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4 Culture: nations, banks and the organisation of power and social life There are several reasons for working with and examining the concept of culture in a study such as this. The culture concept has been central to anthropology and has become increasingly prominent in sociology in recent years, and these two disciplines fundamentally inform this book. It has also become a key concept in the subfield of organisational studies, where the idea of ‘organisational cultures’ has become very influential. And this concern with culture radiates from more general
3 Culture: artefacts and disciplinary formation The Manchester Museum was founded as an institution devoted to natural history, but did not remain so for long. Even by the time it was fully opened in 1890, some man-made things were on display beside the natural specimens. The proliferation of these kinds of objects during its early decades was not planned by Museum staff, but rather expanded thanks to influential donors. Here I trace the differentiation of an intellectually and architecturally distinct portion of the collection devoted to Egyptology
myth and materiality in a woman’s world 5 Culture The thing that was unusual was that the women were in among things. That was the unusual thing. They bwirna supposed to be. (Shetland Archive, 3/1/123: John Gear) he extensive nature of everyday intercourse between women in Shetland spawned complex sets of relationships. Women’s prominence and independence in the world of work, their residential groupings and their mutual reliance on one another in the context of a high male absence and death rate resulted in a high degree of female solidarity governed by codes
5 Culture Culture, Raymond Williams famously said, is one of the most complicated words in the English language. Trying to make sense of the term, Williams suggested that it has two broad meanings. The first refers to a structure of feeling; the second refers to a set of productions that reflect on and attempt to shape and mould that structure of feeling (Williams 1985). It is easier to grasp what Williams means by a set of productions: these include material and symbolic things and practices such as literature, art, music, food, clothes and building styles
4 Code and culture 4.1 The mafia has, in the purely anthropological sense of the term, a culture with rules and beliefs which dictate aspects of its conduct. This culture has been adapted and altered in history but, while studying the contemporary mafia, Pino Arlacchi found it of value to examine the code which contemporary mafiosi had inherited from their own past. Cosa signitica comportarsi in maniera mafiosa? Significafarsi rispettare, essere uomini d'onore, capaci di vendicare con le proprie forze qualunque offesa arrecata alla propria personalita ed alle
9 Feminism in popular culture This chapter brings together debates about the relationships between feminism and popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s which explored how feminism was envisaged within popular culture. These debates are organised around concepts such as 'backlash', 'post-feminism', 'celebrity feminism' and 'popular feminism', and attempt to get to grips with the question 'where has feminism gone?' As will become clear, there has been considerable disagreement about how feminism has figured within the popular and about how to theorise the
6 Consumption and material culture Part II of this book raised questions about consumption by challenging the view that there is a single meaning of a text that is inscribed in it through the production process. It demonstrated a shift in thinking about film, literature and media forms which not only raised questions about how texts are capable of producing a range of meanings, but also highlighted the importance of thinking about how the same text can be interpreted and used in different ways. This, it was argued, is not to claim that the consumer is all
Print culture cannot be reduced to one narrative; for example the introduction of print culture in the Middle East or in India did not necessarily lead to the development of a Western humanist mindset, but was instead often adopted in order to attack colonial rule or secular values. ‘Print culture’ (as a kind of slogan) has also often been
‘Police Officer’ In November 1984 Black British rapper Smiley Culture appeared on TOTP performing his single ‘Police Officer’. The song reached Number 12 and stayed in the charts for 13 weeks. It wasn't Smiley Culture's first popular record, but it was unusual for a home-grown reggae track to hit the UK mainstream charts. Smiley Culture's first release, ‘Cockney Translation’, was originally released on an independent label, Fashion Records, and was picked up by Polydor. Polydor turned down ‘Police Officer’ as the follow
3 Radical visual culture: from caricature to portraiture The previous chapter highlighted the importance of portraiture for shaping the identities of the political parties formed in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act. However, it was radicals who were consistently the most innovative in their exploitation of new visual technologies. This was no coincidence. Portraiture was even more valuable to radical movements, which frequently experienced media indifference or hostility. To counter this, radicals produced their own series to project their own self-image to