Page 209 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

by complex structures or regularities. Here a social formation is not grasped as a
totality but rather as a complex structure of different instances, levels or practices
that are articulated together to form a unity. This totality is not the result of a single
186 one-way base–superstructure determination, as in orthodox Marxist theory, but
rather is the product of determinations emanating from different levels. Thus a
social formation is the outcome of ‘over-determination’ by which is meant that any
given practice or instance is the outcome of many different determinations. These
distinct determinations are levels or types of practice with their own logic and
specificity that cannot be reduced to, or explained by, other levels or practices.
This conceptualization of a social formation was welcomed by key cultural
studies writers because it allows theorists to examine cultural phenomena as a
separate signifying system with its own effects and determinations. That is,
structuralism does not dissolve culture back into the economic (as in the Marxist
base–superstructure model) but instead emphasizes the irreducible character of the
cultural as a set of distinct practices with its own internal organization or
structuration. Thus, Hall argues that we must try to grasp a society or social
formation as constituted by a set of complex practices each with its own specificity
that is articulated unevenly to other related practices. Here, that unity thought of
as ‘society’ is considered to be the unique historically specific temporary
stabilization of the relations and meanings of different levels of a social formation.
Links Base and superstructure, holism, Marxism, reductionism, social, structuralism

Space Following Einstein’s general theory of relativity, space and time are not to be
thought of as separate entities but as inextricably interwoven together. That is, space
is not an absolute entity but is relationally defined since at least two particles are
required for space to occur. Further, time is constituted by the movement of these
particles, which simultaneously establishes both time and space. It is not that time
moves across a static space, but that space and time constitute each other enabling
us to speak of time–space.
Traditionally, modern social theory has been more interested in time than space
since time was understood to be the dynamic field of social change whereas space
was regarded as dead, fixed and immobile, traversed by the movement of history.
However, since the 1970s there has been a growing interest within cultural theory
in questions of space inspired in particular by the work of Foucault and his focus on
the construction of space by discourse, power and discipline. Here space can be
understood as a social construct with the social itself being spatially organized. Thus
space is constituted by a dynamic set of proccesses that are implicated in questions
of power and symbolism.
It is necessary to grasp human activity as distributed in space since human
interaction is situated in particular spaces that have a variety of social meanings. For
example, a ‘home’ is divided into different living spaces – front rooms, kitchens,
dining rooms, bedrooms etc. These spaces are used in diverse ways within which are
carried out a range of activities with different cultural meanings that enable them
to be constituted as emotionally charged places. Accordingly, bedrooms are private