As part of an ongoing effort to examine media power, I am following my last post, which was far too long ago, with a piece that examines the same fundamental question (understanding the nature of the power of media) from the early cultural studies perspective.
Overlapping the development of symbolic interactionism in the 1950s (Hall 1980:33) was the development of cultural studies. The two works understood as leading, in large part, to this new tradition were Richard Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy and Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society. Though cultural studies, and here we are talking about British cultural studies, has no single theoretical orientation it does have a number of mostly constant perspectives that became tradition before the founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in 1964 at Birmingham University and persist today. Below, some of these perspectives will be examined.
Cultural studies can be understood as directed against the critiques of culture made by Max Arnold and F.R Leavis. Arnold and Leavis sought to privilege the cultural elite by charging them with the preservation of culture, which they felt to be under attack in the mid-twentieth century. Gunster (2004) suggests that Raymond Williams’ claim that culture is ordinary and E.P. Thompson’s work on culture-as-class-struggle combined to provide “theoretical resources for redefining culture as the heterogeneous practices through which people express and live their experience, rather than as a normative category in which those practices… are produced” (174). In essence, cultural studies sought to make the point that culture is found in real life, not just in museums, and also to defend the cultures of the subordinated, such as the working class.
In The Uses of Literacy Richard Hoggart worked to correct the perspective that contemporary writers had of the working class – to combat the romanticized depiction of the working class in literature – while examining the impact that literature and entertainment had on the changes seen in the working class over the previous “thirty or forty years.” To achieve this, Hoggart put a great deal of effort into defining the working class, which he did not think could be distinguished by income alone given that there was such a disparity in the amount of money earned within the class. Instead he examined education levels, occupation, speech and dialects, clothing, and more. Indeed, “there are thousands of other items from daily experience which, as will be seen, help to distinguish this recognizably working class life, such as the habit of paying out money in small installments over month after month” (Hoggart 1957:21). He was sure to point out that there were still numerous nuanced differences between the individuals themselves, in an effort to avoid carelessly generalizing. In this study Hoggart examined cultural items that had mostly gone unnoticed: the entertainment and literature consumed by the working class. This included anything from gangster-novelettes and spicy magazines.
He made the argument that “the appeals made by the mass publicists are for a great number of reasons made more insistently, effectively, and in a more comprehensive and centralized form today than they were earlier; that we are moving towards the creation of a mass culture; that the remnants of what was at least in parts an urban culture ‘of the people’ are being destroyed; and that the new mass culture is in some important ways less healthy than the often crude culture it is replacing” (Hoggart 1957:24). That is not to say that all members of the working class were equally affected. In fact, Hoggart (1957) points out that the people in the working class have a great ability to ignore things that are potentially culturally disruptive as well as the ability to absorb the material they choose. He cites the “considerable moral resources of working-class people” as the reason they are less affected than they might otherwise be by the imposition of mass culture. Though the results of Hoggart’s study are interesting, one major of its most important impacts on cultural studies came from his method of investigation, that he “read working class culture for the values and meanings embodied in its patterns and arrangements: as if they were certain kinds of ‘texts’” (Hall 1980:33). Additionally, it is possible to pull out some of the constant perspectives, as mentioned above, from The Uses of Literacy.
Hoggart made sure to work empirically, to avoid romanticizing the working-class; he acknowledged that generalizations about membership were necessary but emphasized understanding that nearly infinite nuances existed between individuals within the working-class; and that the members of the working-class could adapt and interpret mass entertainment, rather passively accepting it. This last point is important because it sets a standard practice for cultural studies: the resistance to the idea of class reductionism – the study’s findings show a resistance to the claim that ruling class ideology is directly forced on the working-class, who inevitably see their own culture and ideology pushed out as the ruling class’ take over. Hoggart took note of the agency of the individuals in the working-class and their ability to partially resist such imposition rather than passively and fully accepting it.
The concept of culture is quite obviously at the heart of cultural studies. However, great difficulty is encountered when attempting to define culture as a concept. Hall (1980) suggests that there are two different ways to conceptualize culture. First comes out of Williams’ Long Revolution and proposes culture as being the “sum of the available descriptions through which societies make sense of and reflect their common experiences” (Hall 1980:35). Here culture is democratized, no longer consisting of the elements that constitute the pinnacle of human civilization. Instead this is the culture-as-ordinary perspective wherein all elements of society, from the entertainment enjoyed by the working-class to the art of Picasso, are each redefined as one form of a general social process of giving and taking meanings. These meanings are shared, or not, by the community and this how they become active. For Williams, in order “to study the relations adequately we must study them actively, seeing all activities as particular and contemporary forms of human energy” (quoted in Hall 1980:35). The second conception that Hall (1980) points to is more anthropological, where culture refers to social practice. However, Hall prefers the first definition over the second. What he is sure to point out is that in the context of the first definition, the “theory of culture is defined as ‘the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life. Culture is not a practice…it is threaded through all social practices and is the sum of their interrelationships” … “ the analysis of culture is, then, ‘the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships. It begins with the discovery of patterns of a characteristic kind… Analytically, one must study the relationships between these patterns. The purpose of the analysis is to grasp how the interactions between all these practices and patterns are lived and experienced as a whole, in any particular period” (Hall 1980:36 quoting Williams).
