"Culture is Ordinary" - Raymond Williams

“Culture is Ordinary” - Raymond Williams              

Introduction

Raymond Williams was a decisive influence on the formation of cultural studies. This text, titled, ‘Culture is Ordinary’, (1958) emphasises that, culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind. To Williams, the word ‘culture’ meant both a ‘whole way of life’ [synonymous with everyday life], and, the ‘forms of signification’ [novels, films, advertising, television, etc] that circulate within a society.

A Retort to Eliot’s Views on Culture

T. S. Eliot, in his ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Culture’ roots for an elitist perspective to culture. He argues that, only a minority fully engage with high culture, that is essential to prevent social disintegration. Ultimately only a kind of cultural elite can preserve and maintain the culture necessary for a civilised society to exist, says Eliot. However, Raymond Williams argues that culture is not the preserve of a tiny minority. ‘An interest in learning or the arts is simple, pleasant and natural’, he observes, and adds that, by becoming a student at Cambridge he didn’t lose the working-class Welsh culture that he had been brought up with.

Two sets of Academic Perspectives on Culture – The Marxist & the Leavisite

Raymond Williams says that, he had come to look at culture using two sets of academic perspectives. At Cambridge he became a follow of two cultural prophets, Karl Marx and the literary critic F. R. Leavis. He attended Leavis’ lectures and was deeply influenced by him. Leavis taught that literature was important because of its moral effects and its impact on everyday life. Williams’ concept of the ‘structure of feelings’ also seems inspired by Leavis. However, Leavis was a cultural pessimist and, like Eliot, an elitist. He feared that culture was debased by industrial society, and feared the effect of mass American culture.

 

Williams learnt a lot from the Cambridge Marxists, but also came to reject some of their cultural analyses. He noted that the Marxists taught him several things: First, they said that a culture must be finally interpreted in relation to its underlying system of production. A capitalist society shapes us with a capitalist culture. Williams noted that with his working-class background he was keenly aware that access to education was restricted. However, Williams also thought that Cambridge Marxism was also – paradoxically - elitist. While class and capitalism shaped culture, he thought there was also an independent and potentially resistant working-class culture. Williams also saw the Marxism of the 1930s as too prescriptive and dogmatic. Williams took from the Marxism of his student days an assumption that culture was bound up with economics and class. He developed the concept of cultural materialism, arguing that culture had a material effect.

The Two Aspects of Culture: Traditional & Creative – the Known & the New

A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life – the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning – the special processes of discovery and creative effort.

The Gift of Power

True, we lived in a very beautiful farming valley, and the valleys beyond the limestone we could all see were ugly. But there was one gift that was overriding, one gift which at any price we would take, the gift of power that is everything to men who have worked with their hands. It was slow in coming to us, in all its effects, but steam power, the petrol engine, electricity, these and their host of products in commodities and services, we took as quickly as we could get them, and were glad.

Our Stratified Educational System

I believe, myself, that our educational system, is too like our social system – a top layer of leaders, a middle layer of supervisors, a large bottom layer of operatives! I cannot accept that education is a training for jobs, or for making useful citizens (that is, fitting into this system). It is a society’s confirmation of its common meanings. Jobs follow from this confirmation: the purpose, and then the working skill.

Williams calls for more and more active public provision for the arts and for adult learning. We now spend £2,00,00,000 annually on all our libraries, museums, galleries, orchestras, on the Arts Council, and on all forms of adult education. At the same time, we spend £36,50,00,000 annually on advertising. When these figures are reversed, we can claim some sense of proportion and value. Secondly, while we must obviously preserve and extend the great national institutions, we should also welcome, encourage and foster the tendencies to regional recreation that are showing themselves; for culture is ordinary, you should not have to go to London to find it. I think much of contemporary advertising is necessary only in terms of the kind of economy we now have: a stimulation of consumption in the direction of particular products and firms, often by irrelevant devices, rather than real advertising. In a socialist economy, which I and others want, the whole of this pseudo-advertising would be irrelevant.

Conclusion

Thus, Raymond Williams emphasizes on the collective nature of ideas, language, and values. Culture for Williams is not, or should not be, what separates people, but what joins them in community. Culture is not for the discerning few, but for the many.

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