Innlegg om tidsskrifter og digitalisering

Denne teksten ble skrevet som en innledning til en paneldebatt jeg skulle delta i på Tidsskriftdagen 2015. Av en eller annen grunn ble det ikke til at panelet fikk holde sine lovede innledninger, så jeg gjengir teksten her.

Mer om tidsskriftdagen her: http://www.litteraturhuset.no/program/2015/11/tidsskriftdagen.html

Tidsskriftdagen 2015

Må alt på nett? Kan det smale bli bredt?

Tidsskriftet står i spennet mellom bok og avis, nå utvider nettet mulighetene for å nå langt flere og å publisere på nye måter. Nett, portaler, strømming, film, men overlever papirtidsskriftet?

Tidsskriftet står i spenn mellom bok og avis, står det i programmet. Fint, men hva innebærer det for digitale satsinger? Bokbransjen og avisbransjen har taklet digitaliseringen på vidt forskjellige måter. Begge vil nok si at de har løst utfordringene og utnyttet mulighetene bedre enn den andre.

Avisbransjen var både frempå og innovative da de første nettavisene dukket opp midt på 90-tallet. Her skulle man ikke bli tatt på senga! Og stadig faller papiropplagene, mot nettavisenes vekst. Bokbransjen hadde sin lille false start med e-bøker og lesebrett rundt 2000-tallsskiftet, men tendensen i denne bransjen har vært at man har funnet det helt komfortabelt i senga, godt understøttet av et lesende folkeferd og generøse støtteordninger. Først de senere år har det presset seg frem en skikkelig e-boksatsing, men digital andel av boklesingen er fremdeles marginal. Hvem valgte den smarteste strategien?

Tar vi utgangspunkt i innovative publiseringsløsninger og vilje til stadig å prøve ut nye ting, er det nok avisbransjeaktørene. Ser vi på digitaliseringen med økonomi-briller står det i ettertid imidlertid ganske meningsløst  å gi bort innholdet sitt gratis til leserne, slik vi ble vant til med nettavisene – før man i seneste laget fant ut at dette var lite bærekraftig og startet innføringen av betalingsmurer. Sånn sett “vant” bokbransjen.

Nettet utvider mulighetene også for tidsskriftene. Hva skal man gjøre med det? Noe av problemet med min fremstilling av avisbransjen vs. bokbransjen, er at den gir inntrykk av at en bransje kan og bør agere som en enhet. Samhold gir styrke, hold deg til flokken din, liksom. Det er kjent fra institusjonsteorier at aktører innenfor en bransje eller et felt tenderer til å oppføre seg på samme måte når ytre omstendigheter er usikre. Men det gir ingen konkurransefortrinn for den enkelte aktør og det skaper lite dynamikk i feltet. Når alle er enige om noe, kan utfallet bli sidrompa. Det er ikke sikkert man vet hva man gjør heller, selv om alle er enige om at det er fornuftig.

Jeg sitter i redaksjonen i Norsk medietidsskrift og er stolt av at vi er et heldigitalt såkalt open access-tidsskrift nå. Alt er gratis. Dette er resultatet av en prosess over flere år og er ganske gjennomtenkt. Flere andre tidsskrifter presses nå gjennom den samme kverna fordi det gikk ut et bud fra det kongelige norske kunnskapsdepartement om at open access er veien, sannheten og livet. Uten at noen hadde tenkt skikkelig igjennom hvordan gratis innhold skal finansieres…

Litt solospill er bra, tenker jeg. Derfor synes jeg det er kult at Morgenbladet, tidligere en parentes på nett, inviterer tidsskriftoffentligheten inn i sin digitale portal. Og at Fett og Minerva aktiviserer leserne i sosiale medier på ganske ulike måter. Men jeg har ingenting særskilt å utsette på tidsskrifter som satser hardt på kvalitet i papir, heller. Papir har egenskaper som ikke nødvendigvis trumfes av digitale opplevelser.