In his essay Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory, Williams (1980) hopes to shift the focus from the superstructure in Marxist cultural analysis to the base, which he feels is the more important concept for understanding the realities of cultural processes (5). Rather than understand the base as an object, something static, Williams (1980) advocates for understanding the base as a process. He writes that “we have to revalue ‘the base’ away from the notion of a fixed economic and technological abstraction, and toward the specific activities of men in real social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations and therefore always in a state of dynamic process” (6). However, this emphasis is not to come at the expense of understanding the superstructure. As Williams writes, “if we fail to see a superstructural element, we fail to recognize reality at all” (7). Laws and ideologies that appear natural or universal must be seen as an expression of the domination of a particular class. The intent of this interrogation into the base-superstructure metaphor is to “assert the connectivity of culture, politics, ideology, and economic processes” (Gunster 2004:179).
This leads Williams to a discussion of Antonio Gramsci and the notion of hegemony. He understands hegemony to be more than the mere imposition of ideology, if it were so then one would be glad to overthrow it. Instead, hegemony is a process – made up of numerous forces and processes such as the process of education, the organization of work, the selective tradition, etc. – that continually makes and remakes an effective dominant culture. This is an active and continually adjusting process, it is not singular, but it can be challenged. Importantly, hegemony allows for a central system of practices in any culture. Hegemony should not be understood as mere opinion because it is through this process that the dominant system of meanings and values are experienced and lived. It is in the shadow of hegemony that alternative and oppositional cultures develop, with the former less threatening to the dominant system than the latter.
For Williams, a society is not available for analysis until all of its practices can be included. Therefore, literature and art cannot be separated from other kinds of social practice in an attempt to make them subject to special laws – “they cannot be separated from the general social process” (1980:13). The point for Williams is that it is not possible to separate out literature from society nor from some other body of practices nor can a particular identified practice be given a static, ahistorical relation to an abstract social formation, for the arts make up the part of the cultural process. Importantly, the arts “contribute to the effective dominant culture and are a central articulation of it. They embody residual meanings and values, not all of which are incorporated, though many are. They express also and significantly some emergent practices and meaning, yet some of them may eventually be incorporated, as they reach people and begin to move them” (14).
Occasionally a situation arises where the dominant culture reaches out to an emergent art of performance in an attempt to transform it and through this the dominant culture changes in its articulated features, though not in its central formation. Finally, Williams believes “the true crisis in cultural theory, in our own time, is between this view of the work of art as object and the alternative view of art as a practice” (15). What he means here is that works of art are often not physical objects (e.g. music, literature, etc.), but rather notations which have to be actively interpreted. Thus there is always an active relationship between the creation and reception of a work of art, subject to conventions in the forms of social organization and relationships. This is very different from the production and consumption of an object. This means that it is essential to discover the nature of a practice followed by its conditions, rather than isolating the object and discovering its components. In cultural studies, one should always look for the conditions of a practice.
It is along these last lines of Williams’ essay that we can find what Hall calls the dominant paradigm of cultural studies. It is a conceptualization of culture as interwoven with all social practices, and those practices are interwoven as a common form of human activity: “sensuous human praxis, the activity through which men and women make history” (1980:39). This is opposed to the usual base-superstructure formulation of the relationship between ideal and material forces. The dominant paradigm “defines culture as both the meanings and values which arise amongst distinctive social groups and classes, on the basis of their given historical conditions and relationships, through which they handle and respond to the conditions of existence; and as the lived traditions and practices through which those understandings are expressed and in which they are embodied” (Hall 1980:39).
With this foundation we are able to extract some additional features of cultural studies as an approach to understanding society and media. As seen in the work of Hoggart, cultural studies is interested in understanding real, material consequences of cultural objects. Rather than theorize about the implications of media on the changing character of the working class, Hoggart looked at the cultural objects and the culture itself to better understand what was happening. Further, Hoggart was sure to point out the human agency of the individuals that constitute the working class. From this observation he made the claim that these class members are aware of the media and actively interpret it, rather than passively accept it.
Williams sought to make the point that culture should be understood as a whole rather than as a set of isolated objects. The historical process of culture should be kept in mind and it should override “any effort to keep the instances and elements [of culture] distinct” (Hall 1980:39). Cultural studies in general, as seen in Hoggart and Williams, takes a humanist position wherein experience is what constitutes authenticity, rather than authenticity deriving from status as a museum object as had been the usual understanding before cultural studies. Additionally, Williams spent time reworking a number of old concepts such as, base-superstructure and hegemony. He made the point that although the ideologies and culture of the ruling class is nearly ubiquitous in society, thus hegemonic, the fact that hegemony is a constant process and struggle for position means there are ways in which the subordinated classes can actively resist. It is here that Williams sets the stage for the liberatory potential of the means of communication.
