Session 2: Defining Culture

Today we talked about two ways of defining culture:

- the view of culture as being measured against Matthew Arnold's 'Touchstone Writers' (namely Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton), in the late nineteenth century, and F.R. Leavis's and Q.D. Leavis's 'The Canon' in the 1930s and 1940s

- the view of culture as 'ordinary life', a term coined by Raymond Williams in the 1960s

The challenge to the first view came about with the Industrial Revolution and you can learn about this part of history by visitng the following sites:

www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pz9d6/Why_the_Industrial_Revolution_Happened_Here/
After familiarsing yourself with the concepts of culture as 'everyday life' through how we share the rules of culture with our codes of behaviour in Cultural Practices and our use of Cultural Products, you should now be able to select one Cultural Product and prepare to talk about:

-  how this works as a Cultural Product
- what Cultural Practices are attached to it - what social rules come into play when we use it?

Prepare a three minute presentation and email me a picture of your chosen Cultural Product before Monday's lesson.

My email: sarah.h@efupcam.co.uk