Culture


 * Etymology and Definition**

Culture, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2015), is “the distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period,” (OED, 7, a). It is derived from the Latin word //cultura,// meaning to cultivate land, which later became twelfth century Middle French and Anglo Norman word //culture// (OED, 1, a).


 * History of the Concept of Culture**

Culture as a concept has evolved greatly since its medieval roots, from a physical act of cultivation to a metaphorical one. By the seventeenth century, culture had come to refer to a cultivation of the mind or body, most notably in Thomas Hobbes work //Leviathan//: “The education of Children [is called] a Culture of their minds,” (Hobbes, 1651, 189).

Culture as the modern concept evolved during in the eighteenth century, as the German word //kultur//, which became linked to the word //bildung//, meaning self-cultivation (Bruford, 1975, 61)//.// While the concept was the subject of intense scholarly debate during the German Enlightenment, two German philosophers, Johann Gottfried Herder and Immanuel Kant, provided much of the influence in how the term developed (Bruford, 1975, 76). Kant argued that self-cultivation’s purpose was to better communicate with others as part of a larger society, which included the creation of art (von Bonsdorff, 2013, 128). Kant viewed art as a public form which critique the world in the context of society, and thus its value is subjective (von Bonsdorff, 2013, 130; Bruford, 1975, 78-79). Herder contended that bildung was instead the experiences that provided an identity, both as an individual and as a member of society (Bruford, 2011, 78; de Souza & Mario T., 2006, 107). He also contended that culture should be a pluralistic concept, meaning that there is no singular culture representing a high point but rather that it is present in different nations and at different periods of history (Bruford, 2011, 78).

In the nineteenth century, British Romantic thinkers took the concept of culture and divided it into what would eventually be referred to as a high culture and folk culture, as a form of social control (de Souza & Mario T., 2006, 108). Matthew Arnold, one of the most celebrated philosophers of his time, wrote in his series of essays //Culture and Anarchy// that culture should represent societal perfection in aesthetic and spiritual values, rather than simply a representation of that nation’s customs and beliefs, and removed folk culture by claiming it was not serious enough (Arnold, 1911, 44).


 * What is Cultural Studies?**

In the field of Communication, there are multiple definitions and thus it becomes more difficult to provide precise boundaries. One such definition, from John Hartley, is “the production, circulation, experience, and transformation (over time and space) of meaning (language), identity (consciousness) and relationships (social networks),” (Hartley, 2011, 77). Culture can be studied in terms of politics and power, ordinary life and identity formation, reading cultural products as texts, or studying interactions and differences between different cultures, either nationally or internationally (Hartley, 2011, 76).

There are several sub-divisions in cultural studies in the field of communication: critical culture, intercultural and inter-linguistic studies, mediated culture, popular culture, folk culture, and digital culture, to name a few (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, 281). Cultural studies also exist in interdisciplinary studies, such as women’s studies and LGBTQ studies, and from different research methodologies, such as social science or rhetoric (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, 283). These approaches and definitions also vary between countries and their specific academic traditions (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, 282).

As such, there are often academic debates over what studying culture entails in Communication. There is contention over whether cultural studies should focus on culture as a material text or as social relationships, or rather as a mix of both (Grossberg, 2010, 75). Raymond Williams, an influential cultural academic, argued that culture was a way for critics to judge and analyze historical changes from a structural perspective through the changing ideas, meanings and values of a people through the process of modernization (Grossberg, 2010, 75). James Carey, a highly important American cultural scholar, asserted that culture was a way of confronting and understanding major linguistic, textual, and communicative changes in life (Carey, 2010, 82).


 * Culture and Communication**

Culture as a concept was not revisited until after World War II, wherein scholars attempted to remove its classist and elitist connotations (Grossberg, 2010, 74). This also developed into three different schools of thought: the British, the German, and the American (Jensen, 2010, 90). The British school was Marxist in thought and focused on mass mediation, with scholars like Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams working in how it altered and transformed cultural worthiness and how culture worked as a sphere where identity was formed (Jensen, 2010, 91; Williams, 1958, 238). The German school, which included important intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, specialized in theories on cultural industry and worked with concepts like modern forms of consciousness, automatization and alienation, and the importance of the origins, motives, and influence of media products (Jensen, 2010, 93).

Walter Lippman is often attributed to founding of the American cultural studies school (Tell, 2013, 109). Lippman’s area of study was a highly politicized view of culture that dealt with issues of mass culture and modernity (Tell, 2013, 118). His argument was that in the future, citizens would be unable to grasp the complexities of the world, as people often turned to stereotypes in order to better conceptualize the world, and thus would need to be led by experts (Tell, 2013, 118-120). In addition, he posited that this turning to stereotypes was part of how politics were naturalized, as well as by both experience and by human communication (Tell, 2013, 121).

Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, two Canadian academics, also contributed greatly to the field in the period after World War II, though they had two distinct outlooks of culture and media (Tremblay, 2012, 561). Innis contended that media had either time-binding (meant to last for multiple generations, like stone tablets) or space-binding (conveying meaning across long distances like radio) biases (Schudson, 1990, 236). McLuhan categorized media as hot or cool, wherein hot media extends one of the senses, required little participation, and contained high definition information, while cool media extended multiple senses, was a complex application, and related low-definition information (Tremblay, 2012, 565). Innis used social science theories while McLuhan was more centered in rhetoric and other qualitative methodologies (Tremblay, 2012, 562). Innis viewed history in terms of change and returns to stability and equilibrium, while McLuhan viewed history as media as four distinct periods: the culture of orality, manuscript culture, the civilization of the printing press, and the civilization of electricity as detailed in his book //The Guttenberg Galaxy// (Strate, 2006, 28; Tremblay, 2012, 568). McLuhan was particularly interested in the method by which media was produced, be it the technology itself or the medium used, much like the German school of cultural thought (Trembly, 2012, 570).

James Carey built on the academic tradition of McLuhan and Innis, particular through his theory of transmission and ritual views of culture mirrored Innis’s theory of time and space biased media (Grossberg, 2010, 84). Carey posited that culture is either a way of transmitting or imparting information to others (transmission) or as a form of participating or sharing in society, for the maintenance of social structure (ritual) (Carey, 1988, 18). He argued that communication was a symbolic process by which reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed that also reshaped common culture (Carey, 1988, 35). Carey’s view of culture was dependent on history as context, and, like Herder, argued that it is pluralistic term (Grossberg, 2010, 77-78). Like McLuhan, he identifies a moment in time which changed the nature of how people understood communication and culture, but rather than the printing press or electricity, Carey argues that it is the invention of the telegraph (Carey, 1988, 203). In his seminal essay “Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph,” Carey discusses the creation of this technology a “watershed of communication,” wherein a person could send a message faster than they themselves could physically travel to that destination, and how it changed culture by changing temporal boundaries (Carey, 1988, 203-205).

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 * References**

Arnold, M. (1911). //Culture & Anarchy: an essay in political and social criticism//: MacMillan.

Bruford, Walter Horace. (1975) //The German tradition of self-cultivation: bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann.// London: Cambridge University Press.

Carey, J. W. (1988). //Communication as Culture: essays on media and society.// New York: Routledge.

Culture. (2015). The Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved (2015, July 28) from http://dictionary.oed.com

de Souza, M., & Mario T., L. (2006). Language, Culture, Multimodality, and Dialogic Emergence. //Language and Intercultural Communication, 6//(2), 107-112.

Grossberg, L. (2010). James W. Carey and The Conversation of Culture. In L. S. a. C. Christians (Ed.), //Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies// (pp. 73-87). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Hartley, J. (2011). //Communication, Cultural, and Media Studies// (4th ed.). London: Rutledge.

Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013). What Cultural, Critical and Communication Might Mean*And Why Cultural Studies Is a Bit Like Rave Culture. //Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 10//(2-3), 280-284.

Hobbes, Thomas, //Leviathan; or, the matter, form, and power of a common-wealth ecclesiastical and civil//, 1st edition, 1651 (1 vol.) London, Printed for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragon in St Pauls Church-Yard.

Jensen, J. (2010). Pop Culture: Asking the Right Questions. In L. S. a. C. Christians (Ed.), //Key Concepts in Critical Communications Studies// (pp. 88-102). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Schudson, M. (1990). Culture, Communication, and Carey: On the Relation of Technology and Culture in James Carey's Thought. //American Journalism, 7//(4), 233-241.

Steiner, L., & Christians, C. (2010). //Key concepts in critical cultural studies// University of Illinois Press.

Strate, L. (2006). Harold Innis and American Cultural Studies //Echoes & Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study// (pp. 27-30): Hampton Press.

Tell, D. (2013). Reinventing Walter Lippmann: Communication and Cultural Studies. //The Review of Communication, 13//(2), 108.

Tremblay, G. (2012). From Marshall McLuhan to Harold Innis, or From the Global Village to the World Empire. //Canadian Journal of Communication, 37//(4), 561-573.

von Bonsdorff, P. (2012). Aesthetics and Bildung. //Diogenes//, 59(1/2), 127-137.

Williams, R. (1958) //Culture and Society, 1780-1950//, New York: Columbia University Press.