Cultural studies

In his 1994 book, Introducing Cultural Studies, orientalist scholar Ziauddin Sardar lists the following five main characteristics of cultural studies:Sardar, Ziauddin, and Borin Van Loon. 1994. Introducing Cultural Studies. New York: Totem Books

• The objective of cultural studies is to understand culture in all its complex forms, and analyzing the social and political context in which culture manifests itself.
• Cultural study is a site of both study/analysis and political criticism. For example, not only would a cultural studies scholar study an object, but they may also connect this study to a larger political project.
• Cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile constructed divisions of knowledge that purport to be grounded in nature.
• Cultural studies has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society.
• One aim of cultural studies could be to examine cultural practices and their relation to power, following critical theory. For example, a study of a subculture (such as white working-class youth in London) would consider their social practices against those of the dominant culture (in this example, the middle and upper classes in London who control the political and financial sectors that create policies affecting the well-being of white working-class youth in London).

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.{{cite book |last=Dworkin |first=Dennis |author-link=Dennis Dworkin |date=1997 |title=Cultural Marxism in Post-War Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies |location=Durham |publisher=Duke University Press |page=116}} The centre would become home to the development of the intellectual orientation that has become known internationally as the "Birmingham School" of cultural studies,see also: {{cite journal |last=Corner |first=John |date=1991 |title=Postscript: Studying Culture{{mdash}}Reflections and Assessment: An Interview with Richard Hoggart |journal=Media, Culture & Society |volume=13 |number=2|doi=10.1177/016344391013002002 }} thus becoming the world's first institutional home of cultural studies.{{Cite web |url=http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/history/research/projects/cccs/about.aspx |title=About the Birmingham CCCS – University of Birmingham |website=birmingham.ac.uk |language=en-gb |access-date=14 June 2017 |archive-date=2 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170602105317/http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/history/research/projects/cccs/about.aspx |url-status=live}}

Hoggart appointed as his assistant Stuart Hall, who would effectively be directing CCCS by 1968.{{cite journal |last=Davies |first=Ioan |author-link=Ioan Davies |title=British Cultural Marxism |year=1991 |volume=4 |issue=3 |journal=International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society |pages=323–344 |doi=10.1007/BF01386507 |s2cid=143846218}} Hall formally assumed the directorship of CCCS in 1971, when Hoggart left Birmingham to become Assistant Director-General of UNESCO.Hoggart, Richard. 2011. An Idea and Its Servants: UNESCO from Within. Newark, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Thereafter, the field of cultural studies became closely associated with Hall's work.{{cite book |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Morley |editor2-first=Kuan-Hsing |editor2-last=Chen |title=Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies |date=1996 |publisher=Routledge |location=London}}{{cite book |editor1-first=Paul |editor1-last=Gilroy |editor2-first=Lawrence |editor2-last=Grossberg |editor3-first=Angela |editor3-last=McRobbie |title=Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall |date=2000 |publisher=Verso Books |location=London}} In 1979, Hall left Birmingham to accept a prestigious chair in sociology at the Open University, and Richard Johnson took over the directorship of the centre.

In the late 1990s, "restructuring" at the University of Birmingham led to the elimination of CCCS and the creation of a new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) in 1999. Then, in 2002, the university's senior administration abruptly announced the disestablishment of CSS, provoking a substantial international outcry. The immediate reason for disestablishment of the new department was an unexpectedly low result in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, though a dean from the university attributed the decision to "inexperienced 'macho management'."{{cite journal |last1=Webster |first1=Frank |title=Cultural Studies and Sociology at, and After, the Closure of the Birmingham School |journal=Cultural Studies |date=2004 |volume=18 |issue=6 |page=848 |doi=10.1080/0950238042000306891 |s2cid=145110580}} The RAE, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher-led British government of 1986, determines research funding for university programs.{{cite news |last=Curtis |first=Polly |date=2002 |url=http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/socialsciences/story/0,,745058,00.html |title=Birmingham's cultural studies department given the chop |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070313170017/http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/socialsciences/story/0,,745058,00.html |archive-date=13 March 2007 |work=The Guardian}}