Så til spørsmålet, må alt på nett? Nei. Men noe innhold må nok på nett, abonnenter er dyrebare og må ivaretas på den måten at de kan få tilgang til alt innhold akkurat slik de ønsker seg. Redaksjonen må være synlig på nett i en eller annen forstand. Hva man skal gjøre der avhenger av hva som er det enkelte tidsskrifts styrke og særegenhet. Vagant trenger ikke være på nett på samme måte som Minerva eller Syn og Segn eller Agora eller Historisk tidsskrift. Det er i alle fall en skikkelig dårlig idé at alle skal lage eller være hver sin portal inn i tidsskriftoffentligheten.

For å si det på en annen måte: Når VG er på tv, kan det være de bare kaster bort masse penger på å lage helt ok tv-programmer. Kanskje det ikke er noen grunn til å tro at norske tidsskriftredaksjoner kan lage fremragende videoinnhold?

Men hva vet jeg. Det er jo flinke folk som sitter her i panelet. Noen av de beste i klassen. De vet mye om hva som er deres tidsskrifters styrke. Redaksjonens og bidragsyternes styrke. Lesernes styrke. Bygg på det, også i det digitale. Ikke bli enige. Agér som tidsskrifter, ikke som bransje eller institusjon.

O codex, where art thou?

I've been looking into a recent Atlantic article (November 2013) on The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel. It's a good read and a nice list featuring the usual suspects of technological breakthroughs, including the steam engine (no. 8), optical lenses (5), penicilin (3) and electricity (2). Also there are some chioces that I didn't see coming, such as cement (37) and air-conditioning (44). And unsurprisingly (?), at the top of the list, and with a great deal of consensus among the 12 scientists, historians and technologist asked to compile the list, the printing press.

The importance of the printing press is described as the point when "knowledge began freely replicating and quickly assumed a life of its own." As a book scholar, albeit of digital books in particular, I wouldn't exactly disagree. By the way, the Internet made it as high as no. 9.

It's notable that the invention of paper, dating back to the second century, is also acknowledged as highly important (no. 6). Another technology involved in the production and consumption of books and printed material is alphabetization (25). However, I can't seem to find anywhere the carrier device per se for knowledge throughout the last centuries, the codex. The codex is the book as we know it: Leafs of paper (or other material) with writing on both sides, usually stacked and bound by fixing one edge (the spine) and protected by covers thicker than the sheets. Sometimes a definition of the codex only emcompasses manuscript (handwritten documents), but I would argue that the technology really is more to do with the way text is displayed than the way it is inserted. It is in this sense I believe the codex deserves a place on a list of the greatest inventions.

Replacing the scroll in the third and fourth centuries AC, the codex has remained - and remains! - the dominant format for distributing knowledge. It improved upon the scroll by being more practical and economical. Not just more portable and sturdy, but enabling for instance, random access: The reader may leaf back and forth and consult any page with equal ease unlike the scroll which is organized sequentially.

In the words of Roman poet Martial (original and translation here):

You who long for my little books to be with you everywhere and want to have companions for a long journey, buy these ones which parchment confines within small pages: give your scroll-cases to the great authors - one hand can hold me. So that you are not ignorant of where I am on sale, and don't wander aimlessly through the whole city, I will be your guide and you will be certain: look for Secundus, the freedman of learned Lucensis, behind the threshold of the Temple of Peace and the Forum of Pallas.


Even today, after the advent of ebooks and the Internet, books in the codex form remain incredibly central. Building on a notion from media scholar Klaus Bruhn Jensen, I like to think of books as Institutions-to-think-with. Back to the Atlantic list: What would the impact of the printing press and paper be without the codices? What would the Gutenberg Bible had been on a scroll?

Om bestselgerlister og forlagsøkonomi [On literary bestsellers and the economics of book publishing]

This is a piece a wrote for newspaper Morgenbladet, but which was refused, presumably because it's too long. It deals with Norwegian bestseller lists, the growth of so-called commercial quality literature and the economics of book publishing.

Sorry, it's in Norwegian only...

And sorry, it's not really optimized for web reading, no links and all.

