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The History of Culture

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Culture as romantic critique of modernity. Culture as different ways of life ... Romantic culture. Reaction to. Enlightenment. Modernity. Capitalism ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The History of Culture


1
Lecture 1
  • The History of Culture

2
Theorists of the culture concept
  • Raymond Williams
  • (Marxism and Literature 1977 Keywords 1976)
  • Terry Eagleton
  • (The Idea of Culture 2000)
  • Homi Bhabha
  • (The Location of Culture 1994)
  • Chris Jenks (Culture 1993)
  • Adam Kuper (Culture the anthropologists account
    1999)

3
The Concept of Culture
  • What is the history (genealogy) of the concept of
    culture?
  • What kind of meanings does it carry?
  • Why is it so complex?
  • What is the relation between culture as a concept
    and the kinds of things we tend to denote as
    cultural?

4
Culture
  • one of the two or three most complicated words in
    the English language (Raymond Williams, Keywords,
    1976)
  • a concept-metaphor (catachresis)

5
Raymond Williams
  • At the very centre of a major area of modern
    thought and practice is a concept, culture,
    which in itself, through variation and
    complication, embodies not only the issues but
    the contradictions through which it has
    developed.
  • Keywords

6
CULTURECULTIVATION
  • derives from nature Latin root colere, means to
    cultivate (crops, animals, and the mind)
  • Horticulture
  • Agriculture
  • manurance of the mind
    Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

7
Enlightenment
  • Crucial period (18th century)
  • Reason as basis for authority
  • Scientific method
  • Mechanistic science of man
  • August Comte (1798-1857) sociology
  • Nation building, government, legal rights (Thomas
    Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791)
  • Decline in traditional authority
  • Industrial society

8
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9
Three meanings of the term Culture
  • Culture as the ideal
  • Culture as romantic critique of modernity
  • Culture as different ways of life

10
Culture as the Ideal Culture as Quality
  • Enlightenment idea of progress
  • Human perfectibility
  • Idea of civilisation
  • Culture as quality
  • Quality minds and the quality of things

11
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12
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13
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14
Romantic culture
  • Reaction to
  • Enlightenment
  • Modernity
  • Capitalism
  • Industrialism
  • Appeal to
  • emotions and aesthetic feeling
  • Expressions of love, appreciation of nature

15
Culture as the critique of modernity
16
I Got Plenty of Nothing
  • Oh, I got plenty o nut-tin
  • An nut-tin s plenty for me
  • I got no car, got no mule,
  • I got no misery.
  • De folks wid plen-ty o plenty
  • Got a lock on dey door
  • While deys out a-mak-in more
  • What for?
  • Porgy and Bess

17
I wish I was a punk rocker
  • I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my
    hair
  • In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
  • I was born too late into a world that doesnt
    care
  • I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my
    hair
  • When the head of state didnt play guitar
  • Not everybody drove a car
  • When music really mattered and when radio was
    king
  • When accountants didnt have control
  • And the media couldnt buy your soulAnd
    computers were still scary and we didnt know
    everything
  • When pop stars still remained a myth
  • And ignorance could still be bliss and when god
    saved the queen she turned a whiter shade of pale
  • My mom and dad were in their tens
  • And the only way to stay in touch was a letter in
    the mail
  • I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my
    hair

18
Culture as Different Ways of Life
  • Also a reaction to civilisation
  • Colonial encounter
  • Own language, customs, ideas, values
  • Make sense on their own terms

19
Diversity of human groups
  • relativism
  • Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803)
  • Emphasis on meaning, often with a focus on
    language
  • structuralism
  • anthropology as an interpretive quest
  • Clifford Geertz and thick description

20
First contact
  • What is the fascination of first contact?

21
Conclusion
  • 3 facets of the culture concept
  • All feed of and yet contradict each other
  • All engage at some level and in some way with
    nature
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