To trace the development of British Cultural Studies, see, for example, the work of Richard Hoggart, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy, David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon, Richard Dyer, and others.{{Cite web |last=Storey |first=John |date=1996 |title=What is Cultural Studies?|url=https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/john_storey_what_is_cultural_studies_a_readerbookzz-org.pdf |access-date=14 June 2017 |archive-date=26 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161026152243/https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/john_storey_what_is_cultural_studies_a_readerbookzz-org.pdf |url-status=live}} There are also many published overviews of the historical development of cultural studies, including Graeme Turner's British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd Ed. and John Hartley's A Short History of Cultural Studies{{cite book|last1=Turner|first1=Graeme|title=British Cultural Studies: An Introduction |date=2003|publisher=Routledge|edition=Third |location=London}}{{cite book |last1=Hartley |first1=John |title=A Short History of Cultural Studies |date=2003 |publisher=SAGE Publications |location=London}}{{harvnb|Hall|1980|p=}}

Beginning in 1964, after the initial appearance of the founding works of British Cultural Studies in the late 1950s, Stuart Hall's pioneering work at CCCS, along with that of his colleagues and postgraduate students, gave shape and substance to the field of cultural studies. This would include such people as Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon, John Clarke, Richard Dyer, Judith Williamson, Richard Johnson, Iain Chambers, Dorothy Hobson, Chris Weedon, Tony Jefferson, Michael Green and Angela McRobbie.

Many cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis, exploring the relationships between cultural forms (i.e., the superstructure) and that of the political economy (i.e., the base). By the 1970s, the work of Louis Althusser radically rethought the Marxist account of base and superstructure in ways that had a significant influence on the "Birmingham School." Much of the work done at CCCS studied youth-subcultural expressions of antagonism toward "respectable" middle-class British culture in the post-WWII period. Also during the 1970s, the politically formidable British working classes were in decline. Britain's manufacturing industries while continuing to grow in output and value, were decreasing in share of GDP and numbers employed, and union rolls were shrinking. Millions of working-class Britons backed the rise of Margaret Thatcher, through the labour losses. For Stuart Hall and his colleagues, this shift in loyalty from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party had to be explained in terms of cultural politics, which they had been tracking even before Thatcher's first victory. Some of this work was presented in the cultural studies classic, Policing the Crisis,{{cite book |first1=Stuart |last1=Hall |author1-link=Stuart Hall (cultural theorist) |first2=Chas |last2=Critcher |first3=Tony |last3=Jefferson |first4=John |last4=Clarke |first5=Brian |last5=Roberts |title=Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order |date=1978 |publisher=Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. |location=New York}} and in other later texts such as Hall's The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left,{{cite book|last1=Hall|first1=Stuart|title=The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left|date=1988|publisher=Verso|location=London}} and New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s.{{cite book |editor1=Stuart Hall |editor2=Martin Jacques |title=New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s |date=1991 |publisher=Verso |location=London}}

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.See the Duke University Press Stuart Hall: Selected Writings webpage (below in External Links) 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.See the Stuart Hall Archive Project webpage (below in External Links)

