![]() Cultural Studies believes that we cannot “read” cultural artefacts only within the aesthetic realm, rather they must be studied within the social and material perspectives i.e., a novel must be read not only within the generic conventions and history of the novel, but also in terms of the publishing industry and its profit, its reviewers, its academic field of criticism, the politics of awards and the hype of publicity machinery that sells the book. ![]() The approach of Raymond Williams and CCCS was clearly marxIst and poststructuralist, and held subject identities and relationships as textual, constructed out of discourse. It facilitated analysis of the ways in which subaltern groups actively resist and respond to political and economic domination. Edgar and Sedgwick point out that the theory of hegemony was pivotal to the development of British Cultural Studies. Thus the key rubric for Gramsci and for cultural studies is that of cultural hegemony. In his view, capitalists are not only brute force (police, prison, military) to maintain control, but also penetrate the everyday culture of working people. In order to understand the changing political circumstances of class, politics and culture in the UK, scholars at the CCCS turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci who modified classical Marxism in seeing culture as a key instrument of political and social control. ![]() Cultural Studies’ approaches 1) transcend the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history 2) are politically engaged 3) reject the distinction between “high” and “low” art or “elite” and “popular” culture 4) analyse not only the cultural works but also the means of production. It looks at popular culture and everyday life, which had hitherto been dismissed as “inferior” and unworthy of academic study. Cultural Studies is interested in the process by which power relations organize cultural artefacts (food habits, music, cinema, sport events etc.). The works of Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart with the Birmingham Centre, later expanded through the writings of David Morley, Tony Bennett and others. Since culture is now considered as the source of art and literature, cultural criticism has gained ground, and therefore, Raymond Williams’ term “cultural materialism”, Stephen Greenblatt’s “cultural poetics” and Bakhtin’s term “cultural prosaic”, have become significant in the field of Cultural Studies and cultural criticism. Cultural Studies researches often focus on how a particular phenomenon relates matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class and gender.ĭiscussion on Cultural Studies have gained currency with the publication of Richard Hoggart’s Use of Literacy (1957) and Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society (1958), and with the establishment of Birmingham Centre for is Contemporary Cultural Studies in England in 1968. to study cultural phenomena in various societies. By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on NovemĪrising from the social turmoil of the 1960-s, Cultural Studies is an academic discipline which combines political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, art history/ criticism etc.
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