Williams’s culture theory rejects economic determinism for radical interaction of all practices

Evidence

There is a clear engagement with the “idealist” and “civilizing” definitions of culture—both the equation of “culture” with ideas , in the idealist tradition; and the assimilation of culture to an ideal , prevalent in the elitist terms of the “cultural debate.” But there is also a more extended engagement with certain kinds of Marxism, against which Williams’s definitions are consciously pitched. He is arguing against the literal operations of the base/superstructure metaphor, which in classical Marxism ascribed the domain of ideas and of meanings to the “superstructures,” themselves conceived as merely reflective of and determined in some simple fashion by “the base,” without a social effectivity of their own. That is to say, his argument is constructed against a vulgar materialism and an economic determinism. He offers, instead, a radical interactionism: in effect, the interaction of all practices in and with one another, skirting the problem of determinacy. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 186

The Long Revolution (like many of Williams’s works) carries on a submerged, almost “silent” dialogue with alternative positions, which are not always as clearly identified as one would wish. There is a clear engagement with the “idealist” and “civilizing” definitions of culture—both the equation of “culture” with ideas , in the idealist tradition; and the assimilation of culture to an ideal , prevalent in the elitist terms of the “cultural debate.” But there is also a more extended engagement with certain kinds of Marxism, against which Williams’s definitions are consciously pitched. He is arguing against the literal operations of the base/superstructure metaphor, which in classical Marxism ascribed the domain of ideas and of meanings to the “superstructures,” themselves conceived as merely reflective of and determined in some simple fashion by “the base,” without a social effectivity of their own. That is to say, his argument is constructed against a vulgar materialism and an economic determinism. He offers, instead, a radical interactionism: in effect, the interaction of all practices in and with one another, skirting the problem of determinacy. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 186

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines radical interactionism as the anti-determinist move at the heart of cultural studies.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in Hall as economic thought: this is the theoretical ground for refusing to treat ideas and meanings as mere reflexes of the economic base.
• DEEPTHINKING: The move from base/superstructure to a field of mutually determining forces, while ‘skirting the problem of determinacy,’ is a dense theoretical reframing central to how cultural studies relates to economics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 186