Williams and Marxist Cultural Theory

Culture is the focus of attention from the humanities and social sciences, and also the target of literary and aesthetic discourse. While dividing economy and culture into foundation and super-structure, Marx and Engels stressed the relative freedom of culture, and discloses the complicated relationship between culture and politics and between economy structure and class relations. Facing the emergence of the working class culture and popular culture, Williams constructed the theory of materialist culture and highlighted the sociality and materiality of cultural production the mid- and later 20th century. He proposed the constructive dimension of popular culture, thus enriching and developing the social materialist understanding of the form and social functions of historical materialism.