Raymond Williams "Culture is Ordinary"

The most important phrase in this whole reading, which is repeated several times
throughout the text is when Raymond Williams states that "culture is ordinary".
However, what exactly does he mean by this? Generally, it means that every
human society has its own shape, meanings and expresses these in their own
institutions and thus the making of a society is the finding of common meanings
and directions- i.e writings themselves into the land (p. 4). According to Williams,
a culture has 2 aspects:
1) known meanings and directions
2) new observations and meanings
This seems to imply that there are things in a culture which is more or less static
(traditions to a degree?) but also that the aspects within that culture are
continuously changing and adapting. He also says there are two meanings of the
word culture:
1) a whole way of life
2) the arts and learning
Williams uses both of these usages rather than just one or the other. I think we all
use both of these meanings, depending on the context of what we are trying to
say. Generally when we say someone is 'cultured' we think of 'the arts and
learning', yet when we ask someone what their culture is we are referring to 'a
whole way of life'. There are also two senses of culture which seem to have been
born within English society (but also could be a more general sense, I'm not sure
if he meant it to be global):
1) cultivated people, apart from the ordinary people
2) 'culture-vultures'- highbrows who use this argot as an attempt to influence
ordinary people
Williams refuses to acknowledge these two sense of culture (actually he denies a
lot in this reading). He believes that culture is not limited to a certain group of
people but rather is structured and available to and by all, that is why it is
'ordinary'. It is a very democratic approach towards the definition of culture,
especially when referring to a time period such as industrialization in which the
distinction between the elite and the masses was quite distinctly separated.
Raymond Williams, "Culture Is Ordinary"
Williams briefly introduces his working class background, including his family,
their history, and the farming community and land they are intimately tied to, as
he describes his perspective on culture. These first paragraphs serve to reinforce
his central argument that "culture is ordinary," as he describes his ordinary life
growing up in an ordinary agricultural community, a community that also lived
through and benefited from industrialization and the subsequent growth of the
culture of productivisim of ordinary culture that followed. Like Richard Johnson
advocates, Williams considers and evaluates different theories and approaches to
understanding culture (primarily from Marx and Leavis), always testing them
against personal and historical evidence, and choosing what he finds relevant and
effective for generating accurate knowledge. His primary arguments are:

Point #1
Culture is: ordinary, an experience common and accessible to each person and
his/her society. It is active and changing. It comprises not only the public,
common experience (the "whole way of life-the common meanings, the
accepted, traditional knowledge) but also the new, creative, individual aspects
(arts and literature- the special processes of discovery and creative effort).
Culture is not:
a. An elitist activity or any kind of outward sign of cultivation, refinement or
specialness. Williams gives the example of a high-society, snobby teashop to
show this mistaken idea of culture, a place where people ascribe culture only to

themselves and only based on "trivial differences in behavior...trivial variations of

speech habit."
culture only to themselves and only based on "trivial differences in
behavior...trivial variations of speech habit."
b. Something to be mocked and dismissed as the province of "do-gooders and
highbrows and superior prigs." The idea that "the masses" or ordinary people
can't or don't participate in arts, literature, and learning (all parts of culture) is a
destructive myth.

Point #2
Marxists gave Williams 3 important ideas, which Williams evaluates and
disagrees with as he deems necessary:
a. "A culture is a whole way of life, and the arts are part of a social organization
which economic change clearly radically affects" - thus to understand the culture
(and the arts within it) one must finally interpret it "in relation to its underlying
system of production."
b. Williams agrees that he lives in a class dominated culture" and access to
education is limited (though slowly broadening), but he disagrees with the idea
that "the masses" are "ignorant." He respects the learning and arts of his heritage
and rejects the idea that they don't participate in the national/artistic/English
culture.
c. He also disagrees with the idea of directed/imposed artistic expression,
contradicting the Marxist claim that the advocacy of a different system of
production is in some way a cultural directive, indicating not only a way of life but
new arts and learning

Point#3
Williams was initially swayed by Leavis' argument that the industrial revolution
largely destroyed traditional English culture and left in its place a cheapened,
vulgar, mass culture that dulled and diminished natural human responses. In
Leavis' view, the only defence against the sweeping tide of vulgarity is in
education, which will preserve the highest values in at least a few minds. Williams
was impressed by this view because it respected his heritage (farming), but he
finally rejects it because he sees it doesn't fit with much of his
knowledge/experience. His reasons are:
a. The industrial revolution actually brought real improvements to everyday life,
inlcluding material improvements and increased freedom and power. Because of
these improvements, which no one would give up in a million years, Williams
realizes that "any account...which explicitly or implicitly denies the value of an
industrial society is really irrelevant"
b. Because of new technologies, improvements in power can be achieved without
the filth and ugliness that were required before
c. The idea of "the masses" is a myth because "there are in fact no masses, but
only ways of seeing people as masses." The success of seeing people as masses
during the chaos of the Industrial Revolution led to the "bad new commercial
culture." It was not brought about by including them in the education process, as
some claim.
d. The "badness...of popular culture" is NOT "a true guide to the state of mind and
feeling, the essential quality of living of its consumers."
e. Bad culture is NOT driving out good culture. Rather, the perceived increase in
vulgarity and "low" culture is due to the fact that we live in an expanding culture,
and all aspects are expanding.