By the late 1970s, scholars associated with The Birmingham School had firmly placed questions of gender and race on the cultural studies agenda, where they have remained ever since. Also by the late 1970s, cultural studies had begun to attract a great deal of international attention. It spread globally throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As it did so, it both encountered new conditions of knowledge production, and engaged with other major international intellectual currents such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism.{{cite book |editor1-first=Ackbar |editor1-last=Abbas |editor2-first=John Nguyet |editor2-last=Erni |title=Internationalizing Cultural Studies: An Anthology |date=2005 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing |location=Malden, MA}} The wide range of cultural studies journals now located throughout the world, as shown below, is one indication of the globalization of the field. For overviews of and commentaries on developments in cultural studies during the twenty-first century, see Lawrence Grossberg's Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, Gilbert Rodman's Why Cultural Studies? and Graeme Turner's What's Become of 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.Griffin, E. A., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. G. (2023). Cultural Studies of Stuart Hall. A First Look at Communication Theory (11th ed.,  pp. 451-462). McGraw Hill. Hall viewed culture as a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled."Procter, James (2004). Stuart Hall. London: Routledge. {{ISBN|9781134504251}}. He perceived culture as a power dynamic, in which the media unintentionally possesses more control over ideology than the public.{{cite journal | doi=10.2307/591390 | jstor=591390 | title=Stuart Hall's Cultural Studies and the Problem of Hegemony | last1=Wood | first1=Brennon | journal=The British Journal of Sociology | date=1998 | volume=49 | issue=3 | pages=399–414 }} 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."Procter, James (2004). {{ISBN|9781134504251}}. Compared to other thinkers on this subject, he studied and analyzed symbols, ideologies, signs, and other representations within cultural studies.{{Cite book |last=Miller |first=Toby |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aBLTBQAAQBAJ&dq=Communication+and+cultural+Studies+journal+article&pg=PA1 |title=A Companion to Cultural Studies |date=2008-04-15 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-470-99879-3 |language=en}} 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.{{Cite book |last1=Holt |first1=Jennifer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SJ1ZYY-8kj4C&dq=cultural+studies+media+communications&pg=PA95 |title=Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method |last2=Perren |first2=Alisa |date=2011-09-19 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4443-6023-3 |language=en}} 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.”{{cite journal | doi=10.1080/1479142042000180926 | title=Cultural studies, public pedagogy, and the responsibility of intellectuals | date=2004 | last1=Giroux | first1=Henry A. | journal=Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies | volume=1 | pages=59–79 }} He viewed politics as being used mainly for power instead of the betterment of society.Giroux, H. A. (2004). p. 59–79. 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.{{sfn|Hall|1980b}} Culture is something that makes up society, is a learned trait, and is influenced by various forms of media that help to establish it.Hall, G., & Birchall, C. (2006). New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (1st ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Power is the underlying tone of Hall’s cultural studies.Hall, G., & Birchall, C. (2006). New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (1st ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Hall believed that culture has some power, but the media's use of it is what sways and dictates culture itself.Goggin, G. (2016). Media and Power After Stuart Hall. Cultural Studies Review, 22(1), p. 277.

In the US, prior to the emergence of British Cultural Studies, several versions of cultural analysis had emerged largely from pragmatic and liberal-pluralist philosophical traditions.Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 60. However, in the late 1970s and 1980s, when British Cultural Studies began to spread internationally, and to engage with feminism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and race, critical cultural studies (i.e., Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, etc.) expanded tremendously in American universities in fields such as communication studies, education, sociology, and literature.{{harvnb|Grossberg|Nelson|Treichler|1992|p=}}{{cite book |editor1=Catherine A. Warren |editor2=Mary Douglas Vavrus |title=American Cultural Studies|date=2002|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana Champaign, IL}}{{cite book |editor1=John Hartley |editor2= Roberta E. Pearson |title=American Cultural Studies: A Reader|date=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press}} Cultural Studies, the flagship journal of the field, has been based in the US since its founding editor, John Fiske, brought it there from Australia in 1987.

A thriving cultural studies scene has existed in Australia since the late 1970s, when several key CS practitioners emigrated there from the UK, bringing British Cultural Studies with them, after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979. A school of cultural studies known as cultural policy studies is one of the distinctive Australian contributions to the field, though it is not the only one. Australia also gave birth to the world's first professional cultural studies association (now known as the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia) in 1990.{{cite book |editor1=John Frow |editor2=Meaghan Morris |title=Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader|date=1993|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana Champaign, IL}}{{cite book|editor-last1=Turner|editor-first1=Graeme|title=Nation, Culture, Text: Australian Cultural and Media Studies|date=1993|publisher=Routledge|location=London}} Cultural studies journals based in Australia include International Journal of Cultural Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, and Cultural Studies Review.

In Canada, cultural studies has sometimes focused on issues of technology and society, continuing the emphasis in the work of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, and others. Cultural studies journals based in Canada include Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

In Africa, human rights and Third-World issues are among the central topics treated. There is a thriving cultural and media studies scholarship in Southern Africa, with its locus in South Africa and Zimbabwe.{{cite journal |last1=Tomaselli |first1=K.G. |last2=Ronning |first2=H. |last3=Mboti |first3=N |title=South–North perspectives: the development of cultural and media studies in Southern Africa |journal=Media, Culture & Society |date=2013 |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=36–43 |doi=10.1177/0163443712464556|s2cid=145257054 }} Cultural Studies journals based in Africa include the Journal of African Cultural Studies.