TC

Børs og katedral revisited

Ære være Bernhard Ellefsen for å skrive langt og godt om underholdningsromaner og den norske bokbransjen (”Å lese seg nedover”, MB 22.03.13) uten å anvende det slitte ordparet børs og katedral. Altfor ofte tys det til mytologiserende og tilslørende begreper når bokbransjen og dens gjøren og laden skal beskrives. Likevel er det vanskelig å skulle plassere underholdslitteraturens forleggeri i en kulturpolitisk sammenheng uten å forholde seg til et par sentrale momenter i bokøkonomien. Og ja, katedralen og børsen, Gud og Mammon, kommer også inn her. 

Det som synes nytt i den norske situasjonen, som Ellefsen helt presist påpeker, er dominansen på bestselgerlistene av en middelkulturell kategori med krim, fantasy og ”kommersiell kvalitetslitteratur”. En stor andel av disse bøkene utgis på relativt nylig etablerte forlag som Font (etablert 2005), Bazar (2005), Bastion (2006), Juritzen (2006), Vendetta (2009) og Silke (2009). Uten at jeg har gått vitenskapelig til verks slik Cecilie Naper gjorde i 2009, synes det i dag klart at de store forlagsgrupperingene er underrepresentert på bestselgerlistene i forhold til sin størrelse. Bestselgerlista for skjønnlitteratur uke 11, 2013 ser slik ut (trolig preget av den forestående påskefeiring):

	Tittel	Forfatter	Forlag
1	Flink pike	Gillian Flynn	Font
2	Marco-effekten	Jussi Adler-Olsen	Aschehoug
3	Sandmannen	Lars Kepler	Cappelen Damm
4	Påskekrim 2013	Gunnar Staalesen m.fl	Juritzen
5	Syv dager med tirsdagsdamene	Monika Peetz	Bastion
6	Mokka	Tatiana de Rosnay	Bazar
7	Fifty shades: Bundet	E.L. James	Gyldendal
8	Fifty shades: Fri	E.L. James	Gyldendal
9	Fifty shades: Fanget	E.L. James	Gyldendal
10	Jakthundene	Jørn Lier Horst	Gyldendal
11	Hemmeligheter	Kate Morton	Schibsted
12	En sjøens helt: Skogsmatrosen	Jon Michelet	Oktober
13	Sensommerdager	Joyce Maynard	Silke
14	Stål og snø: bok 3: del 1	George R. R. Martin	Vendetta
15	Manuskriptet fra Accra	Paulo Coelho	Bazar

Av topp 15 er kanskje så mange som ti titler å regne innenfor den vage benevnelsen kommersiell kvalitetslitteratur. I tillegg kommer en håndfull krimbøker. Hva så med Michelet, den gamle krimforfatter, skal han regnes som kommersiell kvalitet? Eller bare kvalitet? Litterære klassifiseringer av denne typen er ikke helt enkle og aldri nøytrale. La oss heller se på hvilke forlag som er representert. Innenfor topp 15 har Aschehoug og Cappelen Damm kun én tittel hver, mens Gyldendal leder an med fire titler, anført av storselgeren Fifty Shades. Aschehoug-eide Oktober er inne med Jon Michelets sjømannsroman En sjøens helt. For øvrig er det Font, Juritzen, Bastion, Bazar, Silke og Vendetta som figurerer på lista, førstnevnte sågar med en kritikerrost førsteplass, Gillian Flynns Flink pike.

Lista for generell litteratur viser den samme spredningen. Her figurerer Juritzen, Stenersen, Cappelen Damm, Vega, Arneberg, Oktober, Victoria, Kagge, Gyldendal og Spiral – ti ulike forlag blant topp 15. Lista for billigbøker skiller seg mer ut, ved at Gyldendal, Aschehoug og Cappelen Damm står bak 13 av 15 titler, kun splittet av Piratforlaget og Bastion. Dette gjenspeiler den forlagsøkonomiske betydning som pocketbøkene har i de store omnibusforlagene. På samme måte som bestselgerne understøtter mindre appellerende bøker, så kryssubsidierer billigbøkene hardbackmarkedet. Forlagsøkonomien dreier seg mye om denne og andre former for kryssubsidiering.

