Introduction to Communication Science week 5: 5.2 Producing and Maintaining Culture

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Transcript of all Week 5 videos: https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/commscience/transcripts%2FTranscript_Week_5%20Coursera.pdf

This lecture in .http://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/commscience/recoded_videos%2F5.2.ec9e7a4e4e1b15fcf1d126f4b6740056.webm

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Subtitle text: https://class.coursera.org/commscience-001/lecture/subtitles?q=77_en&format=srt

Video mp4: https://class.coursera.org/commscience-001/lecture/download.mp4?lecture_id=77
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Week 5 description:
Communication as a social and cultural force
In the fifth week we cover theoretical approaches that understand communication processes as social and cultural forces, as building blocks of reality, and a binding element of power in society.

We have been talking about culture and
communication, but what is culture exactly?

Let’s start by defining this tricky concept.

There are, as always, many definitions in the
field.

Some see culture as an internalized and shared
set of unstated assumptions,

procedures, ways of doing things,

that have been internalized to the extent that
people do not argue about them.

Other definitions focus more on the fact that
culture identifies us.

It creates a feeling of belonging or not-belonging,

for instance this definition by Hofstede who sees
culture as

“the collective programming of the mind which
distinguishes one group,

nation, society, from another”

One of the earliest and most influential
definitions is by Edward B. Tylor

who defined it as “that complex whole, which
includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals,

custom and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.”

Important elements in this definition are the fact
that people share culture.

This process of sharing makes us belong in
society or in a group.

So culture has everything to do with our own
individual identity,

with a feeling of belonging to society, to a larger
group and to a cultural framework.

The study of human culture, and the differences
between cultures,

became a core research theme of the scientific
discipline of Anthropology.

One of the questions anthropologists, and most
notably Franz Boas raised was

how universal is human culture and how can we
study it?

Boas introduced the principle of cultural
relativism,

which meant that there is not one universal
human culture

but in fact there are many different ones,

each equally valid in its own context.

Scientists should, according to Boas,
acknowledge this diversity,

which is difficult because we intuitively tend to
see our own culture as ‘right’.

Still we can overcome this cultural bias by
studying,

observing and participating in different cultures.

And what then should they study, or observe?

Basically everything!

Since culture is communicated through all kinds
of cultural acts:

dance, song, literature, interpersonal interaction,
daily routine, behavior, et cetera.

It’s all part of the cultural framework that
identifies a society.

These ideas became the dominant approach of
cultural and social anthropologists

in the twentieth century.

Their influence spread out to other scientific
disciplines,

like communication science, in the nineteen
sixties.

This culminated in the foundation of the very
influential

Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies in 1964.

This centre inspired scientists all over the world
to study cultural aspects of communication.

And it prospered under the leadership of its
foremost scientist

and later he also became the director of the
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies:

Stuart Hall.

You might remember from last week that he was
also the leading scholar

in the field of Reception Theory,

the theory that focused on the recipients of
communication

and how they give meaning to a message and
use those messages

to give meaning to the world around them.

This idea fitted neatly within the Cultural
Approach.

Let’s further explore this in the next section of
our MOOC.