ch 6: Cultural Theory

ch 6: Cultural Theory

1. The branch of comparative anthropology and semiotics

2. Stuart Hall: He emphasizes that culture is now of major importance and human sciences and points out what is important is that we focus on the meanings that people give to objects- meanings that are varied, can change in time, and should be studied by many different disciplines

3. Clotaire Rapaille

   • He calls a combination of experiences and accompanying emotions "imprints" and explains that once children receive an imprint, that imprint, at an uncoscious level, shapes their attitudes towards food, artifacts, automobiles, and all the other things they buy or own.
   • He also believed that in addition to the Freudian individual unconscious and the Jungian collective unconscious there is a third "culture" unconscious which explains why there is a French mind, an American mind, an English mind, and so on-minds that shape the way we purchase thingss and our attitudes toward the things we purchase.
   • His basic argument is that culture can be thought of as a series of codes that we learn while we grow up and that shape our behavior in many different areas.

4. Mary Douglas

   • The objects and services that we buy and possess (as gifts, inheritances, and so forth) are culturally defined and best understood as being tied to our lifestyle.
   • The four mutually hostile lifestyles: Elitist, Individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist, and everyone in modern democratic societies belongs to one of them
   • It is our membership in one of these lifestyles, grid-group theorists argue, that shapes our behavior as consumers, and thus the objects we have in out houses reflect the lifestyle to which we belong