In Latin America, cultural studies have drawn on thinkers such as José Martí, Ángel Rama, and other Latin-American figures, in addition to the Western theoretical sources associated with cultural studies in other parts of the world. Leading Latin American cultural studies scholars include Néstor García Canclini, Jésus Martín-Barbero, and Beatriz Sarlo.{{cite book |editor1=Ana del Sarto |editor2=Alicia Ríos |editor3=Abril Trigo |title=The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader|date=2004|publisher=Duke University Press|location=Durham, NC}}{{cite book |editor1=Robert McKee Irwin |editor2=Mónica Szurmuk |title=Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies|date=2012|publisher=University Press of Florida|location=Gainesville}} Among the key issues addressed by Latin American cultural studies scholars are decoloniality, urban cultures, and postdevelopment theory. Latin American cultural studies journals include the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies.

Even though cultural studies developed much more rapidly in the UK than in continental Europe, there is significant cultural studies presence in countries such as France, Spain, and Portugal. The field is relatively undeveloped in Germany, probably due to the continued influence of the Frankfurt School,See, e.g., Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, "Cultural Studies and German Media Theory," in Gary Hall & Claire Birchall (eds.), New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (pp. 88-104). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. which is now often said to be in its third generation, which includes notable figures such as Axel Honneth. Cultural studies journals based in continental Europe include the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, French Cultural Studies, and Portuguese Cultural Studies.

In Germany, the term cultural studies specifically refers to the field in the Anglosphere, especially British Cultural Studies,{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GEkqO--HndgC&q=cultural+studies+in+deutschen+Kontext&pg=PA314 |title=Normativität: Über die Hintergründe sozialwissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung |trans-title=Normativity: On the background of social science theory formation |last1=Ahrens |first1=Johannes |last2=Beer |first2=Raphael |last3=Bittlingmayer |first3=Uwe H. |last4=Gerdes |first4=Jürgen |date=10 February 2011 |publisher=Springer-Verlag |isbn=9783531930107|language=de |access-date=2 October 2020 |archive-date=30 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230630063121/https://books.google.com/books?id=GEkqO--HndgC&q=cultural+studies+in+deutschen+Kontext&pg=PA314 |url-status=live}} to differentiate it from the German {{lang|de|Kulturwissenschaft}} which developed along different lines and is characterized by its distance from political science. However, {{lang|de|Kulturwissenschaft}} and cultural studies are often used interchangeably, particularly by lay people.

Throughout Asia, cultural studies have boomed and thrived since at least the beginning of the 1990s.{{cite book |last1=Chen |first1=Kuan-Hsing |last2=Chua |first2=Beng Huat |author2-link=Chua Beng Huat |title=The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader |date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |location=London}} Cultural studies journals based in Asia include Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. 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.

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).

To understand the changing political circumstances of class, politics, and culture in the United Kingdom, scholars at The Birmingham School turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker, writer, and Communist Party leader. Gramsci had been concerned with similar issues: why would Italian laborers and peasants vote for fascists? What strategic approach is necessary to mobilize popular support in more progressive directions? Gramsci modified classical Marxism, and argued that culture must be understood as a key site of political and social struggle. In his view, capitalists used not only brute force (police, prisons, repression, military) to maintain control, but also penetrated the everyday culture of working people in a variety of ways in their efforts to win popular "consent."

It is important to recognize that for Gramsci, historical leadership, or hegemony, involves the formation of alliances between class factions, and struggles within the cultural realm of everyday common sense. Hegemony was always, for Gramsci, an interminable, unstable and contested process.{{cite journal |last1=Hall |first1=Stuart |author-link1=Stuart Hall (cultural theorist) |title=Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity |journal=Journal of Communication Inquiry |date=June 1986 |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=5–27 |doi=10.1177/019685998601000202 |s2cid=53782}}

Scott Lash writes:

