Ian B "Culture is Ordinary"

I thought that the reading for the weekend by Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary,” was an interesting take on what exactly the word “culture” really refers to in our society or any society for that matter. Williams holds, as he reiterates several times throughout the selection, “culture is ordinary.” He believes that it isn’t what some scholar or some historian holds that define what our culture is, but rather that it is the contribution of average people that shape the cultural identity of our society.

Williams’s talks about his family, who came from the humble origins of a farming family and evolved into the industrial workforce of his contemporary time. He claims that it is the learning of new skills and the new relationships and interactions that everyone experiences throughout their lifetimes that defines culture. Williams even writes about speaking with his grandfather and his father, as they spoke excitedly about the things that mattered to them, and while they used different idioms, their messages were one in the same.

Williams goes on to speak about society at large, and how culture shapes the identity of an entire population of people. Societies are founded on the concept of a group of people who share common threads that tie them together, and the culture of these societies are perpetuated in the institutions as well as the people who live in them, creating a unique identity by which these people are known. IN this kind of dichotomy, the word culture, according to Williams, has two meanings. A general meaning which is associated with the people, and the special meaning which can be associated with the processes and the accomplishments of the institutions.

I have to say that I agree with Williams whole take on culture which he illustrates in this article. Whole societies form around the common threads that tie their people together, and everyone in that culture contributes their own little niche into their culture at large. Even our modern culture is defined not only by the great scientific achievements of our great institutions, but by the ordinary people who walk the streets every day. Culture is ordinary because we experience it on a daily basis, it is not even just the works created by our culture, but it is the combined consciousness of all of us.