What is Cultural Studies?
Introduction
Cultural Studies is a relatively new academic phenomenon, having emerged in the 1960s as an 'anti-disciplinary' discipline - a project that explicitly sough to bridge gaps between the study of Literature, History, Sociology, Anthropology and Communication. Marxist in its orientation, it was and is an intellectual endeavor aimed at understanding, theorizing, critiquing and otherwise taking seriously the role of culture as crucial terrain of political and ideological contestation. Cultural Studies is probably best understood as the politically committed, theoretically informed, radically self-reflexive and historical-materialist analysis of cultural processes and practices, where the commitment to imagine a more humane, more democratic society has always been a guiding assumption in the field from its early formations in post-war Britain. In this sense, Cultural Studies is not just an academic discipline and a particular approach within the wider field of the study of culture (one with implicit, but distinctive epistemological assumptions and ways of working); it is also a political project that seeks to construct what Larry Grossberg calls a "radical political history of the present."
Cultural Studies understands culture in a very broad way, as a way of life and a 'way of struggle', including all the practices and phenomena of all kinds — media representations; media and literary texts; consumer culture; youth subcultures; performance and display practices, as well as other aspects of popular culture and everyday life. That is why, it would be impossible to define Cultural Studies by looking at the kind of objects it studies. While it is true that actually existing Cultural Studies work has tended to concern itself with a very limited number of cultural objects and issues, a fact that has contributed to the vagueness of Cultural Studies as a project (as in the conflation of cultural studies with popular culture studies), Cultural Studies cannot be defined by a particular kind of object of set of objects; and as Grossberg puts it, "[Y]ou can do cultural studies of almost anything." In the same way, Cultural Studies cannot be defined by reference to a specific set of methods, despite the fact that certain methods, such as semiotics, have come to be associated with most of actually existing work in cultural studies, a fact that has ultimately limited the scope and range of the whole field. In other words, Cultural Studies is not an object-driven or method-driven discipline. It is driven, instead, by a set of methodological/epistemological moves. Here are five interrelated epistemological assumptions that inform more robust work in Cultural Studies:
Core Assumptions
The Need for Political Commitment and the Analysis of the "Social Whole"
Because Cultural Studies understands culture politically, the notions of 'social totality/whole', and, in more dominant versions, that of 'articulation' are central in Cultural Studies. The significance of an event, phenomenon, or practice — be it ideological, political, economic, or cultural -- cannot be properly assessed outside a dialectical understanding of its place in society as a whole (which, here, refers to the concrete unity of all interacting spheres of social life), that is, by pursuing their hidden interactions and interconnections in real life. This way we are in a better position to understand how social, economic, and political forces act on cultural production, distribution, and reception; and how cultural forces, in turn, act on the social, economic, and political.
The Need for a Multiplicity of Methods and Interdisciplinarity
In most Cultural Studies, there is a realization that traditional disciplinary methods have their merits and limits, but that they work better when they are deployed together in the analysis of cultural phenomena and processes. No single method is complete; and to get as close as possible to a better and more complex understanding of cultural practices and processes, combining methods becomes indispensable. As Johnson and company put it, "a multiplicity of methods is necessary because no one method is intrinsically superior to the rest and each provides a more or less appropriate way of exploring some different aspect of cultural process". And it is in this nuanced sense that Cultural Studies is also interdisciplinary. But while Cultural Studies understands culture in a broad way, as a way of life and encourages interdisciplinary perspectives and strategies, it, at the same time, demands a rigorous engagement with cultural texts, practices, and forms of all kind.
The Need for Self-Reflexivity
As cultural researchers, we are 'inside' our object of study. We approach our topics with a particular cultural biography. Gramsci notes somewhere that the starting point of critical reflection -- in this case, research -- is the consciousness of who one is. Far from being negative source of research bias, knowing our partialities enables us to correct our biases. Self-reflexivity puts our work in perspective, highlighting its merits, as well as its limits.
The Need and Commitment to Theory
As Larry Grossberg puts it, "Cultural Studies is always theoretical. It is absolutely committed to the necessity of theoretical work, to what Karl Marx called the detour through theory." It is not committed to theory for theory's sake; it is rather interested in how theory and theoretical work can be deployed to better understand and transform specific historical conjunctures, contexts, and formations.
