Culture

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 351-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hutnyk
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
High Mass ◽  
Critical Mode ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
Street Culture ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Development Resource

Culture is considered as a key term in anthropology, now in critical mode, and to be worked through powerful tropes that lead to issues in politics, interpretation, translation, stereotype and racism. Anthropology is described as a cultural system itself, with a large supporting institutional apparatus, not unlike the culture industry as critiqued by Adorno and the Frankfurt School. The high mass culture/high culture distinction is considered and some distortions explained (away). Street culture and culture as (development) resource are evaluated, leading to an assessment of culture as souvenirs, trinkets and the ephemera of tourism as a modern commodity fetish. How this measures up to political struggles is again considered in the light of work by critics such as Fanon and those engaged with anti-imperialist struggles worldwide.

scholarly journals Re-visiting The History of Consumerism: The Emergence of Mass Consumer Culture as a Distinctive Feature of Capitalist Societies

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 159-162
Author(s):  
Ousama Bziker
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Herbert Marcuse ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Erich Fromm ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
Main Components

The Frankfurt School was the first school to discern the roles of the media in shaping human thought, influencing politics, and increasing the insatiable demand of consumers in capitalist societies. The analysis brought to the fore by Adorno and Horkheimer regarding the ‘Culture Industry’ illustrated a model of media as tools of hegemony and social control advanced by Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jurgen Habermas. The School also examined the repercussions of mass culture and the rise of the consumer society on the proletariat that was aimed to be the instrument of revolution in the classical Marxian scenario. Another thing that was analyzed is how the culture industries and consumer society were considered as stabilizing forces of contemporary capitalism. Therefore, they were among the first to see the expansion of communication and mass media roles in politics, socialization and social life, culture, and the construction of docile subjects as Foucault puts it. In the present article, I review the contributions to media and social theory advanced by the Frankfurt School. The integration of psychoanalysis, aesthetic theory and the critique of mass culture, and the critique of the Enlightenment are the main components discussed in the present article.

Popular Culture and Cultural Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Madhava Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Intellectual Interest ◽  
Anglophone World

At the core of what we know as popular culture studies today is the work of scholars associated with or influenced by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Popular culture itself and intellectual interest in its risks and possibilities, however, long predate this moment. Earlier in the 20th century, members of the Frankfurt School took an active interest in what was then referred to as “mass culture” or the culture industry. Semiotics, emerging in the latter half of the 20th century as an exciting new methodology of cultural analysis, turned to popular culture for many of its objects as it redefined textuality, reading, and meaning. The works of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco are exemplary in this regard. The work of the Birmingham school, also known as British cultural studies, drew from both of these intellectual traditions but went on to forge its own unique methods drawing on Marxist and poststructuralist theoretical legacies. Quickly spreading across the Anglophone world, Cultural Studies is now widely recognized, if not as a discipline proper, as a distinctive branch of the humanities. Other methodologies contemporaneous with this trend are also now clubbed together as part of this generalized practice of cultural studies. Important among these are feminist approaches to popular culture exemplified by work on Hollywood cinema and women’s melodrama in particular, the study of images and representations through a mass communications approach, and ethnographic studies of readers of popular romances and television audiences. A minor, theoretically weak tradition of popular culture studies initiated by Ray Browne parallelly in the Unites States may also be mentioned. More recently, Slavoj Zizek has introduced startlingly new ways of drawing popular cultural texts into philosophical debates. If all of these can be taken together as constituting what is generally referred to as popular culture studies today, it is still limited to the 20th century. Apart from the Frankfurt School and semiotics, British cultural studies also counts among the precursors it had to settle scores with, the tradition of cultural criticism in Britain that Matthew Arnold and in his wake F. R. Leavis undertook as they sought to insulate “the best of what was thought and said” from the debasing influence of the commercial press and mass culture in general. But the history of popular culture as an object of investigation and social concern goes further back still to the 18th and 19th centuries, the period of the rise and spread of mass literature, boosted by the rise of a working-class readership.

scholarly journals A indústria cultural lida pela cultura erudita: tomadas de posição e ideologia * Culture industry read by high culture: positions and ideology

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
MARIA LUÍSA CARNEIRO FUMANERI
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

