Cultural Studies - It's Origin and Concept

Paper: Cultural Studies
Topic: Cultural Studies – Its origin and Concept
Prepared by: Avani N. Dave
M.A. - SEM – 2
Roll No: 02
Date: 18/03/'13
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumar Sinhji
Bhavnagar University

Cultural Studies

           Cultural  studies is an academic field of critical theory and Literary Criticism initially introduced by British academics in 1964 and subsequently adopted by allied academics throughout the world. Characteristically interdisciplinary, cultural studies is an academic discipline aiding cultural researchers who theorize about the forces from which the whole of humankind construct their daily lives. Cultural Studies is not a unified theory, but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches, methods and academic perspectives. Distinct from the breadth, objective and methodology of cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, cultural studies is focused upon the political dynamics of contemporary culture and its historical foundations, conflicts and defining traits. Researchers concentrate on how a particular medium or message relates to ideology, social class, nationality ethnicity, sexuality and/or gender, rather than providing an encyclopedic identification, categorization or definition of a particular culture or area of the world.

                                         Cultural studies combines feminist theory, social theory, political theory, history, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, communication studies, political studies, economy   , translation studies, museum studies to study cultural phenomena in various societies. Thus, cultural studies seek to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a given culture. The influential theories of cultural hegemony and agency have emerged from the cultural studies movement as well as the most recent communications theory, which attempts to explain the cultural forces behind globalization. Unique academic approaches to cultural studies have also emerged in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Italy.

                                            During the 1980s rise of neo-liberalism in Britain and the new conservatism  in America, cultural studies was beset with criticism from both outside political and inside academic forces, due to the close alliance between many cultural studies scholars and Marxist theory, left-wing politics and perceived "triumphalism" by other established scholars. Opposition to cultural studies was most dramatically demonstrated with the 2002 closing of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, UK. CCCS was considered the founding academic program for cultural studies in the world, and was closed due to the result of the Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher led UK Government of 1986, that determined research funding for university programs. While many 21st century opponents continue to view the discipline as "irrelevant," the field has a world-wide presence consisting of numerous annual international conferences, academic programs, publications, students and practitioners, from Taiwan to Amsterdam and from Bangalore to Santa Cruz

Origins

                   The growth of cultural studies is linked to the rise in interest in popular culture in western societies in the 1960s. more leisure time wide spread television viewing music and other cultural status especially among the youth brought popular culture to the for fount of cultural    scrutiny within the academy cultural anthropologist, sociologist and historians were beginning to express greater interest in social history. Especially those of the subordinated groups such as women. African, Americans and the colonized. The work of the Birmingham school of [BCCS, see below] focused on,

·       Working class and dissident youth populations

(Willis 1978, hall and Jefferson 1976, )

·       Television personalities

·       Audiences ( Morley, 1980 )

                     The tone of this early version of cultural studies was set by student of the British new left. Especially Richard haggard and Raymond Williams both of whom had working class backgrounds such student with working class backgrounds carried their own cultures into their interpretation and found that their culture had no role in the literary studies programs at oxford or Cambridge. The emphasis on high culture ( the elite ) meant a creation, alienation for  these students.

                         Further (in Britain) labor union feminist and anti racist movements continued the 1970s. there was some nostalgia for the student radicalism of the 1960s which had thrown up a range of new movements, and cultural identities. Gay, race based feminist, and so on. The aim was to politicize specific identities but such radicalism had no academic attention anymore. The quest thus concretized into a study of youth subculture as the site of a new political future. Culture, especially popular culture, became the scene of struggle. Cultural studies sought, in the tradition of subculture studies and the movements of the 1960s and 70s, to detect and theorized ‘agency’ among these ‘identities (gay, woman and others)

Birmingham centre for contemporary cultural studies and Stuart hall.

                        The work of Raymond Williams influenced the projects and approaches of the BCCS in the 1970s. The approaches of the was clearly Marxist, and it adapted theoretical insights from post structuralism to develop cultural studies. The early approaches took the debate in the direction of textuality, were ‘culture’ , ‘identity’ and even the nation  were seen as texts and narratives.

                        Between 1982 and 1987 the open university (U.K.) offered a one-year interdisciplinary course, u203. This u203 was a course on ‘popular culture’. More than 5000 students took the course until it was terminated in 1987. The course was directed by Tony Bennett and evaluated by Terry Eagleton, Raymond Williams and others.

