Cultural Studies - Approaches

Approaches

While cultural studies is committed to the absolute necessity of theoretical work, it sees theory as a resource to be used to respond strategically to a particular project, to specific questions and specific contexts. The measure of a theory's truth is its ability to enable a better understanding of a particular context and to open up new—or at least imagined—possibilities for changing that context. In this sense, cultural studies desacralizes theory in order to take it up as a contingent strategic resource. Thus, cultural studies cannot be identified with any single theoretical paradigm or tradition; it continues to wrestle with various modern and postmodern philosophies, including Marxism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, pragmatism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. (Johnson) Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field's inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies was developed in the 1950s and 1960s mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political left-wing views and criticisms of popular culture as 'capitalist' mass culture. It absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British Cultural Studies scholars and their influences, (see the work of, for example, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy).

In contrast, Cultural Studies was grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition in the United States (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002,p. 60).The American version of Cultural Studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to and uses of mass culture. For example, American Cultural Studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. The distinction between American and British strands has since faded, however.

Stuart Hall asserts that mainstream mass communication in the United States holds the illusion of democratic pluralism- “the pretense that society is held together by common norms, including equal opportunity, respect for diversity, one person-one vote, individual rights and rule of law”. One of his goals in looking at Cultural Studies is to raise awareness and combat social power imbalances and dominant ideology. “The ultimate issue for cultural studies is not what information is presented but whose information it is”. Also, he contends that the aim of theory and research is to delegate power to marginalized people and allow them to have a say in this world. One criticism of Hall offered suggestions of ways to change the problem he cites. However, he has worked hard to raise awareness of racism in the media. In Canada, Cultural Studies has sometimes focused on issues of technology and society, continuing the emphasis in the work of Marshall McLuhan, George Grant, and others. In Australia, there has sometimes been a special emphasis on cultural policy. In South Africa, human rights and Third World issues are among the topics treated. There were a number of exchanges between Birmingham and Italy resulting in work on Italian leftism and theories of postmodernism. On the other hand, there is a debate in Latin America about the relevance of Cultural Studies with some researchers calling for more action-oriented research. Cultural Studies is relatively undeveloped in France, where there is a stronger tradition of semiotics, as in the writings of Roland Barthes. Also in Germany it is undeveloped, probably due to the continued influence of the Frankfurt School, which has developed a body of writing on such topics as mass culture, modern art and music. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, those who control the means of production (the economic base) essentially control a culture.

Hall is strongly influenced by Marxist, even though he doesn’t buy into the idea of economic determinism. This sees all economic, political, and social relationships as ultimately based on money. Hall believes your physical appearance is just as important as your economic status regarding the way your peers act towards you. Other approaches to Cultural Studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view is best exemplified by the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Case of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al.), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva was an influential voice in the turn of the century, contributing to Cultural Studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.

Ultimately, this perspective criticizes the traditional view, assuming a passive consumer, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive and interpret cultural texts. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively reject or challenge the meaning of a product. These different approaches have shifted the focus away from the production of items. Instead, they argue that consumption plays an equally important role, since the way consumers consume a product gives meaning to an item. Some closely link the act of consuming with cultural identity. Stuart Hall and John Fiske have become influential in these developments.

Why is consumerism considered part of culture? According to Jeremy Gilbert, “We now live in an era when, throughout the capitalist world, the overriding aim of government economic policy is to maintain consumer spending levels. This is an era when ‘consumer confidence’ is treated as the key indicator and cause of economic effectiveness. Not only is it the government’s goal to keep the public buying and spending, but it’s also that of many businesses and corporations. This is a major problem when looking through an environmental lens, because this significant rate of consumption is leading our planet to a point where it can no longer be sustained, threatening the human race and all living things. However, if we are constantly being exposed to advertisements, consumerism doesn’t look like it’s heading to a halt. This is a major issue when looking at Cultural Studies, because of mass media’s influence on the ideology of consumerism.

In the context of Cultural Studies, the idea of a text, not only includes written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of Cultural Studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of "culture". "Culture" for a cultural studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups) and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two have become the main focus of Cultural Studies. A further and more recent approach is Comparative cultural studies, based on the discipline of comparative literature and Cultural Studies.