What makes culture?

Raymond Williams, in his book “The Analysis of Culture”, claims that there are three categories of culture in his mind. These are:

1. The ideal approach

2. The documentary approcah

3. The social approach

The ideal approach to the analysis of culture is a situation in which “culture is a state or process of human perfection”. This approach is said to analyse culture through:

“the discovery and description, in lives and works, of those values which can be seen to ...have permanent reference to the universal human condition.”

The documentary approach deals with a situation in which “culture is the body of intellectual and imaginative work” and where thought and experience are recorded on a number of different levels. The analysis of culture, in this context, comes from the criticism of this thought and experience and through the “details of the language, form and convention in which these are active”.

The social approach to the analysis of culture brings itself from the situation in which culture “is a description of a particular way of life”. The focus in this instance falls on the particular meanings and values “not only in art and learning, but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour” of the time. The analysis of culture, through this approach, studies the “clarification of the meanings and values” in a particualr culture, at a particular time. What is most destincive about this form of analysis, is that this approach will also include elements of the way of life, which other approachs do not consider to be “cultural” at all.

Williams goes on to state that each of these cateoriges are strong cases for a wholesome definition of how best to analyse culture, but says that it is a combination of all three which makes the most rounded and complete analysis of our culture.

“The variations of meaning and reference, in the use of culture as a term, must be seen...not simply as a disadvantage...but as a genuine complexity”.

Williams criticises the “ideal” analysis of culture for attempting to “abstract the process it describes from its detailed embodiment and shaping by particular societies” – in that the ideal does not even attempt to consider the reality of the world surrounding the culture of the time.

He criticises the “documentary” analysis for only seeing value in the written word and artisit format, as this approach marks an area off from the rest the audience’s life in society. Although Williams notes that this form of analysis does provide specific evidence about the situation in which the culture was produced, he goes on to note that a great deal of history has been written with the assumption that all of the society (and its political, economic and social stance) form the “central core of facts”.

Williams also criticises the “social” analysis for treating “the general process or the body of art and learning as a mere by-product” of a society, and accepting it only as a “passive refelction of the interests” of taht particular society.

Williams believes that we, as scholars, need to analyse culture in a more complete and universal context – combining all of the aspects which helps to produce culture and cultural works.

“The art is there, as an activity, with the production, the trading, the politics, the raising of families.”

Williams gives his own definition of the theory of culture as being:

“the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life.”

He also gives his own definition of the analysis of culture as being:

“the attempt to discover the nature of the organisation which is the complex of these relationships.”