MH Cultural Studies 5

Question 1

What theoretical contribution did the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) make to the study of youth subcultures in the 1970s?

Accepted Answer

It analyzed subcultural styles as symbolic forms of resistance to dominant class structures and hegemony

Answer

The CCCS, through works like 'Resistance Through Rituals,' argued that working-class youth subcultures express symbolic resistance to class inequalities through the bricolage of distinctive styles, music, and behaviors.

Question 2

In postcolonial theory, what does Homi Bhabha mean by 'mimicry' as a colonial dynamic?

Accepted Answer

The ambivalent imitation of the colonizer by the colonized that produces a disturbing 'almost the same but not quite' effect

Answer

Bhabha argues that colonial mimicry—when the colonized imitate but can never fully replicate the colonizer's culture—creates an uncanny slippage that threatens colonial authority by revealing its constructed, contingent nature.

Question 3

Which concept describes the way news media frames events by selecting certain aspects of reality and making them more salient, thereby shaping public interpretation?

Accepted Answer

Framing

Answer

Framing theory, associated with Erving Goffman and later media scholars like Entman, examines how journalists select, emphasize, and organize information in ways that promote particular interpretations of events.

Question 4

In cultural studies, what does 'carnival' represent in Mikhail Bakhtin's theoretical framework?

Accepted Answer

A temporary, sanctioned space of social inversion and transgression that ultimately reinforces the social order

Answer

Bakhtin's carnivalesque describes how carnival temporarily inverts social hierarchies and celebrates bodily excess, but this inversion is time-limited and ultimately licensed by authority, making its radical potential ambiguous.

Question 5

What is 'cultural memory,' as theorized by scholars like Jan and Aleida Assmann, and how does it differ from individual memory?

Accepted Answer

Cultural memory refers to institutionalized, symbolic representations of the past that shape collective identity across generations

Answer

The Assmanns distinguish cultural memory—preserved through texts, rituals, monuments, and other cultural forms that transmit collective identity across generations—from communicative memory, which is shared among living generations.

MH - Master of Humanities Practice Test

MH - Master of Humanities Practice Test

MH Cultural Studies 5