Cultural Studies of Communication / What is Cultural Studies? / Origination of Cultural Studies / High Culture and Popular Culture /

1. Cultural Studies of
Communication
D. D. P. Arunasiri
Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture
University of Peradeniya
Sri Lanka

2. What is Culture ?
Foods Cloths Shelters Religion Marriage Music

3. What is Cultural Studies
• Way of looking at culture and society
• Started in Britain in 1960s and 1970s
• Spread globally in 1980s and 1990s
• Combines cultural anthropology with sociology ,
politics .. etc

4. What is Cultural Studies Cont…
• A critical approach to culture and society
• It focuses on inequality and discrimination
between groups in society
• It looks for the causes of inequality and
discrimination in culture
• It wants to change culture and society to end
inequality and discrimination

5. Origination of Cultural Studies
• It derives from the CCCS ( Center for Contemporary
Cultural Study) at the Univ, of Birmingham (1964)
• Founders Are, Richards Hoggart, Raymond
williams, E.P Thompson, Stuart hall
• They concerned the changing of English cultural life.

6. Cultural Studies Look at…
• Culture = common, shared ideas, beliefs,
customs, ways of behaving in a society..etc
• where these ideas, beliefs, etc, come from, and
what effect they have on social roles and
relations (e.g. for men and women)

7. High Culture and Popular Culture
• High culture e.g. literature, art, philosophy,
etc,
• Popular culture (mass culture) & mass media
- TV, movies, adverts, popular music, sport,
fashion, consumption

8. Identities of groups in society
• sex (female/male)
• gender (femininity/masculinity)
• sexuality (homosexuality/heterosexuality)
• age/generation
(child/adult;teenager/middle-aged/old)
• social class (working class/middle
class/upper class)
• nationality (Indian, Korean, British, etc)

9. Role

10. Identity

11. Men as dominant

12. Gender

13. Representation of Sexuality

14. Persuation

15. Thank You