Culture and Society
11 / 15 / 2014
In his book Culture and Society, Raymond Williams argues that the meaning of culture changed as a response to the Industrial Revolution and the political and social changes that accompanied it. By studying some novelists and thinkers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, specifically in Great Britain, he noticed that the notion of culture changed and developed. I totally agree that culture is in continual formation and changing, not only as a response to a certain object or to a specific social situation, but as a need in which people try to better handle their life. Culture is an essential need that does not develop due to an Industrial Revolution or to social and political change only, but sometimes due to an external factor that comes from different experiences.
Williams concluded that the idea of culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had been changed and became a response to industrialism, democracy, and the new problems of social class. He dug deep into the meanings of some words, like democracy, industry, class, art, and culture, to explain how these words were changed by time in their significations. For instance, the word Industry, before the European Industrial Revolution, could be referred as “skill”. But after that, it “became a collective word for our manufacturing and productive institutions, and for their general activities” (Williams xiii). The change in the meaning of this word caused a change in the meaning of culture itself. However, the idea of culture was not a response to industrialism alone, but it was also a “response to the new political and social developments” such as democracy and social classism (Williams xviii). I am not disagreeing with what Williams concluded. I totally agree with it. The only thing that I want to say is that having Europe as an example on how culture was developed would not be enough to explain the idea of culture in a global context. It is a sort of “eurocentrist explanation” that Williams fell into. The third world countries, for example, never experienced an Industrial Revolution or even a big change in society; does Williams’s approach apply to them? I do not think so. The people of third world countries never had their culture developed as a response to their “new” social situation or to an Industrial Revolution happening within their own societies, but as a need to catch up with the western culture and, in turn, to apply that culture on their own societies. The development of culture in the third world countries, specifically in the Middle East, did not naturally happen within their own societies, but as a result of the “adoption” of western culture that is considered an external factor. This adoption was an essential need for the third world countries to make a change in their own societies, NOT a response to what these societies already had. Based on this definition of culture, culture does not develop due to an Industrial Revolution or only through political and social change, but sometimes due to an external factor. In the Middle East’s case, the external factor was the western experience that came from the western societies and imposed its own vision as a solution to the problems of the Middle Eastern societies.
Another example from the Middle East will be useful to well explain my point of view. In Iraq, there really was not that feminist movement before the ’90s because of the closed nature of the Iraqi society and the totalitarian rule of Saddam’s regime. The feminist movement achieved some progress after the fall of Saddam’s regime, at least in politics, when the Iraqi women guaranteed 25% of the House of Representatives’ seats as a constant quota. This “achievement” would not have occurred without the helping hand of the United States. The U.S. experts participated in writing the new Iraqi constitution after 2003. They insisted in having this quota written in the constitution to guarantee the participation of Iraqi women in the political life, as the Iraqi feminist activists were calling for. Today, participation of Iraqi women in politics is a “culture” everyone calls for. Nobody objects it, as some did before. The development of feminist culture in Iraq was not a response to a change in the society, but a need imposed by an external factor (the American culture).
Williams’s approach on how culture was developed was valuable. It is just not enough to understand the idea of culture in a global context when studying it within the European experience only. In Europe, the development of culture might be a response to the Industrial Revolution or to social and political change that occurred in its own society, but that is NOT the case in every society. Some societies have their culture developed due to an external factor that comes from foreign experiences.
Works Cited
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780 - 1950. New York: Columbia UP, 1958. ix – xx. Print.
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