Assignment 2 - Essay - Recommended Readings: Cultural Studies

Chapter 10: Cultural Studies and the Culture in Everyday Life
John Fiske

Very annoying way of writing. We've been told to avoid long interwoven sentences and to make sure we put our point across to the reader. Well - what about this sentence from the first paragraph of this reading:
As the mundanities of our social conditions are set aside, or distanced, by this view of art, so, too, are the so-called sensuous, cheap, and easy pleasures of the mind.

...and: The culture of everyday life works only to the extent that it is imbricated (!) into its immediate historical and social setting.

Comment on Boudieu:
Boudieu's theory of the habitus extends the concept of habitus to such extent, that it includes the entire appearance of a person, not only the person's behaviour. Therefor it includes lifestyle, language, taste and dressence. Habitus provides an indication of ranking or status in society.

What does Fiske mean? About Brett Williams, who gives an example of both living in a mainly black, working class culture, and providing an academic account of it:
Her study details some of the key-features of habitus whose culture is of the material density of embodied practice.

Page 156, bottom: As Leal comments "The social system that broke these kinship webs is reproduced in the symbolic system within the photograph framse" (p.23) and these lost kinship webs are reasserted, reformed through bricolage.
Why does Leal make the assumption that a social system is to blame for the situaton, not the decision of the people to change something in their lifes? Is that irrelevant?

Explanation
Sardonically: Bitter in a sarcastic way.

Finally found something interesting to contextualise:
The supermarket is a densely woven texture of commodity information and display, but through her routine practices the experienced shopper transforms information overload into an information-specific setting.

Here is my comment on the above, the way I put it on Blackboard:

Hi Jane and Fellow Students,

I am on page 7 of the 22 page excerpt of John Fiske's book Cultural Study. I've learned about habitus in the sense of Bordieu and a lot about the opressed black society and the difference between those from North Carolina and those living in the Washington D.C. suburbs. I've learned about the high value of plastic flowers ("because they cost money...") in the dense conditions the opressed black society finds, living in the suburbs of Washington D.C.

I'm not sure what to make of this for our studies.

However, later on in the text I found something to contextualise/discuss:
Fiske states that Lave (1988, p.2.) cites an example of contextualised maths. It is about a woman shopper negotiating how many apples to bring home considering four kids, limited space in the fridge and the season being summertime.
Friske (1992) continues to cite Lave in his text: 'Lave observed that this woman is not interested in in a generalisable answer that relates to the problem n terms of a universalised criterion of right-wrong, but that problem shaped each other in action in a specific setting. In this material setting the shopper's cognitive processes are part of a physical relationship with the goods on display.
The supermarket is a densely woven texture of commodity information and display, but through her routine practices the experienced shopper transforms information overload into an information-specific setting.'

I assume, what both are trying to say is that she focuses on her shopping.

Specifically the last sentence made me think that we have the same situation online. The Internet is also a densely woven texture of commodity information and display. The experienced Internet user transforms information overload into an information specific setting.

What do you think?

Reference
Fiske, J. (1992). Cultural Studies. New York, N.Y.: Routledge
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press