CSBS 310 Culture

A History of Culture (or, A Story About Stories)

Lecture 1

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• Early Uses of Culture

• Early 19th-Century “Culture”

• Culture as civilization

• Culture as high art

• Late 19th-Century “Culture”

• Culture as a non-material realm of thinking and acting

• Marx’s use of “culture”

• 20th-Century “Culture”

• Emile Durkheim & Max Weber

• Culture as autonomous (and cultural researchers as value-neutral)

• Culture as Performance

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Cultura

• Latin: “Tend, care, cultivate” particularly in regard to agriculture

• “Cult” from Latin “cultus”: “care, labor, cultivation, worship”

• First used around 1500 as a metaphor for education: tending, caring for, cultivating the mind

• Both agriculture and worship are uniquely human actions, requiring knowledge and complex communication

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Early 19th-Century “Culture” • Culture was primarily identified with

“civilization”

- A “civilized” politics, religion, food, social interaction, architecture, landscape, art

- Refinement (intentionality, reason)

- Complexity (skilled technique, required a lot of background knowledge)

- Human/nature divide

- Non-European societies and lower-class Europeans were considered to be without culture and therefore uncivilized

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Early 19th-Century “Culture”

• Culture was further identified with a defining feature of civilization: art

• To be “cultured” meant to understand and discern high art

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Late 19th-Century “Culture”

• Scholars began to use “culture” to refer to a realm of ideas and actions informed by ideas

• Culture came to be synonymous with “world view”

• But it still allowed for “higher” and “lower” worldviews

Johann Gottfried Herder, 1744-1803

Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1767-1835

Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903

Edward Tyler, 1832-1917

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

• Karl Marx adopted this view of culture as a non- material realm of ideas and idea-inspired actions

• But for Marx, culture was determined by things he considered to be more fundamental: labor, material production, relationships between workers and owners

Late 19th-Century “Culture”: Karl Marx

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Late 19th-Century “Culture”

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

Late 19th-Century “Culture”: Marx

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Late 19th-Century “Culture”

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

Reflected the interests of the upper classes

Owned and controlled by the upper classes

Late 19th-Century “Culture”: Marx

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Late 19th-Century “Culture”

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

Makes the interests of the upper-classes seem natural and inevitable

Late 19th-Century “Culture”: Marx

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Late 19th-Century “Culture”

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

Makes the interests of the upper-classes seem natural and inevitable

Creates “false consciousness”: An acceptance of the dominant culture (which makes the lower classes happy with the system that keeps them poor and powerless).

Late 19th-Century “Culture”: Marx

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Late 19th-Century “Culture”: Marx

Superstructure Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

“Demystification”

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Marxian views of contemporary culture?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

Marxian/Materialist View of Culture

X CultureProduction Science Finance

Education

Politics

Durkheimian/Autonomous View of Culture

20th-Century “Culture”: Émile Durkheim

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material Production

Marxian/Materialist View of Culture

20th-Century “Culture”: Émile Durkheim

Culture is determined by the economy

What do we mean when we say “culture is autonomous”?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Culture

Production Science

Finance

Education

Politics

Durkheimian/Autonomous View of Culture

20th-Century “Culture”: Émile Durkheim

Culture is not completely determined by any one aspect of social life

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

20th-Century “Culture”: Émile Durkheim

Culture

Finance

Collective Conscience

Social Facts

Ritual

Sacred/ Profane

Social Solidarity

• Individuals do not exist in isolation; they are always inherently connected to a society

• They are connected through cultural representations (ideas and ideals, symbolic objects, ritual acts, stories)

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

20th-Century “Culture”: Émile Durkheim

Culture

Finance

Collective Conscience

Social Facts

Ritual

Sacred/ Profane

Social Solidarity

• “Collective Conscience”: “the body of beliefs and sentiments common to the average member of a society

• “Social Facts”: ways of thinking/ acting that are produced and restrained by the collective conscience

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

20th-Century “Culture”: Émile Durkheim

Culture

Finance

Collective Conscience

Social Facts

Ritual

Sacred/ Profane

Social Solidarity

• Culture is seen as a glue that holds society together

• Culture is made up of fundamental binaries (sacred/profane; clean/dirty; male/female) that allowed societies to order themselves

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

What would Durkheim say about Undercover Boss?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

20th-Century Culture: Max Weber

Art politics religion

entertainment

Material Production Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Superstructure

Base

Art politics religion

entertainment

Economy Finance

Agriculture Manufacturing

Material ProductionX Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

20th-Century Culture: Max Weber

Art politics religion

entertainment

Material Production Economy Agriculture

Manufacturing

Meaning

Access meaning through verstehen (understanding or interpretation):

This requires the observer to try to reconstruct the subjective meanings that influenced a

particular line of action

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

20th-Century Culture: Max Weber

• In order to understand any human action, cultural meaning must be understood

• Cultural meaning can only be understood through interpretation

- Descriptive understanding

- Explanatory understanding

Art politics religion

entertainment

Material Production Economy Agriculture

Manufacturing

Meaning through Verstehen

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

So, what exactly is culture?

Education/Cultivation?

Civilization?

Great art?

Worldview?

Superstructure?

Social glue?

Meaning?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Culture is both macro- and micro

• Durkheim: Culture was about macro social cohesion

• Weber: Culture was about meaning and verstehen; it was about subjective (micro) motivation for individuals

• Contemporary cultural research is concerned with combining macro- and micro- perspectives into a unifying concept of “cultural performance”

So, what exactly is culture?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Culture is a PERFORMANCE that allows us to understand and give

meaning to ourselves and the world

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Culture-as-performance allows us to keep in view the fact that culture is

both micro and macro...

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Performance

Cultural Binaries Background Scripts Narrative (story)

Enacting a piece of a larger story

Fundamental ideas that order humans’ relationship to each other and the world

Example: clean/dirty

masculine/feminine sacred/profane

Larger themes that relate back to more fundamental ideas

Example: Civilization Freedom Success

Stories that relate in simple

and complex ways to larger themes

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Background Culture (Stories, Themes,

Binaries)

What is performance? How does it work?

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

➫

Cultural Fusion

Interpretation

➫ Communication

➬ Psychological Identification

➬ Cathexis

Social Power

mise-en-scéne = “putting into place”

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Is performance real or fake?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Is performance real or fake?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Is performance real or fake?

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Background Culture (Stories, Themes,

Binaries)

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

mise-en-scéne = “putting into place”

Performances are neither real nor fake They are either successful (fused) or unsuccessful (de-fused)

Misinterpretation

Social Power

Miscommunication

Alienation/DistanceCynical/False/Inauthentic relation to background

culture

Cultural De-Fusion

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310

Background Culture (Stories, Themes,

Binaries)

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

mise-en-scéne = “putting into place”

Misinterpretation

Social Power

Miscommunication

Alienation/DistanceCynical/False/Inauthentic relation to background

culture

Cultural De-Fusion

In modernity, cultural performances are much more tenuous

Why?

In modern world, background cultures and audiences are extremely diverse

Eastern Washington University

CSBS 310