[Week 2: Sept 9] Introduction I: What is culture? What is cultural analysis?

1. Cultural studies
1.1. Culture is ordinary: everyday life
1.2. Critique of the hierarchy separating high culture from low culture
1.3. Popular culture (普及文化)

2. Quantitative definition of culture: artifacts favoured by many people or ways of life shared by them.
Question I: Who decides the extent of popularity?
Question II: Is "queuing up for rice handouts" a popular culture? Are people's responses to this phenomenon also popular culture?
Example: 平安米

3. High culture and popular culture
Question I: Who is qualified to define cultural taste?
Question II: Is Li Yundi a figure of high culture or popular culture?
Example I: Pavarotti (Storey: p. 7)

4. Mass culture (大眾文化)
-Commercial and formulaic product and passive audience
-brain-numbing effect
-American culture
Question I: If consumers are so passive, why do 80 per cent of new products fail?
Question II: How could we explain people take Disney's products (toy, animation and theme park) as their dreams?

"If it is the crime of popular culture that it has taken our dreams and packaged them and sold them back to us, it is also the achievement of popular culture that it has brought us more and more varied dreams than we could otherwise ever have known." (Storey: p. 9; quoted from Richard Maltby)

5. Political concept of popular culture
-The polyvalence of culture
-Popular culture as a site of struggle and negotiation
-Incorporation and resistance
-Popular culture is what people activley make from it.
Question I: Is audience always active? How could we make sense of audience passivity?
Example: Andy Lau's TV advertisement
-Encoding (編碼): Consumption, tough-ness, being "cool", naturalness
-(Potential) Decoding (解碼): subversion and disorder
-Struggle and negotiation: Warning message and censorship
Further references: 普及文化是霸權的競逐

6. Cultural politics 文化政治
6.1. Culture is not an given object
6.2. What makes cultural studies or cultural analysis distinct is not its subject matter.
6.3. Cultural studies is concerned with the contestation in everyday.
6.4. Ideology and ideological studies (Storey: p. 2)

7. Definition of ideology意識形態

7.1. A body of ideas?
Example: Communism and socialism

7.2. False consciousness: masking, distortion and concealment
-The subordinated class does not see themselves as oppressed or exploited.
Example I: "An untalented woman is virtuous" "女子無才便是德"
Example II: "Homosexuality is harmful to public health." "同性戀危害公共衛生"
Please read:
"性傾向歧視立法對公共衛生的影響" (The Society for Truth and Light)
"回應明光廣告有關公共衛生問題 "

7.3. A world view
-The cultural text presents a particular image of the world or a collective social understanding.
-The dominant worldview represses the alternative ones.
Example: "Social Harmony I & II"
-Questions: Why did CPCE (Committee on the Promotion of Civic Education) promote this world view at this time? What is the relationship between the current political situation andthis world view? Whose world view is it?

7.4. Material practices
-The rituals and customs binding us to the social order
-Power, discipline and institution
Example: classroom
->The setting of classroom
->Education and classroom

7.5. Myth: naturalization
-Sets of beliefs and attitudes which readers are invited to accept as true and natural.
Example: "Coke" is fresh and cool. It relieves your thirst.
可樂可以... ...

8. Culture-cultural politics-ideology
8.1. There is no consensus on the definition of ideology.
8.2. It depends on what problem or question you want to address.
8.3. Political contestation in everyday life

Reading for next week:
*Storey, John. 2001. "The 'Culture and Civilization' Tradition." Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. NY: Prentice Hall, 17-35. (Focus on the parts of Arnold and Leavis)

Please comment on the F.7 subject of "Chinese Culture".
Please read: 「熟讀必合格的文化科筆記」


Activities:
民間博物館
展覽開幕及新書發佈：
2005年9月10日 (星期六) 下午二時三十分
灣仔集成中心集成展廊 (軒尼詩道302-308號)
展期由9月10日至10月9日

同場加映：灣仔街坊帶你看另一個「灣仔」！！