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Cultural Studies

Four Categories of Culture

– Culture as a Standard of Excellence

– Culture as a Way of Life

– Subaltern Cultures

– Popular Culture

Criticism of Popular Culture– Marxist School: Proletariats were sustaining Ruling

Class Ideologies

– Popular Culture is Kitsch

– Not real art

– Distinction between Folk Art and Mass Culture

Frankfurt School

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Birmingham Centre

Criticism of Popular Culture– Affinity with disenfranchised

– Connection between Literary Criticism and Popular Culture texts

– Moved from production to consumption

– Dynamics between Dominate and Subordinate Groups

– Understood subculture through style, poaching, simulacrum and hyperreal

Example of Poaching

Spoof ads

Adbusters.org

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Example of Hyperreal

Video Games Comic Books Movies

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Corbett’s Working Definition

Religion is an integrated system of belief, lifestyle, ritual activities, and institutions by which individuals give meaning to (or find meaning in) their lives by orientating themselves to what they take as holy, sacred, or of the highest value.

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Secularity and Sacredness

Three Paradigms• Secularization vs. Sacred Reality• Secularization Catalyst for Sacred Realities• Secular and Sacred Authorities

Secular and Sacred are opposedSecularization is• Modern in scope• Will lead to demise of religion• Irreversible and embedded in Western Civilization

Secularization vs. Sacred Reality

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Secularization Catalyst for Sacred Realities

• Secularization is continually process

• Religion doesn’t die, it changes

• Religion and secularity have flexible boundaries

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Secular and Sacred Authorities

• Secularization is not replacing religion

• Religious institutions have less authority

• Understood not as declining religion by declining scope of authority

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Ostwald, Secular Steeples

This change in authority results in ways in which humans express themselves religiously, so we get a constant infusion of new religious expressions, new religions, revival of religions, and new vehicles of expression which come from outside of traditional religious institutions and draw upon other cultural that may or may not be formally related to religious institutions.

… to be continued …KAPOW

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