The document discusses cultural studies, with a focus on British cultural materialism, which combines Marxist influences with various other disciplines to analyze cultural and historical contexts. It outlines the evolution of cultural studies in Britain, emphasizing the importance of revisiting the past to understand how ideology shapes societal norms and viewpoints. Key theorists and concepts are referenced, highlighting the significance of cultural hegemony and the reinterpretation of texts and images from alternative perspectives.

1. 205 Cultural
Studies
Prepared by Mayuri Pandya

2. Personal Information
Name :Mayuri Pandya
Roll No:14
Topic : British Cultural Materialism
Submitted To : S.B.Gardi Department of English,MKBU

3. What is Cultural Studies
"cultural studies" is hard to define.
Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s, cultural studies is composed of
elements of Marxism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, feminism, gender
studies, anthropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, film theory, urban
studies, public policy, popular culture studies, and postcolonial studies: those
fields that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community
or cause division and alienation.

4. Five Type of Cultural Studies
1.British Cultural Materialism
2.New Historicism
3.American Multiculturalism
4.Postmodernism and Popular Cultural
5.Postcolonial Studies

5. British Cultural Materialism
Cultural Materialism refers to a Marxist orientation of New Historicism,
characterised by the analysis of any historical material within a politicized
framework, in a radical and subversive manner. Cultural Materialism
emphasises studying the historical context, looking at those historical
aspects that have been discarded or silenced in other narratives of
history, through an eclectic theoretical approach, backed by the political
commitment arising from the influence of Marxist and Feminist
perspective and thus executing a textual analysis—close reading that
critiques traditional approaches, especially on canonical texts.(MAMBROL,
NASRULLAH)
Cultural studies is referred to as "cultural materialism" in Britain, and it
has a long tradition. In the later nineteenth century.

6. Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the "givens" of British culture.
Edward Burnett Tylor's pioneering anthropological study Primitive Culture (1877)
argued that "Culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,custom, and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society".
Claude Levi-Strauss's influence moved British thinkers to assign "culture" to primitive
peoples, and they with the work of British scholars like
Raymond Williams, to attribute culture to the working class as well as the elite.
Williams memorably states: "There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing
[other] people as masses".

7. Britain two trajectories for "culture" developed:
one led back to the past and the feudal hierarchies that ordered community in
the past; here, culture acted in its sacred function as preserver of the past.
The other trajectory led toward a future, socialist utopia that would annul the
distinction between labor and leisure classes and make transformation of status,
not fixity, the norm.

8. Raymond Williams applauded the richness of canonical texts such as Leavis
promoted, but also found they could seem to erase certain communal forms of life.
Inspired by Karl Marx, British theorists were also influenced by Gyorgy Lukacs,
Theodor Adorno, Louis Althusser, Max Horkheimer, Mikhail Bakhtin,and Antonio
Gramsci.
They were especially interested in problems of cultural hegemony and in the many
systems of domination related to literature. From Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, for
example, they got the concept of cultural "hedge firered," referring to relations of
domination not always visible as such.
Williams noted that hegemony was "a sense of reality for most people. . .beyond
which it is very difficult for most members of society to move" (Marxism and Literature
). But the people are not always victims of hegemony; they sometimes possess the
power to change it.

9. Cultural materialism is engaged in the process of renewing our images of
the past, of revisiting the past. They carry out this work to different ends:
new historicism aims to show that each era or period has its own
conceptual and ideological frameworks, that people of the past did not
understand concepts like ‘the individual’, ‘God’, ‘reality’ or ‘gender’ in the
same way that we do now; cultural materialism aims to show that our
political and ideological systems manipulate images and texts of the past
to serve their own interests, and that these images and texts can be
interpreted from alternative and radically different perspectives, often
constructed by placing those images or texts in their historical
contexts.(McGuigan, J)

10. Althusser insisted that ideology was ultimately in control of the people, that "the
main function of ideology is to reproduce the society's existing relations of
production, and that that function is even carried out in literary texts."
Ideology must maintain this state of affairs if the state and capitalism can
continue to reproduce themselves without fear of revolution. Althusser saw
popular literature as merely "carrying the baggage of a culture's ideology,"
whereas "high" literature retained more autonomy and hence had more power .

11. Example
In power and Male dominating society with Patriarchal
structure make decision for Women with the absence of
women going toward bacK.

12. तस्मादेतााः सदा पूज्या भूषण – आच्छादन – अशनाः।
भूतत – कामर् नरर् तनत्यं सत्करेषु – उत्सवेषु च।
Men who seek (their own) welfare,
should always honor women on
festivals with (gifts of) ornaments,
clothes, and (dainty) food.(ManuSmriti 3.59)
तपतृतभर् भ्रातृतभश् च-एतााः पतततभर् देवरस् तथा।
पूज्या भूषतितव्याश् च बहुकल्याणम् ईप्सुतभाः।।
Women must be honored and adorned by their fathers,
brothers, husbands, and brothers-in-law, who desire (their own)
welfare.(ManuSmriti 3.55)

13. Citation
Althusser, Louis. For Marx. Trans. Ben Brewster. New york: pantheon,1969.
Bhaskar Ground Report." Divya Bhaskar [Mehsana], 28 Aug. 2022.
Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, no. 16. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1977.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. Trans. john and Doreen Weightman. New York: Harpeg 1975.
Marxism andLiterature. New York: Oxford University, Press,1973.
MAMBROL, NASRULLAH. “New Historicism and Cultural Materialism – Literary Theory and Criticism.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 21 October 2016,
https://literariness.org/2016/10/21/new-historicism-and-cultural-materialism/. Accessed 7 October 2022.
McGuigan, J. (2016). Cultural Materialism. In: Neoliberal Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137466464_6
“Sanskrit quotes on women - Manusminti Shlokas.” TFIStore, 18 April 2022, https://tfi-store.com/sanskrit-quotes-on-women-manusmiriti-shlokas/.
Accessed 7 October 2022.
Tylor, Edward Burnett. Primitiae Culture. New York: Holt, 1877
Willingham, John R., et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford University Press, 1992.
Williams, Raymond.1958.Culture and Society: 1780-1950. London: Chatto,.1958

14. THANK YOU