Page 15 - Cultural Theory

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••• Tim Edwards •••

inform issues of transnationalism and transculturalism. Within this she considers
two examples: the Chinese diaspora and the ‘politics of veiling’ or Islam and femi-
nism. Through a wide-ranging discussion, often placing a heavy emphasis upon
questions of feminist praxis, she concludes that neither the traditions of sociology
nor cultural studies alone are wide enough to incorporate the complexities of con-
temporary culture. Implicit within this and a recurrent theme through Part III is an
engagement with interdisciplinarity or, more basically, an argument for what one
might call subject hybrids combining and drawing on an array of disciplinary back-
grounds. O’Neill’s Chapter 11 on feminist epistemology and the role of participatory
action research is complementary here. Interestingly, once again, she also returns to
reconsider the legacy of the Frankfurt School and phenomenology more widely for
contemporary feminist praxis. In his chapter on pop music, Eamonn Carrabine pro-
vides an effective survey of a wide range of theorizations of music from Adorno’s
work on jazz through to McRobbie’s critique of Hebdige, concluding that pop music
is indeed a hybrid topic in need of equally hybrid theorizing and understanding.
Stevenson’s final chapter on citizenship is perhaps the most wide-ranging of all and
the one that opens up, and yet also concludes, the discussion of cultural phenom-
ena. In opening up the politics of the cultural through an analysis of the increasing
conflation of citizenship and consumption, Stevenson steers a deft course through
the contested terrain of the cultural and the economic concluding that more atten-
tion is needed to address the increasing social divisions emerging from neo-liberal
politics and practice, suggesting that the work of Raymond Williams may form the
basis for such an engagement.
At the start of this Introduction, I pointed to a perceived conflict or tension
between cultural theory and sociology. The chapters collected here, however, in a
wide diversity of ways point to the falsity of any such division and the need for
greater – and mutual – engagement between such disciplines and indeed many
others. The challenge, then, is to put this into effect not only individually or in one
direction but collectively across disciplines and with the mutual recognition of the
enormity of contributions of sociology and sociologists past and present for cultural
analysis and cultural practice.

References

Bauman, Z. (1999) Culture as Praxis. 2nd edn, London: Sage.
Frisby, D. (1981) Sociological Impressionism. London: Heinemann.
Hall, S. (1980) ