Concerning This Book
Selectivity
Any book about cultural studies is necessarily selective and likely to engender debate, argument and even conflict. To offer a truly comprehensive account of cultural studies would be to reproduce, or at least to summarize, every single text ever written within the parameters of cultural studies. Not only would this be too mammoth a task for any writer, but also the problem would remain of deciding which texts warranted the nomination. Consequently, this book, like all others, is implicated in constructing a particular version of cultural studies.
We do offer, under the rubric of âculture and cultural studiesâ, some (selective) history of the field. However, most of the later chapters, the sites of cultural studies, draw on more contemporary theory. Indeed, in order to make the book as useful as possible in as many different geographical places as possible, there is a stress on theory over context-specific empirical work (though theory is also context-specific and the text does try to link theory with empirical work). In doing so, we deploy a good number of theorists who would not describe themselves as working within cultural studies but who have something to say which has informed the field. Thus, writers like Tony Bennett, Paul Gilroy, Lawrence Grossberg, Stuart Hall, Meaghan Morris and Paul Willis would probably accept a description of their work as âcultural studiesâ. However, though extremely influential, neither Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida nor Roland Barthes would have described themselves in this way, just as Anthony Giddens would not adopt this self-nomination today.
This book is a selective account because it stresses a certain type of cultural studies. In particular, we explore that version of cultural studies which places language at its heart. The kind of cultural studies influenced by poststructuralist theories of language, representation and subjectivity is given greater attention than a cultural studies more concerned with the ethnography of lived experience or with cultural policy. Nevertheless, both do receive attention and we are personally supportive of both.
Cultural studies does not speak with one voice, it cannot be spoken with one voice, and we do not have one voice with which to represent it.
The title of this book is somewhat over-ambitious in its claims. Not only is this a selective account of cultural studies, it is also one that draws very largely from work developed in Britain, the United States, Continental Europe (most notably France) and Australia. We draw very little from the growing body of work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As such, it would be more accurate to call this text âwestern cultural studiesâ. We simply do not feel qualified to say how much cultural studies, as we understand it, is pertinent to the social and cultural conditions of Africa (though we do acknowledge that the rapid growth of the cybersphere is producing a multitude of digital cultures which have transnational qualities).
The language-game of cultural studies
Further, this book tends to gloss over differences within western cultural studies, despite doubts about whether theory developed in one context (e.g. Britain) can be workable in another (e.g. Australia) (Ang and Stratton, 1996; Turner, 1992). Nevertheless, we want to justify this degree of generalization about cultural studies. We maintain that the term âcultural studiesâ has no referent to which we can point. Rather, cultural studies is constituted by the language-game of cultural studies. The theoretical terms developed and deployed by persons calling their work cultural studies are what cultural studies âisâ. We stress the language of cultural studies as constitutive of cultural studies and draw attention at the start of each chapter to what we take to be important terms. Subsequently, each of these concepts, and others, can be referred to in the Glossary at the end of the book.
These are concepts that have been deployed in the various geographical sites of cultural studies. For, as Grossberg et al. have argued, though cultural studies has stressed conjunctural analysis, âwhich is embedded, descriptive, and historically and contextually specificâ, there are some concepts in cultural studies across the globe which form âa history of real achievements that is now part of the cultural studies traditionâ, and to do without which would be âto willingly accept real incapacitationâ (1992: 8). Concepts are tools for thinking and acting in the world.
Cultural studies as politics
It remains difficult to pin down the boundaries of cultural studies as a coherent, unified, academic discipline with clear-cut substantive topics, concepts and methods that differentiate it from other disciplines. Cultural studies has always been a multi- or post-disciplinary field of enquiry which blurs the boundaries between itself and other âsubjectsâ. It is not physics, it is not sociology and it is not linguistics, though it draws upon these subject areas. Indeed, there must be, as Hall (1992a) argues, something at stake in cultural studies that differentiates it from other subject areas.
For Hall, what is at stake is the connection that cultural studies seeks to make to matters of power and cultural politics. That is, to an exploration of representations of and âforâ marginalized social groups and the need for cultural change. Hence, cultural studies is a body of theory generated by thinkers who regard the production of theoretical knowledge as a political practice. Here, knowledge is never a neutral or objective phenomenon but a matter of positionality, that is, of the place from which one speaks, to whom, and for what purposes.
