Cultural Studies

Compiled by:
Arif Widyanto
Budi Nirwana Sakti
 Definition
• Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field of
studies, which means that it draws from many
different subject areas, including sociology,
anthropology, political science, and history.
• Although it is sometimes misunderstood as being
the study of popular culture, cultural studies is, in
fact, the study of the ways in which culture is
constructed and organized and the ways in which
it evolves and changes over time.
 History of Cultural Studies
• 1867: Karl Marx's Das Kapital (vol. 1): Even
though cultural studies ended up drifting away
from its Marxist roots, it's worth remembering
that Marx's work played a major role for early
theorists in the Frankfurt and Birmingham
schools. While cultural studies stemmed from
Marxism in its aim to analyze the effects of the
economy, consumption, and mass ideology on
society, its key theorists branched out from
Marx's economic model to analyze culture in a
wider sense.
• 1964: Founding of the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of
Birmingham: one key event in the cultural studies
is the setting up of the CCCS, when cultural
studies was born as a full area of academic study
• 1971: Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks:
Gramsci developed the concept of cultural
hegemony in an effort to explain why working-
class people supported regimes that didn't seem
to be in their best interests
 Theories of Cultural Studies
• One of the notable theories about cultural
study is hegemony. Hegemony refers to
domination or rule achieved through
ideological and cultural means.
• The term refers to the ability of a group of
people to hold power over social institutions,
and thus, to strongly influence the values,
norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and
behavior of the rest of society.
• Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural
hegemony based on Karl Marx’s theory that the
dominant ideology of society reflected the beliefs and
interests of the ruling class.
• Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not
just through violence and political and economic
coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie
developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its
own values and norms so that they became the
"common sense" values of all. People in the working-
class (and other classes) identified their own good with
the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain
the status quo rather than revolting.
 Cultural Studies in literature
• Example of hegemony can be found in Divergent
novel by Veronica Roth. There is a kind of system
that controls the life of people in the story called
Faction System. Factions are societal divisions
that classify citizens based on their aptitudes and
values.
• Hegemony is a kind of strategy to hold control of
people or a group of people. In a social life, the
practice of hegemony is usually done by a group
of people who have authority in society.
• The groups of people who have authority in
society is shown in the leaders of each faction
and in the image of parents to their children.
Parents have influence to educate the children
about the Faction System to maintain the
condition of the society in the novel
 Refferences
• http://study.com/academy/lesson/cultural-
studies-definition-theory-methodologies.html
• https://www.shmoop.com/cultural-
studies/timeline.html
• https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-hegemony-
3026121
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_(novel)
• http://eprints.undip.ac.id/48548/1/THESIS_-
_Elmira_Primananda_13020111140122.pdf