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This post is for @BCUMedia module MC513 and is a response to the reading ‘The Analysis of Culture’ by Raymond Williams.

Williams initially outlines three key definitions of culture:

• the ‘ideal’: “culture is a state or process of human perfection”
• the ‘documentary’: “culture is the body of intellectual and imaginative work”
• the ‘social’: “culture is a description of a particular way of life”

It is clear that these three definitions, whilst independent of each other, must be used collaboratively to analyse culture; to evaluate fully “meanings and values” within all areas of ‘culture’, from “art and intellectual work” through to “institutions and forms of behaviour”, all three definitions must be used.

Williams goes on to define the theory of culture as “the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life”; where the analysis of culture is “the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships”. Through the analysis of culture, including the three definitions, Williams sees ‘patterns’ as key markers for the aforementioned “relationships”.

Williams also defines three levels of culture:

• “livied culture”: openly acceptable, of a particular time or place
• “recorded culture”: the culture of a period
• “selective tradition”: the amalgamation of the two previous levels

It is key to comprehend the concept of “selective tradition”, the beginnings of cultural selection “within the period itself”. This creates three levels of selection: “general human culture”; “historical record of a particular society”; or “rejection of considerable areas”.

Culture, according to Williams, is evolutionary - constantly reinventing and evolving itself. This characteristic is defined as “structure of feeling”, where new generations actively move culture forward or remediate older culture. Equally, “cultural tradition can be seen as a continual selection and re-selection of ancestors”.