1. The Analysis Of Culture
Raymond Williams
METU Faculty of Architecture Department of Industrial Design
ID501 Advanced Project Development in Industrial Design
Nur Yıldırım

2. Overview
• Analyses the approaches to culture, or culture theories
• Studies the relation between the activities in that organization
• Inspects the three levels of culture with reference to selective
tradition
• Reads the social character of a period through the activities

3. Keywords
ideal, documentary, social, human evolution,
activities, organizations, patterns, selection,
structure of feeling
Aim and Scope
• Analysis of culture theories by relating and making use of them as a part of
a process
• Defines a theory of culture
• Show complex interrelation of elements and activities as a whole

4. Culture Theories in Three General Categories
Ideal Documentary Social
human thought and experience description of a
discovery of certain are recorded, described and particular way of life
absolute or universal, valued. ideally, best that has been expresses certain
higer and lower done, or relating them to values in both
meanings and values traditions. Modes of change to arts&learning and
discover general laws and trends institutions&ordinary
behavior

5. Ideal human evolution
we move towards progress
kept alive,
enrich people’s lives,
help to regulate and control their environment
such as techniques, medicine
add to a line of common growth
we can call
‘general human culture’
meanings in values
discovered in particular societies

6. ideal terms; values; reverence for the dead
Antigone of
documentary terms; communication of certain values,
Sophocles
expression of human tensions through dramatic chorus
These values do no have meaning only in contexts to which we assigned, they
pass beyond context into general growth of human consciousness
SOCIETY
ART
core economic SCIENCE background
social
arrangements PHILOSOPHY
political
correlation develop with their own laws
art&theory

7. ideal development written & paint ‘we have to try to see
the process as a whole’
animal nature & ‘relating particular studies
rest of life in society to actual & complex organization’
material needs
studying general organization in a particular
example
what are
the relations?
HABIT
studying all the activities and their interrelations
changing relations, ‘patterns’

8. theory of culture: study of relationships between elements in a whole
way of life
complex relationships nature of organization
other places and times - we can learn, but living experience of time is important
organization of life - social character, behavior and attitudes, pattern of culture
selection and configuration of interests and activities, a way of life
through art, we can discover actual experience of a period

9. Three levels of culture
Lived culture nature of organization
Recorded culture every kind, art to everyday facts
Connecting Lived & Period selective tradition
culture

10. survives with
record cultural work
culture of social character
a period general patterns of activity & value
structure of feeling
no longer selection
being lived
(will change)
SELECTIVE TRADITION
selection reflect the organization
of a period as whole
it creates a general human
society, a rejection of areas of
what was once a living culture
from whole body certain things are selected schools keep tradition,
of activities for value and emphasis resist to change

11. 19th century England, literature
What we know today (Dickens) might not be the most popular one at that
time (Reynolds)
similar with newspapers, The Times and Sunday
factors behind are complex; social, political, technological, economic
but compose a single story in which each is subject to selective interpretation
Reads social character through literature’s context
concepts; orphan, poor girl
legislations, sexuality
older and romantic ways of feeling
beside new reproductions: money, success
connection between popular structure of feeling and
used in literature of the time
area of relations in art, perceptions, real relationships, connections to life
between these activities description, discussion, characteristics, problems of society

12. Conclusions
Theory of culture: Studying of relationships between elements in a whole way of life
we should try to study all the activities and their interrelations to understand
the complex story of social character of a period
Several factors interrelate and effect single notions, which cannot be separated
and have different dynamics through themselves
We can read social character mostly through arts
Selective tradition determines the line of culture with keeping some parts, and
changing, reproducing and interpreting some other