Page 12 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

x Preface

activity of writing. Similarly, in order to make successful musical record-
ings, one must have not only talent but also a music production company
that has the capital to make your music into marketable recordings.
To engage in the cultural activity of making television shows or movies,
one must work with large economic entities that have the wherewithal to
produce and market your ideas and creations. One might say that culture
in the second sense of artistic objects is only possible if culture in the fi rst
sense as a way of life gives permission. One cannot make good television
shows if there is no television distribution system, for example, and that
presupposes a high level of prosperity of the kind found in such places as
London and Hong Kong but not in the African or South Asian countryside.
Similarly, to write novels, one usually has to be well educated, to know
language well at least and to be trained in how to write. Culture understood
as a norm - guided behavior or as an institution is the house in which culture
understood as an artifact occurs. What this means is that most cultural
products or artifacts embody and express the norms of the culture in which
they are made. But not all.
The culture in which one lives determines the culture that is created

within it, but influence works in the other direction as well. One could even
go so far as to say that the second meaning of culture as human creativity
is our way of modifying the first meaning of culture as civilized normativ-

ity. Creative culture is often accused of being uncivil because it breaks
existing norms and points the way toward the creation of new ones. When
the bohemian movement started in Western Europe in the late nineteenth
century, it was an attempt on the part of creative people to upset the reign-
ing norms of the culture, which were perceived as being too restrictive, too
allied with conservatism, commerce, and a narrow scientific view of knowl-

edge. Women had been instructed throughout the nineteenth century to
be prim and proper and to dress accordingly – tight corsets, body - covering
dresses, and the like. Along came the bohemians in the 1880s who upset
all that. They wore loose clothing that revealed their bodies. Women artists
danced in free style instead of in the prescribed rote forms associated with
“ high ” culture. Emotional expressiveness replaced formal rigor, and reverie
replaced objective scientifi c clarity. Drugs, of course, were part of the new
bohemian scene, as was potent alcohol that altered the normal state of
things. Commercial conservative “ bourgeois ” culture ’ s hold on human
possibilities was shaken, and a new culture eventually was born. We still
live with its legacy today when we dress informally or reveal our bodies
without shame or embarrassment or dance in nonprescribed ways to music