Introducing Cultural Studies Quotes

“2. Liberal democracy is widely accepted across cultures from Eastern Europe to Africa, along with its symbolic associations: respect for human rights, environmental protection, cosmopolitanism etc.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“1. The economic wave of liberalization that began in the 1980s has achieved global proportions after the fall of Communism. Markets became free from all state constraints and capital could now move across borders with ease. Multinational corporations could move from country to country in their quest for cheap labour and tax exemptions.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“Basing his work on F.R. Leavis’s (1895–1978) ideas on literary criticism, Hoggart argued that a critical reading of art could reveal “the felt quality of life” of a society. Only art could recreate life in all its rich complexity and diversity.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“5. Black and non-Western feminists concentrate on racism and colonialism, and view these as tools for understanding gender relations. For black women, race remains an essential form of oppression.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“4. In postmodern feminism, gender and race do not have a fixed meaning. Each individual is seen as a composite of elements from a range of available modes of subjectivity. While these elements may be contradictory in themselves, they are appropriate in different contexts. No one is naturally male or female. Femininity and masculinity are socially constructed and are a site of political struggle about meaning.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“3. Marxist feminists view gender as a cultural phenomenon. Differences in women’s cultural practice are not seen as signs of essential differences between the sexes.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“2. Woman-centred cultural politics, on the other hand, concentrates on a perspective that privileges female difference.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“1. Feminist liberal politics stresses the importance of equality and opportunity in such areas as employment, access to education and childcare.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“second definition came into use when feminists realized that society not only influences personality and behaviour, but also the ways in which the body appears.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“Gender” has two meanings. The first is a contrast word to “sex” which depicts social construction as opposed to biological determination. The other meaning is any social construction involving the male/female distinction.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“Diaspora, from the Greek, means “dispersion”.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“4. And finally, Synthesis: a theory self-contained, yet linked by analogy to other theories.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“3. Repetition and Difference which used contemporary criticism to read Black texts, but critiqued the theory implicitly.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“2. Repetition and Imitation which amounted to unreflective mimicry of European and American theories.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“1. The Black Aesthetic which linked Black literature and the struggle for Black Power and repudiated white literary critical methods.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“Racism developed as a set of ideologies and pseudoscientific doctrines after the Renaissance, especially with the industrialization of Europe and the process of colonization.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“4. Finally, Said defines Orientalism as “the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“3. Orientalism, Said insists, always “overrode the Orient”. As a system of thought, “it always rose from the specifically human detail to the general transhuman one; an observation about a tenth-century Arab poet multiplied itself into a policy towards (and about) the Oriental mentality in Egypt, Iraq or Arabia. Similarly, a verse from the Koran would be considered the best evidence of an ineradicable Muslim sensuality.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“2. The second definition, related to this academic tradition, is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident”’. Said views these as fictions that gave rise to rhetoric of blame.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“1. The classical tradition of studying a region by means of its languages and writings. Anyone who teaches, researches or writes about the Orient is an Orientalist. Said is concerned that Orientalism in this form lives on through its doctrines and theses, with the “expert Orientalist” as its main authority.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“5. Cultural studies is committed to a moral evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political action. The tradition of cultural studies is not one of value-free scholarship but one committed to social reconstruction by critical political involvement. Thus cultural studies aims to understand and change the structures of dominance everywhere, but in industrial capitalist societies in particular.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“4. Cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit (that is, intuitive knowledge based on local cultures) and objective (so-called universal) forms of knowledge. It assumes a common identity and common interest between the knower and the known, between the observer and what is being observed.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“3. Culture in cultural studies always performs two functions: it is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action. Cultural studies aims to be both an intellectual and a pragmatic enterprise.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“2. Cultural studies is not simply the study of culture as though it was a discrete entity divorced from its social or political context. Its objective is to understand culture in all its complex forms and to analyse the social and political context within which it manifests itself.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“1. Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. Its constant goal is to expose power relationships and examine how these relationships influence and shape cultural practices.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“Sir Thomas Roe in 1605 to establish a company in India,”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide

“culture as a theme or topic of study has replaced society as the general subject of inquiry among progressives.”
― Ziauddin Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide