Top Highlights

• By using cultural materialism as a research method, sociologists can produce a critical understanding of the values, beliefs, and worldviews of a period through close study of cultural products. They can also discern how these values connect to social structure, trends, and problems. To do so, they must consider the historical context in which a pr...
• He argued that technology, economic production, the built environment, etc. influences both the structure of society (social organization and relations) and the superstructure (the collection of ideas, values, beliefs, and worldviews). He asserted that one must take this whole system into account to understand why cultures differ from place to plac...
• Embracing the political nature of Marx's theory and his critical focus on power and class structure, Williams' cultural materialism took aim at how cultural products relate to a class-based system of domination and oppression

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