Talk:Cultural studies
From Academic Kids
I think "came under the influence of the Frankfurt School" has undesirable connotations which make the Frankfurt School's critique of mass culture sound like a powerful narcotic (in the dialect of English I speak, at least, "under the influence" has a strong primary meaning of "intoxicated"). "Was influenced by" is free of this connotation, and so is better, as it draws on the primary scholarly meaning of "influence" as predecessor and inspiration. -- Rbellin 06:24, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Marxist influence
Raymond Williams does apply a marxist model of culture, indeed. But it is not an orthodox marxism conception. Basically, the determination of the cultural superstructure by the base, and the conception of ideolology (the first developed by Marx just as an example), are both extensively critiziced by Williams in his book titled Culture (i'm not exactly sure about the title, sorry). He takes a different approach based on the concepts developed by Antonio Gramsci in his Jail Books (who was a marxist intelectual, but not orthodox).
British cultural studies
British cultural studies was originally leftist, but it was a reaction to orthodox Marxism, which many of the scholars in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University were interested in complementing with a more balanced view of society. From early on, the CCCS was interested in the lived experience of the everyday. If capitalist domination functioned through the ownership of the means of production and various other apparatus (following Marx, Gramsci, Althusser), then wouldn't it be just as valid to examine how everyday people encountered this domination and dealt with it, instead of only looking at the way messages of domination were produced?
In this respect Stuart Hall's contribution should not be overlooked. Hall's essay "Encoding/Decoding in the Television Discourse" was important because it introduced the idea that people viewing texts were free to understand them in a way that was different to the way the producer of the text intended. Once this was established, it helped develop a more balanced view of how power and domination might work in society. Instead of the meaning of a message (an advertisement, say) being injected into the viewer/reader/listener as if through a syringe, there is room for active interpretation, and even resistance to the message.
Hall's paper was also a reaction to behaviourism and positivism in the study of the media that was current in the 1970s (effects theories of communication, also referred to as hypodermic needle theories). So, British cultural studies can be viewed as both a reaction to orthodox Marxism, and as a respond to behaviourist and positivist research (which still has relevance today as some psychologists continue to search for proof of a hypodermic-style model of media effects).