                      The course stated aim was to ‘interrogate critically the part that popular culture plays within your life’ (Qtd: in East hope 1991:74) ‘the distinction plays within your life’. Between ‘high’ and ‘ low’ culture was untenable, and one needed to see this evaluative judgment as driven by the need to obtained and retain power by the dominant classes. Stuart Hall’s 1980 essay, cultural studies: two paradigms’ (represented in the course reader culture, ideology and social process, 1981) set the tone for the interrogation of the above constitutive and culturally expressive subjects and expression are both determined by structures of social signification. This structure is ‘ hegemony’: the ideological structure that enables the dominant classes to legitimize, naturalize and retain power with this u203’s emphasis on the culture power link emerges clearly, an emphasis that has been retained in the cultural studies approaches even today.

                          Stuart Hall’s work has been a trendsetter in cultural studies and inaugurated in the field in Britain. Hall’s early essay, ‘Encoding/Decoding’ (first published in 1973) set the scene for cultural studies of the media (his work on ideology, cultural identity and others are discussed in subsequent chapters.) The essay argued that meanings within texts, songs, paintings, television soaps are organized through the operation of certain ‘codes’. Hall argues that the apparatuses, relations and practices of production appear as symbolic vehicles within language.

                    

 Concept of Cultural Studies :

       

                        The word “culture” itself is so difficult to pin down, “Cultural studies” is hard to define. As was also the case in chapter 8 with Elaine Showalter’s “Culture” model of feminine difference, “cultural studies” is not so much a discrete approach at all but rather a set of practices. As Patrick Bran linger has pointed out, cultural studies is not “a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda”, but a “loosely Coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda.” But a “loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions.” That is also study of human culture race for example, drawing from Roland Barthes on the nature of literary language and Claude Levi-Strauss on anthropology cultural studies was influenced by structuralism and post structuralism.

                     

                    

                         The discipline of psychology has also entered the field of cultural studies. For example, Jacques Lucan’s psychoanalytic the theory of the unconscious structured as a language promoted emphasis upon language and power as symbolic systems. From Michel Foucault came the notion that power is a whole complex of forces; it is that which produces what happens. A tyrannical aristocrat does not   just independently wield power but is empowered by “discourses” – accepted ways of thinking, writing and speaking, and practices that embody exercise, and amount to power from punishment to sexual mores, Foucault’s “genealogy” of topics includes many things excluded by traditional blueprints for prisons to memoirs of “deviants” , “ psychoanalytic, structuralist and post-structuralist approaches are treated elsewhere in this handbook ; in the present chapter, we review ‘cultural studies’ connections with Marxism, the new historicism, multiculturalism, post modernism, popular culture, and post colonial studies before moving on the group of six literary works.

·       Why study Cultural study?

There are four goals of cultural studies

1.  Inter discipline

2.  Politically engaged

3.  High and low culture

4.  Means of production

·       Conclusion:

       

Thus, cultural studies is a new concept of literary criticism. It defines the literary criticism on the base of culture. Generally everything of literature affects and is affected by culture. So cultural studies is the study of literature keeping the cultural aspects in focus.

Shri Aurobindo's views on Education

Paper Name    :-  Indian Writing in English

Name               :-  Avani N. Dave

Roll No.           :-  2 

Semester         :- M.A- 1

Topic               : - “Shri Aurobindo's views on
                              Education"

Date                 :-  17 /10/12

Year                :-  2012-2013

Submitted to   :- Heenaba Zala

                          Department of English,

                            Bhavnagar University.

                              Before knowing Shri Aurobindo’s views on Education, The Basic Concept of Education is as under.

The Concepts of Education as given by prominent Indian educationists are as follows.

Rigved: "Education is something which makes man self-reliant and selfless".

 Panini: "Human education means the training which one gets from nature".

 Vivekanand: “Education is the manifestation of the divine perfection, already existing  in man."

Tagore: "The widest road leading to the solution of all our problems is education."

Sri Aurobindo: "Education which will offer the tools whereby one can live for the  divine, for the country, for oneself and for others and this must be the ideal of every school which calls itself national".

Meaning:

According to some learned people, the word "Education" has been derived from the Latin term "Educatum" which means the act of teaching or training. A group of educationists say that it has come from another Latin word "Educare" which means "to bring up" or "to raise".

Sri Aurobiondo’s views on Education :-

                  

                                Sir aurobindo always laid great stress on education. He himself had the best education while in Cambridge, and between 1897 and 1906, was a professor in the Bengal National College. So he knew the question in depth. And he had hopes in the young. He trusted that youth can give their good contribution in rebuilding the nation. Sir Auribindo never tired of calling for what he termed “ a national education”. He gave his brief definition for it. :-

                                    The education which starting with the past and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantages of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines.