At the start of the evolution of British cultural studies the idea that the field was politically engaged was taken as a defining characteristic. Today, cultural studiesâ alignment with political activism is more controversial â both inside and outside of the field. Grossberg questions such approaches in Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, where he argues that it should not be the job of critical scholars and analysts of the contemporary âto offer a normative politics or even morally based political judgmentsâ or âto tell people what they should be or should desireâ (2010: 97). In this book, we support the idea that cultural studies provides a useful way to think about and engage in cultural politics, but we do not wish to be prescriptive about the form these politics might take. We accept that the notion of âprogressiveâ social change is not commonsensical or self-evident, but varies from person to person. Our aim, therefore, is to offer various conceptual and theoretical architectures that might be useful for thinking about and attempting to effect cultural change, but to leave open the question about what these changes ought to be.
The Tea Party
The Tea Party movement in the US advocates for conservative political policies such as reducing the size of government, lowering taxes and promoting free market economics. Supporters make up about 10 per cent of the American population. They feel aggrieved by existing policies and utilize protest methods â such as large, public rallies involving vocal protestors holding placards â that some might associate more with left-wing movements.
- In your view, is the Tea Party a marginalized social group?
- How do its calls for social change compare with those made by, for example, the Occupy movement and its international protests against social and economic inequality?
- How might cultural studies approaches be used to understand the ideals and dynamics of conservative political movements?
The Parameters of Cultural Studies
There is a difference between the study of culture and institutionally located cultural studies. The study of culture has taken place in a variety of academic disciplines (sociology, anthropology, English literature, etc.) and in a range of geographical and institutional spaces. However, this is not to be understood as cultural studies. The study of culture has no origins, and to locate one is to exclude other possible starting points. Nevertheless this does not mean that cultural studies cannot be named and its key concepts identified.
Cultural studies is a discursive formation, that is, âa cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and conduct associated with, a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in societyâ (Hall, 1997a: 6). Cultural studies is constituted by a regulated way of speaking about objects (which it brings into view) and coheres around key concepts, ideas and concerns. Further, cultural studies had a moment at which it named itself, even though that naming marks only a cut or snapshot of an ever-evolving intellectual project.
Key Thinkers
Stuart Hall (1932â2014)
A West Indian-born British thinker initially associated with the âNew Leftâ of the late-1960s, Hall was the Director of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from 1968 to 1979. It was during this time that an identifiable and particular field called cultural studies began to emerge. Hall is perhaps the most significant figure in the development of British cultural studies. His work makes considerable use of Antonio Gramsci and the concepts of ideology and hegemony, though he also played a significant part in deploying poststructuralism in cultural studies.
Reading: Morley, D. and Chen, D. K-H. (eds.) (1996) Stuart Hall. London: Routledge.
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Cultural studies has been reluctant to accept institutional legitimation. Nevertheless, the formation of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University in the UK in the 1960s was a decisive organizational instance. Since that time, cultural studies has extended its intellectual base and geographic scope. There are self-defined cultural studies practitioners in the USA, Australia, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, with each âformationâ of cultural studies working in different ways. While we are not privileging British cultural studies per se, we are pointing to the formation of cultural studies at Birmingham as an institutionally significant moment. By the same token, we note that the controversial closing of the CCCS in 2002 also marked a significant moment in the fieldâs attempt to respond to critique and keep pace with the rapidly changing nature of its objects and subjects of analyses (see the âCriticizing cultural studiesâ section below).
Since its emergence, cultural studies has acquired a multitude of institutional bases, courses, textbooks and students as it has become something to be taught. As Jim McGuigan (1997a) comments, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise, despite the concern that professionalized and institutionalized cultural studies may âformalize out of existence the critical questions of power, history and politicsâ (Hall, 1992a: 286). Cultural studiesâ main location has always been institutions of higher education and the bookshop. Consequently, one way of âdefiningâ cultural studies is to look at what university courses offer to students. This necessarily involves âdiscipliningâ cultural studies.
Disciplining cultural studies
Many cultural studies practitioners oppose forging disciplinary boundaries for the field. However, it is hard to see how this can be resisted if cultural studies wants to survive by attracting degree students and funding (as opposed to being only a postgraduate research activity). In that context, Bennett (1998) offers his âelement of a definitionâ of cultural studies:
- Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field in which perspectives from different disciplines can be selectively drawn on to examine the relations of culture and power.
- âCultural studies is concerned with all those practices, institutions and systems of classification through which there are inculcated in a population particular values, beliefs, competencies, routines of life and habitual forms of conductâ (Bennett, 1998: 28).
- The forms of power that cultural stud...