I mindre beskyttede bokmarkeder enn det norske snakker man om at ikke mer enn 20-30 % av utgitte bøker tjener inn utgiftene for forlagene. Kanskje er det enda færre. Å ta risiko regnes derfor som et sentralt i forleggerens funksjon. Det skaper også et voldsomt driv etter den neste bestselgeren, den neste big book. En storselger av typen Fifty Shades kan redde året for et forlag. Selv i gigantiske Random House utgjorde E.L. James’ trilogi et svært pluss i regnskapet for 2012. Bloomsbury har lenge levd godt på Harry Potter.

Takket være en levende bokkultur, men også en pakke med litteraturpolitiske virkemidler, er norske skjønnlitterære utgivelser langt sikrere som prosjekter enn i en del andre markeder, på tross av vårt språkområdes beskjedne størrelse. Bokavtalen, og en mulig forestående boklov, er et viktig element i virkemiddelpakken, men ikke det eneste. Under innkjøpsordningen for voksen skjønnlitteratur kjøper Kulturrådet inn over 200 titler i året. Momsfritaket utgjør den tredje bjelken i dette litteraturpolitiske byggverket. Ordningene tjener ulike funksjoner, og endrer du på et element, så endres byggverket.  

Uansett er det fremdeles ikke slik at på langt nær alle bøker ”går i null”, selv etter offentlig finansierte innkjøp til bibliotekene. At bestselgerne således understøtter kvalitetslitteraturen er ikke bare et retorisk knep fra forleggerne, men i overensstemmelse med hvordan forlagene og andre kulturindustrier opererer − etter det som er blitt beskrevet av Richard Caves som the nobody knows principle. Man kan si mye rart om kulturindustrienes produkter og maskineriet bak – Adorno-style – men det er i bunn og grunn svært, svært vanskelig å forutse eller planlegge hva som blir en bestselger eller en hit. Bøker om vedstabling og temmelig hardcore beskrivelser av bondage og sadomasochisme selger som hakka møkk. En cowboydansende koreaner som synger på sitt morsmål? Ja, takk!, sa verden.

Usikkerheten som ligger i frykten for å mislykkes kommersielt medfører at man prøver å minimere risiko. Bestselgerforleggeriet med fokus på krim og populærlitteratur á la Kate Morton og Victoria Hislop inngår i en slik strategi. Formelpreget litteratur som kan koples til tidligere salgssuksesser gir et sammenlikningsgrunnlag for utgiveren. Ellefsen siterer fra en typisk blurb: «Liker du Carlos Ruiz Zafóns bøker fra et gåtefullt Barcelona? Da vil du elske Elia Barcelós magiske fortelling Lange skygger.» Oversatt til forlagsøkonomisk: ”Vi tjente x millioner på Vindens skygge, håper du kan hjelpe oss til å gjøre denne likelydende boka til en liknende suksess”. Det kulturpolitiske argumentet vil her være at Vindens lange skygger finansierer utgivelsen av Mo Yan, Gyldendals ferske nobelprisvinner, eller utviklingen av Tomas Espedals forfatterskap. Klisjeen om børs og katedral har faktisk noe for seg.

Hva som utgjør den brede smak er interessant nok, men det er fort gjort å stirre seg blind på bestselgerlistene alene. Det vesentlige må være om børsen finansierer katedralen eller bare fungerer etter sin egen logikk. Når Ellefsen, i likhet med Karin Haugen i Klassekampen (23.03.13) og Susanne Hedemann Hiorth i Dagens Næringsliv (02.04.13), bekymrer seg for at litteraturfeltet heller mot det kommersielle, det feminiserte og det ensrettede, tar de opp igjen en tone som synes å forstumme hver gang en Wassmo, en Saabye Christensen, en Knausgård eller en Petterson når toppen på bestselgerlistene. På samme måte som man i en litteraturpolitisk sammenheng må ha blikket for hele virkemiddelapparatet, må man i en analyse av bestselgerlistene evne å se litteraturfeltet som en helhet.

