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Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Studies: Two’ Paradigms summary
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Outline: In this essay I will try to present the ways in which Stuart Hall influenced the development of Cultural Studies in Britain and illuminate the importance of his contribution to the understanding of British culture in general. As “one of the leading cultural theorists”, an epithet given to him by The Observer in 2007, he expanded the field of study to include gender, race and identity. He is also important for introducing new approaches to the study based on the works of French theorists. Introduction Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica on February 3, 1932. After receiving a Rhodes scholarship in the 1950 he came to Britain in order to study at Merton College at the University of Oxford. He was a member of the Windrush generation, when a great number of African-Caribbeans migrated to the UK and other parts of Europe in the search of a better future. It is interesting to note that he was part of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1957. The publication of his book “The Popular Arts” (Hall and Whannel 1967; first published in Britain in 1964) ten years later led to the invitation by Richard Hoggart, another important figure in the founding of British Cultural Studies, to join the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In 1968 he replaced Hoggart as the director of the institution and held the position until 1979. The BCCCS might be considered the cradle of cultural studies in Britain and some might even say that is the pivotal institution in the history of cultural studies in general. After leaving his position at the Centre, Hall became a professor at the Open University. He retired in 1997. Throughout his career, Hall stressed the practical impact that cultural studies can have on... ... middle of paper ... ...’s work has been crucial for both the process of formation and the expansion and development of British Cultural Studies, as well as cultural studies as an international discipline. Due to the fact that Hall was born in Jamaica but practiced his career in Britain, he is able to present views both from inside and outside the British society. As much as he participated in contributing to the studies dealing with ethnicity, he also contributed to the study of national identity. The impact of his work expands the circle of cultural studies; during the 1980s he was a fierce critic of Thatcherism and influenced the Labour Party in Britain. The dedication he put in his work, together with the innovation and diversity of his studies have earned him the epithet “The Father of Cultural Studies”, a title most certainly deserved for redefining British cultural studies.
In Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine argues that a distinction between high and low culture that did not exist in the first half of the 19th century emerged by the turn of the century and solidified during the 20th century, and that despite a move in the last few decades toward a more ecumenical interpretation of “culture,” the distinction between high art and popular entertainment and the revering of a canon of sacred, inalterable cultural works persists. In the prologue Levine states that one of his central arguments is that concepts of cultural boundaries have changed over the period he treats. Throughout Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine defines culture as a process rather than a fixed entity, and as a product of interactions between the past and the present.
George Washington Plunkitt worked his way as a young boy in the New York city politics to become one of the most well know statesman that city has ever now. As a young boy, he became an “apprenticeship of the business “(RIORDON, Chapter, 1) of politics by “working around the district headquarters and hustling about the polls on Election Day” (RIORDON, Chapter, 1). He steadily built a following and became very clever in the political game. Plunkitt had definite idea’s as to what characteristics where needed to thrive in the political arena. If one understood that there could be personal benefits in being in politics, then one could succeed greatly, he was fond of the saying “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘en” (RIORDON, Chapter, 1). In order to make it in the political game, one must distinguish between an honest graft and a dishonest graft. Plunkitt idea’s of an honest graft was to basically find opportunities and take action on them before someone else could benefit from them. While working in city government, Plunkitt used his position to benefit himself and his friend, for example, he would “go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared, particular for before. Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft. Or supposin’ it’s a new bridge they’re goin’ to build. I get tipped off and I buy, as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank. Wouldn’t you? It’s just like lookin’ ahead in Wall Street or in the cof...
Martin presented a still not complete, but broader world view and therefore corresponding understandings needed to be developed. O’Neill (2012) emphasises how Les Magiciens representations of otherness took the approach of postmodernist pluralism (p. 57) highlighting diversity and difference which aligned with a global art world of a vastly wider range. By opening the scope of the art world, the Western view slowly but radically changing to comprehend this awareness of what contemporary art was defined as on a global scale. One example of the opening of opportunities that followed can be drawn from Alfredo Jaar’s (2014) reflections from progress since Les Magiciens. Jaar commented how ‘provincial’ he found New York upon his arrival from Santiago de Chile in 1982. The city was considered to be an art ‘capital’ but was completely absorbed in its own production and being from Chile he found it impossible to operate outside the minority areas. His opinion is that Les Magiciens broke through this Euro-American central view and the current more global art world in which he can now exist in is as a result of these breaks into what he terms the ‘Western art
American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997. Print. The. Marger, Martin N. Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives.
During the second world war, the people living in the British Empire were portrayed as loyal and as a part of the British people. They fought in the war alongside britons, and their right to migrate to Britain was only disputed if they were non-white. After the war, when the immigration from the non-white colonies continued, the British attitude towards non-whites changed (Webster 54). Paul Gilroy argues that this is due to the fact that the British people lost a sense of comfort as their society became less homogen...
In Jamaica Kincaid’s article “Excerpt from on Seeing England for the First Time”, she notes that people should not forget their own traditional culture and should protect traditional cultural. Kincaid lived in a British colony when she was a child. When she saw England on a map in her school, she thought England was a beautiful place and like a jewel. In addition, England is an important and seriousness and adoration in her country because most people thought England is a leader of the country, and most things came from England in the life of her childhood, such as a cup of cocoa, shoes, and clothes. In a hot summer, her father wore a felt hat which came from England just because he saw a picture that an Englishman wore a similar felt hat in
This review questions Maurice Berger´s assertion that “white [museum] curators, administrators, and patrons” seldom accept art outside the “mainstream” or art that “challenges dominant values.” Paradoxically, this quote supports the point of an article—Lisa C. Corrin´s “Mining the Museum”—rich in examples of exhibitions, curated by white artists and curators, and aimed at overcoming standard practices.
