Cultural Studies 1 - Introduction: studying cultural studies through everyday life

This blog is about introducing the discipline of cultural studies through the study of everyday life.

So, what do I by ‘studying everyday life’? I mean, is not the everyday boring and mundane? Nothing happens on an average day and should we not be studying the extraordinary events that occur such as elections, wars, terrorist attacks and so on – things that are unique, happen rarely and we stop and notice?

The answer is yes, we should be studying these events – because they are both important and shape our world. The war in Iraq, for example, will be studied in years to come as a moment in history when the world changed: it may be seen as the beginning of the end of US power, or maybe the beginning of peace and stability in the region… who knows what history holds? We can only speculate.

But the study of the everyday is different: it allows us to turn into anthropologists and look at our own civilisations like zoologists look at elephants. In this way, we learn to look at the way we live by taken-for-granted understandings about the ‘rules’ of everyday life. This gives insights in the power relations in our society, what we consider important, the way we structure our society and a whole lot more.

So, studying the everyday life is both self-evident and puzzling as it is everywhere but invisible. We need to unpack the very things that we take for granted. It involves, not the one-off events, but the everyday patterns and events. To do this, it is necessary to begin the process of ‘unlearning’. That is, the things that we consider normal and natural we need to learn to stop doing them and looking at them like we are looking at them for the first time: unpack the familiar – which is known as ‘deconstruction’.

So, in cultural studies we are less interested in how we structure our society, but more in the logic of things: for example, do we drive rather than take public transport because of convenience, or is there something specific in our culture – the way we see the world – that prioritises cars over public transport? And why does this persist even when we know it is damaging the environment?


Some background

The study of everyday life emerged as academics became interested in the life of ordinary people. Early historians were interested mainly in the lives of the elites – nobility, royalty and generals – but by looking at everyday life, it was possible to gain insights into how our own society is arranged, liveable, understanding why we accept certain things, do not revolt, why we are happy or miserable.

The field emerged as society changed particularly through mass urbanisation and more and more people came to live in cities: the questions that were raised included how do we all get along? What rules do we all accept and follow? How do we learn those rules?

Now, one of the challenges of studying this area is that sometimes things change subtly and we do not even recognise it. Other times there is rapid change. As change happens, we can no longer take everyday interactions for granted: what may seem normal at one point is no longer the case. Likewise, what was once accepted as normal, now seems strange.

One example is multiculturalism. For at least two generations it has been an acceptable and it would have appeared permanent part of Australian life. Previously, however, we had the White Australia Policy. The change from white Australia to multiculturalism was both subtle and dramatic. We had a department of multicultural affairs and a dedicated minister. Now this has changed dramatically and the current government has removed references about the term from its departments and renamed the department to Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

So we study everyday life to understand both the subtle dimensions and major changes of our lives.


Why study everyday Life?

So the question is, why do we study everyday life? Is it not the major events that define us and is everyday life not mundane, obvious, and ‘natural’? I have kind of answered this question already, but I think the following quote sums it up well:

‘It is one of the most fundamental paradoxes of our social life that when we are at our most natural, our most everyday, we are also at our most cultural; that when we are in roles that look the most obvious and given, we are actually in roles that are constructed, learned and far from inevitable’ (Willis, 1979: 184 – my emphasis).

That is, everyday life often masks social power, social order and process of socialisation. And it is often with the ordinary and mundane that we can get amazing insights into our culture. As one famous theorist, LeFebvre, noted, we must ‘look for the extraordinary in the ordinary’: in other words, behind what we consider ordinary there is a great deal happening that we should analyse and challenge.

So we have relations of power that come to feel normal – but they are not – we construct them. All dimensions of life are socially acquired even things such as sitting on a bus or food hall. The rules of dealing with the stranger is to act indifferently towards them.

Irving Goffman, a major theorist, presented the concept of civil indifference and dealing with the unfamiliar. That is, when you see something or someone unfamiliar, you act indifferently. For Goffman, this was one reason that we all got along. So acting politely indifferently is one rule of life.


Aspects of Everyday Life

When we are looking at everyday life, we need to recognise that the events of our lives are historically specific and situated. That is, if we were studying the lives of your parents 20 years ago, or say any children that we might produce in 20 years time, it would be different. The rules we follow within our daily lives are specifically situated. As I said, some changes have been subtle and others dramatic.

Compare how we would organise someone’s birthday party a few years ago. You would write invitations and send them out. Today, we organise parties through MySpace and Facebook where once people relied on phones and even physical invitations! What does it tell us about the way we communicate? What does it tell us about our culture?

Ok… so let us look at the cultural meaning behind some things that we do without even thinking about it – cultural meanings that we actually accept. Let me give you an example, when you go to a shop and buy a can of Coke, the process of pulling money out and paying the dude at a convenience store is pretty simple. But think about all the associated meanings:

• In the process of paying for something you are accepting the fact that cash is a mechanism of exchange.
• You are saying that we live in a capitalist society and there are property rights – the store owns the Coke until you pay for it and then it is yours.
• You are saying that like it or not, this is normal and you buy into that system.
• You buy a Coke… this is not a random decision but because you feel like a Coke. You know about this because of advertising – a walking down the street drinking a Coke has meaning behind it (say compared to walking down the street and drinking a beer or Bicardi Breezer or milk)

No one really explained to us these rules, but they are there. Most of us will never just walk into a shop and take things without paying for it or refuse to pay for it for revolutionary reasons – just as most of us will never think about the cultural meaning associated with buying a Coke.

Saying that, if in such a simple there exist so many rules and it carries so much meanings, what happens if you took them away? How would we shop?

It is such interactions that are embedded in everything we do and never really think about it.


Some important definitions

Ok, I want to look at some definitions for terms that you will come across in this subject:

• Ideology: a more or less coherent set of beliefs and values that serves to mask or legitimate relations of domination and subordination: think of capitalism and the class system
• Agency: is the ability of the individual to act autonomously. To have ‘agency’ is to be able to act with choice.
• Structures: are the social institutions and social practices that constrain our choices, and that shape our attitudes and beliefs. Structures can influence agency
• Culture: there are many definitions of culture – and is impossible to really define simply or even explain it. I have a bunch listed in the notes but I will explain a couple of these here. But when we talk of culture we are not talking of ‘high culture’ such as the theatre, but talking about the culture of our society. It is the way we see the world, understanding and make sense of what is going on around us and what are the rules of our lives.

Anyway, here are two definitions I like and I think summarise the concept well:

‘Culture consists of the values the members of a given group hold, the norms they follow, and the material goods they create’ (Giddens, 1989, Sociology, 31).

‘Culture is the ensemble of social processes by which meanings are produced, circulated and exchanged.’ (Thwaites, Davis & Mules, 1994:1).

Culture is something that affects us all and shapes our lives – and it is constantly changing. And importantly, no one culture shapes us: there is our Australian culture, whatever that is, but also the culture of ethnicity, sexuality etc. so we are influenced by multiple cultures and thus have multiple identities.