Page 11 - Culture and Cultural Studies

10 CULTURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

moments of production but not determined in any ‘necessary’ way by that moment, and vice
versa. Consequently, we might explore not only how the moment of production is inscribed
in texts but also how the ‘economic’ is cultural; that is, a meaningful set of practices.

Power

Cultural studies writers generally agree on the centrality of the concept of power to the
discipline. For most cultural studies writers, power is regarded as pervading every level of
social relationships. Power is not simply the glue that holds the social together, or the
coercive force which subordinates one set of people to another, though it certainly is this.
It is also understood in terms of the processes that generate and enable any form of social
action, relationship or order. In this sense, power, while certainly constraining, is also
enabling. Having said that, cultural studies has shown a specific concern with subordi-
nated groups, at first with class, and later with races, genders, nations, age groups, etc.

Popular culture

Subordination is a matter not just of coercion but also of consent. Cultural studies has
commonly understood popular culture to be the ground on which this consent is won or
lost. As a way of grasping the interplay of power and consent, two related concepts were
repeatedly deployed in cultural studies’ earlier texts, though they are less prevalent these
days – namely, ideology and hegemony.
By ideology is commonly meant maps of meaning that, while they purport to be uni-
versal truths, are historically specific understandings that obscure and maintain power.
For example, television news produces understandings of the world that continually
explain it in terms of nations, perceived as ‘naturally’ occurring objects. This may have the
consequence of obscuring both the class divisions of social formations and the con-
structed character of nationality.
Representations of gender in advertising, which depict women as housewives or sexy
bodies alone, reduce them to those categories. As such, they deny women their place as
full human beings and citizens. The process of making, maintaining and reproducing
ascendant meanings and practices has been called hegemony. Hegemony implies a situa-
tion where a ‘historical bloc’ of powerful groups exercises social authority and leadership
over subordinate groups through the winning of consent.

Texts and readers

The production of consent implies popular identification with the cultural meanings gener-
ated by the signifying practices of hegemonic texts. The concept of text suggests not simply
the written word, though this is one of its senses, but also all practices that signify. This

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