Introducing Cultural Studies

A Graphic Guide

Ziauddin Sardar, Borin Van Loon

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781848319660
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Cultural Studies signals a major academic revolution for the 21st century. But what exactly is it, and how is it applied? It is a discipline that claims not to be a discipline; it is a radical critical approach for understanding racial, national, social and gender identities. "Introducing Cultural Studies" provides an incisive tour through the minefield of this complex subject, charting its origins in Britain and its migration to the USA, Canada, France, Australia and South Asia, examining the ideas of its leading exponents and providing a flavour of its use around the world. Covering the ground from Gramsci to Raymond Williams, postcolonial discourse to the politics of diaspora, feminism to queer theory, technoculture and the media to globalization, it serves as an insightful guide to the essential concepts of this fascinating area of study. It is essential reading for all those concerned with the quickening pulse of old, new and emerging cultures.

What Is Cultural Studies?

Cultural studies is an exciting and “hot” field of study. It has become the rage amongst progressives of all sorts – not least because culture as a theme or topic of study has replaced society as the general subject of inquiry among progressives.

Cultural studies has made its presence felt in academic work within the arts, the humanities, the social sciences and even science and technology. It appears to be everywhere and everyone seems to be talking about it.

But what exactly is cultural studies? The term “studies” suggests a broad field of inquiry – like business studies or management studies. So is cultural studies simply the study of culture?

We know what business is. And what management is.

But culture? Well, that’s an altogether different thing.

What is Culture?

The ambiguity of the concept of culture is notorious. Some anthropologists consider culture to be social behaviour. For others, it is not behaviour at all, but an abstraction from behaviour. To some, stone axes and pottery, dance and music, fashion and style constitute culture; while no material object can be culture to others.

Yet for still other, culture exists only in the mind.

One of the oldest definitions of culture was given by the British anthropologist, Sir E.B. Tylor (1832–1917) in the opening lines of his book, Primitive Cultures (1871):

Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Here are a few more attempts to define culture …

American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901–78)

Culture is that learned behavior of a society or a subgroup.

Raymond Williams (1921–88), one of the founders of cultural studies

Culture includes the organization of production, the structure of the family, the structure of institutions which express or govern social relationships, the characteristic forms through which members of the society communicate.

Clifford Geertz (b. 1926), Professor of Social Science at Princeton University

Culture is simply the ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

On the basis of these definitions, culture seems to be (almost) everything and cultural studies the study of (almost) everything!

What is the Subject of Cultural Studies?

Not surprisingly, cultural studies does not have a clearly defined subject area. Its starting point is a very broad and all-inclusive notion of culture that is used to describe and study a whole range of practices.

Apart from the ambiguous nature of its subject area, cultural studies also lacks its own principles, theories or methods.
But it does have its own very distinct and distinctive history.
If cultural studies does not have its own theories or methodology, how does it actually function?

Cultural studies functions by borrowing freely from social science disciplines and all branches of humanities and the arts. It appropriates theories and methodologies from

Almost any method from textual analysis, ethnography and psychoanalysis to survey research can be used to do cultural studies.

Cultural studies takes whatever it needs from any discipline and adopts it to suit its own purposes.

All this makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to agree on any basic definition of the nature of the beast that is cultural studies. Cultural studies is not one thing, it is many things. It straddles the intellectual and academic landscape from old established disciplines to new political movements, intellectual practices and modes of inquiry such as Marxism, post-colonialism, feminism and post-structuralism. It moves from discipline to discipline,

methodology to methodology, according to its own concerns and motivations.

This is why cultural studies is not a discipline. It is, in fact, a collective term for diverse and often contentious intellectual endeavours that address numerous questions, and consists of many different theoretical and political positions.

This is why cultural studies is often described as an “anti-discipline” – a mode of inquiry that does not subscribe to the straitjacket of institutionalized disciplines.

Characteristics of Cultural Studies

Just because cultural studies is practically impossible to define, it does not mean that anything can be cultural studies or cultural studies can be just anything. The history of cultural studies has provided it with certain distinguishable characteristics that can often be identified in terms of what cultural studies aims to do.

1. Cultural studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. Its constant goal is to expose power relationships and examine how these relationships influence and shape cultural practices.

2. Cultural studies is not simply the study of culture as though it was a discrete entity divorced from its social or political context. Its objective is to understand culture in all its complex forms and to analyse the social and political context within which it manifests itself.

3. Culture in cultural studies always performs two functions: it is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action. Cultural studies aims to be both an intellectual and a pragmatic enterprise.

4. Cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit (that is, intuitive knowledge based on local cultures) and objective (so-called universal) forms of knowledge. It assumes a common identity and common interest between the know...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• What Is Cultural Studies?
• Further Reading
• Index
• Biographies
• Acknowledgements