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NPOV Cultural studies combines sociology, social theory, literary theory, film theoryfilm/video studies, and cultural anthropology to study culture cultural phenomena in industrial societyindustrial societies. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, social class, and/or gender.Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday personal life life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. Particular meanings attach to the ways people in particular cultures do things.In a loosely related but separate usage, the phrase cultural studies sometimes serves as a rough synonym for area studies, as a general term referring to the academic study of particular cultures in departments and programs such as Islamic studies, Asian studies, African American studies, African studies, ''et al.''.
Overview - In his book ''Introducing Cultural Studies'', Ziauddin Sardar lists the following five main characteristics of cultural studies:Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power (sociology) power. It has the objective of understanding culture in all its complex forms and of analysing the social and political context in which culture manifests itself.It is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action.It attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit (cultural knowledge) and objective (universal) forms of knowledge.It has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society and to a radicalism radical line of political action.
Approaches - Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field's inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies was developed in the 1960s mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)Stuart Hall at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political, Left-wing politicsleft-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as 'capitalist' mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. In contrast, the American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. See the writings of critics such as John Guillory. The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded.Some scholars, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the ''production'' of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, those who control the means of production (the economic ''base'') essentially control a culture.Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this rigidly deterministic view. They criticise the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product.Another major point of criticism involved the traditional view assuming a passive consumer. Other views challenge this, particularly by underlining the different ways people ''read'', receive, and interpret cultural texts. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively reject, or challenge the meaning of a product. These different approaches have shifted the focus away from the ''production'' of items. Instead, they argue that ''consumption'' plays an equally important role, since the way consumers consume a product gives meaning to an item. Some closely link the act of consuming with identity. Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)Stuart Hall has become influential in these developments. Some commentators have described the shift towards meaning as the ''cultural turn''.In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a ''text'' not only includes written language, but also films, photography photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of "culture". "Culture" for a cultural studies researcher not only includes traditional high culture and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies.
Compare - culture, cultural history, cultural identity, culture theory, cultural critic.
See also - popular culture, popular culture studies, subculture postmodernism, queer theory, gender studies, orientalism, critical theory, feminism, semiotics, social constructionalism, new musicology, Roland Barthes' !''Mythologies''.Category:Cultu ral? studiesCategory:Social philosophyes:Estudios culturalesde:cultural !studieszh:文化 740;究
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Websites
ISNM International School of New Media at the University of Lübeck
The ISNM offers a unique interdisciplinary Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Digital Media program, which combines information technology and computer science with natural sciences, economics, arts, humanities, social and applied sciences. The internationally accredited program is entirely conducted in English. It focuses on the latest trends of digital media technology and their sustainable use in a global context.
http://www.isnm.de
Textem
Kulturmagazin und Verlag
http://www.textem.de/
PopCultures.Com
Links to other sites related to popular culture analysis, cultural studies and mass media theory.
http://www.popcultures.com/
The English Server
Includes a variety of literature-related materials, including etext archives of prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction; links.
http://eserver.org/
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