This document discusses British cultural materialism, an approach to cultural studies that began in the 1950s. It examines culture from two perspectives - looking back to the past or toward the future. Key figures discussed include Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, and F.R. Leavis, who promoted improving the moral sensibilities of wider readers. Influential thinkers referenced Marxist concepts like classless society and cultural hegemony from thinkers like Gramsci, exploring how domination is not always visible.

1. BRITISH CULTURAL MATERIALISM
Prepared by: Vibhuti V. Bhatt,
M. A. Part – I, Sem – II,
Roll No: 15,
Department of English,
MKBU,
Bhavnagar.

2. WHAT IS CULTURE?
• Hard to define
• Something that one inherits
• ‘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’
(Brunette, Edmund Primitive Culture, 1871)

3. CULTURAL STUDIES / BRITISH CULTURAL
MATERIALISM
• Began in the 1950s with the works of F. R. Leavis
• Two trajectories for culture:
1. One led back to past
2. The other led toward a future

4. WORKS DONE BY BRITISH AUTHORS:
• Mathew Arnold’s – Bourgeois Culture (Cultural and
Anarchy)
• Raymond Williams – Culture – Working Class as well
as the Elite
• Leavis – promoted the ‘great tradition’ – to improve the
moral sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just
the elites
• Threat – Mass Culture

5. INFLUENTIAL THINKERS:
• Karl Marx (Classless Society), Gyorgy Lukacs, Theodor
Adorno, Louis Althusser, Max Horkheimer, Mikhail
Bakhtin and Antonio Gramsci
• Gramsci – Concept of Cultural Hegemony – Relation of
Domination not always visible as such
• Walter Benjamin – Aura of Culture
• Lukacs – Reflection Theory