According to Cambridge Dictionary, the definition of “culture” is “the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time”. On the other hand, according to Raymond Williams, it is more complicated. However, there is something that is certain: Culture is ordinary, which happens to be the title of an article he wrote to define and explain what culture is. In his article “Culture Is Ordinary”, Raymond Williams defines culture, based on his knowledge, and experience –which would, as he defines, would be his culture. He starts his article with simply giving a definition according to his understanding by telling what is and is not culture, and continues with the reasons he doesn’t agree with some of Marxist ideas of culture, and that of F. R. Leavis’. While giving reasons for his disagreements, he gives solid examples from both people he knows and doesn’t know. Culture is something that is alive, moving. It is not something that some people have and some don’t. It is not only what is seen in public “common meanings” as Williams say, or some kind of education, but also what an individual experiences when s/he encounters them both. Therefore, it is a false approach to declare some people “cultured” and others “not cultured”, because in the end, however uneducated one might be, whatever s/he sees in life is his/her own culture.
Raymond Williams is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of cultural studies. He was a left-wing literary critic who developed an approach to cultural studies he called “cultural materialism.” It is based on Marxist theory, and it attempts to explain the relationship between culture and society, and specifically, between literary tradition and political power. By generating what could be called “dissident literature,” that is, literature that focuses on marginalized and exploited groups in society and that promotes their socio-political agendas, Williams and the cultural materialists hoped to transform the social order by using literature as a form of resistance. Cultural materialists are aware of the subversive power of literature, and they recognize that authors have the ability to hide political messages in a text. So, cultural materialists interpret the literature of a given time period to uncover these messages, particularly the messages that reveal power struggles among the people.
Williams, a mid-twentieth century scholar of English literature who died in 1988, brought a "people's" perspective to literary and cultural studies. In 1958, he published Culture and Society, his most famous work, which studies how the concept of culture evolved between the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, circa 1780, and the year 1950. He contends that our current ideas about culture are influenced by history and by economic realities—they are not "timeless," as some have argued.
During the period he describes, he writes, two competing views of culture evolved. One identified culture with the "arts," and defined it as a higher, refined, and more perfect way of life. The other view, which Williams embraced, identified culture with "a whole way of life," a manner of living humanely which is far broader than reading "good" literature and viewing Old Master paintings.
In another famous book, The Country and the City, Williams shows how the literature of the elites obscures the real suffering of the rural laborer, idealizing it to make it seems as if crops grew themselves and livestock took care of itself. He reveals as well how we can use literature to help critique these blind spots in society.
Williams wrote in a simple, accessible style, unlike many literary theorists of his period. He interpreted literature and society through the lens of the common man, and his work has held up well.
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