Cultural studies

Cultural Studies explores the material and symbolic dimension of cultures. It combines the cultural aspects of anthropology, art history, musicology, literary studies, theater studies, film studies, media studies, communication studies, linguistics, ethnology, etc., in various combinations, thus forming a schnittmenge rich sister discipline of the humanities. In parts of cultural studies have recourse also to social, economic and human sciences. Cultural studies thus represent a highly interdisciplinary faculty

History

Cultural studies as a discipline in Germany extends to cultural philosophy (Georg Simmel, Ernst Cassirer ), cultural history, historical and philosophical anthropology, sociology ( Max Weber) and art history ( Aby Warburg ) back to the 1920s.

Since the 1960s she has gained as a multidisciplinary research approach that seeks to explore the importance of culture as an everyday practice international importance under the Anglo-Saxon concept of "cultural studies".

Since the 1980s, moreover, the term " cultural studies " for a new self-description of a large part of the tradition Wilhelm Dilthey in Germany " humanities " disciplines mentioned.

Cultural studies is more taught in Germany, depending on the institutionalization of cultural studies as an empirical ( or European Ethnology Ethnology ), or as a historical cultural studies ( cultural studies, cultural history, media, culture, etc. ).

Cultural Studies and Cultural Studies

From the study of culture ( in the plural), which deal with the method of single humanities for the study of culture, the newer discipline of cultural studies can be distinguished as a discipline by Hartmut Böhme, which relies on the study of culture on the results of the individual sciences, although, but in spite of all attempts by cultural reflection and cultural criticism to bring cross- correlations in the view: " This distinguishes cultural studies, at least in its current phase of the established humanities, by virtue of their high degree of specialization in touch with that tradition largely lost the Reinhart Koselleck (1973 ) has described as the characteristic of the modern context of criticism and crisis '. "

Compared to the cultural studies cultural studies can be distinguished by the following points:

• On one hand, it takes the displacement of the humanities by Nazism back, on the other hand they do not immediately follows the German tradition of the humanities, but also takes ideas from the cultural studies and humanities on with.
• Object of their study is not only the so-called high culture, but it involves all areas of cultural life with a.
• Attention is paid therefore all mass media (ie not only the book), because culture in different media happens.
• This does not play only the written tradition a central role, but all cultural image forms, that is, performative acts, body figures, rituals and habits.
• As a cultural memory thus counts not just the writing, but all incarnations and embeddings of culture, the need to look for their preservation are constantly updating and re- enroll.
• The Cultural Studies examines the migration of cultural forms and symbols of historical and ethnic boundaries, thus also a Eurocentrism is avoided.
• Following the cultural semiotics understands culture as a symbol of the universe and textualen context: The importance of individual cultural moments arises only in connection with other sections of this text, culture is a text in which the culture of science reads, from which it reads out the culturally Significant.

International comparison

Especially in the U.S. and Canada, the interdisciplinary combination of subjects from those disciplines focus is determined in " cultural studies " in which researches and teaches an academic institution. Even within a research area, due to the particular research question, different combinations must be established. For example, comprises the world's leading medical and psychology Elite McGill University, an interdisciplinary " cultural studies " degree with research field of Gender Medicine trays anthropology, psychology, communication, sociology and history of medicine. At other Anglo-American universities and research institutions, for example, policy priorities to " cultural studies " as understood in turn decidedly political science, while most of the representatives of the German cultural studies also examine policy often free fields of knowledge. This is due to the history of German cultural studies.

The Russian " cultural studies " is based mainly on semiotics, which here mainly Tartu ( Juri Lotman ) and Moscow schools ( Boris Uspensky ) are worth mentioning. Mikhail Bakhtin is one of its precursors.

Criticism

Friedrich Kittler criticizes the " wonderfully played to, but the more verlogenere scientific innocence " of cultural studies, and especially the Anglo-Saxon cultural studies. Rather than assume the position of a particular enthobenen observer, Kittler calls instead for " our own science as a ' fact' with its own resources to tackle. " By historicizing the emergence of cultural studies and cultural studies, says Kittler that the cultural studies not ideologically are neutral, but prove themselves as a form of lived culture.

" Above all, any theory that a so-called society ( be it to improve their so-called ) is already decided in advance about their basic concepts. It holds that void, and not open in the dark room, it can be as opposed to a ubiquitous fable convenue never taken for granted that it never ever are the noise and the gods, the tragedy and the sky. No people, not companies decide whether and when the gift of the pouring boring especially since heaven and earth, the divine and the mortal. "

Kittler holds here the neutral imaging science mode for comparison against an alternative world, as he finds in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and in Heidegger's later philosophy of the fourfold. Neither ideological neutrality nor an absolute position can be for Kittler by the researcher to produce, but are determined by the dynamics of media history that defies the availability of man. Applying this knowledge to themselves Kittler calls from the cultural studies and cultural studies.