Week One. Williams, R - An Analysis of Culture - Reading Response.

Williams begins by structuring Culture into three categories, the 'ideal', the 'documentary' and the 'social'. To begin, the 'ideal' is the idea that culture is the state of human perfection in terms of values and is essentially the discovery and description in our lives of values which have a connection and reference to the permanent universal human condition. Secondly the 'documentary' is the idea that culture is the foundation of intellectual and human work. Finally the 'social' defines culture as a particular way of life and traditions within an individuals life which expresses certain meanings.

Culture is defined as a clarification and analysis of values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life and culture. Such analysis includes and is influenced by historical criticism in which intellectual and imaginary works are analysed in relation to traditions and behaviours and analysis of other ways of life which wouldn't necessarily be classed as culture such as family life and relationship structures.

Culture is a form of development and a key part of society and in individual circumstances. Williams suggests culture can be structured on two different levels, lived and recorded culture. A mid point between the two can be labeled as period culture which can be determined to conclude culture comes from either living a certain lifestyle or a pre determined culture.


He describes the theory of culture as ‘the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life’. This definition combines the idea of three elements ideal, documentary and social together.

Williams then looks into the ‘structure of feeling’. He mentions how culture evolves and develops with the time meaning that experts at a particular time in a specific field may not be able to take in everything and pass on the information. Therefore the accounts of previous cultures are often misconstrued through biased records and do not have a structure of feeling within a culture. E.g Elements of our grandparents culture that we have read about may not be the same or have the same nostalgic view that people of that era have and may not convey the exact truth about their culture.