                                       Sir aurobbindo had little love for British education in India, which he called a ‘‘  mercenary and soulless education,” and for its debilitating influence on the “ the innate possibilities” of the Indian brain. “ In India,” he said “ the students generally have great capacities, but the system of education represses and destroys these capacities.” As in every field, he wanted India to crave out her own path courageously:

The greatest knowledge and the greatest riches man can possess are India’s by inheritance; she has that for all mankind is waiting but the full soul rich with the inheritance of the past, the widening gains of the present, and the large potentiality of the future, can come only by a system of National Education. It can not come by any extension or imitation of the system of the existing universities with its radically false principles, its vicious and mechanical methods, its dead-alive routine tradition and its narrow and sightless spirit. Only a new spirit and a new body born from the heart of the Nation and full of the light and hope of it’s resurgence can create it.  

                                           Young Indians are increasingly deprived from their rightful heritage, cut off from their deeper roots. He have often found himself in the curious position of explaining to some of them the symbolic meaning of an   ancient Indian myth, for instance or worse, of having to narrate the myth it self. Again, a French or English child will be given at least some semblance of cultural identity, whatever its worth; but here, in this country which not long ago had the most living culture in the world, a child is given no nourishing food only some insipid, unappetizing hodgepodge, cooked in the west and pickled in India. This means that in the name of some irrational principles, India as an entity is throwing away some precious treasures.  As Sri Aurobindo put it :

Ancient India’s culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping.

             Young Indians are increasingly deprived from their deeper roots. He have often found

Concept of Spiritual Education :-

‘‘Man can not rest permanently until he reaches some highest 

   good.’’

‘‘ To fulfil god in life is man’s manhood. ’’  - Sri Aurobindo

                           A true spiritual education has to teach the students to recognize this relationship of spirit and matter, so that one neither looks down upon matter and all the problems the material life presents, nor shuns spirituality as a less on in escapism.

    

                          A Spiritual education would prepare the student to face life armed with a greater faith and face with an outlook which is integral. His recognition of the problems of life will not depend entirely on their appearances. He will be able to grow spirituality through tracking. 

   

                               Sri Aurobindo has been widely acclaimed as a modern seer and a Vedic scholar. He had headed the first National College of Education of Calcutta and had written extensively on the subject of education. His approach to ‘Integral education’ is in itself a unique concept. Education of the body, mind and spirit are each expounded in his writings on education, but their integration is even more significant. He has also dwelt on the social and psychological aspects of education. His thought has been put to practice at Sri Aurobindo Ashram’s educational programmes, The Auroville and several other schools of the country.

"The first principle of teaching is that nothing can be taught". This statement of Sri Aurobindo condenses a whole lot of theories of education and a new form of pedagogy closer to integral approach to education. It puts learning above teaching. It makes learning a self-starting, self propelling process. It redefines the role of the teacher from a mere possessor of information to a facilitator and a guide for the learner. I am not aware of any other profound statement in teaching which has such a permanent validity.''  - Shri Aurobindo        
 
Integral education for the growth of the soul:-

                                            Originally a poet and a politician, not a philosopher, Shri Aurobindo engaged himself for forty-five years out of his seventy-eight years in the practice of Yoga, and developed a philosophy of complete affirmation, affirming the reality of the world from the ultimate standpoint and the meaningfulness of socio-political action from the spiritual standpoint

                                          He was sovereignly aware of the significance of variations in the concept of man, his life and destiny, of the nation and of humanity and the life of human race, which get reflected in the respective philosophies of education, and developed his scheme of integral education rooted in ‘the developing soul of India, to her future need, to the greatness of her coming self creation, to her eternal spirit according to Shri Aurobindo, has seen always in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit. In his educational philosophy, Shri Aurobindo upheld the basic but commonly forgotten principle that ‘it is the spirit, the living and vital issue that we have to do with, and there the question is not between modernism and antiquity, but between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities of the Indian mind and nature,not between the present and the past, but between the present and the future’. In devising a true and living education, three things according to Sri Aurobindo the man, the individual in his commonness and his uniqueness, the nation or people and universal humanity should be taken into account.

 Conclusion :-

                                             thus, Aurobindo conceived of education as an instrument for the real working of the spirit in the mind and body of the individual and the nation. He thought of education that for the individual will make its one central object the growth of the soul and its powers and possibilities, for the nation will keep first in view the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation—soul and its Dharma (virtue) and raise both into powers of the life and ascending mind and soul of humanity.