“Education is, before everything else, the process of giving to the ordinary members of society its full common meanings, and the skills that will enable them to amend these meanings, in the light of their personal and common experience.”
Raymond Williams, ‘Culture is Ordinary’
Culture is indeed ordinary, it includes most human activities: the arts, religion, sport, science and technology, TV/ radio and other media, the internet, eating and drinking, etc. etc. All of these topics have political dimensions involving struggles and negotiations over meanings and values. On this hub are articles on cultural activities apart from the arts, which are to be found on the arts hub, surprisingly enough.
Stuart Cartland looks at the cultural and political representation of topography, at how landscape becomes mythscape, expressing class power and national identity. The painting is Mr and Mrs. Andrews, by... Continue reading
James Crossley reflects on the dangers and possibilities of the Covid-19 crisis. Image: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Albrecht Durer, 1497-8 Towards the end of March, it... Continue reading
Robert Myles shows how historical materialism explains the origins of Christianity “The history of the world is but the biography of great men,” wrote nineteenth-century historian Thomas... Continue reading
Helena Sheehan continues the Culture Matters and Morning Star series on the Covid-19 crisis and various cultural activities, by looking at its effect on science. Photo: Dave... Continue reading
Jack Newsinger continues the series, jointly published on Culture Matters and the Morning Star, on the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on culture, sketching out what needs... Continue reading
Dennis Broe reviews more series TV, from Germany and from the U.S. Image above: military fascists in Weimar Berlin Season three of the German megaseries Babylon Berlin... Continue reading
Lyndsey Ayre reflects on common ground, coronavirus, and the values of the labour movement. The image is of a piece of embroidery by Melanie Kyles This must... Continue reading
Dennis Broe traces the links between class and the coronavirus, and parallels in cultural works. Plus ca change…….. In many ways the rearrangement of life in the... Continue reading
David Betteridge takes us along Glasgow’s Byres Road, enjoying several works of public art by the late Alasdair Gray, who died on 29 December, 2019, the day after his... Continue reading
David Cromwell analyses the way that autocratic, runaway capitalism has corrupted the mainstream media, and why there will not, and cannot, be major changes in society without genuine... Continue reading