Terje Colbjørnsen, stipendiat Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon, Universitetet i Oslo

On Pottermore... (continued)

I did promise, a good while ago, to continue on J.K. Rowling's Pottermore.com. Like this blog, I kind of forgot. Anyhow, my paper on Pottermore, entitled Harry Potter and the Chamber of Commerce, was presented at an International Harry Potter Conference in Limerick, Ireland (yup) in the summer of 2012 (yup). The conference proceedings are published as an ebook and features some great stuff by people who know waaay more about HP than I do.

Look here!

http://magicismight2012.blogspot.no/

Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a remote control/TV

On a weekend visit to my parents I leafed through some editions of the Lyd og Bilde (Sound and Image) magazine. An issue from 2009 is ancient in the world of consumer electronics, and I found an interesting example of the troublesome birth of technological innovations...

The headline reads "Remote control is a TV", and the case in point is Samsung's then new remote control, which also works as a secondary portable TV screen and can handle images, music and video via a wifi-connection that also enables Internet access. All in all, it seems like a prototype for Samsung's Galaxy tab, right?

The first Galaxy tablet was demonstrated by Samsung on 2 September at the 2010 IFA in Berlin. It sports a 7" screen, just like the remote control/tv and looks practically identical. The device featured in Lyd og Bilde was bundled with the purchase of a Samsung's LED/LCD TV screen, hence the clumsy term remote control/TV. In 2009 the tablet segment of digital devices had yet to be defined. As we are aware, it was not until Apple released the iPad in April 2010 that tablet computers were recognized as a market niche.

Naming in itself is hard. Even though "tablet" or "tablet computer" seems to be the preferred term, the jury may still be out on what shall be the generic term for devices such as the iPad and the Galaxy Tab. And the issue raised inadvertedly by the note in Lyd og Bilde goes beyond the naming game, and speaks more profoundly of the nature of technological innovations and how to define multi-purpose devices.

The complex origins of a technological innovation is not a new discovery. The history of radio technology and radio broadcasting is a well-known example of technology and its uses being unpredictable and changing. There is a long way from the early military uses of radio signals to today's morning radio shows.

So the difficulties Samsung (and Lyd og Bilde) had with defining the 7" LCD device are perhaps not so odd. After all, it took a company with the combined marketing and innovation skills of Apple to establish the tablet segment of the consumer electronics market.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Commerce

The eight and final Harry Potter film has premiered and apparently there won´t be any more Potter books. So, has the Harry Potter saga come to an end?

Naturally there will be more Potter, or Pottermore, to be exact. J.K Rowling announced the website pottermore.com this summer, and July 31st 2011 the site opened for registration. I tried to be an early bird (owl, I suppose), and registered through some intricate channels including a riddle that I had to google for the answer to. I am no Harry Potter reader, so my interest in the subject is mostly professional.

Professionally speaking, however, the Harry Potter phenomenon is thrilling. This is perhaps the biggest commercial success in media history. The Atlantic calls Rowling's Harry Potter series "a unique commodity in the modern book trade". The success cuts across national borders, genres and formats. A generation of readers grew up alongside Harry & co. There really was no way that it could end after 13 years, seven books, eight films, computer games and a host of toys and memorabilia. The brand must go on.

What it is
So what is Pottermore? I´m not entirely sure. The launch of the site was preceded by a stylish youtube video featuring JKR in a chesterfield couch, boasting of "an online reading experience unlike any other". The site is free for access, and reader participation seems to be a key point. "Pottermore will be built, in part, by you, the reader", JKR announces. "The digital generation will be able to enjoy a safe, unique online reading experince built around the Harry Potter books", she says.



