PART I Frameworks of Analysis INTRODUCTION Tony Bennett then examine the forms of cultural analysis that have been associated It is clear from our discussion in the general with the development of psychological and introduction that it is impossible to tie the sociological thought. Peter Burke’s discussion term ‘culture’ to a single concept or to a of cultural history provides a bridge into simple history of usage. It is better understood the next group of chapters focused mainly as referencing a network of loosely related on text-based disciplines. James English’s concepts that has been shaped by the relations account of the role that the analysis of form between the different histories and fields of has played in the development of literary usage with which the term has came to be studies is followed here by Tia DeNora’s entangled. A significant factor here has been consideration of music as both text and the different meanings deriving from the ways performance. Mieke Bal then examines the in which the concept has been used and relations between art history and the more interpreted in the social science disciplines recent development of visual culture studies. one the one hand and in the humanities The next two chapters – Tom Gunning’s on the other. These different disciplinary discussion of film studies and Toby Miller’s articulations of the concept are the focus account of broadcasting – are concerned with of the contributions composing this first the forms of cultural analysis that have been part of the book, which also assesses how developed in relation to the two main media the ‘cultural turn’ has affected developments systems of the twentieth century. The final within, across and between these different set of chapters explores the role played by disciplinary ensembles. a number of interdisciplinary perspectives The first group of chapters explores the in developing new and distinctive forms role that the concept of culture has played of cultural analysis. We include here Ien in the social sciences, beginning with Eric Ang’s account of the development of cultural Gable and Richard Handler’s discussion of studies, initially in Britain and subsequently as its role in the history of anthropological a wider international formation, and Griselda thought. Kay Anderson then looks at the Pollock’s discussion of the varied traditions role that questions of cultural analysis have of cultural analysis that have been associated played in constructing the human/nature with the development of feminist theory and divide that has played a key role in the politics. Daniel Miller then reviews recent development of, as it is sometimes still known, developments in the field of material culture human geography. Valerie Walkerdine and studies, arguing the need for a dialectical [19:47 3/10/2007 5038-Bennett-Ch01.tex] Paper: a4 Job No: 5038 Bennett: The Sage Handbook of Cultural Analysis Page: 17 17–45 18 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF CULTURAL ANALYSIS perspective capable of taking account of the After reviewing howAnglo-American anthro- relations between subjects and objects, while pology was influenced by French structural Andrew Pickering, writing from a contrasting anthropology, and by the work of Claude perspective, outlines the role that is accorded Lévi-Strauss in particular, Gable and Handler the relations between persons and things in the examine the revival of a Boasian orientation perspectives of posthumanist science studies in anthropology as evidenced by the work and technoscience. of Alfred Kroeber, Clifford Geertz and Our brief to all our contributors was that David Schneider. They conclude by assessing they should write an engaged account of their the varied forms of critical political self- topic, reviewing and assessing its most salient reflexiveness that now inform contemporary characteristics from the vantage point of their anthropological approaches to culture. own position within the contemporary debates Kay Anderson’s concerns overlap with associated with the fields of cultural analysis those of Gable and Handler at many points. in question rather than aspiring to a position She starts by reminding us that geography of Olympian detachment. In responding to was included among the cultural sciences long this brief, Eric Gable and Richard Handler before the emergence, since the 1980s, of seek to untangle the history of the rela- ‘cultural geography’ in response to the per- tions between anthropology and the ‘culture spectives of the ‘cultural turn’. However, she concept’ that is most commonly associated is equally clear that these perspectives have with that discipline: that is, culture as the significantly revised what had earlier been the organized system of beliefs, customs, and distinctive signature of geography’s contribu- practices comprising the way of a life of a tions to cultural analysis: that is, the influence particularly territorially defined population. of space and place on the distribution and They see this as a task of untangling precisely organization of human meaning systems and because the histories of this concept and those practices. The influence of structuralist and of anthropology have sometimes followed post-structuralist linguistics decisively shifted separate paths, and sometimes converged, approaches to these questions by effecting in ways that disqualify their often implicit what Anderson characterizes as a ‘move equation with one another. Although focusing from a positivist understanding of space as their attention for the greater part on the a “surface” on which people, events and so twentieth-century history of the discipline, on are distributed and arranged, to a notion they first show how Franz Boas’s work of space as relational and co-constitutive broke with the hierarchical and evolutionary of social process’ (00). Anderson then asks assumptions informing Edward Tylor’s initial what light this perspective throws on the formulation of the ‘culture concept’to propose history of earlier geographical understandings a more pluralist understanding of cultures as of the relations between space, place and bounded wholes that had a value and validity human cultures. Adopting a posthumanist that needed to be understood on their own perspective derived from contemporary fem- terms rather than – as had been the case inist thought and the related challenge to throughout anthropology’s earlier association essentialist conceptions of the nature/human with the history of colonialism – compar- divide emerging from the work of Bruno ing non-Western cultures unfavourably to Latour, she reviews the ways in which earlier Western ones. Gable and Handler then turn Enlightenment and evolutionary conceptions their attention to the subsequent history of the geographical relations between space, of the relations between anthropology and place and culture equated the essence of fieldwork, paying special attention to the humanness with distance from nature. In development, from Bronislaw Malinowski to assessing the consequences of such concep- Margaret Mead, of the ‘participant observa- tions for indigenous peoples who, throughout tion’ approach in which the anthropologist the history of colonialism, were seen as closer seeks to learn another culture by living it. to nature and therefore less human than their [19:47 3/10/2007 5038-Bennett-Ch01.tex] Paper: a4 Job No: 5038 Bennett: The Sage Handbook of Cultural Analysis Page: 18 17–45 FRAMEWORKS OF ANALYSIS 19 colonizers,Anderson also shows how colonial Tony Bennett considers the relations encounters with indigenous peoples – and between sociology and culture from three with Australian aborigines in particular – perspectives. The first of these focuses on often unsettled the logic of such humanist sociological analyses of those practices and ontologies. institutions which comprise culture as a Valerie Walkerdine and Lisa Blackman distinctive level, field or subsystem of society: also remind us that, at first, psychology too literary, musical and artistic institutions and was closely related to the cultural sciences. texts, and the media and entertainment However, the emerging dominance of Anglo- complexes comprising the culture industries. American psychology in the early twentieth In reviewing these traditions of work, Bennett century, its commitment to an experimen- outlines the different ways in which soci- tally derived cognitive universalism, and ologists have sought to explain social and the parallel parting of the ways between historical variations in literary and artistic psychology and psychoanalysis saw an end forms and practices, focusing particularly to this until the 1960s, when the disciplinary on sociological accounts of such genres as hegemony of such conceptions was chal- tragedy and the novel. He then considers lenged from a variety of quarters. In reviewing the consequences of the ways in which these challenges and placing them in their literary and artistic forms are classified and appropriate political and theoretical contexts, organized into cultural hierarchies, and moves Walkerdine and Blackman’s main concern on to review different sociological accounts is to trace the various attempts to develop of the development of distinctive literary and discursive, narrative, social and cultural artistic fields or systems, and of the nature psychologies, and to consider the influence and value of aesthetic experience. Bennett’s of all of these on the development of critical second main concern is with the role that the psychology. Focusing initially on cultural analysis of