<p><strong>Resumo:</strong> Muitos intelectuais têm discutido o problema da compreensão da cultura de massa como uma forma de alienação. Desde a "Dialética do esclarecimento" de Adorno e Horkheimer, tende-se a entender cultura de massa em oposição à alta cultura. Este artigo tenta mostrar como uma compreensão menos estanque do fenômeno poderia ajudar a ver o problema como ele aparece hoje. Se “cultura de massa” e “alta cultura” parecem, em muitos aspectos, inextricavelmente confundidas atualmente, este trabalho baseia-se na teoria sociológica, a fim de esclarecer as posições dos agentes no campo de produção erudita.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave:</strong> Cultura de massa – Alta cultura – Indústria cultural.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstract:</strong> Many intellectuals have been discussing the problem of understanding mass culture as a way to alienation. Since Adorno and Horkheimer´s "Dialectic of Enlightenment", we tend to understand mass culture in opposition to high culture. This article tries to show how a less tight understanding of the phenomena could help us to look at the problem as it appears today. If mass culture and high culture seem, in many ways, inextricably mixed these days, this work relies on some sociological works, in order to enlighten the agents’ positions within the cultural field.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Mass culture – High culture – Culture industry.</p>

Percepción sobre la televisión en el ecosistema audiovisual de la convergencia digital

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Vázquez-Barrio ◽  
Teresa Torrecillas-Lacave ◽  
Rebeca Suárez-Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Discussion Groups ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Visual Content ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
El Alto ◽  
La Red ◽  
High Degree

Traditional television coexists with formats that originated on the internet, as well as on-demand consumption, paid television, and other audio-visual content distribution platforms. Audience data reveal a steady decline in television viewership, and digital technologies now allow any citizen to produce audio-visual content and distribute it for mass consumption through the internet. Given this new audio-visual ecosystem, the aim of this research is to ascertain whether there are any signs of a crisis regarding the dominance of television as a means of disseminating the products of the culture industry. Disinterest or indifference toward conventional programming by users would reveal a danger to the broadcast industry. In contrast, the consumption of television products through other channels would imply the retention of television audiences through the internet. This study analyzes perceptions regarding television through five online discussion groups. Three conclusions can be drawn: Firstly, television holds a prominent place in the daily lives of those who use it, including the youngest participants, despite the fact that audiences have declined in recent years. The second conclusion states that the perception of television is positive and associated with disengagement, relaxation, and family gatherings, which can be combined with individual consumption at other times of the day. As a third conclusion, this study reveals the high degree of compatibility between the internet and television screens, as new forms of consumption are emerging, yet there is still a predominant interest in content on television and from the mass culture industry. Resumen La televisión tradicional convive con formatos originados en internet, con el consumo bajo demanda, con la televisión de pago y con otras plataformas de distribución de contenido audiovisual. Los datos de audiencias muestran un descenso continuado de telespectadores y las tecnologías digitales permiten a cualquier ciudadano producir contenidos audiovisuales y distribuirlos para el consumo masivo a través de la Red. Ante este nuevo ecosistema audiovisual, el objetivo de esta investigación es comprobar si se pueden advertir signos de una crisis de la supremacía del televisor como medio de difusión de industria cultural. El desapego o indiferencia de los usuarios hacia la programación convencional evidenciaría un peligro para la televisión. Al contrario, el consumo de productos televisivos a través de otras pantallas implicaría el mantenimiento de las audiencias televisivas a través de internet. La investigación analiza las percepciones sobre la televisión mediante cinco grupos de discusión online. Se extraen tres conclusiones. La primera, que la televisión ocupa una posición relevante en la cotidianeidad de los participantes, incluidos los más jóvenes, a pesar de que las audiencias han descendido en los últimos años. La segunda, que la percepción sobre la televisión es positiva y se asocia a la desconexión, el relax y a un momento de reunión familiar compaginable con consumos individualizados en otros momentos del día. Tercera, el estudio demuestra el alto grado de compatibilidad entre internet y la pantalla del televisor porque surgen nuevas formas de consumo, pero se mantiene un interés predominante por los contenidos televisivos y de la gran industria cultural.

