A Research On Raymond Williams' Cultural Materialism

Raymond Williams was the most well-known cultural theorist. He named his theory as"cultural materialism", a category which could be seen as the summary of his life-long theoretical exploration. This thesis attempts to outline the course of constructing'cultural materialism'and his strategy of doing so.There are four parts in the thesis, the first one of which is the introduction about Raymond Williams'life, works and the research status about his thought. Following this are three chapters, which are the main body of the thesis. Chapter one is"Reconstructing Culture and Society Tradition: Culture as a Way of Life". The author thinks that Williams used'culture and society'tradition to liberate Culture from'culture and civilization'tradition. So"culture"became'ordinary', and thus"a whole way of life".Chapter two,"Reconstructing Base and Structure Mode: Liberate Culture from Superstructure", is about Raymond Williams'rethinking the"base and superstructure"model. He liberated"culture"from"superstructure"through his discussions. Thus he could combine"culture as way of life"and"culture as base", and it is the theoretical base for his"cultural materialism".Chapter three continues to analyze the contents of"cultural materialism". The author thinks that the core content of"cultural materialism"is that culture is material, which is represented by the social production process. Meanwhile, ideology, the structure of feeling and hegemony are three key concepts we must face if we want to understand what"cultural materialism"is. ?The aim of the thesis is to combing the theoretical and conceptual contents of"cultural materialism", hoping to attribute some references to China's research on Raymond Williams and Marxism.