{{blockquote|text=In the work of Hall, Hebdige and McRobbie, popular culture came to the fore... What Gramsci gave to this was the importance of consent and culture. If the fundamental Marxists saw the power in terms of class-versus-class, then Gramsci gave to us a question of class alliance. The rise of cultural studies itself was based on the decline of the prominence of fundamental class-versus-class politics.{{harvnb|Lash|2007|pp=68–69}}}}

Edgar and Sedgwick write:

{{blockquote|The theory of hegemony was of central importance to the development of British cultural studies [particularly The Birmingham School. It facilitated the analysis of the ways subordinate groups actively resist and respond to political and economic domination. The subordinate groups needed not to be seen merely as the passive dupes of the dominant class and its ideology.Edgar & Sedgewick, 165.}}

The development of hegemony theory in cultural studies was in some ways consonant with work in other fields exploring agency, a theoretical concept that insists on the active, critical capacities of subordinated people (e.g. the working classes, colonized peoples, women).{{cite book |last1=Giddens |first1=Anthony|title=The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration |date=1984 |publisher=Polity Press |location=Malden, MA}} As Stuart Hall famously argued in his 1981 essay, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular{{'"}}: "ordinary people are not cultural dopes."{{cite book |editor1-last=Guins |editor1-first=Raiford |editor2-last=Cruz |editor2-first=Omayra Zaragoza |title=Popular Culture: A Reader |date=1 May 2005 |publisher=SAGE Publications |location=London |isbn=978-0-7619-7472-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=THCDk9jO1ZUC |language=en |page=67 |access-date=6 January 2023 |archive-date=30 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230630063122/https://books.google.com/books?id=THCDk9jO1ZUC |url-status=live}} Insistence on accounting for the agency of subordinated people run counter to the work of traditional structuralists. Some analysts{{Who|date=October 2020}} have however been critical of some work in cultural studies that they feel overstates the significance of or even romanticizes some forms of popular cultural agency.

Cultural studies often concerns itself with the agency at the level of the practices of everyday life, and approaches such research from a standpoint of radical contextualism.{{cite book |last1=Grossberg |first1=Lawrence |title=Cultural Studies in the Future Tense |date=2010 |publisher=Duke University Press |location=Durham, NC}} In other words, cultural studies rejects universal accounts of cultural practices, meanings, and identities.

Judith Butler, an American feminist theorist whose work is often associated with cultural studies, wrote that:

{{blockquote|the move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure. It has marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.{{cite journal |last1=Butler |first1=Judith |author-link=Judith Butler |title=Further Reflections on Conversations of Our Time |journal=Diacritics |date=1997 |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=13–15 |doi=10.1353/dia.1997.0004 |s2cid=170598741 |url=http://rcin.org.pl/Content/59783 |access-date=2 October 2020 |archive-date=30 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230630063125/http://rcin.org.pl/Content/59783/PDF/WA248_79442_P-I-2524_markiewka-teorie_o.pdf |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}}}

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.{{cite book |last1=Appadurai |first1=Arjun |title=Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization |date=1996 |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |location=Minneapolis}}

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.

A special 2008 issue of the field's flagship journal, Cultural Studies, examined "anti-consumerism" from a variety of cultural studies angles. Jeremy Gilbert noted in the issue, cultural studies must grapple with the fact that "we now live in an era when, throughout the capitalist world, the overriding aim of government economic policy is to maintain consumer spending levels. This is an era when 'consumer confidence' is treated as the key indicator and cause of economic effectiveness."{{cite journal |last1=Gilbert |first1=Jeremy |title=Against the Commodification of Everything |journal=Cultural Studies |date=2008 |volume=22 |issue=5 |pages=551–566 |doi=10.1080/09502380802245811 |s2cid=142515063}}

Cultural studies, drawing upon and developing semiotics, uses the concept of text to designate not only written language, but also television programs, films, photographs, fashion, hairstyles, and so forth; the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. This 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."{{cite book |last1=Fiske, Hodge and Turner |title=Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture |date=1987 |publisher=Boston |location=Allen & Unwin}}

Culture, in this context, includes not only high culture,{{cite book |last1=Bakhtin |first1=Mikhail |date=1981 |title=The Dialogic Imagination |location=Austin, Texas |publisher=University of Texas Press |page=4}} 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.Lewis, Jeff. 2008. Cultural Studies. London: SAGE.Lewis, Jeff. 2005. Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence. London: Pluto Press. 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. This engagement represents the critical dimensions of the analysis, its capacity to illuminate the hierarchies within and surrounding the given text and its discourse.