The Need to Think Historically and Spatially
Cultural research and activity is also temporarily located; it takes place at a certain historical moment/conjecture. The time dimension is an essential perspective in cultural theory and practice. It not only greatly enhances the subtlety with which cultural phenomena is explored, but helps us recognize the historical content and specificity of our work (including the theoretical categories we work with), as well. Cultural research activity is also always spacially located: It takes place somewhere. Issues of space and place are inherent in every research project, and recognizing the particularities of the places we study and where we study them could be enlightening.
Further Reading
There are numerous resources on the histories, practices, and/or debates pertaining to Cultural Studies. Here are some excellent points of reference:
Jaafar Aksikas, "Could/Should Cultural Studies Be 'Born Again': Cultural Studies, Marxism, Totality, and Radical Historicity?" in Renewing Cultural Studies: An Anthology. Ed. Paul Smith. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.
Tony Bennet, Culture: A Reformer's Science, London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.
Michael Bérubé, "Pop Goes the Academy: Cult Studs Fight the Power." In Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics. New York: Verso, 1994, pp. 137-160.
Valda Blundell, John Shephard, and Ian Taylor (eds.) Relocating Cultural Studies: Developments in Theory and Research. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
John Clarke, "Cultural Studies: A British Inheritance." In New Times, Old Enemies: Essays on Cultural Studies and America. London: HarperCollins, 1991, pp. 1-19.
Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, "Feminism and Cultural Studies: Pasts, Presents, Futures." In Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey (eds.), Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. New York: Harper Collins, 1991, pp. 1-19.
John Frow and Meaghan Morries, "Introduction." In John Frow and Meaghan Morris (eds.), Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader. Urbana:U University of Illinois Press, 1993, pp. vii-xxxii.
Henry Giroux, David Shumway, Paul Smith, and James Sosnoski. "The Need for Cultural Studies: Resisting Intellectuals and Oppositional Public Spheres," Dalhousie Review 64.2 (1984): 472-86.
Herman Gray, "Is Cultural Studies Inflated?: The Cultural Economy of Cultural Studies in the United States." In Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (eds.) Disciplinary and Dissent in Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 203-216.
Lawrence Grossberg. Bringing it Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies. Duhram, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.
Lawrence Grossberg, "The Scandal of Cultural Studies." In It's a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics, and Culture. Sydney: Power Publications, 1988, pp. 8-22.
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler. Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems." In Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Love, and Paul Willis (eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1980, pp. 15-47.
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," Media, Culture, and Society, 2, 1980, pp. 57-72.
Stuart Hall, "The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis in the Humanities," October 53, 1990.
Richard Johnson, "What is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text, 16, 1986/87, pp. 38-80.
Richard Johnson, "Reinventing Cultural Studies: Remembering the Best Version." In Elizabeth Long (ed.), From Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, pp. 452-488.
Cary Nelson, "Always Already Cultural Studies: Academic Conferences and a Manifesto." In Ishaiah Smithson and Nancy Ruff (eds.) English Studies/Cultural Studies: Institutionalizing Dissent. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994, pp. 191-205.
Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, "Cultural Studies and the Politics of Disciplinarity: An Introduction." In Lawrence Grossberg, Carey Nelson, Paula A. Treichler, Linda Baughman, and J. Macgregor Wise (eds.), Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 1992, pp 1-22.
Gilbert B Rodman. "Subjects to Debate:(Mis)Reading Cultural Studies," Journal of Communication Inquiry, 21(2), 1997, pp. 56-69.
John Storey. What is Cultural Studies?: A Reader. London; New York: Arnold, 1996.
John Stratton and Ien Ang, "On the Impossibility of a Global Cultural Studies: 'British' Cultural Studies in an 'International' Frame." In David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (pp. 361-391). London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
Cultural Studies Links
Cultural Studies Resources (via the University of Iowa)
Cultural Studies Associations, Centers, Journals and Misc. Resources (via the Association for Cultural Studies)
CULTSTUD-L a Cultural Studies online discussion list hosted by Gil Rodman)
Cultural Studies and Critical Theory articles (via Eserver)
Illuminations: The Critical Theory Website (hosted by Doug Kellner)
Cultural Studies Strikes Back: Media Literacy as Critical Pedagogy (hosted by Doug Kellner and Richard Kahn)