This document provides an overview of cultural studies. It defines culture as including production organization, family structure, and social institutions. Cultural studies borrows from various disciplines like sociology and philosophy. It aims to examine culture and power relations, understand culture in complex forms, and analyze social and political contexts. To study culture, concepts like signs are important - having a concrete form, referring to something, and being recognizable. Cultural studies originated from the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies and concerns changing English cultural life. Major issues include identity, representation, spaces, high/popular culture, and consumption.

1. •Topic: cultural studies
• Name: Gopi pipavat
• Class: M.A SEM-2
• Roll no : 27
• Submitted to: Department of English M.K
Bhavnagar university

2. • What is cultural studies?
• What is cultural study
• Culture includes the organization of production,
structure of the family .the structure of
institutions which express or govern social
relationships , the characteristic forms through
which members of the society communicate.

3. • The subject of cultural
studies
• It does not have a clearly defined subject
area.
• It is used to describe and study a whole
range of practices.
• It also lacks its own principles, theories
or methods.

4. • How does it function?
•It functions by borrowing freely from
social science disciplines and all
branches of humanities, sociology,
linguistics, literary criticism,
philosophy, etc.

5. •Characteristics of cultural
• It aims to examine its subject matter in
terms of cultural practices and their
relation to power.
• Its objective is to understand culture in all
its complex forms and to analyses the
social and political context within which it
manifest itself.

6. • Cont.…
• It aims to understand and
change the structures of
dominance everywhere but in
industrial capitalist societies in
particular.

7. • How to do cultural study?
• A major concept is sign.it has 3 basic
characteristics:
 It has a concrete form
 It refers to something other than itself
 It can be recognized by most people as
a sign

8. • E.g. The idea or sign ‘Indian’ is
given a specific ideological
shape in the way ‘ Indians’
have been represented in
colonial literature.

9. •The origin of cultural study
•It derives from the cccs ( center for
contemporary cultural study) at the
univ, of Birmingham established in 1964
•The founding fathers are: Richards Hogg
art, Raymond williams,E.P Thompson,
Stuart hall
•They concern with the changing of
English cultural life.

10. • Major issues in cultural study
• Identity and difference
• Representation
• Spaces and places
• High culture/ popular culture
• Subject, bodies, selves
• consumption

11. •Culture today:
• ‘For cultural studies today’ cultural objects
are simultaneously events and experiences,
produced out of, and thrown back in to, a
social force field constituted unevenly by
power flows, status hierarchies and
opportunities”

12. •The academic setting
• In Asia , culture is studied largely in
language or science departments.
• “Traditional topics of cultural
studies are less apparent in third
world”
• Countries because questions and
concerns about westernization,
modernization, and autonomous
national identity and nation-
building are dominant in field.