Page 23 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

14 Cultural change and ordinary life

The concept of ‘the ordinariness of culture’ is important: first, because it
looks at cultural production in terms of the contributions and reflections
of all members of a culture; and second, because it stresses the political
implications of how culture is organized, its material basis. Culture, in
this sense, matters to everyone; it concerns our shared life together.
(Couldry 2000a: 26)
Despite what he sees as its many strengths, Couldry argues that Williams’
work has limitations. First, he suggests that Williams’ work tends to have a
‘local’ focus and, second, that it has difficulties in taking into account the
changing nature of British communities, especially as they were changed by
‘significant levels of government-encouraged immigration’ (p. 29). These were
compounded by Williams’ difficulties in dealing with gender issues.
In broad terms, the latter difficulties have been recognized and discussed
at least since Williams’ work gained widespread influence. The critique by E. P.
Thompson (1961) was only the beginning of this significant line of criticism
when he suggested that Williams’ idea of a whole way of life should be
replaced by that of a ‘whole way of struggle’. The former criticism is less
securely based. While Williams’ work was, in many ways, based on his experi-
ence of Welsh border community and this gives it a particular rootedness, it is
important to recognize that this was indeed ‘border country’, which was
always in Williams’ work seen as connected to forces and movements outside
it by networks of communication. In this sense Williams recognized very
early that local living was in carried out in the context of global networks of
communication, travel and the movement of capital to the disadvantage of
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organized labour. Thus, it can be suggested that Williams’ work is more
important on these topics than Couldry allows. This may in one sense be a
relatively small point, but it does facilitate the recognition that in many ways
contemporary emphases on flows of people and information have always been
a part of cultural studies.
In addition to his arguments concerning the significance of Williams’
ideas of ordinariness for the study of culture, a second aspect of Couldry’s
argument is of importance. This is his point that cultural studies requires a
fuller understanding of the individual. As he suggests, ‘cultural studies has
provided relatively few insights into how individuals are formed, and how
they act, “inside” cultures. Post-structuralist critiques of the subject have only
served to confuse matters’ (p. 45). For Couldry, this means a concern with
a range of individual voices and a refocus on the experiences of groups
and individuals that have been relatively neglected in cultural studies. Two
emphases here are of particular concern to my argument. First, he argues that
‘cultural studies’ work on television and film . . . has rarely, if ever considered
the engagements of people with high cultural and/or economic capital’ (p. 59).
In drawing on some of my own research through the course of this book,
I hope to rectify this omission, which I agree is serious for the project of
understanding different forms of ordinary culture. Second, he maintains that:
People’s engagement with ‘ordinary’ material culture (everyday clothes,
household goods, and so on) and their dreams of material prosperity
have normally been downplayed in cultural studies compared to more