Cultural studies

For the journal, see Cultural Studies (journal).

Not to be confused with Culture theory or Cultural theory of risk.

Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations.

British cultural studies

Dennis Dworkin writes that "a critical moment" in the beginning of cultural studies as a field was when Richard Hoggart used the term in 1964 in founding the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham. The centre would become home to the development of the intellectual orientation that has become known internationally as the "Birmingham School" of cultural studies, thus becoming the world's first institutional home of cultural studies.

Hoggart appointed as his assistant Stuart Hall, who would effectively be directing CCCS by 1968. Hall formally assumed the directorship of CCCS in 1971, when Hoggart left Birmingham to become Assistant Director-General of UNESCO.

In 2016, Duke University Press launched a new series of Stuart Hall's collected writings, many of which detail his major and decisive contributions toward the establishment of the field of cultural studies. In 2023, a new Stuart Hall Archive Project was launched at the University of Birmingham to commemorate Hall's contributions in pioneering the field of cultural studies at CCCS.

Stuart Hall's cultural Studies

Hall's cultural studies explores culture as a system that affects individuals' identities through the meanings and practices that arise from the constant power dynamics that comprise culture. Hall viewed culture as a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled." He perceived culture as a power dynamic, in which the media unintentionally possesses more control over ideology than the public. Hall viewed the media as a source of preserving the status quo of a reflection that already exists in society. The media hegemony in question, he emphasized, "is not a conscious plot or conspiracy, it’s not overtly coercive, and its effects are not total." Compared to other thinkers on this subject, he studied and analyzed symbols, ideologies, signs, and other representations within cultural studies. Most of his contributions occurred in the 1980s, where he looked at how media cultivates cultural power, how it is consumed, mediated and negotiated, etc. Hall has also been accredited with the expansion of cultural studies through “the primacy of culture’s role as an educational site where identities are being continually transformed, power is enacted, and learning assumes a political dynamic.” He viewed politics as being used mainly for power instead of the betterment of society. This led to the belief that political dynamics could change with a reform in the education system (if one changes the education system, then one can change the culture). Hall viewed culture as something that is institutionalized, which could only be studied through the interactional patterns that people within a culture exhibit and experience. Culture is something that makes up society, is a learned trait, and is influenced by various forms of media that help to establish it. Power is the underlying tone of Hall’s cultural studies. Hall believed that culture has some power, but the media's use of it is what sways and dictates culture itself.

Developments outside the UK

In Germany, the term cultural studies specifically refers to the field in the Anglosphere, especially British Cultural Studies, to differentiate it from the German Kulturwissenschaft which developed along different lines and is characterized by its distance from political science. However, Kulturwissenschaft and cultural studies are often used interchangeably, particularly by lay people.

Throughout Asia, cultural studies have boomed and thrived. In India, the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore and the Department of Cultural Studies at The English and Foreign Languages and the University of Hyderabad are two major institutional spaces for Cultural Studies.

Issues, concepts, and approaches

Marxism has been an important influence upon cultural studies. Those associated with CCCS initially engaged deeply with the structuralism of Louis Althusser, and later in the 1970s turned decisively toward Antonio Gramsci. Cultural studies has also embraced the examination of race, gender, and other aspects of identity, as is illustrated, for example, by a number of key books published collectively under the name of CCCS in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination (1978), and The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (1982).

Globalization

In recent decades, as capitalism has spread throughout the world via contemporary forms of globalization, cultural studies has generated important analyses of local sites and practices of negotiation with and resistance to Western hegemony.

Cultural consumption

Cultural studies criticizes the traditional view of the passive consumer, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive and interpret cultural texts, or appropriate other kinds of cultural products, or otherwise participate in the production and circulation of meanings. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively rework, or challenge the meanings circulated through cultural texts. In some of its variants, cultural studies has shifted the analytical focus from traditional understandings of production to consumption – viewed as a form of production (of meanings, of identities, etc.) in its own right. Stuart Hall, John Fiske, and others have been influential in these developments.

The concept of "text"

A conception of textuality derives especially from the work of the pioneering and influential semiotician, Roland Barthes, but also owes debts to other sources, such as Juri Lotman and his colleagues from Tartu–Moscow School. Similarly, the field widens the concept of culture. Cultural studies approach the sites and spaces of everyday life, such as pubs, living rooms, gardens, and beaches, as "texts."

Culture, in this context, includes not only high culture, but also everyday meanings and practices, a central focus of cultural studies.

Jeff Lewis summarized much of the work on textuality and textual analysis in his cultural studies textbook and a post-9/11 monograph on media and terrorism. According to Lewis, textual studies use complex and difficult heuristic methods and require both powerful interpretive skills and a subtle conception of politics and contexts. The task of the cultural analyst, for Lewis, is to engage with both knowledge systems and texts and observe and analyze the ways the two interact with one another.

