Term
| Arnolds Definition of Culture |
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Definition
1. The Best that has been said and thought in the world.
2. Being able to recognize the best.
3. The application of moral and spiritual perfection.
4. The drive towards seeking perfection |
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Definition
-education will teach the working class to obey social order
-keep them complacent and obedient within their roles as working people
-natural selection: people are genetically predisposed to belong in a higher class
-"education is the road to culture" |
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Definition
-politicization of the working class would stem the degradation of cultural and social values
-loss of an organic community due to mass media
-mass media: appeals to lowest common denominator, masturabitory, pale substitute to real life, addicting
-public must be educated to discern popular culture from real culture |
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Definition
| -our communication is not institutionalized |
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Term
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Definition
-democratized culture
-culture is more than just the artifacts
-you can't understand culture just by looking at an object in the present
-culture is the lived experience of people in their everyday life
-culture is made of process and practices, not just artifacts
-debunks Arnold and Leavis's high and low cultural theories |
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Definition
-worried that mass produced culture would replace the organic
-but also believed the working class could exist |
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Term
| Williams Culture Definition |
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Definition
The ‘ideal’ àA culture is a state or process of human perfection in terms of absolute or universal values
2) The ‘documentary’ record surviving texts and practices of a culture àCulture is the body of intellectual
and imaginative work, in a detailed way, human thought and experience are variously record
3) The ‘social’ definition of culture: a particular way of life |
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Term
| Meaning of the word culture through history |
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Definition
The meanings of the word ‘culture’ through history
1) The highest achievement of humans: Arnold and Leavis
2) Art and symbolic practices –“High” art
3) Based on notions of nurturance and preservation; culture is something acquired
4) Anthropological definition: a whole way of life |
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Term
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Definition
-The shared values, common set of perceptions of a particular group, class, or society
-Different groups work out ways to explain the contradictions and difficulties of the world to themselves and
express them through cultural forms
-These forms will express their shared ‘structure of feeling’
-Most often below the surface of consciousness
-The “affect” –Emotion |
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Definition
-What we are given as ‘culture’ have always been through some prior process of selection
-Gatekeepers of culture: curators, festival admins, art funders, governments, publishers, media conglomerates, etc
-Often these groups will reflect the interests of those who hold political power
-Who or what sets of interests “authorizes” these gatekeepers?
-Williams against gatekeepers, wants all to contribute, Leavis and Arnold for them |
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