Reading Philip Smith, Cultural Theory: An Introduction, (Blackwell Publishers 2001), I found some ideas which helped me make links. The following notes (which might seem quite simple to some) have helped me understand at least one view of how the word "culture" has evolved.
In English, Smith point out, from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the term culture applied widely to, "the improvement of the individual human mind and personal manners through learning" as it moved away from being a term largely used to refer to the "cultivation of crops and animals" (1). But, even as it began to refer to the idea of a person as "cultured" (having manners,) it moved on to refer to the "improvement of society as a whole," and culture became something of a "value-laden synonym for civilization" (1). So, as the term in English continued to evolve, it began to be used as a comparative term (unfortunately) being used to label (for example) a European nature as "cultured," compared to a society in another part of the globe as "barbaric." That comparison, Smith goes on to say, would have included differences between nations ranging from "technological" to "morals and manners" (1).
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As I read these ideas, I am drawn back into the studies I have conducted in a high school classroom asking students to identify their own cultures, their diversity, their identities. As I introduce pieces of literature into the high school classroom- literature which will take students into multiple cultures - I am trying to broaden my own understanding of how, for example, some of the Western authors who are part of the literary canon commonly studied in high schools across the United States, were able to label (and dismiss) "other" cultures as "inferior to." Since I teach in an ethnically undiverse setting in southern Minnesota, I have decided that I need to embrace the concept of difference by trying to get the students to unlock the many ways in which their identities are very different from each other "culturally."But, I do not want to digress too far into that at this time...I only want to mention it and make the link.
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Back to Smith's tracing of the evolution of the term culture... he goes on to cite the rise of Romanticism in the Industrial Revolution, and proffers the idea that "culture began to be used to designate spiritual development alone and to contrast this with material and infrastructural change....(and) along with Romantic nationalism in the late nineteenth century, there came inflections which accented tradition and everydane life as dimensions of culture (folk culture, national culture)" (2). Then, Smith gets to Raymond Wilson's (1976) suggestion that this history (summarized above from Smith's tracings) of how the word "culture" came to be identified are "dimly reflected in the three current uses of the term 'culture'" (2).
"...to refer to the intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development of an individual, group, or society."
"...to capture a range of intellectual and artistic activities and their products (film, art, theatre)...in this usage culture is more or less synonymous with "the Arts," (allowing us to refer to a "Minister of Culture,")..."
:...to designate the entire way of life, activities, beliefs, and customs of a people, group, or society" (2).
Smith goes on to offer, in Chapter One, "Introduction: What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory," some analysis of the work of anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) who documented multiple definitions of culture. Smith takes a sampling of their many categories of "culture" definitions and boils it down to his ideas about how our understanding of "culture" has shifted in the past fifty years "within the field of cultural study" (3). Smith offers these ideas:
"Culture tends to be opposed to the material, technological, and social structural...there may be complex empirical relations between them...(but) we need to understand culture as something distinctive from...an entire 'way of life'" (3-4).
"Culture is seen as the realm of the ideal, the spiritual, and the non-material....It is understood as the patterned sphere of beliefs, values, symbols, signs, and discourses" (4).
"Emphasis is placed on the 'autonomy of culture'....it cannot be explained (only) as economic forces, distributions of power, or social structural needs" (4).
"Efforts are made to remain value-neutral....The study of culture is not restricted to the Arts, but rather is understood to pervade all aspects and levels of social life. Ideas of cultural superiority and inferiority play almost no place in contemporary academic study" (4).
Smith concludes his groundwork chapter by saying talking about "action, agency, self." He writes, "The connection between culture and the individual is what is at stake here. The most critical issue concerns the ways in which culture shapes human action" (5).
I found reading Smith helped me get an idea about how this term (which he calls one of the most complex) has been understood historically, is understood by historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, and others.
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I suspect that Bourdieu's ideas about power, language, and violence, and Foucault's ideas about discipline, punishment, and power will build my understanding about how those two philosophers saw culture shaping human action.
And now, before leaving Smith, I want to include some more notes from Smith's chapters (same book) which deal with postmodern and poststructural theory because I have found that reading helpful in my (current) classroom. I don't know that the following notes will be particularly useful to others in the class, but I want to include them as helpful definitions / theories for myself in this course and in my literature classroom.
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In Chapter Thirteen ("The Cultrual Analysis of Postmodernism and Postmodernity,") of the aforementioned text, Cultural Theory: An Introduction, Smith sets out to help his reader understand that the theory of "postmodernism" as one of the most highly tied to "anxiety and controversy" in cultural theory (214). Then, he offers what I found to be a helpful list of what Smith calls, "...some of the qualities of postmodern culture and postmodern society on which everyone seems to agree, regardless of their particular explanations and discussions" (215).
And, he references Zygmunt Bauman, John Frow, Dick Hebdige, and Scott Lask as he offers his list...(215).
1) "Culture and the mass media have become more powerful and important in social life than previously."
2) "Economic and social life revolve around the consumption of symbols and lifestyles, rather than the production of goods through industrial labor."
3) "Ideas about reality and its representation are made problematic.
4) "Image and space have replaced narrative and history as organizing principles of cultural production."
5) "Stylistic features like parody, pastiche, irony, and pop eclecticism become more prevalent."
6) "A consumption[based ctyscape dominates urgan form. Rather than being organized around economic production, this has as its central dynamic the provision of entertainment, leisure, and lifestyle services. Shopping malls, pleasure parks, and themed residential complexes are examples of this."
7) "Hybridity comes to replace rigid boundaries and classifications." (More to follow from Chapter Fourteen on hybridity.)
In Chapter Fourteen, "Postmodern and Poststructural Critical Theory," Smith introduces a section entitled, "The Analysis of Identify and Difference." Smith cites Cornel West (1994) who argues that we should engage in a "new, cultural politics of difference." Although I am slimming these ideas down (perhaps too much) I believe that what Smith is getting at is embedded in these words: "Over recent years the study of identity and difference has become a crucial hallmark of thinkers influenced by postmodern and poststructural theory. 'Identity' refers to who people think they are, either individually or collectively, and the ways that this is culturally constructed. Ideas about 'difference' try to capture the diversity of forms of human identity and experience" (241). Smith goes on to discuss ideas from Homi Bhabha and Edward Said regarding their writing about colonialism and postcolonialism. Smith says, "Like other postcolonial theorists, Bhabha sees difference, ambivalence, and hybridity as powerful tools for combating dominant discourses and structures of power. It is the last of these that he hints is the most potent. Rather than simply setting up an alternative discourse which affirms difference, hybridity works to transgress existing discourses and reveal the imcomplete and contingent nature of nationalist ideologies" (243). He goes on to use (what I find to be) powerful example of this in explaining why ( in a study of the Harlem Renaissance by Houston Baker) Baker explains why he thinks that movement was misunderstood (or rather) inaccurately articulated (244).
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Notes in this posting were drawn (and cited) largely from the following source:
Smith, Philip. Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell
Publishers, 2001.
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