Page 94 - Cultural Theory

Edwards-3516-Ch-05.qxd 5/9/2007 5:56 PM Page 83

Giddens and

CHAPTER FIVE Cultural Analysis
••••••••
Absent word and central

concept

John Scott

Anthony Giddens has been one of the most widely cited social theorists in
1
English-speaking countries in the past two decades. His work is widely used across
the social sciences, and has been very influential among cultural analysts. Rather
surprisingly, however, Giddens rarely uses the word culture in any of his many
publications. Despite this apparent disregard for the word culture, however, the
concept is central to his theoretical concerns. There are, in fact, two principal
conceptions of culture in his work. These can be termed culture as structure and
culture as lifeworld.
Culture as structure is, in fact, the central idea in Giddens’ sociology. According to
this view, culture consists of the underlying rules employed in social interactions
and through which social systems are reproduced. These ‘rules’ are not the norms
and values stressed by structural functionalists, they are the deeply embedded and
embodied generative dispositions that organize social practices. What Giddens terms
‘structure’, then, is actually what structuralist and other writers have seen as the
cultural codes of social life.
Culture as lifeworld also figures centrally in Giddens’ work. In describing the orga-
nization of actual social systems, he uses the term ‘lifeworld’ to designate the whole
way of life in a society. This comprises the everyday, mutual knowledge and con-
sciousness of social groups and their more systematic ‘intellectual’ formations and
2
cultural products (Giddens, 1986). He traces the demise of cultural tradition in the
face of rationalization and reflexivity, and he places particular emphasis on the part
played by the media of mass communication.
In this chapter, I will explore these two ideas as they have developed in Giddens’
work. Despite his lack of attention to the word culture, I will show, the idea of cul-
ture has been a central concern.

• 83 •