Culture

From MarxWiki

Culture is perhaps best understood as a site of tension between dominant and resistant forces in a society. Many critical social theorists like Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige and theorists in the Frankfurt School argue that culture is the continuous struggle and flow from that which is revolutionary into the mainstream.

Popular culture is often understood as the activities and entertainments of the mass of the general population. Yet culture is also imposed upon society by the upper echelons and in many cases the nation-state and government. The ideologies of the dominant and ruling classes are often reflected cultural artifacts and activities, thus reinforcing and reinstating hierarchical power structures in a society. Simultaneously, disempowered groups are often able to re-signify specific sites within the hegemonic cultural production and gain agency in the flow of culture.

The two opposing definitions of culture: the market definition which describes culture as the product and ideology delivered for consumption and manipulation of the population, by the hegemonic powers, and the descriptive definition which includes the totality of activities of the population, merge in cultural space to create a third, dynamic definition of culture. This dynamic definition considers culture both as a means of manipulation and as a site of resistance. Culture is the location of a dynamic encounter between the dominant ideologies, identifications, and products and the oppositional expressions of resistant re-identification and re-signification that that belongs to individuals and groups that exist just outside the periphery of the hegemonic or capitalist elite. The mass media has increased undoubtedly contributed and assisted in the growing power and prevasiveness of popular culture.

Edward Said, author of `Culture and Imperialism` and `Orientalism`, provides a two-part definition of culture. He argues that culture is `all practices..that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms`. In addition, he argues that culture is each society's reservoir of the best that has been known and thought.