Williams' "Culture is Ordinary"

I. Summary
Williams opens his piece with a short account of revisiting his childhood home in

Wales, accompanied by a brief recollection of his personal historya rhetorical

strategy he employs with frequency in the piece, and not unlike what we saw in
Millers work. From here, Williams presents us with the notion that a society is
forged from its members formation of common meanings and directions, its
growth actively debated under the pressures of experience, contact, and
discovery. This definition serves as segue into the main idea, that culture is
ordinary, composed of two distinct parts: the known meanings and directions,
which its members are trained to; the newobservations and meanings, which are
offered and tested (6).
To further his point, the author delivers and refutes two conceptions of culture he
has encountered: I call them down-the-nose, and bad-mouthing. Those in the
first example (teashop culture) are committed to the notion that the only culture
is high cultureart, music, literature, etc. Williams rejects this notion for what it
is, a means of maintaining a power division between cultivated and common folk,
and adds that he has encountered fine examples of art in the company of socalled common people. Williams second rejected notion of culture is at the
opposite end of the spectrum. The bad-mouthers, like those in the teashop,
perceive (and are threatened by) culture as solely high culture, and label such
work that of do-gooders and highbrows.
From here, Williams transitions into a brief discussion of some of the ideas of Marx
and Leavis that have come to shape his own thinking. From the Marxists, Williams
extracts three principles, only the first of which he accepts: culture must be
interpreted through its underlying systems of production; education and hence
power are restricted to those in power; and new systems of production create
new culture, thought, and art. Willams refutes the second notion by stating that
the working class are not restricted, but are instead gaining access to institutions
of learning (as Williams himself did) and developing there own culture. English
bourgeois culture has no elitist monopoly on culture, and in fact, future cultural
development could do no better than to emphasize working class values
neighbourhood, mutual obligation, and common betterment. The final Marxist
idea is rejected on the premise that a culture is a tapestry of individual and
collective meanings, of personal and social experience, and as such are living and
ever-changing, impossible to dictate through a change in systems of production.
Williams then moves on to Leavis, whose idea, that as England has became
industrialized and vulgar, art and thinking have suffered, Williams also rejects
(though with difficulty). The basis of the rejection is in Williams working class
roots: he and his family view the technological advances and easing of labor from
industrialization as an advantage, a newly acquired from of power. This leads
Williams to his suggestion of how we can move into an age of economic
abundance and productive common culture: by disproving two false equations,
one false analogy, and one false proposition.
The proposition is that ugliness and pollution are a price all cultures must pay for
the economic power that comes from industrialization. Williams posits cleaner,
less-abrasive technology and responsible industry as a solution.
The equations are that popular education gives rise to commerical culture, and
that consumption of popular culture bespeaks a flawed character. Williams
interprets both equations as essentially a flaw in perception. The over-crowding of
industrialization, coupled with mass communication, led to the construction of
the masses, a threat for its unfamiliarity. According to Williams, then, there are
no masses, only ways of constructing people as such. This manner of thinking is
what imbued popular education, and popular culturethe culture of the
threatening masseswith its stigma. Along with this comes the discussion of the
false analogy, which is that bad culture will drive out good culture. Williams cites

rising instances of literature, quality periodicals, and literacy to debunk this idea.
The author ends the piece with the idea that culture and its inherent elements are
expanding, and that this phenomenon must be studied.
II. Analysis
This piece seems to me less a description of the idea of a common culture and
more an account of how Williams formed this idea through the rejection of many
of the ideas of Marx and Leavis. However, the oddly altruistic manner in which
Williams refutes these ideas is interesting: he does not characterize them as
useless simply because he disagrees with them, but instead closes his work with
emphasis on how important the ideas are, how they have come to shape his own
inquiry into the expansion of culture. Its strange: the ideas he has no use for are
those that have served to most powerfully shape his thinking. His idea of
common culture is compelling, and echoes other readings from this semester
culture is not elitist and compartmentalized, but a continual negotiation of power
via interactions, texts, and ideas.
Im a little confused about the page 9 rejection of the Marxist notion that altering
systems of production spawns new culture and thought. I may just be misreading
the text, but if we accept Williams notion of culturenegotiations of meanings
and directions, both known and unknownthen the change that came about from
the industrialization (change in production from the rural and agricultural) of the
authors village in Wales does seem to have produced cultural change, as it
delivered the gift of power that is everything to men who have worked with their
hands (10). New meanings, ideas, possibly even art cant help but arise from
that kind of drastic change. Maybe someone can help me out?
I also respond to Williams use of the personal in this piece. He constantly
emphasizes his working class roots (I enjoy it) to establish his ability to make use
of both this perspective, and that of the academic, sort of a dual expert voice.
There are places, however, where I question if he relies too much on the personal
to stand as evidence (on page 13 he disproves the deleterious effects of popular
culture by talking with family members). Above all, I think he draws on the
personal, on his common roots, to distance himself from the bourgeois class, of
which he is, in many places, disdainful. I wonder a little at how incongruous this is
with his assertion that culture is common, ordinary, and shared. Why emphasize
the division in light of this idea? If we all share a common culture, can there be a
division?
Making another attempt at Bathes here: does anyone else feel that Williams twopart model of culture the known meanings and directions, which its members
are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested
(6), seems to qualify as linguistic/denotative (accepted/known) and
mythological/connotative (new observations and meanings)?
III. Questions and Further Reading
1.What do you make of Willams definition of culture?
2. How do you respond to Williams treatment of the ideas of Marx and Leavis?
3. Is Williams rhetorical decision to employ the personal effective? Why or why
not?