In Means of Communication as Means of Production, Williams acknowledges that there are problems of access and control to the means of amplification (radio, broadcast, etc.) and duration (audio recording, etc.). Even though these restrictions (licensing, capital cost, and the like) exist, Williams believes the use of amplificatory and durational means of communication contain great potential as tools of liberation for the subordinated classes, as long as the means of access can be achieved.
Cultural studies approaches the question of media power in two separate, though related, ways. The first, following Hoggart, examines the real impact of media on the individuals consuming it. Though media messages are important, what is equally, if not more, important for this line of cultural studies is the resilience of the consumer and the ability for them to adapt and interpret the messages and material they are given. There are a number of different characteristics (education, moral character, etc.) that could impact their susceptibility to be swayed by media and it is important to investigate them rather than making theoretical assumptions grounded in ideology. The second approach is more associated with Williams. This approach understands cultural as a whole and interactive process while also looking for places that groups can directly resist the hegemony of the ruling class. This goes beyond the resilience that Hoggart noted, it advocates for active resistance for the sake of liberation rather than resistance for the sake of cultural conservatism.
Culture, should be “viewed as a material, social process inextricably intertwined with other elements of social formation. Accordingly, the principal task for cultural critique should be to investigate and map the mutually constitutive relations between different planes of social life… how cultural forms are able to constitute the dominant ‘structure of feeling’ of certain historical periods and express how a specific social formation is actually lived and experienced” (Gunster 2004:179). What both of the above approaches have in common, among other things, is that the power of the media and the ideology of the ruling class are intertwined such that the ruling class’ ideology tends to be transferred through the media with differing degrees of efficacy, making it particularly important to understand. Cultural studies asks questions such as “how do members of the working class resist ruling class ideology when presented through the media?” and “what cultural items are being produced within the subordinated classes and what are the impacts of those items?” and “how can the means of communicative production be utilized by the subordinated classes to resist the hegemony of the ruling class in a practical way?” The goal of cultural studies is to give status to the culture of the subordinated classes, to resist the notion that culture is only what is found in the museum, to emphasize human agency and the ability to interpret and adapt media messages actively, and to understand ways in which culture (which constitutes media and art, of course) can be utilized as a platform of resistance and liberation.
The cultural studies approach does ultimately give individuals agency in society, without being so naïve to think that no manipulation occurs – this manipulation is a core operation of hegemony after all. The case of surveillance is in some ways at odds with the agency given to the working class by Hoggart. He believes that working-class individuals can often resist various mediated impositions on their culture. However, there is little resistance to surveillance by the working class. While there is a fair amount of critique of domestic surveillance in the written media (newspapers, magazines, etc.), there is much less in the amplificatory communicative modes such as television and radio. For Williams, this means that the written critiques may be out of reach for much of the working class, since reading this kind of writing requires “skills beyond those which are developed in the most basic forms of social intercourse” (Williams 1980:57). Amplificatory systems, on the other hand, are easily accessible for the working class and their messages easily received. Indeed, these system have the appearance of being a direct transmission because the processes of editing the video footage and audio is obscured by the presentation. The amplificatory systems are qualitatively similar to the direct interactions and therefore retain legitimacy. Williams points out that “what is being seen in what appears to be a natural form is, evidently, then in part or large part what is being made to be seen” (1980:61). Further, Williams suggests that modes of naturalization of television, film, and radio are tremendously powerful, and that news generations are increasingly habituated to them. Though Williams is talking primarily of the ways that certain communicative forms hide the real relations of production and relations of men, the point still stands that certain communicative systems have the ability to push on individuals with little critical pushback.
From this it could be suspected that the working class are not more resistant to domestic surveillance because the media they consume is not critical of it. That is, there is a certain power in the withholding of messages from particular mediums and from particular classes. This is almost always in the interest of ruling class, just as there is a ruling class interest in producing and broadcasting certain messages on certain mediums to certain groups. To understand the power of the media in relation to surveillance and the failure of resistance in the working class, cultural studies would not only ask about what messages are being created, but also what messages are being withheld, who is doing the withholding, and what real effect does it have on the individuals that constitute the working class.
Gunster, S. (2004). Capitalizing on culture: Critical theory for cultural studies. University of Toronto Press.
Hall, S. (1980). Cultural studies: Two paradigms. Media, culture and society,2(1), 57-72.
Hoggart, R. (1957). The uses of literacy. Transaction publishers.
Williams, R. (1980). Problems in Materialism and Culture. Verso.
The MSR - Media Studies Repository 