Although I registered and was given a wizardlike like username of sorts, I have not been able to access any content yet. Some aspects of the content are yet to be revealed, but there seems to be a multiplayer game-like experience built around the Potter universe, puzzles and quizzes, and also lots of background info that the author left out, perhaps in the form of an online encyclopedia. Last but not least, the site will from October on, for the first time, offer digital audiobooks and ebooks. And Rowling promises that the ebooks will be available for all reading devices!

JKR has been holding back on ebook offerings for an astonishingly long time now, and it could be suspected - based on earlier statements made - that this was out of technology caution, fear of piracy or nostalgia for the printed book. I think not. I hold with Austin Allen of the Big Think blog:

"But somehow I suspect that J. K. Rowling bows to no one and nothing, not even the wizardry of modern technology. I think she’s a tremendously savvy woman, and I think she and the franchise she’s created have timed this business move very precisely". Equally impressed by her "marketing genious" is the Guardian and the Atlantic. In any case, the timing of the launch of Pottermore seems too calculated to be the outcome of some accidental strategy ("It was time to give something back", as the video says). Close on the heels of the final film, and in keeping with the global ebook trend, Pottermore comes at a good time.

Pottermore and the book industry
So what is the impact of Pottermore? Will it change the face of modern publishing? No, it's not a game changer, says Rachel Deahl of Publisher's Weekly. "Pottermore could shake up digital publishing in three ways, says Laura Hazard Owen of paidcontent.org.

Naturally, it is early to predicate the exact implications of the Pottermore extension of the Harry Potter brand. I think we need to divide the issue into smaller parts, asking about the artistic impact, the commercial impact and the implications on publishing business power relations.

We do not know much about the artistic innovations that may be hidden on the servers of pottermore.com, but I'm quite sure that it will earn JKR a lot more dollars, pounds and kroner. As for the power aspect, that can become quite interesting to see unfold. It involves a possible shake-up of the relationship between publishers, retailers, digital resellers and tech providers, authors, agents and readers.

The Pottermore venture sidesteps both traditional publishers and retailers. Although publishers Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic (US) are involved and will receive a cut of sales, the dominant partner is Sony. Even the digitally empowered Amazon and Apple are pushed aside by the magic wand. If the ebooks are actually available for all reading devices that means JKR has found a way to end or circumvent the format "war" that marks digital publishing today (Epub/AZV/PDF & Flash/HTML5). Interestingly, the rights holders for the Harry Potter films and games, Warner Bros., holds no stake in Pottermore. Furthermore, JKR actually changed publishing agency in front of the digital launch, parting ways with longtime agent Christopher Little.

As for the fans and readers, they seem to be getting both more content on their hands and a platform from which to discuss Harry, but perhaps at the expense of getting caught in JKR's commercial web? Potter fans are an resourceful and creative bunch that have previously been in legal disputes with JKR and her lawyers. How will they cope with assimilated social networking on pottermore.com?

Finally, there's the authors: Wired has likened the strategy to Radiohead´s self-release of In Rainbows, emphasizing the disintermediation of middleman publishers. However, as the analogy with Radiohead indicates, this is not a strategy for everyone. Rowling is quite aware, as she stated in a press conference:

"I am lucky to have the resources to do it myself and I think this is a fantastic and unique experience that I could afford to take my time over to make this come alive. There was really no way to do it for the fans or me than just do it myself. Not every author could do this, but it's right for Harry Potter. It is so much fun to have direct content with my fans. It was an extension of the existing jkrowling.com."

This aspect leaves it somewhat difficult to make longterm predictions on the book industry based on JKR and Pottermore. Exactly how many authors of her commercial calibre are there? Nonetheless, if this venture were to shake the industry profoundly, it could later pave the way for other single-author initiatives taking advantage of weakened publishers and retailers. Perhaps a Jo Nesbø or a Stieg Larsson publishing company (The Scandicrime Consortium)? Stephenie Meyer's twilighter.com?

To be continued.

Williams and culture

I'd like to add to yesterday's post with a short remark on William's definition of culture. I was reminded, during some easter book-cleanup that RW worked with a threepart definition in his book The Long Revolution (1961). Briefly, the three general categories of culture are 1) the ideal, 2) the documentary and 3) the social.