High culture as mass culture

Society ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith R. Blau
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
High Culture

scholarly journals Documentary realism and film pleasure: Two moments from Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season

Literator ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 101-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
General Account ◽  
History Of

This essay examines some of the strains and tensions around the notions of film pleasure and documentary realism in the film A Dry White Season. It offers a schematic analysis of the history of the idea of a politics of film pleasure in the early work on mass culture of the Frankfurt School and F.R. Leavis, and more recent debates in feminism. This general account then provides the context for the examination of some of the problems in Palcy's film, focusing particularly on the question of Palcy's claims for a documentary realism, and two particular moments in the film itself.

3. Critical theory and modernism

2017 ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
The Individual

The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of an international avant-garde that focused upon alienation, standardization, and the liberation of the individual from constrictive social norms. Impressionists, Cubists, Expressionists, Futurists, Dadaists, Surrealists, and representatives from many other styles provided a blizzard of philosophical–aesthetic manifestos that blended political with cultural resistance to mass society. The Frankfurt School’s inner circle was sympathetic from the start; modernism provided a response to the ontology of false conditions and, indeed, an avant-garde opposition to mass culture provided inspiration and cohesion. ‘Critical theory and modernism’ explains how the unflinching support of modernism and experimental art by the Frankfurt School confirmed both its cultural radicalism and contempt for totalitarianism.

scholarly journals Las alusiones a la Literatura española en Internet como palabras aladas : reto para el traductor extranjero

2011 ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Madyjewska
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
The Internet ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Important Impact ◽  
Virtual Interaction ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Rhetorical Model ◽  
Sobre Todo

este trabajo trata de las alusiones literarias en la traducción de textos españoles, sobre todo de los artículos de opinión accesibles en Internet. Con la creciente divulgación de la lengua española, y en consecuencia de los estereotipos de la cultura hispana, es más patente que el contacto entre lenguas no coincide con el de las literaturas locales. Además, las nuevas formas de comunicación en Internet, donde accedemos a ediciones digitales de prensa, foros, etc., plantean nuevos retos a la traducción, porque incorporan tanto los registros y contenidos de la cultura de masas como los de la alta cultura. Ésta se manifiesta en frecuentes alusiones a la literatura española, que independizadas de su contexto original se han convertido en las denominadas palabras aladas. Por tanto, un traductor debe elegir entre varias técnicas de traducción para reflejar en la lengua meta un impacto, un juego de palabras, una pretendida mezcla de registros o un idiolecto, que en la lengua original se producen a través del uso de alusiones literarias.Tthe article tackles with the subject of literary allusions in translation of spanish texts available on the internet. Along with the spread of spanish language, among which the spanish stereotypes have their important impact, we realize that the reciprocity between languages does not convey the subtle liaisons found in the local literary content. Contemporary means and manners of virtual interaction, within which we find newspages, blogs and forums, constitute further challenge in rhetorical model of translation. It is due to the fact that a blended styles and contents of discourse, which mix the mass culture with a high one, can be observed in texts addressed to all different audiences. In case of the participation of the high culture we may encounter certain allusions which became independent from its origin: so called winged words. Hence, a translator shall adopt a technique of translation which would convey in the target language the literary modes such as pun, witty remarks, styles of utterances or idiolect, which are, in the original texts, attained by the mentioned literary allusions.

scholarly journals Sinking in Quicksand: The Demise of Victorian High Culture in America 1870-1915

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitra Sharafi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Modern Mass ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Ideal

Today, the term Victorian implies snobbishness and rigidity. Our world, the result in part of a rebellion against Victorian formality and social hierarchy, celebrates the classless, the democratic, and the popular. It professes faith in the artistic judgment of all members of society regardless of ethnic origin, level of education or wealth. From the Victorian point of view, however, twentieth-century mass culture is accessible to all by appealing to the lowest common denominator; it is inclusive at the cost of a loss of education, refinement, and profundity. Turn-of-the-century America is the ideal subject for a study of the interaction between Victorian high culture and modern mass culture; the period from 1870 to 1915 was one of drastic cultural metamorphosis. Social change threatened the foundations of high culture and eventually killed it, but not without the unintentional help of the Victorians' own self-alienating behaviour.

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