Cultural studies has evolved through its uptake across a variety of different disciplines—anthropology, media studies, communication studies, literary studies, education, geography, philosophy, sociology, politics, and others.

While some{{Who|date=June 2024}} have accused certain areas of cultural studies of meandering into political relativism and a kind of empty version of "postmodern" analysis, others{{Who|date=June 2024}} hold that at its core, cultural studies provides a significant conceptual and methodological framework for cultural, social, and economic critique. This critique is designed to "deconstruct" the meanings and assumptions that are inscribed in the institutions, texts, and practices that work with and through, and produce and re-present, culture.{{harvnb|Lewis|2008|p=}}{{page needed|date=September 2015}} Thus, while some scholars and disciplines have dismissed cultural studies for its methodological rejection of disciplinarity, its core strategies of critique and analysis have influenced areas of the social sciences and humanities; for example, cultural studies work on forms of social differentiation, control and inequality, identity, community-building, media, and knowledge production has had a substantial impact. Moreover, the influence of cultural studies has become increasingly evident in areas as diverse as translation studies, health studies, international relations, development studies, computer studies, economics, archaeology, and neurobiology.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Cultural studies has also diversified its own interests and methodologies, incorporating a range of studies on media policy, democracy, design, leisure, tourism, warfare, and development. While certain key concepts such as ideology or discourse, class, hegemony, identity, and gender remain significant, cultural studies has long engaged with and integrated new concepts and approaches. The field thus continues to pursue political critique through its engagements with the forces of culture and politics.{{harvnb|During|2007|p=}}{{page needed|date=September 2015}}

[edit]

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.{{Cite journal |last=Faidley |first=Evan W. |title=""Movies, TV Shows, and Memes... Oh My!" : An Honors Education through Popular Culture and Critical Pedagogy". |journal=National Collegiate Honors Council}} Shows like South Park allow students to evaluate societal norms and political issues, using a pedagogy of resistance{{Cite journal |last=Stevens |first=Lisa Patel |date=2001 |title=""South Park" and Society: Instructional and Curricular Implications of Popular Culture in the Classroom" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40013566 |journal=Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy |volume=44 |issue=6 |pages=548–555|jstor=40013566 }} (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.{{Cite book |last=Duff |first=Patricia A. |title="Intertextuality and Hybrid Discourses: The Infusion of Pop Culture in Educational Discourse." |publisher=Linguistics and Education |year=2003 |pages=231–276}} 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.{{Cite journal |last=Mills |first=Kathy A. |title="Multiliteracies: Interrogating Competing Discourses." |journal=Language and Education |date=2009 |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=103–116|doi=10.1080/09500780802152762 |url=https://eprints.qut.edu.au/14973/8/Multiiliteracies%20Interrogating%20Discourses_KM.pdf }} 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.{{Cite book |last=Penrod |first=Diane |title=Miss Grundy doesn't teach here anymore: Popular culture and the composition classroom. |publisher=Heinemann Educational Books}} 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.

Many cultural studies practitioners work in departments of English or comparative literature. Nevertheless, some traditional literary scholars such as Yale professor Harold Bloom have been outspoken critics of cultural studies. On the level of methodology, these scholars dispute the theoretical underpinning of the movement's critical framework.

Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN's Booknotes, while discussing his book How to Read and Why:

{{blockquote|text=[T]here are two enemies of reading now in the world, not just in the English-speaking world. One [is] the lunatic destruction of literary studies...and its replacement by what is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is. I mean, the...now-weary phrase 'political correctness' remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in the English-speaking world, who really do represent treason of the intellectuals, I think, a 'betrayal of the clerks'."{{cite web |title=How to Read and Why |url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?157968-1/read |publisher=C-SPAN |access-date=19 April 2017 |date=3 September 2000 |archive-date=19 April 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170419193938/https://www.c-span.org/video/?157968-1/read |url-status=live}}}}

Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies, but has criticised aspects of it and highlighted what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory (2003). For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about the "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential.

