)
 e.g., we accept that corporations,
government act in our best interests.
47
Meaning that…
 the
“masses” (common people) consent to
their own domination, seeing it as completely
normal (or failing to question it)!
 the dominated will find their own reasons—
which DO actually make sense!—to go along
with their domination.
 For example…
48
Hegemony in our daily lives
 Grades.
 Christmas
presents.
 Body image.
 Work.
49
So what happens in
hegemonic systems?
 Dominant
classes exercise social and cultural
leadership.
 We consent to, and perpetuate, a system
that disadvantages us.
 In finding our own good reasons to go along
with the system…
 We fail to challenge or question the
system.
 Let alone call for its overthrow!
50
However…
 Hegemonic
domination is a constant struggle.
 Consent must be continually won and re-won.
 Concessions are made so that the dominated
will not overthrow the entire system
 But instead will be given new reasons to
accept it.
 New things to consent to.
 The media are often the sites of this struggle.
51
Hegemony is maintained
 Because
dominant have advantages
 Easier access to media.
 More input into media representations of
“reality”.
 And media themselves are huge corporate
powers.
52
Given all this
 CS
on culture.
 CS on ideology and power.
 We
might not be surprised by CS’s
explanations of
 Race.
 Ethnicity.
 Nation.
 Identity.
53
CS on race, racialization, and
racisms
 Stuart
Hall: races don’t exist apart from
representation.
 What does this mean?
54
To paraphrase
 Race
is a social (and communication)
construct rather than a biological fact.
 Race is “constructed” by looking at
observable characteristics
 And then working backwards to “create” a
race.
55
The fluidity of race
 New
Mexico.
 The Irish in New York (mid 1800s).
 The Jews in US (late 1800s).
 “black blood”.
56
CS on race and power
 CS
argument: race is a construct (multifaceted concept) developed in order to justify
power differentials
 Labor market.
 Economy.
 Housing market.
 Education system.
 Media.
 Legal system.
 Immigration.
57
Race and nationhood
 If
you’re a member of a minority race in a
nation
 Are you “truly” a member of the nation?
 Blacks in US.
 Blacks in UK.
 Blacks in South Africa during apartheid.
58
CS on ethnicity
A
cultural concept
 An ethnic group’s members share
 Norms.
 Values.
 Beliefs.
 Cultural symbols and practices.
all of which developed under specific
historical, social, political contexts.
59
What ethnicity does
 Encourages
sense of belonging
 Based (at least in part) on common
mythological ancestry (why
“mythological”?)
Shared (or believed to be shared)
history, language, culture.
60
Ethnicity as “relational
concept”
 I’m
a member of ethnic group X because I’m
not a member of Y or Z.
 We define our ethnicity by contrasting
ourselves to “out groups”.
 Implies power relations
 Some groups are at the “center,” while
others are at “periphery”.
 Examples in US?
61
CS on the nation-state
 The
nation-state is an invention
 Not a “natural” (naturally occurring) group.
 Rather, a contingent historical-cultural
formation.
 Prime example? The US!
62
Nation-states and national
identity
 Nation-state:
a political concept
 An administrative apparatus.
 Group of people with shared government,
laws, leaders who have sovereignty over
defined body of land.
 National
identity: “imaginative identification”
with the symbols and discourses of the
nation-state.
63
Careful!
 National
cultural identities are not coterminous with state borders.
 Consider Jewish, African, Indian, cultural
identities.
64
Nation as “imagined community”
 Benedict
Anderson (1983) argued that
nations are “imagined communities”.
 What might this mean?
 Not “false”.
 But simply, an idea—something that exists
in our heads if not in physical space.
 We don’t know most of our fellow Americans.
 But we have shared ideas—and we believe
ourselves to be a unity.
65
Hybridity
 Basically,
cultural mixing.
 Few cultures are homogeneous
 Our culture reflects hybridity.
 Few individuals have ancestors from only one
culture
 We are hybrids as individuals.
 As a result of mixing, we create new
identities
 “African-American,” “Italian-American,”
“Afro-Caribbean,” “Pakistani-British”.
66
Multiple identities

