Emergent cultures:
Raymond Williams defines emergent cultures as “[...] the new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship are continually being created” (123). In order to clarify, Williams juxtaposes dominant culture to compare. Williams states, that emergent culture, since most of the time arises with a formation of a new class, mostly working class, is closely related to the dominant culture: “Since we are always considering relations within a cultural process, definitions of the emergent, as of the residual, can be made only in relation to a full sense of the dominant” (123). As an example of emergent culture, Williams explains new formation of cultures in nineteenth- century England. Here he argues
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that an emergence of a culture occurs with a formation of a new class: “A new class is always a source of emergent cultural practice, but while it is still, as a class, relatively subordinate, this is always likely to be uneven and is certain to be incomplete” (124).
In nineteenth-century England, when the Industrial Revolutions and Reform Acts happened, new cultures were formed amongst the working class, and these new cultures include “[...] trade unions, working-class life styles (as incorporated into ‘popular’ journalism, advertising, and commercial entertainment)” (124). In this example of an emergent culture in nineteenth- century England, Williams emphasizes that emergent culture is either an alternative or an opposition to the dominant culture. As Williams’s example, newly formed classes are non-dominant classes, and they create cultures to either substitute or disagree with the dominant culture. However, the dominant culture still exists; thus, “the process of emergence, in such conditions, is then a constantly repeated, an always renewable, move beyond a phase of practical incorporation: usually made much more difficult by the fact that much incorporation looks like recognition, acknowledgement, and thus a form of acceptance” (124-125). Moreover, as we discussed in class, mass culture relies on and absorbs popular culture which is a culture derived from working class. In other words, many of cultures that we consider as mass culture might have been an emergent culture once- that later mass
culture has absorbed. Thus, going along with Williams’s example of nineteenth- century England, the modern example of emergent culture would be the digital culture, created by digital generation. Sharing personal life status and pictures, online information, and forming relationships online emerged with a new generation; years later, it became a popular culture, and mass culture is making a good use of this new culture in media industry, commercial industry, and politics as well.
In the essay The Chosen People, Stewart Ewen, discusses his perspective of middle class America. Specifically, he explores the idea that the middle class is suffering from an identity crisis. According to Ewen’s theory, “the notion of personal distinction [in America] is leading to an identity crisis” of the non-upper class. (185) The source of this identity crisis is mass consumerism. As a result of the Industrial Revolution and mass production, products became cheaper and therefore more available to the non-elite classes. “Mass production was investing individuals with tools of identity, marks of personhood.” (Ewen 187) Through advertising, junk mail and style industries, the middle class is always striving for “a stylistic affinity to wealth,” finding “delight in the unreal,” and obsessed with “cheap luxury items.” (Ewen 185-6) In other words, instead of defining themselves based on who they are on the inside, the people of middle class America define themselves in terms of external image and material possessions.
“Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s book “Dialectic of Enlightenment” it goes onto discus the conflicts presented by the “culture industry.” Adorno states that the culture industry is a main phenomenon of late capitalism, encompassing all products from Hollywood films, to advertisements, and even extending to musical compositions. Adorno is very deliberate in noting the term “culture industry” over “mass culture” this was done to specifically distinguish, that it is not to be understood as something which spontaneously stems from the masses themselves.
Mary Poovey, “Domesticity and Class Formation: Chadwick’s 1842 Sanitary Report,” in Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1839-1864 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 115-131
The effects of the Cultural Revolution are seen on a nationwide level, with national trends and ideals rapidly changing
Donald Kagan argues for the requisiteness of Western History by describing older cultures, and then explaining how these older cultures became a key influence in what our society has become today. He examines the ancient Greek, Christian, and English culture influences that helped form our country. Throughout his essay, his depth of historical research is quite evident. He uses historical research of past cultures to imply the necessity of knowing where we, as Americans, came from. This approach helps establish the author’s credibility, and makes his presentation more plausible.
The time period from 1860 to 1914 is defined by the surfacing of the "mass societies." The social order practically ignored the industrial proletariat and the foundation for a reform was laid. The industrial proletariat refers to all the workers who desperately depended on their wages. These people had absolutely no role in politics or in society in general. Even as late as 1860, the workers had to depend on themselves only to improve their social conditions. During the Industrial Revolution, as the number of machines mu...
Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000), Kindle edition, chap. 1.
In Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine argues that a distinction between high and low culture that did not exist in the first half of the 19th century emerged by the turn of the century and solidified during the 20th century, and that despite a move in the last few decades toward a more ecumenical interpretation of “culture,” the distinction between high art and popular entertainment and the revering of a canon of sacred, inalterable cultural works persists. In the prologue Levine states that one of his central arguments is that concepts of cultural boundaries have changed over the period he treats. Throughout Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine defines culture as a process rather than a fixed entity, and as a product of interactions between the past and the present.
O'Brien, Patrick, and Roland Quinault, eds. The Industrial Revolution and British Society. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectics of Enlightenment. New York: Seabury Press, 1972: 120-167.
The problem with society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the equality of all persons was few and far between. The bourgeoisie was in control of all the power and the proletariats were basically under their control. It was as if the bourgeoisie “originated out of the old medieval peasant class, in opposition to the medieval titled aristocracy.” [ii] They had taken over everything; the oppressed class lived by their rules and ways of life. Their way of life was not a happy one; family was based upon money instead of love. “Capital developed in the same proportion as the class of laborers developed.” ii Life then seemed simple for those living the life of the bourgeoisie, b...
The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class. Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial
In the introduction to “The Pure Products Go Crazy,” James Clifford offers a poem by William Carlos Williams about a housekeeper of his named Elsie. This girl is of mixed blood, with a divided common ancestry, and no real collective roots to trace. Williams begins to make the observation that this is the direction that the world is moving in, as Clifford puts it—“an inevitable momentum.” Clifford believes in that, “in an interconnected world, one is always to varying degrees, ‘inauthentic.’” In making this statement, Clifford is perhaps only partially accurate. In the western hemisphere, where Williams was located, perhaps it can be said directly that the influence of modern society has attributed to the lack of general ancestry, as one culture after another has blended with the next. Perhaps it can be said as well that, as Clifford puts it, “there seem no distant places left on the planet where the presence of ‘modern’ products, media, and power cannot be felt” (Clifford, 14). The intention of this paper is to contend first that there is essentially such a thing as “pure” culture, and contrary to Clifford’s belief, that there are “pure” unblended cultures that remain (while not altogether untouched by foreign influence), natural within themselves. It will be argued as well that the influence of modern society does not necessarily lead to a loss of cultural soundness itself, but rather that a presence of certain cultural practices within the respective cultures has attributed to the lasting “purity” of certain cultures. In this case, we will be discussing the cultures that exist in Haiti and Bali.
“According to, Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” from Media, Culture and Society, Raymond Williams and E.P Thompson summarize about the way they saw culture, they refer it to the way of life and saw mainstream media as the main role in capitalist society. “Williams says that, his perspective and ideas are referred to culture as to social practice, he saw “culture as a whole way of life” and as to structuralism that makes the concept of
Qs 3: A number of writers suggest that the capitalism of the middle to late twentieth century is markedly different from previous phases. How do they describe this particular iteration of the mode of production? What role, if any, do images, spectacle, ideology, machines, or computers play?