Culture: Contested Discourses

• How important is culture

• Most certainly it has an important influence on
human perception and behaviour
• But must it necessarily overwhelm us
• Can it be the sole defining identity of our existence?

• Culture is not homogenous

x Culture
• Who owns culture?

• We or a self appointed custodian of culture?

• Culture does not sit still

• Culture interacts with other determinants of social perception and action. For example,
economic globalization brings in not only more trade, but also more global music and
cinema.

• Culture cannot be seen as an isolated force independent of other influences. The

presumption of insularity—often implicitly invoked— can be deeply delusive.
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• We have to distinguish between the idea of cultural liberty,
which focuses on our freedom either to preserve or to
change our priorities and that of valuing cultural
conservation,

• Cultural freedom may include, among other priorities, the

liberty to question the automatic endorsement of past
traditions, when people—particularly young people— see a
reason for changing their ways of living.
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For the sake of cultural diversity can we support

cultural conservatism?

Guard against cultural generalizations…produces a

limited perspective
x Understanding Culture

• Functionalists take on culture

• Value consensus and stability

• New arrivals such as immigrants learn to adapt and embrace
• Cultural universals (traits that are part of every known culture)
• George Murdock
• Funeral rites
• Jokes
• Family
x Marxists

• Cultures are usually unequal

• Some traits benefit some members at the expense of
others
• Why do certain values dominate a society? (eg
farmers’ agitations)
• How do we create alternate cultures of resistance?
x Critical

Adorno - 'mass culture' of emerging music and films

weakens critical consciousness and manipulates the
working masses

Gramsci – ‘hegemony’ – the means by which a ruling

dominant group wins over a subordinate group
through ideas.
Coercive power is not required
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Watching a regular diet of soaps, news programmes

(especially today) may be sufficient

Bourdieu – Cultural capital

Are we prisoners of culture?

x Subcultures and Counter Cultures

A set of norms that are different but do not conflict

with the larger culture

A set of norms that run contrary to the larger

dominant culture

Today’s counter cultures are tomorrow’s subcultures

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