These case studies demonstrate different approaches and struggles in a feminist approach to history. These include an extended examination of The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson where Scott shows how Thomson portrays the working class and brings their struggles to light. Despite being a classic example of labor history and history from bellow, Thompson struggles to portray the female role in the English working class. Scott builds off these shortcomings and shows how these points could be included in the
In the passage here presented, Arnold’s attention is focused on three different and yet closely related purposes: firstly, that of redefining the meaning of ‘culture’, proposing a new angle on traditional views; secondly, that of underlining the obstacles such a theory could encounter in the Victorian community; and thirdly, that of advancing hypothesis as to how a pursuit of culture on the part of mankind, and particularly of the British population, would result in a great improvement of social, moral, and political conditions. This essay attempts to analyse two crucial aspects of Arnold’s work: on the one hand, it will examine the essayist’s outlook on the themes of culture, its relation to religion and science, and its importance in contemporary civilisation; on the other hand, it will explore the linguistic, stylistic and structural devices of which Arnold avails himself in order to fulfil the persuasive aim of his thesis.
Throughout this paper I will be discuss and describe these three articles about Stuart Hall cultural studies theory the Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms from Media, Culture and Society, then the Cultural Studies in the Future tense and Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies theory.
What does the concept of cultural citizenship bring to our analysis? It enables us to recognise the affective dimension of our relationship to politics and to media texts as a whole. Rather than simply using popular culture as a source of knowledge of the wider world (and of politics), we engage emotionally with popular cultural texts and that is precisely what makes us bridge popular culture and politics. As it has been argued, cultural citizenship is a deeply ‘affective relationship to the sovereign state’ (Miller 2007: 39) – it involves notions of bonding and belonging to an imagined community. Popular culture, as we have seen, addresses values, representations, and issues of social identity (Curran 2011: 63-68). Cultural citizenship, in turn, enables us to look at popular culture as a source of collective identity – whether it involves bonding and ‘commonality’, or distancing oneself from others (Street, Inthorn and Scott 2011: 350). It views popular culture as having ‘relevance for identity construction, ideology, and norms, aiding us to work through important [and might I add, conflicting] contemporary ideas and issues’ (Dahlgren 2009: 141). Popular culture allows us to engage affectively as well as cognitively in crucial issues, such as ‘how we should live (and live together) and what kind of society we want’ (Dahlgren 2009: 141).
Every person will identify themselves as having some sort of nationality. However, it is the conditions of classes and gender that affect the everyday lives of the individual. If the form of literature is an accurate reflection of public opinion, through the study of the novels The Wig My Father Wore, Anne Enright, and The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle, we should see the terms by which contemporary Irish society identifies itself.
Culture, no doubt one of the most complex words of the English language, for years, scholars debated its definition. Clarifying what culture means in this essay or what culture means in an Intercultural respect would be to start by defining what it is not. Culture does not refer to products of the intellectual and artistic elites, or “high-culture”, nor does it refer Lady Gaga’s dress sense or Miley Cyrus’s Twerking or otherwise known as “pop-culture” both examples of such culture are merely aesthetics , for all intents and purposes of this essay, culture will be operationally defined as an ambiguous set of values, assumptions, beliefs about directions to life, procedural and behavioral norms that influence individuals with held membership, giving meaning from an interpretation of form with respect to others (Spencer-Oatey 2008), it is a distinct collective organization of the mind that discerns one group from another (Hofstede 1994).
At its most basic level, multiculturalism therefore conceives of a cultural hierarchy that ranks different ethnic groups in terms of their proximity to the ‘common culture’. In this respect, it perpetuates relations of domination and subordination that carry with them judgements about the value of different ethnic groups (Habibis, D & Walter, M 2015, p. 5). As this paper will go on to highlight, this hierarchical structure consequently informs the cultural identities of the ethnic ‘other’ in various ways that perpetuate their social
What does it mean to be British? Britain's national identity has evolved and transformed over the years. Through the works of Phyllis Wheatley, Aphra Ben, William Shakespeare, Daniel DeFoe, Coetzee and Caryl Phillips we have explored the different meanings and aspects of British identity. Britishness is not just confined to England (or the United Kingdom in recent times), Britishness extends far beyond the nation. Britishness is not a simple concept and is complicated by the existence of many British colonies all over the world. The colonized people of the British colonies also have claims on Britishness. So what determines if an individual is British or not? Is it one's religion? Is it the way one speaks? Is it just the difference of skin color? Is it one's appearance and dress? Is it based on citizenship? Is it one's knowledge of social norms of England? The colonized people of British colonies defied many of those above. The Britishness of these people did not just rely on their language, their appearance, their citizenship and at many times their understanding or application of social norms to their life yet their claim on Britishness, them demanding their claim on British identity is as legitimate as any. So if not on these basic characteristics, that define national identity, on what is the Britishness of the colonized people based on?