Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies

A cultural study is an academic work that is studied within the arts, social sciences, the humanities and science and technology (Sardar and Loon, 2005). There are numerous way culture is seen, and one of them is seen to be a type of a social behavior. According to Wendy Grisworld (1994), when sociologists talks about culture it usually means four things, which consists of norms, values, beliefs or expressive symbols. Norms is define as a way a person behaves in a particular society, values on the other hand is what the people is a belief that they think is valuable to them, beliefs is how they think the world operates, and lastly expressive symbols are representations.

Visual culture, is important because it is a study of a society, group or community share the same practices in which meanings and messages are made out through visual and textual world of representations, and the way in which is engaged though communicative and symbolic activities. Here is an example of a society of Harry Potter fans, which can be seen as a culture of its own.

Sir E.B Tylor an anthropologist however define culture as something that is complex which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquire by man as a member of society (Sardar and Look, 2005).

To understand cultural studies further, the major concept in cultural studies is that of signs, which consists of a signifier and the signified. This is important in cultural studies because language is a cultural phenomenon, which produces meaning by a system of relationships, by having a network where there are similarities and differences. For example, the way a person eat or dress or communicate between one another, can be studied as signs, in which is the key to understand social life.

Durkheim too, saw the society as a structured system which consists of institutions, established pattern of behavior and a shared language which shapes our lives ( Billington et al, 1991).

Culture as a representation and a discourse

Discourses are dialogues that varies according to the kinds of social institutions and practices in which they take place (Billington et al, 1991). Words and expressions that are used, where their meanings alter from one discourse to another in relation to what social positions of those who are using them.

Stuart hall sees, representation as something that always involves ideology, ideology are images, concept and premises that provides the framework through which a culture represent, interpret, understand and make sense of come aspect of social existence (Griffin, 2009), it is a study field that requires, encoding and decoding of socio-cultural rules.

To conclude, it should be understood that there are many meaning for culture. The main focus of cultural studies in this post is on visual cultural studies where the media culture communicates its information through their medium. Discourse understood as a cultural framework, where we understand discourses through our understand of its representation.

Understanding theory with the use of a media text

Discourse: Sleeping Beauty

Ideologies: The woman looks beautiful, the prince charming saves the women, heterosexual relationship, true love is god sent.

Politics: politics of gender relations, politics of gender masculinity and feminity, politics of social classes.

Reference:

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory (7^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill

Grisworld, W. (2006) Culture and Societies in A Changing World. (3rd ed.). USA: Pine Forge Press

Sardar, Z., & Loon, B., V. (2005). Introducing cultural studies: A Graphic Guide. Cambridge: Totem Books. Available from Ebrary.