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."{{Cite web |title=Cultural Rhetorics Consortium |url=http://cultrhetconsortium.org/ |access-date=2021-09-13 |language=en |archive-date=24 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210924145836/http://cultrhetconsortium.org/ |url-status=usurped}} Cultural rhetorics scholars are interested in investigating topics like climate change,{{Cite web |title=Introduction: Rhetorics and Literacies of Climate Change {{!}} enculturation |url=http://enculturation.net/rhetorics-and-literacies-of-climate-change |access-date=2021-09-13 |website=enculturation.net |archive-date=12 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211012075905/http://www.enculturation.net/rhetorics-and-literacies-of-climate-change|url-status=live}} autism,{{Cite web |title=I Am #ActuallyAutistic, Hear Me Tweet: The Autist-Topoi of Autistic Activists on Twitter {{!}} enculturation |url=http://enculturation.net/I_Am_ActuallyAutistic |access-date=2021-09-13 |website=enculturation.net |archive-date=13 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210913164453/http://enculturation.net/I_Am_ActuallyAutistic |url-status=live}} Asian American rhetoric,{{Cite web |title=Beyond Representation: Spatial, Temporal and Embodied Trans/Formations of Asian/Asian American Rhetoric {{!}} enculturation |url=http://enculturation.net/beyond_representation |access-date=2021-09-13 |website=enculturation.net |archive-date=13 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210913164504/http://enculturation.net/beyond_representation |url-status=live}} and more.

Cultural studies have also had a substantial impact on sociology. For example, when Stuart Hall left CCCS at Birmingham, it was to accept a prestigious professorship in Sociology at the Open University in Britain. The subfield of cultural sociology, in particular, is disciplinary home to many cultural studies practitioners. Nevertheless, there are some differences between sociology as a discipline and the field of cultural studies as a whole. While sociology was founded upon various historic works purposefully distinguishing the subject from philosophy or psychology, cultural studies have explicitly interrogated and criticized traditional understandings and practices of disciplinarity. Most CS practitioners think it is best that cultural studies neither emulate disciplines nor aspire to disciplinarity for cultural studies. Rather, they promote a kind of radical interdisciplinarity as the basis for cultural studies.

One sociologist whose work has had a major influence on cultural studies is Pierre Bourdieu, whose work makes innovative use of statistics and in-depth interviews.{{cite book |editor1-first=Richard |editor1-last=Harker |editor2-first=Cheleen |editor2-last=Mahar |editor3-first=Chris |editor3-last=Wilkes |title=An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu: The Theory of Practice |location=Houndmills |publisher=Macmillan |date=1990 |pages=68–71}}{{cite book |last1=Bourdieu |first1=Pierre |author-link=Pierre Bourdieu |title=Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste |url=https://archive.org/details/distinctionsocia0000bour |url-access=registration |date=1984 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=9780674212770}} However, although Bourdieu's work has been highly influential within cultural studies, and although Bourdieu regarded his work as a form of science, cultural studies has never embraced the idea that it should aspire toward "scientificity," and has marshalled a wide range of theoretical and methodological arguments against the fetishization of "scientificity" as a basis for cultural studies.

Two sociologists who have been critical of cultural studies, Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner, argue in their article, "Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn," that cultural studies, particularly the flavor championed by Stuart Hall, lacks a stable research agenda, and privileges the contemporary reading of texts, thus producing an ahistorical theoretical focus. Many,{{Who|date=July 2020}} 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.{{cite journal |last1=Rojek |first1=Chris |author2-link=Bryan Turner (sociologist) |first2=Bryan |last2=Turner |date=2000 |title=Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn |journal=The Sociological Review |volume=48 |number=4 |pages=629–648|doi=10.1111/1467-954X.00236 }}

{{Main|Science wars|Sokal affair}}

In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal expressed his opposition to cultural studies by submitting a hoax article to a cultural studies journal, Social Text. The article, which was crafted as a parody of what Sokal referred to as the "fashionable nonsense" of postmodernism, was accepted by the editors of the journal, which did not at the time practice peer review. When the paper appeared in print, Sokal published a second article in a self-described "academic gossip" magazine, Lingua Franca, revealing his hoax on Social Text. Sokal stated that his motivation stemmed from his rejection of contemporary critiques of scientific rationalism:Sokal, Alan. 1996. "[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190904042240/https://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html |date=4 September 2019 }}," translated by D. Sleator. NYU Department of Physics.

