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Questions from Jason Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Questions from Jason Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It seems all efforts by the New Cultural Geography to extricate some definition, or instance of “culture” dictating social functions continuously lands in a quagmire of

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Questions from Jason Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

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  1. Questions from Jason • Which came first, the chicken or the egg? • It seems all efforts by the New Cultural Geography to extricate some definition, or • instance of “culture” dictating social functions continuously lands in a quagmire of • complicated feedback loops, such as, economy affects culture, and culture affects • economy et al. What, if anything, can be pulled from these loops that can help from these • loops that can help either explain the past; adjust the present; or alter the future? • Is culture an artifact or a precursor, or neither? • If culture, with all its variance can be used as a point of contact for so many diverse • disciplines, is it important to define culture precisely? Why? • Does the shift from totality to plurality in cultural geography signal an overall weakening, • or reduction in the relevance/importance of the discipline-at-large?

  2. Mitchell Ch. 2: Cultural Studies and the New Cultural Geography

  3. British Cultural Studies • “Culture is a domain in which economic and political contradictions are tested and resolved” • Culture is a ‘map of meaning’ for understanding how social relations are ‘structured and shaped…experienced and understood’

  4. Key Figures in Cultural Studies • Raymond Williams (1921-1988)- “cultural materialism”; attention to difference, change, power, and the everyday, adapted “base-superstructure” model of society • Richard Hoggart(1918- )- mass culture vs. folk culture • Stuart Hall (1932- )- positionality, hybridity, identity, race, postcolonialism • All part of the New Left

  5. Antonio Gramsci • Key inspiration to British Cultural Studies • Developed concept of cultural hegemony– poses question “how and why do subordinate people seem to consent to their own domination? Go against their ‘objective’ best interests? When do they resist? • Hegemony: sets the terms of debate, must be actively maintained

  6. Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies • “What is the nature of current (1960s and 1970s British) social hegemony?” • “What type of social formation is now in the making?” • 1980s- Incorporated feminist theories– analysis of social reproduction, gender, sexuality, family • Sparked explosion of academic cultural studies

  7. The New Cultural Geography • Postmodern turn- emphasizes heterogeneity, multiplicity, specificity • Challenge to modernist rationality, universalism • Shift from totality to plurality Experts knows more and more about less and less until they knows everything about nothing. Generalists knows less and less about more and more, until they knows nothing about everything.

  8. Postmodernism on Film Arthur Lipset- Very Nice, Very Nice (7 min, 1961) http://www.nfb.ca/film/very_nice_very_nice/

  9. Postmodernism, Hegemony, Ideology • In what way is this film postmodern? • What does it have to say about hegemony, ideology, culture in 1961? • What aspects of the culture are revealed? • What are the significant landscapes of the film? • Does the film seem to have an ideology of its own?

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