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Elements of a
Cultural Studies Approach
Production & Political Economic Analysis
Textual Analysis
Audience/Reception Analysis
Culture in Motion
Popular Culture Process
Production
Process
"encoding"
Text
or
"code"
Reception
Process
"decoding"
What is “culture”?
Culture is one of the most complex words in the
social theory.
For our purposes, we will emphasize culture as a
narrative process.
Definition: a culture consists of the collection of
stories people tell each other about the meanings
of their lives.
Keywords
in
Popular Culture Analysis
NOTE: Strangely enough, definitions are seldom
definitive.
Rather, almost any important word has multiple, often
conflicting definitions. These keywords will, along with
the “Glossaries” in our course texts represent “working
definitions” to give us a common vocabulary for
discussion.
text
Any unit of meaning isolated for
the purposes of cultural analysis.
The “text” in a given analysis could be a small as
a single image in one commercial, or as
large as a whole day of television programs.
Texts can include words, images, sounds, even touch, in
various combinations.
ideology
1. Consciously held and systematic political ideas.
2. Unconscious or hidden tendencies to offer a
viewpoint of that supports the self-interest of a particular
group of people Thus, the “ideology” of a “text” is its
unconscious or hidden political bias in favor of one
group over another.
ideological bias
All texts, whether intentionally or overtly political
or not, have built into them certain views
of how the world is or should be.
Those views are thus inherently “ideological,” not
simply neutral depictions or representations.
hegemony
The process through which elite or dominant groups
gain consent to their rule from subordinate social
groups without force or physical violence.
Usually this is done by convincing the subordinate
group that the dominant group “knows best” or is
acting in the best interests of the subordinate group.
Hegemony is largely an unconscious, social process, not
a conscious conspiracy.
hegemonic processes
Hegemony is often achieved through saturation. It is not
that alternatives to the “mainstream” do not exist, but rather
that they tend to drown in that main stream amidst so
many messages favorable to those with power (75 women’s
Fashion magazines on the rack, versus one or
two feminist ones).
Hegemony is never fully achieved, never complete,
always there is some resistance, some counter-hegemonic process. Sometimes the dominant forces use this
to their advantage by pointing to the freedom to dissent,
while continuing to control most institutions.
Myth
Repeated stories that take on a central
pattern of significance in a culture by linking
many smaller stories together
Myths are the narrative form of ideology, the
way ideology is turned into stories that are
taken for granted as truths about the culture
Myths are usually neither wholly“true” nor
wholly “false” but rather partial truths made
to seem like absolute ones
subculture
A “subculture” is a coherent, smaller collective within
a
A larger culture, be an ethnic subculture, a religious
One, an occupational one, or one based on media
consumption (fan subculture).
Some subcultures can be characterized as
“oppositional” or “alternatived” when they explicitly
or implicitly (often through style) challenge
mainstream cultural values, forms, ideas, or styles
encoding/codes/decoding
Encodings are the meanings made by the
producers of texts
Codes are the material “signs” present in a
a text.
Decodings are the meanings made by audiences
subject position
The socially structured positioning of an individual
vis-à-vis the wider culture according to the key variables.
Production side: the “ideal receiver” of a text “encoded”
into that text
Audience side: the “actual social position” through
which a text is “decoded”
Key social variables in popular
culture analysis
Social class
Race/ethnicity
Nationality/Region
Gender
Sexual orientation
Age
Political ideology
formation
A “formation” is a historically changing, but
relatively stable structure of practices and ideas
by which social categories of identity (racial,
gender, class, sexuality) come into being and
become dominant for a time.
The term formation, as we will be using it, was
first used in association with race as in “racial
formation” (Omi and Winant). We will generalize
this idea to talk about, gender formations, class
formations, as well as racial formations, among
others.
gender; sexism
The system of meanings and representations
attached in a given culture to sexed bodies as
fixed or “natural” identities
In U.S. cultural norms, gender is fixed as masculine
and feminine qualities attached to male
and female bodies
Sexism is the practice by which one gender is given
systematically greater social, economic and political
power.
race; racism
Race is a socially constructed category by
which certain physical characteristics common
to most members of a group are ascribed to all
members and given positive (racial supremacy)
or negative (racial degradation) social value.
Race is a biologically insignificant fact given
great social significance.
Racism is a power relationship by which racial
prejudice is systematically structured to the
advantage of one group and the disadvantage
of another.
Racism vs. prejudice
Where “prejudice” has to do with “attitudes,”
Racism exists when attitudes have been
Systematically structured into institutions
(political, economic, social, and cultural)
It is possible to have “racism” without “prejudice”
When a no longer attitudinally racist culture continues
To be shaped by racist structures and institutions.