Cultural studies rejects the base-superstructure model of economic determination

Evidence

Here, then, despite the many significant differences, is the outline of one significant line of thinking in Cultural Studies—some would say, the dominant paradigm. It stands opposed to the residual and merely reflective role assigned to “the cultural.” In its different ways, it conceptualizes culture as interwoven with all social practices; and those practices, in turn, as a common form of human activity: sensuous human praxis, the activity through which men and women make history. It is opposed to the base-superstructure way of formulating the relationship between ideal and material forces, especially where the “base” is defined as the determination by “the economic” in any simple sense. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 191

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the culturalist vs structuralist debate, which anticipates my interest in how Williams and Thompson differ from Althusser and Levi-Strauss.

Related

• The culturalist paradigm rejects the base-superstructure model of material and ideal forces. (similarity 0.87)
• Cultural Studies replaced Marxist base-superstructure with complex notions of determination (similarity 0.87)
• Culture is a field of mutually and unevenly determining forces, not base and superstructure (similarity 0.85)
• Williams’s culture theory rejects economic determinism for radical interaction of all practices (similarity 0.84)
• Economic base sets limits but never fully determines historical outcomes (similarity 0.81)
• Cultural Studies’ core problem is non-reductive determinacy between the cultural and the economic. (similarity 0.81)
• Culture is not superstructural but is where financialized capitalism subjugates social values (similarity 0.80)
• Economic-only explanations of culture cannot capture conjunctural specificity (similarity 0.79)
• Economic base determines superstructure and historical epochs change through structural contradiction (similarity 0.79)
• Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism (similarity 0.79)
• Without a concept of ideology, culture’s role in reproducing production cannot be grasped. (similarity 0.79)
• Cultural Studies engaged Marxism through its omissions, not its established doctrines. (similarity 0.79)
• The economy can never act independently of political and ideological practices. (similarity 0.79)
• Economic base determines superstructures by setting limits, not by specifying their content (similarity 0.79)
• Classical political economy of culture reduces all cultural phenomena to economic determination (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Classical political economy of culture reduces all cultural phenomena to economic determination #corroborates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 205
• Economic structures are necessary but not sufficient to explain political and ideological features #qualifies (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 621
• Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined #expands (0.65)
• Social reproduction thinking revives domains Marxist base-superstructure theory had reduced away #corroborates (0.65)
• Race lacks a singular transhistorical essence and is not fully determined by economics #exemplifies (0.60) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 297