Hello readers !
Welcome to my world.
Each and every society have their own culture. Every society followed some kind of rules and regulations. Like how to live life, what to eat, what to wear, how to wear, how to behave etc: We also mentioned one thing is that cultural studies is not about praising particular Culture but it is thinking critically towards Culture.
In a way culture is bounding us for various things like you don't eat this food, you don't think in this way, don't wear particular type of clothes, follow the rules made by culture. Among all the things Culture are interesting and beautiful thing or ritual. Sometimes culture became helpful for humanity. If we think about what is the thing ? that make a difference between human being and animal. Then we can say that human being have culture and that is the superiority of human being. And that is the difference between Man and animal.
★ What is Culture ?
The word "culture" derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin "colere," which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture. "It shares its etymology with a number of other words related to actively fostering growth," De Rossi said.
Culture is the characteristic and knowledge of a particular group of people encompassing language, social habits,arts and music. "Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, our marriage system, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones, and many more things,".
In simple words we can say that Culture is a word for the 'way of life' of groups of people, meaning the way they do things.
★ What is Cultural studies :
To define " cultural studies" is very hard. In the summer of 1983, the Jamaican scholar Stuart Hall, who lived and taught in England, travelled to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to deliver a series of lectures on something called “Cultural Studies.” This way cultural studies started.
As Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out , cultural studies is not ' a tightly coherent, unified movement with fixed agenda' but a ' loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues and questions'.
If we look at for main aims and characteristic of the culture studies are here : In the book "Introducing Cultural studies" by Ziauddin Sardar (1994)
In this book we find five characteristics of cultural studies. That is given below :
- The aim of cultural studies is to examine cultural practices and their relation to power.
- The objective of cultural studies includes understanding culture in all its complex forms and analyzing the social and political context in which culture manifests.
- Cultural studies is a site of both study/analysis and political criticism/action.
- Cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile constructed divisions of knowledge that purport to be grounded in nature.
- Cultural studies has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political action.
★ Four Goals of Cultural studies :
How is understanding " power " at the center of cultural studies ?
There are connections between power and culture. Cultural issues and the themes are mediated through with the question of profit ( economic) and power ( politics). Culture is therefore about power.
Power plays a vital role in democracy, that through the definition of the power is changed. There are six types of Civic force of power.
Physical force, Wealth, State action, Social power,deals and Number.
If these six elements mingling then those who get powerful positions, who feel like a king.
There is a noticeable thing that power is always changing, not static. It keeps shifting. Power is like water. Another thing is that power compound.
So that all the things through we can read the power properly. Just read the power that is not important but how you interpret it the opposite way that is major things. After reading to write about it that is also needed. For example if one person who got the power and then increases the power more and more then that is highly problematic for democracy. Because that is the situation that brings us in dangerous parts of the time.
If we look at our democracy's definition then we find : democracy means of the people , for the people and by the people. But that is not in reality. In reality the words are slightly changed.
Of - cut off the people
For - that is only for four people who support the power.
By - In reality not 'by' the people but that is 'buy' the people.
For the reference of this concept I would recall here the quote from George Orwell. In the 'Animal Farm'. That is
" All are equal but some are more equal than others"
This sentence is fairly connected with the concept of power.
Thank you ….
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