Raymond Williams and the Evolution of Cultural Theory

Raymond Williams and the Concept of Culture

This last interpretation is defended by Raymond Williams. He saw society as a grouping of people who interact and create new values, practices, and beliefs; all in all, culture. This is exactly what T.S. Eliot referred to when conceiving culture as a "whole way of life."

The Industrial Revolution and Social Change

Coming back to the core of the matter, Williams said that the idea of culture has always existed, but it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution took place that it was introduced into common English. Besides, he argues that the modern sense of "culture" can only be interpreted in this particular framework with its historical circumstances and its socio-political and intellectual changes.

In addition, in Culture and Society, he managed to capture the responses and feelings of every social class who looked down upon mass culture. Furthermore, he gives three potential approaches to the definition of culture:

• The ideal
• The documentary
• The social

Ideology and the Mechanics of Capitalism

Besides, he sees ideology as a mediator between systems of power and subjects. He believed that ideology resides in the practices of everyday life which create unequal social relations among classes which are essential for capitalism.

Education and Social Inequality

For example, capitalism needs education, not for humanistic reasons, but the point is that some need not to be educated. During the Industrial Revolution, some received an education while others remained illiterate because they had to be sent to factories from an early age. These unequal relations are needed to justify the functioning of our system. Therefore, he agreed with Marx that whoever controls the base also promulgates the superstructure. Consequently, different ideologies are always coming out.

Althusser and State Apparatuses

Louis Althusser underscores the role of institutions. For example, the Armed Forces act by abiding by the law; they cannot act as they please. The final point on Althusser deals with his conception of the subject and ideology.

Structuralism and Semiotic Analysis

Structuralists such as Saussure introduced semiology or semiotics, focusing on signification and other signifying practices. Claude Lévi-Strauss applied these methods to interpret popular culture, as did Roland Barthes.

Roland Barthes and the Power of Myth

In his work Mythologies, Barthes asserted that myths are found in everyday life. He focused on advertisements and photographs, such as the Panzani ad, analyzing denotation and connotation.