Cultural Studies

Hello everyone,

Today I write a blog about Cultural Studies as part of the thinking activity assigned by Professor Dilip Barad sir. In this blog, I would like to share my understanding about what is cultural studies and idea of power and what is education. 

1)What is Cultural Studies:-

It's hard to define 'culture' in one line but the term culture came under cultural Studies. Cultural Studies is all about seeing the world from today's point of view rather than past and history.

Cultural studies are considered an interdisciplinary field due to its blend of various academic fields of study. The field draws from a mix of sociology, anthropology, politics, history, economics, philosophy, literature, communications, and more. The cultural studies definition can be summarized as a field of academia that examines how meaning is created in social structures with adherence to class, ethnicity, gender, race, ideology, nationality, etc. 

Cultural Study is still emerging people still learning cultural studies in the 20th century people believed that cinema makes people worst Plato also applied this Idea and Aristotle broke this idea and give an answer to his question. Culture is not civilization because everybody has a culture but everyone doesn't have civilization.

Cultural Studies is not about praising culture rather it's about criticizing and questioning culture. 

1)Understanding of power in Cultural Studies:- 

Power is directly connected with the position. 'Where is the position there is power'. Chief Theorist: Michel Foucault was a famous French historian, philosopher and critic, associated with the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. He strongly influenced a wide range of humanistic and social scientific disciplines as well as philosophy. He gave an idea about what is power and how it works. According to him, power is everywhere and nothing can exist without power. Foucault sees not the only negative side of power but positive side also power can be productive and positive. So basic definition of power is that,

"Power is the ability of its holder to make other individuals obedient on whatever basis in some social relationship. In Foucault's theories power is not only seen as brute physical force or faced in one single direction but working net-like creating counterforces".

In short, "power is an ability to make others do what you would have them do". 

Power is with the people so if you have to think before speaking then the opposite person is in power and no relationship exists without power.

There are six types of powers in the society:-

1) Physical force

2) Wealth

3) State action

4) Social Norms

5) Idea

6) Numbers 

 These six branches or we can say the type of power. So very first is a physical force in which if somebody is physically more powerful than you then they can control you. The second is Wealth - if somebody has money then they can control everything with money only. Politics and economy both are in control of the wealthy people and poor people have to obey only to them. The third is State action - how State decisions and power control the people. For example the Idea of 'notebandhi'- during that time people can not do anything as it was State's decision. Fourth is social norms - how networks and fame can control people by giving name of religion and culture to the thing which they want to do from society. Fifth is Idea and Six and the last is Number - a number of the people and groups has decided how powerful they are. 

 There are three low of power:-

1) power is never Static

2) power is like water

3) power compounds 

So how power is related to culture is that if somebody has more power than other groups then they will decide what should be culture or not. Not something in favour of powerful people but something which is against powerful people became part of cultural studies.

2)Why media study is so important in our degital culture? 

 We can observe today digital culture became an important part of human life which gave us all kind of information about the world through technology and media so it's became more important for the people to understand the language used by media to convince the society it's only possible if we aware about the media Studies and history. Cultural Studies works on showing people's both the side and aspects - good as well as bad to the society. Communication matters because connections matters. Communication is one of the fastest growing fields in today’s labour market. Media has their own language and meaning it's became necessary for the people to understand it. Because on the name of the civilization and freedom people do what they have to do. How things changed with the language language that time how to question government became important and advertisement became good example of it, because it has many angle to see it.

 

The five filters proposed by Chomsky and Herman are: 

1. The size and ownership of mass media corporations

2. The economic model predicated on generating revenue via corporate advertising

3. The reliance on ‘trusted sources’ which frequently means using government or corporate spokespeople who spend vast sums on public relations and lobbying.

4. The ability of financially or politically privileged actors to provide flak, negative responses to critical media coverage

 5. An ideological filter described as anticommunism (due to Manufacturing Consent being published during the final years of the Cold war). 

So language is manmaid and it can be lier of right. Language has it's own power and ruler know that how to use language and they make people to believe in it. In today's time media is all about benifits not about truth and reality. Media tries to hide truth and reality by covering and praising it. So for the society it becomes necessary to learn the language of the social media.

3)Who can be considered as truly educated person?

Education is not only about studying and scoring high but it's about questing to the authority and power.

Many scholars have also defined education. Such as Swami Vivekanand defined this word as expression of inbuilt perfection of oneself. Similarly, according to Aristotle education is,

“The creation of a sound mind in a sound body”

Thus, a person may be considered to be educated if he develops his knowledge and skills in such a way which ultimately results into his positive contribution in community life. Acquiring knowledge and using it for the happiness and goodness of the society really makes a person educated. It is because of this reason that knowledge acquired through education is essential for any prosperous society.

According to Noam Chomsky used to told in his classes it's not important what we cover in the class, it's important what you discover. 

To be truly educated from this point of view means to be in a position to enquire and to create on the basis of the resources available to you which you've come to appreciate and comprehend. To know where to look, to know how to formulate serious questions, to question a standard doctrine if that's appropriate, to find your own way, to shape the questions that are worth pursuing, and to develop the path to pursue them. That means knowing, understanding many things but also, much more important than what you have stored in your mind, to know where to look, how to look, how to question, how to challenge, how to proceed independently, to deal with the challenges that the world presents to you and that you develop in the course of your self education and inquiry and investigations, in cooperation and solidarity with others. And this is the system to educate kindergarten to the graduation. That's what an educational system should cultivate from kindergarten to graduate school, and in the best cases sometimes does, and that leads to people who are, at least by my standards, well educated.

In short cultural Studies is about power, Media and education. What is power, how media study is important and and what is truly educated.

Thank you for visiting:-)