Page 110 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

HOMOLOGY

individuals, a methodological holist argues that this will have limited value in
illuminating the workings of the social and cultural whole.
Given the central place that language occupies in the study of culture it is worth
noting that linguistic holism suggests that an understanding of language requires 87
utterances to be put in the context of the entire network of language. Meaning is
always relational and context-specific. Thus the philosophy of language espoused
by those writers who have been influential in cultural studies – Derrida, Bakhtin,
Foucault, Wittgenstein – emphasizes the relational character of language and the
contextual nature of truth. A language-oriented study of culture must then seek to
locate culture as a linguistic and cultural whole (way of life).
Culture is constitutive of other practices, that is, culture (as language or
discourse) is the classificatory process that makes an act meaningful. Thus, the study
of culture requires a methodological holism given that any act is multi-faceted in
its meanings, partaking as it does of the multi-accentuality of the sign. For example,
buying flowers for one’s partner is a commercial transaction enacted within a
network of economic relations. However, within the context of contemporary social
relationships, buying flowers acts as a sign of affection (or apology or a strategy etc.)
implicated in gender relations and the politics of the family. Of course, within the
context of the whole, discourses mark out the boundaries of significance through
their classificatory operations so that we need to grasp both the non-separable unity
of forms of life and their cultural categorizing into parts.

Links Circuit of culture, culture, discourse, ethnography, language, methodology, signs

Homology The idea of homology within cultural studies marks the synchronic
relationship by which social structures, social values and cultural symbols are said
to ‘fit’ together. The concept is used to describe the ‘accord’ between a structural
position in the social order, the social values of subcultural participants and the
cultural symbols and styles by which they express themselves. In particular, the
theory of homology connects a located lived culture as a set of constitutive
relationships to the surrounding objects, artefacts, institutions and practices.
Homological analysis records snapshots of social structures and cultural symbols. It
involves two levels of related analysis; the examination of the social group and the
investigation of their preferred cultural item. It is concerned with how far the
structure and content of particular cultural items parallel and reflect the structure,
style, typical concerns, attitudes and feelings of the social group.
Homological analysis is fundamentally structural in its exploration of the
continuous play between the cultural group and a particular item which produces
specific styles, meanings, contents and forms of consciousness. Thus Willis holds
that the ensemble of the bike, noise and ‘rider on the move’ expresses the
‘motorbike boys’’ culture, values and identities so that the strength of the
motorcycle matches the secure character of the bikers’ world. Accordingly, the
motorcycle underwrites the boys’ commitment to tangible things, to toughness and
power and to masculine assertiveness and a rough camaraderie.
Subcultural participants are not held to have cognitive understandings of