Hum 101W Notes

Intro ppt:

 Central focus: culture

o How relationships with society & culture define us
o Culture and social hierarchies
o Why do we seek to belong to groups
o Making sense of the past through heritage and tradition
o Cultural conformity and resistance
o Culture, coexistence and conflict
 Culture (by Roman orator Cicero): meant the highest possible ideal for human
development
o Culture is now used more expansively with most aspects of human & social
creativity
o It describes how we pursue endeavours, who we are, where we come from and
what we aspire to be
 Samuel von Pufendorf: philosophy is one of the many things through which human
beings go beyond their animal state and become truly human
 Food: symbolic act that links individuals with their personal family history, boosts social
bonding

Week 2 Culture & cultures

 Focus on “Culture is Ordinary” by Raymond Williams

o Explore meaning of the term “culture”
o Unpack different politics behind word “culture”
 “Culture” with a capital C
o Matthew Arnold—leading elitist school figure: culture is a study in perfection, as
sweetness & light
 o Culture was a state of refinement, of detaching oneself from the daily struggle to
survive &creating, or appreciating the products of refined, artistic & cultural
labour
o Cultivation of the soul
 What makes up Culture?
o Art, music, literature, performing arts …
 Culture: from outside & from below
o Often it’s used to distinguish those “possessing” it to those who don’t from below
o Nazi leaders: when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”
 Raymond Williams
o “it is the product of our everyday life”
o “culture is ordinary…every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its
own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts
and learning. The making of society is the finding of common meanings and
directions.”
o His 2 understandings of culture
 It’s not the property of the elites or intellectuals
 It’s practiced and lived everywhere
 Lived culture

Vs.

 Culture is all forms of signification—ways we produce meaning (novels,

films, theatre, art, TV, digital & online production)
 Democratization of culture
o “acting as if it were one of the older and more respectable departments, was a
different matter. Here was culture, not in any sense I knew, but in a special sense:
the outward and emphatically visible sign of a special kind of people, cultivated
people. They were not, the great majority of them, particularly learned; they
practised few arts; but they had it, and they showed you they had it”
o Critiques its use as a means of social distinction and establishment of hierarchies
 Anthropology & ethnography (study of ‘primitive’ societies)
 o E.B.Tylor (Victorian anthropologist): primitive culture is not really primitive. We
should appreciate the real culture which better acquaintance always shows among
the rudest tribes of man (referring to Aboriginal peoples)
o “a distinct way of life” (knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society)
 Elite culture
o It often appears “natural”
o Pierre Bourdieu’s 1984 discussion of ‘cultural capital & habitus’
o Elites learn from early age of etiquette & refined taste and later in life, the shaping
& nurturing of their habitus continues through attending events such as the opera,
theatre, elite sports etc
 Concluding
o Culture is malleable
o Not neutral
o Artificial differentiation of types of human creativity
o Used to establish social distinction & hierarchies
o Inherently political

Week 3 Popular Cultures

Discussion—folk art/culture

Fok culture are cultural traditions that are done at a local level and derived from longstanding
cultural practices. It’s separated from popular and high culture by its traditional and localized
nature (Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism)

 Popular culture as folk culture

o Modernity: people enter politics
o Romanticism: roaming the countryside in search of the people (folk), of
authenticity
 o Popular culture becomes high culture: The popular ballad is rescued from the
hands of the vulgar, to obtain a place in the collection of the man of taste
 The people & the mass psych of the crowd
o Gustave Le Bon: Outline of Crowd Psychology emphasizes the crowd’s
tendencies reinforced during mass action—incapacity to reason, absence of
judgement of the critical spirit, openness to suggestion, exaggeration of the
sentiments good/bad, manifestation of certain forms of morality
 Critique of mass culture
o Dwight Macdonald’s 1957 book “The Responsibility of Peoples & Other Essays
in Political Criticism”
o Diff. between folk art, high/mass culture
o Folk art: created by ordinary people, emerging spontaneously within communities
in preindustrial societies. It was common & produced no great artistic works but
was created from below & reflected the needs of communities & so was authentic
o High culture: produced by great individuals; appreciated mainly by an elite
minority who had the capacity to appreciate such works
o Mass culture: standardised, formulaic, mass produced cultural products designed
to be entertaining & simplistic so that it will be consumed by a mass audience
 Mass culture
o Produced by companies for profit, simple design to appeal to general public
o Lacks authenticity found in folk art or value of high culture
o Cons:
 Erosion of high culture: theatre—cinema, literature—mass consumed
novels
 Alienation & manipulation
 Critique of mass culture—Theodor Adorno
o Popular culture, as well as being a source of pleasure, is also a kind of training; it
reinforces, certain patterns of though & self-understanding that harm our ability to
live as truly free people. Through its predictability
 o At start of a film, you can predict fate of characters. You can always anticipate the
next chorus in a song
 Concluding
o Culture is complex
o Domination & resistance
o Mass culture is only one facet of cultural ecologies
o Need to develop critical reflexes in our study of culture

Week 5 Who are We? Nation, ethnicity, race, gender & sexuality

 We as Nation
o From empire to nation (nationalism)
o Mass schooling
o National standing armies
 The birth of a the Nation
o Notion of the folk or people
o Print capitalism
o Industrialization
 Nation as socially/culturally constructed
o Imagined community
o Imagined & real: oscillating between national identities
o People invest in the existence of their nation (patriotism) –reinforced through
everyday settings eg. The news
 Nation & its others
o Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine
o Minorities
o Otherothers –sexuality, gender, identity
 Race has no bio/genetic/scientific basis, but racial identity is very real
o Implicated in establishing & justifying systems of power, privilege, & oppression
 o Racial identity is externally imposed: how do others perceive me, how do I
identify myself?
 Race constructed from outside through
o Individual racism: believing in superiority of a group
o Interpersonal racism: public expressions of racism (slurs)
o Institutional racism: policies & practices that give unfair advantages to certain
groups
o Structural racism: racial bias across institutions (stereotyping POC as criminals in
mainstream media)
 Gender & culture
o Social construction of gender
o Fixed gender roles: barbie, Disney princesses
o Binary gender & sexuality system
o Rights and legislation
o Workplace roles
o Stereotyping masculinity & femininity through culture
 Intersections between gender, sexuality, nation, race
o Femonationalism
o Nazi Germany prisoner classification chart
o There was a broad range of gender + erotic diversity in First Nations communities
before European contact
o Racist, patriarchal and heterosexist knowledges used to regulate those preferring
same-sex intimacies
o Construction of shame, abnormality, degeneracy
 Concluding
o Culture crucial in the social construction of categories such as nation, race, gender
and sexuality
o Mobilizing difference & establishing inequalities