«CULTURE IS ORDINARY» Raymond WILLIAMS 1958

Selected Works by Raymond Williams Drama from Ibsen to Eliot. London: Chatto & Windus, 1952. Drama in Performance. London: Watts, 1954. Preface to Film, with Michael Orram. London: Film Drama, 1954. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. London and New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. Border Country (novel). London: Chatto & Windus, 1960. The Long Revolution. London and New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Communications. London: Penguin, 1962; 3rd edition, 1976. Modern Tragedy. London: Verso; Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1966. Drama From Ibsen to Eliot. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968 (revised as Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, 1968) The Pelican Book of English Prose: From 1780 to the Present Day, editor. London: Harmondsworth Penguin, 1970. The English Novel from Dickson to Lawrence. London: Chatto & Windus, 1970.  Orwell. London: Fontana, 1971. D. H. Lawrence on Education, editor, with Joy Williams. London: Harmondsworth Penguin, 1973. The Country and the City. London: Chatto & Windus, 1973. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana, 1974. George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays, editor. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1974. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana, 1975. English Drama: Forms and Development: Essays in Honour of Muriel Clara Bradbrook, editor, with Marie Axton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Marxism and Literature. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. The Volunteers (novel). London: Eyre Methuen, 1978. The Fight for Manod (novel). London: Chatto & Windus, 1979. Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review. London and New York, 1979. Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London and New York: Verso, 1980. Contact: Human Communication and Its History, editor. London: Thames and Hudson, 1981. Culture. London: Fontana, 1981. The Sociology of Culture. New York: Schocken, 1982. Towards 2000. London: Chatto & Windus, 1983. Writing in Society. London: Verso, 1984. People of the Black Mountains.  Part I (The Beginning: People of the Black Mountains), 1989 / Part II (The Eggs of the Eagle), 1990.

working class, traditional, creative, production, masses, bourgeois, industrial revolution, power, education, press, advertising, vulgarity

What does the opening paragraph of Williams’ essay indicate regarding the social history of Britain?

What are the two aspects of a culture What are the two aspects of a culture? How does Williams’ definition of culture set a contrast to the “teashop” scene at Cambridge?

Clive Bell was an art critic in the 20th century Clive Bell was an art critic in the 20th century. He believed in the necessity of a leisured elite for the maintenance of civilisation – an idea which Williams disagreed with.

Marxism The teaching of Leavis

1. Marxists said that culture must be interpreted in relation to its underlying system of production. Williams agrees with this, since he views culture as a whole way of life and the arts as a part of a social organisation which economic change clearly radically affects (i.e. production shapes producers’ way of life, which may undergo a change due to economic fluctuations – farming, mining).

According to the Marxists, the masses were deliberately left ignorant. Williams does not seem to be in full agreement with this idea: he acknowledges the existence of an English bourgeois culture, with its powerful educational, literary and social institutions; but, he does not think that working people are excluded from English culture.

Williams does not agree with the Marxist idea that a different system of production should be encouraged through writing, thinking and learning in «prescribed ways». To Williams, these things cannot be prescribed because they are based on personal and social experience.

2. F. R. Leavis was an English literary critic 2. F.R. Leavis was an English literary critic. He wrote The Great Tradition (1948) – a critical book on English fiction in which he classified Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad as the great novelists of the past, and praised their works for placing «a reverent openness before life and marked moral intensity.

Leavis argued that the traditional English culture was destroyed by the industrial revolution, and turned into a cheap, vulgar, mass culture. Leavis refers to pre- and post-industrial revolution culture, focusing on dichotomies as old vs. new, valuable vs. cheap, pure vs. vulgar. Williams points out that industrial revolution paved the way for social progress, and asks if we defend these «good» advances, how are we to answer the problem of «the new cultural vulgarity»? To Williams, the cheapening of response was not a consequence of the cheapening of power.

Towards «the good common culture» Williams believes that «a good culture» can be made on condition that one false proposition, two false equations, and one false analogy are removed.

One False proposal The new power brought ugliness. According to Williams, this proposition is false since the old sources of power could be replaced by the new ones which could make England clean and pleasant again. (e.g. Diesel and petrol cars to be replaced with electric or hybrid cars by 2040).

Two False Equations Popular education (that came into effect by the 1870 Education Act) is responsible for the new commercial culture. Williams states that it was not popular education but the cheap press that led to the emergence of a commercial culture, a process which began in the 1890s when editors sold space for advertising. 2. The masses share the same tastes and manners. To Williams, the masses do not indicate a category that bring together people who are «low and trivial in taste». His observation of his friends with different responses to popular culture reveals that their minds do not reflect one another.

One False Analogy Gresham’s law – «just as bad money will drive out good, so bad culture will drive out good.» According to Williams, the increase in bad culture does not mean a decrease in good culture. Culture expands, and as it expands so does its elements.

According to Williams, what should the “good common culture” be like? What does the “new cultural vulgarity” refer to?