Paper no.8:-cultural studies - Four Goals of Cultural Studies

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH MAHARAJAH KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

CONCEPT OF CULTURE AND ANARCHY BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

                      Semester:-M.A SEM 2                               Paper no.8:-cultural studies

ROLL NO:-6

ENROLLMENT NO:- PG15101006

EMAIL ID:-cnbhungani7484@gmail.com

Blog id:- chintavanbhungani201517.blog.spot.com

Four Goals of Cultural Studies

Introduction:-

The word “culture” itself it so difficult to pin down, “cultural studies” is hard to define. As far as cultural study is concerned, it has broader meaning because we see from various perspective then an individual can know what actually it lays in the meaning. Therefore firstly it becomes my job to deconstruct the meaning of culture as the meaning is elaborated according to different critics so at first we will have glance on the meaning of culture.

What is culture?

 ‘Culture’, derives from ‘Cultura’ and ‘colere’ meaning ‘to cultivate’. It also meant ‘to honor’ and ‘project’ by the 19th century in Europe it tastes of the upper class (elite).

          ‘Culture’ is the mode of producing meaning and ideas. This ‘mode’ is a negotiation over which meanings are valid. Elite culture controls meanings because it controls the terms of the debate.

What is Cultural Study?

Cultural studies is the science of understanding modern society, with an emphasis on politics and power cultural studies is an umbrella term used to look at a number of different subject. Categories studied include media studies including film and Journalism, sociology, industrial culture, globalization and social theory.

“Cultural Studies is not a tightly coherent unified movement with a fixed agenda, but a loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions.”

Cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, Post structuralism and Postmodernism, Feminism, Gender studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture studies and Postcolonial studies: those field that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation.

First Goals: cultural studies transcends the confines of a PARTICULAR DISCIPLINE such as literary criticism or history:-

“Cultural studies transcend the confine of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history. “practiced in such journal as critical inquiry , representations, and boundary 2 , cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text – for example Italian opera, a Latino telenovela, the architectural styles of prisons, body piercing and drawing conclusion about the change in textual phenomena over time.

 Cultural studies are not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about “art”. In their introduction to cultural studies , editors Lawrence grossberg,cary nelson , and Paula trencher emphasize that the intellectual promise of cultural studies lies in the attempts to “ cut across diverse social and political interests and address many of the struggles within the current scene.”

 Intellectual works are not limited by their own “borders” as single texts, historical problems or disciplines , and the critic’s own personal connections to what is being analyzed Amy also be described.

      Henry Giroux and others write in their Dalhousie review  manifesto that cultural studies practitioners are “resisting intellectuals” who see what they do as “an emancipator project.” Because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most institutions of higher education.

 Second goals:- Cultural Studies is politically engaged:

          The cultural critics see themselves as “Oppositional” not only within their own discipliner but to many of the power structures of society at large. The cultural critics question inequalities within power structures and try to find out the models for restructuring relationships among the dominant and “minority” of “Subaltern” discourses. The meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed, they can thus be reconstructed. This type of idea, taken to a Philosophical extreme, demise the autonomy of the individual whether an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic “Great man” or “Great Book” theory and a relocation of esthetics and culture from the ideal realms of taste and sensibility into the arena of a whole society’s everyday life as it is constructed.

3.   Cultural studies deny the separation of “high” and “law” or elite and popular culture:

You might hear someone remarks at the symphony or at art museum “I came here to get a little culture”. Being a “cultured” person used to mean being acquainted with “highbrow” art and intellectual pursuits. But is not culture also being found with a pair of tickets to a rock concert? Cultural critic’s today work to transfer the term popular, folk or urban. Following theorists Team Baudrillard and Andreas Hussein, cultural critics argue that after world war-II the distinction among high, low and mass culture collapsed and they cite other theory such as Pierre Boudoirs and Dick Hedge on how “Good taste” often only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power bases.

For example,

The images of India that were circulated during the colonial rule of the British Raj by writers like Rudyard Kipling seem innocent but reveal an entrenched imperialist argument for white superiority and worldwide domination of other races, especially Asians. But race alone was not the issue for the British Raj, money was also a deciding factor. Thus, drawing also upon the ideas of French historian Michel de Cereal, cultural critics examined “The practice of everyday life”. Studying literature as an anthropologist would, as a phenomenon of culture, including a culture’s economy. Rather than determining which are the “best” works produced, cultural critics describe what is produced and how various productions relate to one another. They aim to reveal the political economic reasons why certain cultural product is more valued at certain times.

Transgressing of boundaries among discipline high and law can make cultural studies just plain fun.

For example,

A possible cultural studies research paper with the following title: The Birth of Caption Jack Sparrow: An Analysis”. For sources of Johnny Deep’s funky performance in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the curse of the Black Pearl (2003). You could research cultural topics ranging from the trade economies of the sea two hundred years ago, to real pirates of the Caribbean such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, then on the Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1881).

4.  Cultural Studies analyses not only the cultural work, but also the means of production:

Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such par literary questions as these: Who published his or her books and how are these books distributed? Who buys books? For that matter, who is literate and who is not? A well known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway’s study of the American romance novel and its readers, reading the romance women, patriarchy and popular literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industry’s decisions about books that will minimize its financial risks. Another contribution is the collection reading in America, edited by Cathy N. Davidson, which includes essays on literature and gender in colonial New England, urban magazine audiences in 18th century New York City. The impact upon reading of such technical innovations as cheaper eye glasses, electric lights and trains, the book-of-the-month club and how writers and texts go through fluctuation of popularity and canonicity. These studies help us recognize that literature does not occur in a space separated from other concerns of over lives.

Cultural studies thus joins subjectively – that is, cultural in relation to individual lives – with engagement a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though cultural studies practitioners deny “humanism” or “the humanities” as universal categories, they strive reason”, which often resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals. What difference does a cultural studies approach make for student? First of all, it is increasingly clear that by the year 2050 the United States will be demographers call a “Majority – Minority” population, that is the present numerical majority of “white”, “education” and  “Anglo-Americans” will be the minority, particularly with the dramatically increasing number of Latin / residents, mostly Mexican Americans. As Gerald Graff and James Phelan observe “It is a common prediction that the culture of the next century will put a premium on people’s ability to deal productively with conflict and cultural difference. To the question “Why teach the controversy?” they note that today a student can go from one class in which the values of western culture are prorated as hopelessly compromised by racism, sexism and homophobia. Professors can acknowledge these differences and encourage student to construct a conversation for themselves as “the most exciting part of their education”.

Conclusion:-

So here I write my own thoughts and understanding about four goals of cultural studies .in culture this main four goals are most important part for understanding the cultural studies. This theory came with many questions and here we can solve this issue with these goals.