Thus culture depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them, and 'making sense' of the world, in broadly similar ways. (Hall, 1997a:2)
That quote comes from Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice by Chris Barker. When two people share the same interest (or similar) they are part of a culture. Every Wednesday and Thursday night you can be sure you will find my friends and I playing Dungeons and Dragons on the second level of our local comic book shop.
My friends and I every Wednesday and Thursday night
Being nerds is our culture. "Culture" was simple. It was easy to grasp. I am a nerd and I tend to land on the stereotype of liking all things "nerdy." Do I like them because they make me a nerd, or am I a nerd because I like them? That's where "politics" and control comes into play. Politics and control of culture.
Seen here: Bush playing politics
As Edward Thompson said, "class happens when some men [sic], as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed) to theirs." In other words, if my understanding is correct, culture is political and is mad up completely of "what I like is good culture and then there's everything else."
Unless I misunderstood, that's basically close to high culture and low culture, which is used to control. Before reading "Introducing 'The Politics of Culture'" I just assumed that culture was made by people and that's where social cliques came from, but not that capitalists created it to control our cliques.
Capitalist!
As I continued reading I started siding with the concept that culture is a great capitalist marketing ploy in our Western culture. Now, it may seem ignorant, but I will admit that I never thought of it in this manner. Whether I chock it up to being a "sheep" or simply because I never cared enough to think about it, I am thinking about it now. Music, clothing, films. They all have genres, categories, styles and each of those is worn, listened to, or watched by different "cultures."
As I read on, it became apparent that culture was definitely not just innocent ideas "shared in similar ways" by two or more people. It was more of how us as consumers could be controlled to continue buying things in our own "culture" to make people who figured that out long ago how to make money.
Donald just found out his Uncle Scrooge invented "culture"
So what is culture? It isn't as simple as I thought if politics are involved, and hierarchies. It isn't just people coming together who share similar interests, but according to Thompson, Williams, Rivkin and Ryan, it is also a huge moneymaker.