{{blockquote|text=Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful – not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of many "progressive" or "leftist" academic humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about "the social construction of reality" won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.|title=|source=}}

In response to this critique, Jacques Derrida wrote:Derrida, Jacques. 2005. "Sokal and Bricmont aren't serious" In: J. Derrida (Ed.), R. Bowlby (Trans.),Paper Machine. (pp. 70-72). Stanford CA: Stanford University Press (first published 1997 "Sokal et Bricmont ne sont pas sérieux." in Le Monde: p. 17.).

{{blockquote|text=In whose interest was it to go for a quick practical joke rather than taking part in the work which, sadly, it replaced?|author=|title=|source=}}

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{{Page needed|date=September 2015}}
• E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class.

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

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |last=Bitar |first=Amer |date=2020 |title=Bedouin Visual Leadership in the Middle East: The Power of Aesthetics and Practical Implications |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X4oBEAAAQBAJ |publisher=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.
• {{cite book |last=During |first=Simon |title=The cultural studies reader |date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=978-0-415-37412-5 |edition=3rd}}
• 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.
• {{cite book |editor-link1=Lawrence Grossberg |editor-last1=Grossberg |editor-first1=Lawrence |editor-link2=Cary Nelson |editor-last2=Nelson |editor-first2=Cary |editor-last3=Treichler |editor-first3=Paula |title=Cultural Studies |year=1992 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/culturalstudies0000unse |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-90351-3}}.
• Hall, Gary & Birchall, Claire, eds. (2006). New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• {{cite book |editor1-last=Hall |editor1-first=Stuart |editor1-link=Stuart Hall (cultural theorist) |title=Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979 |date=1980 |publisher=Routledge in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham |location=London |isbn=0-09-142070-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/culturemedialang0000unse |url-access=registration}}
• {{cite journal | doi=10.1177/016344378000200106 | title=Cultural studies: Two paradigms | date=1980b | last1=Hall | first1=Stuart | journal=Media, Culture & Society | volume=2 | pages=57–72 |author-mask=2}}
• —— 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.
• {{cite journal |author1-link=Scott Lash |last1=Lash |first1=Scott |title=Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation? |journal=Theory, Culture & Society |date=May 2007 |volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=55–78 |doi=10.1177/0263276407075956 |s2cid=145639801}}
• {{cite book |author-link1=Jeff Lewis (professor) |last1=Lewis |first1=Jeff |title=Cultural Studies: The Basics |date=2008 |publisher=SAGE Publications |location=London |isbn=978-1-4129-2229-6 |edition=2nd}}
• 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}}.
• {{cite book |editor-link1=Toby Miller |editor1-last=Miller |editor1-first=Toby |title=A Companion to Cultural Studies. |date=2006 |publisher=Blackwell Publishers |location=Malden, MA |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. "[http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=/tocnode?id=g9781405141758_chunk_g978140514175820 Looking Backwards and Forwards at Cultural Studies]{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}." 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. "[http://osf1.gmu.edu/~psmith5/interview1.html 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.

{{commons category}}

• [http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/history/research/projects/cccs/publications/index.aspx CCCS publications (Annual Reports and Stencilled {{sic|nolink=y|Occas|ional}} Papers) of the University of Birmingham] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190510041017/https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/history/research/projects/cccs/publications/index.aspx |date=10 May 2019 }}
• [http://csaa.asn.au/ CSAA: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia]
• [https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rcus20 Cultural Studies]
• [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ics International Journal of Cultural Studies]
• [https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/stuarthall/index.aspx/ Stuart Hall Archive Project, University of Birmingham, UK]
• [https://www.dukeupress.edu/series/Stuart-Hall-Selected-Writings Stuart Hall: Selected Writings, Duke University Press]

{{British New Left}}

{{Culture}}

{{Social sciences}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cultural Studies}}

Category:Social sciences