What is Culture?
\n01\/12\/09<\/p>\n
Throughout the readings, Williams and Keesing provide insight into the definition of culture and how scholars perceive its function in society. Williams\u2019 title \u201cCulture is Ordinary\u201d reflects his viewpoint of culture as a universal and innate phenomenon. He describes culture as the arts and learning implemented to expresses the beliefs of every human society. Williams suggests that culture serves two distinct functions: 1) the \u201ccommon purpose\u201d of the society, and 2) the \u201cdeep personal meaning\u201d of the individuals. He criticizes \u201cteashop culture\u201d as well as those who utilize esoteric argot in describing culture to illustrate his belief that all individuals create and share this structure, not merely the well-educated. Williams additionally examines Marxist cultural theory, which states \u201cculture must be finally interpreted in relations to its underlying system of production.\u201d He denounces the Marxist notion \u201cwe live in a dying culture and the masses are ignorant,\u201d and likens this reference of the masses to cultural othering. However, Williams does find merit in three aspects of Marxist cultural theory: 1) the relationship between culture and production, 2) the observation of restricted education, and 3) a different system of production would serve as a cultural directive. He condones Leavis\u2019 theory that industrialization has tainted, or cheapened, British culture, and suggests that education is the only method of retaining classic art and literature. Finally, Williams opposes the theory that the decline of culture in the industrial era resembles \u201ca kind of Gresham\u2019s law,\u201d enumerating examples of how \u201cbad culture\u201d does not replace \u201cgood culture\u201d in any definitive correlation.
\nIn \u201cTheories of Culture Revisited,\u201d Keesing focuses on radical alterity, defined as \u201ca culturally constructed Other radically different from Us.\u201d He describes some classic binaries associated with othering, including \u201ccivilized verses primitive,\u201d \u201crational verses irrational,\u201d and \u201cOccident verses Orient.\u201d Keesing criticizes common anthropological approaches to culture, accusing them of essentialism and reification. He means scholars typically study and describe culture in a manner that portrays this elusive concept as concrete and tangible. Keesing elaborates on how the reification of culture results in its becoming a commodity with potential for appropriation, thus, further allowing for othering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is Culture?01\/12\/09 Throughout the readings, Williams and Keesing provide insight into the definition of culture and how scholars perceive its function in society. Williams\u2019 title \u201cCulture is Ordinary\u201d reflects his viewpoint of culture as a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[333,1997],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-responses","category-williams-and-keesing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last201\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}