Nuff said. Happy easter!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Why Culture is Ordinary?

This blog is named after a 1958 essay by Raymond Williams. It’s a catchy phrase and a good name for a blog. It’s also something like a source of inspiration, or a mind opener, you could say. I’ll try and explain how and why.

Williams was a marxist-socialist academic, writer and critic, and one of the forces behind the formation of the Cultural Studies school of media research. Coming from someone who spent his lifetime studying aspects of culture, “ordinary” may seem an odd choice of words, but hang on – it all makes sense.

I do not subscribe to nearly all aspects of Williams’ opinions. His ideas were born out of different times (1921-1988) and a different place (primarily the UK). Although it is possible to draw a few comparisons between Williams and myself – a non-academic background, coming into media studies through literature – I would probably feel a stranger next to him.

But then, there’s this view of culture that I really find interesting. Williams wrote in Keywords (1976) that “culture” is one of the most complicated words in the English language. (We might add, so it is in Norwegian as well.) It’s complicated because it carries different meanings and those meanings change with different contexts, but not the least because it’s so widely used. It’s one of those complicated terms that we actually use in everyday language.

If we stick to the uses of culture employed in the humanities, I believe we are left with three definitions, or senses of the concept:

1. Culture as a set of shared practices and values (in the anthropological sense, the culture of the Aztecs, Norwegian culture, but also in more narrow contexts, cf. subculture).

2. Culture as in cultural phenomena, consumption goods and leisure activities: Books, paintings, movies, television drama – but also in the extended usage of culture in connection with sports, fashion etc.)

3. Culture as the utmost of human artistic achievement, cf. high culture, Culture as Civilization.

In addition, we should add the overall distinction between culture and nature as significant for an understanding of the concept.

Despite all the depth and richness and conflict and confusion surrounding the concept, Williams states: “Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact”.

And further:

“Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land”

This notion of culture writing itself into the land is significant. It is connected to the observations the author makes about seeing culture in the landscape itself. In “Culture is Ordinary”, Williams describes a journey, from the village and the contryside to the city and the factory, from the cathedral to the university, from the teashop to the pub. The landscapes he experiences all carry different meanings: Culture writing itself into the land. (This brings to mind Pierre Bourdieu’s and Marcel Mauss’ notion of habitus, as culture anchored in the body).

Williams sees two (rather than three) senses of culture, and he argues that we need to value the “significance of their conjunction”. Thus, in order to fully understand def. 1, we need to grasp def. 2 and 3 and vice versa. Culture is the sum of its definitions.

Raymond Williams is a great writer of prose, his style is concise, succinct, personal. Another brilliant academic also wrote on the subject of bringing together of the various notions of culture, but Pierre Bourdieu’s style is more Proust than Hemingway. I really enjoy the following passage from the opening pages of Distinction (1979):

“One cannot fully understand cultural practices unless ‘culture’ in the restricted, normative sense of ordinary usage, is brought back into ‘culture’ in the antroplogical sense, and the elaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the elementary taste for the flavours of food”.

Once more, then: Culture inscribed in the body, incorporated.

Let’s go back to Williams: “The questions I ask about our culture are questions about our general and common purposes, yet also questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.”

To me, this is a call to keep your eyes open to culture in all its forms and to remember that culture carries significance both on a societal and personal level. Culture is the air that we breathe, and we tend not to think about the existence of oxygen on a daily basis, but it’s nevertheless a good thing to be reminded of what keeps us going. There is a lot of crap out there, Williams reminds us, but are the people we meet vulgar?, he asks. Let’s at least examine the matter at hand. This is the force of media studies, the way I know it, it doesn’t discriminate. I believe it was Cicero who said that “I am human, I consider nothing human to be alien to me”. A great motto, not only for Montaigne, who supposedly carved it into a roof beam in his study, but also for media studies in general. Culture is ordinary, therefore, do not shy away from academic examinations of any cultural expression, high, low or middle brow.

It’s a tall order, I know. But remember: Culture can also be extraordinary.