No one of us has an identity that is “pure” or “fixed”
 We are each a hybrid.
 At any moment, we each can be described as
belonging to one or more
 Ethnicity.
 Nation.
 Sex.
 Race.
 Occupation.
 Class.
67
Hence, multiple “subject
positions”
 How
are you, or can you be, addressed?
 What roles do you play?
 Mother, sister, daughter.
 Boss, employee.
 Student, teacher.
 Friend, co-worker.
 Fellow church member, club member,
team member.
68
Recap: key CS concepts
 Ideology.
 Hegemony.
 Race,
racialization, and racisms.
 Ethnicity.
 The nation-state.
 The imagined community.
 Hybridity.
 Identity.
 Subject position.
69
Link to our course?
 Popular
culture—particularly as transmitted
via the mass media—is arguably the most
important “site” in our lives in which these
issues are played out, spelled out, and
contested.
 So let’s get back to “culture”
 High, low, popular, and other.
70
Recap: “high” culture, etc.
 Arnold
and the Leavises (19th-20th C. UK)
define culture as the “best”.
 View that culture is the domain only of the
minority
 Educated, moneyed elite.
 What has come to be called “high culture”.
 By contrast, what the non-educated, nonmoneyed everyday folk do is uncivilized,
uncultured: “low culture”.
71
CS: mid-1960s and beyond
 New
approach to culture.
 Culture as ordinary, everyday.
 Entire ways of life
 Regardless of class/status.
72
Moreover, CS argues
 There
is no legitimate grounds for drawing
distinction between “high” and “low” culture.
 Artistic forms, whether Shakespeare or WWF
broadcasts
 all expressive and creative.
 all are socially created.
 Who is to decide which is more worthy?
73
While many people still do
distinguish “high” vs. “low” . . .
 High:
cultural activities of the wealthy or
elite: opera, ballet, symphony, great
literature, fine art.
 Low: all other
 In other words, activities of the non-elite:
music videos, TV game shows,
professional wrestling, NASCAR, graffiti
art, Jackie Chan movies.
74
CS (and many other scholars)
prefer to speak of…
 “popular
culture”.
 rather than demeaning non-elite culture as
“low”.
75
How might we define “popular
culture”?
 Systems
or artifacts that most people share
and that most people know about.
 Made popular by and for the people.
 Speaks to—and resonates from—the people.
 But NOT usually created BY the people!
 Why not?
76
Popular culture as “mass
culture”
 Most
popular culture forms—movies, TV
shows, magazines, videos, CDs—are
produced by large corporations
 And are then sold to “the people”.
 Hence,
the music, art, film, television (etc.)
businesses were called “the culture
industries” by Adorno and Horkheimer
(1940s cultural critics).
77
The “culture industries”
 Acknowledgment
of mass-produced nature
of popular culture “products”
 CDs, DVDs, magazines, paperback novels,
etc.
 Acknowledgment of for-profit nature of the
companies that make and market them
 Sony, Disney, Time-Warner, etc., aren’t in
it for love!
78
Production vs. consumption:
where’s your focus?