The integration of popular culture in cultural studies and education

The integration of popular culture in classrooms has influenced educational practices in Cultural Studies. Through the analysis of TV series, movies, memes, and other cultural materials, educators can encourage media literacy, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of social issues. Popular culture can be an effective tool for critical pedagogy. Evan Faidley explores how TV shows, movies, and memes can be used in the classroom to discuss topics like social justice and identity. Shows like South Park allow students to evaluate societal norms and political issues, using a pedagogy of resistance (Stevens). Cultural studies encourage students to analyze intertextuality. Patricia Duff discusses how popular culture incorporates with academic discourse to build media literacy which helps students critically engage with the media they consume daily. Kathy Mills also highlights the importance of multiliteracies, which encourages students to utilize a variety of communication media outside of the standard text, including digital and visual media. Diane Penrod argues that incorporating popular culture in education makes learning more relevant and engaging. Teachers can aid students in comprehending difficult concepts like gender, ethnicity, and class by utilizing works from their own culture. Students are also encouraged to develop critical analytical abilities which they can use in both academic and everyday situations when popular culture is integrated into the classroom. Incorporating popular culture into education through cultural studies helps students critically engage with the world around them, fostering media literacy and critical thinking. Educators can use cultural texts to discuss societal issues, challenge norms, and prepare students for active participation in a media-dominated world.

English departments also host cultural rhetorics scholars. This academic field defines cultural rhetorics as "the study and practice of making meaning and knowledge with the belief that all cultures are rhetorical and all rhetorics are cultural." Cultural rhetorics scholars are interested in investigating topics like climate change, autism, Asian American rhetoric, and more.

Many sociologists, however, would argue, following Hall, that cultural studies have always sought to avoid the establishment of a fixed research agenda; this follows from its critique of disciplinarity. Moreover, Hall and many others have long argued against the misunderstanding that textual analysis is the sole methodology of cultural studies, and have practiced numerous other approaches, as noted above. Rojek and Turner also level the accusation that there is "a sense of moral superiority about the correctness of the political views articulated" in cultural studies.

Founding works

Hall and others have identified some core originating texts, or the original "curricula," of the field of cultural studies:

• Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy
• Raymond Williams' Culture and Society and The Long Revolution
• E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.

See also

• Culturology
• Cultural Studies Association (US)
• European Communication Research and Education Association (Norway)
• International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (South Korea)
• Popular culture studies

References

Sources

• Bitar, Amer (2020). Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East: The Power of Aesthetics and Practical Implications. Springer Nature. ISBN 9783030573973.
• Du Gay, Paul, et al. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Culture, Media and Identities. London: SAGE, in association with Open University.
• During, Simon (2007). The cultural studies reader (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-37412-5.
• Edgar, Andrew, and Peter Sedgwick. 2005. Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
• Engel, Manfred. 2008. "Cultural and Literary Studies." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 31:460–67.
• Grossberg, Lawrence (2010). Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Grossberg, Lawrence; Nelson, Cary; Treichler, Paula, eds. (1992). Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90351-3..
• Hall, Gary & Birchall, Claire, eds. (2006). New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Hall, Stuart, ed. (1980). Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979. London: Routledge in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. ISBN 0-09-142070-9.
• —— (1980b). "Cultural studies: Two paradigms". Media, Culture & Society. 2: 57–72. doi:10.1177/016344378000200106.
• —— 1992. "Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies." Rethinking Marxism 5(1):10–18.
• Hoggart, Richard. 1957. The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life. Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-7011-0763-4
• Hartley, John (2003). A Short History of Cultural Studies. London: Sage.
• Johnson, Richard. 1986–87. "What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text 16:38–80.
• —— 2004. "Multiplying Methods: From Pluralism to Combination." pp. 26–43 in Practice of Cultural Studies. London: SAGE.
• —— "Post-Hegemony? I Don't Think So" Theory, Culture & Society 24(3):95–110.
• Lash, Scott (May 2007). "Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?". Theory, Culture & Society. 24 (3): 55–78. doi:10.1177/0263276407075956. S2CID 145639801.
• Lewis, Jeff (2008). Cultural Studies: The Basics (2nd ed.). London: SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-4129-2229-6.
• Lindlof, T. R., and B. C. Taylor. 2002. Qualitative Communication Research Methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Longhurst, Brian, Greg Smith, Gaynor Bagnall, Garry Crawford, and Michael Ogborn. 2008. Introducing Cultural Studies (2nd ed.). London: Pearson. ISBN 978-1-4058-5843-4.
• Miller, Toby, ed. (2006). A Companion to Cultural Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0-631-21788-6.
• Pollock, Griselda, ed. 1996. Generations and Geographies: Critical Theories and Critical Practices in Feminism and the Visual Arts. Routledge.
• —— 2006. Psychoanalysis and the Image. Boston: Blackwell.
• Sardar, Ziauddin, Van Loon, Borin (1997). Introducing Cultural Studies. New York: Totem Books.
• Smith, Paul. 1991. "A Course In 'Cultural Studies'." The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 24(1):39–49.
• —— 2006. "Looking Backwards and Forwards at Cultural Studies." pp. 331–40 in A Companion to Cultural Studies, edited by T. Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0-631-21788-6.
• Rodman, Gil (2015). Why Cultural Studies? Maldon, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
• Turner, Graeme (2003). British Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Third ed.). London: Routledge.
• —— 2012. What's Become of Cultural Studies? Los Angeles: SAGE.
• Williams, Jeffrey, interviewer. 1994. "Questioning Cultural Studies: An Interview with Paul Smith." Hartford, CT: MLG Institute for Culture and Society, Trinity College. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
• Williams, Raymond. 1985. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (revised ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
• —— 1966. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. New York: Harper & Row.

External links

• CCCS publications (Annual Reports and Stencilled Occasional [sic] Papers) of the University of Birmingham Archived 10 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine
• CSAA: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
• Cultural Studies
• International Journal of Cultural Studies
• Stuart Hall Archive Project, University of Birmingham, UK
• Stuart Hall: Selected Writings, Duke University Press