Page 8 - Culture and Cultural Studies

AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES 7

v Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field in which perspectives from different
disciplines can be selectively drawn on to examine the relations of culture and
power.

v ‘Cultural studies is concerned with all those practices, institutions and systems of clas-
sification through which there are inculcated in a population particular values, beliefs,
competencies, routines of life and habitual forms of conduct’ (Bennett, 1998: 28).
v The forms of power that cultural studies explores are diverse and include gender,
race, class, colonialism, etc. Cultural studies seeks to explore the connections
between these forms of power and to develop ways of thinking about culture and
power that can be utilized by agents in the pursuit of change.

v The prime institutional sites for cultural studies are those of higher education, and
as such, cultural studies is like other academic disciplines. Nevertheless, it tries to
forge connections outside of the academy with social and political movements,
workers in cultural institutions, and cultural management.

With this in mind, we may consider the kinds of concepts and concerns that regulate
cultural studies as a discursive formation or language-game. Each of the concepts intro-
duced here is developed at greater length throughout the book and can also be referred
to in the Glossary.

KEY CONCEPTS IN CULTURAL STUDIES

Culture and signifying practices

Cultural studies would not warrant its name without a focus on culture (Chapter 2). As
Hall puts it, ‘By culture, here I mean the actual grounded terrain of practices, representa-
tions, languages and customs of any specific society. I also mean the contradictory forms
of common sense which have taken root in and helped to shape popular life’ (Hall, 1996c:
439). Culture is concerned with questions of shared social meanings, that is, the various
ways we make sense of the world. However, meanings are not simply floating ‘out there’;
rather, they are generated through signs, most notably those of language.
Cultural studies has argued that language is not a neutral medium for the formation of
meanings and knowledge about an independent object world ‘existing’ outside of language.
Rather, it is constitutive of those very meanings and knowledge. That is, language gives
meaning to material objects and social practices that are brought into view by language and
made intelligible to us in terms that language delimits. These processes of meaning produc-
tion are signifying practices. In order to understand culture, we need to explore how mean-
ing is produced symbolically in language as a ‘signifying system’ (Chapter 3).

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