Frankfurt School (“Critical Theory”) of 1940s leveled
criticism on the production end of the chain
(critique of “mass culture”).
CS focuses on the consumption end (thus prefers
the term “popular culture”), inquires into
 How do we (consumers, ordinary people) use
the products of the culture industries?
 How do we interpret them?
 What meanings/values do we give them?
 Why are these things important to us?
79
Depending on your focus
 If
you’re focused on the production end (the
corporate, mass-produced, for-profit
aspects), you’re probably more likely to
speak of “mass culture”.
 If
you’re focused on the consumption/
interpretation end, you’re probably more
likely to speak of “popular culture”.
80
Why popular culture is so important
to ICC (Martin/Nakayama)
 Popular
culture plays an enormous role in
explaining relations around the globe.
 It
is through popular culture that we try to
understand the dynamics of other cultures
and other nations.
 For
many of us, the world exists through
popular culture.
81
Why popular culture is so
important more generally
 It’s
everywhere
 Disseminated widely (in many cases,
globally).
 It’s impossible to avoid.
 We all have easy access to it.
 It comes at us from all directions.
 It comes at us every moment of our lives.
 We wear it, buy it, think about it, listen to it,
read it, watch it.
82
And on the positive side…
 Popular
culture serves important social
functions
 Windows onto the world.
 Shared experiences and (parasocial)
relationships.
 Forum for public discussion (especially, but
not only, the news).
 Shaper of opinions.
 Shaper of identities.
 Shaper of meanings.
83
But popular culture does not
work monolithically!
 What
do I mean by this?
 Hint: recall Hall’s encoding/decoding model
of communication.
84
“encoding/decoding”
programme as
‘meaningful discourse’
encoding
decoding
frameworks of
knowledge
frameworks of
knowledge
relations of
production
relations of
production
technical
infrastructure.
technical
infrastructure.
85
Claims Hall makes
 Producers
of cultural texts (TV shows, ads,
movies, books, videos) operate within
specific cultural contexts
 And produce out of their own “frameworks
of knowledge”.
 But we consumers consume the texts within
our own contexts.
 We don’t find the same meanings as the
producers
 Or each other!
86
However, Hall claimed…
 We
don’t necessarily have 6 billion “reading
positions”
 Hall identified 3 reading positions, depending
upon a reader’s class (and identification with
producer):
 Dominant.
 Negotiated.
 Oppositional.
87
Popular culture, then…
 Is
a “site” of struggle.
 We have competing, even conflicting,
interpretations of what a cultural text means
 And what values it represents.
 And whether we like (approve of) it or not.
 And if it’s offensive or agreeable.
 We offer different decodings and struggle
over them.
 We “negotiate” the meanings of cultural
texts.
88
How might we interpret
 U.
of North Dakota Fighting Sioux.
 Florida State U. Seminoles.
 Washington Redskins..
 Atlanta Braves.
 Cleveland Indians
 Insult/racial slur?
 Compliment/honor?
89
Popular culture and problems
of representation
 The
big question:
 Do popular culture texts (especially those
depicting cultures other than our own)
truly, fairly, accurately represent the
cultures they claim to be showing?
90
For example…
 Is
Jackass a representation of America,
quintessential Americans and quintessential
American values?
 or only a selective portrait of a small group
of Americans?
 How might Jackass (if viewed outside the
US) create or reinforce stereotypes about
Americans?
91
How CS approaches “criticism”
of popular culture
 The
important questions
 Not whether a cultural text is “good” or
“bad” (in terms of quality)
 Rather,
What ideologies are conveyed, overtly or
subtly?
How are individuals and cultures
represented?
How might representations maintain
power differentials?
92
Τέλος Ενότητας
Χρηματοδότηση

Το παρόν εκπαιδευτικό υλικό έχει αναπτυχθεί στα πλαίσια του
εκπαιδευτικού έργου του διδάσκοντα.

Το έργο «Ανοικτά Ακαδημαϊκά Μαθήματα στο Πανεπιστήμιο
Ιωαννίνων» έχει χρηματοδοτήσει μόνο τη αναδιαμόρφωση του
εκπαιδευτικού υλικού.

Το έργο υλοποιείται στο πλαίσιο του Επιχειρησιακού Προγράμματος
«Εκπαίδευση και Δια Βίου Μάθηση» και συγχρηματοδοτείται από την
Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση (Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινωνικό Ταμείο) και από εθνικούς
πόρους.
Σημειώματα
Σημείωμα Ιστορικού
Εκδόσεων Έργου
Το παρόν έργο αποτελεί την έκδοση 1.0.
Έχουν προηγηθεί οι κάτωθι εκδόσεις:
Έκδοση
1.0 διαθέσιμη εδώ.
http://ecourse.uoi.gr/course/view.php?id=1201.
Σημείωμα Αναφοράς
Copyright Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων, Διδάσκων:
Καθηγητής Χρήστος Α. Δερμεντζόπουλος.
«Εισαγωγή στην Ανθρωπολογία της Τέχνης.
Πολιτισμικές σπουδές (Cultural Studies) και
ανθρωπιστικές επιστήμες, CULTURE,CULTURAL
STUDIES, RACE, ETHNICITY». Έκδοση: 1.0.
Ιωάννινα 2014. Διαθέσιμο από τη δικτυακή
διεύθυνση:
http://ecourse.uoi.gr/course/view.php?id=1201.
Σημείωμα Αδειοδότησης

Το παρόν υλικό διατίθεται με τους όρους της
άδειας χρήσης Creative Commons Αναφορά
Δημιουργού - Παρόμοια Διανομή, Διεθνής
Έκδοση 4.0 [1] ή μεταγενέστερη.
• [1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.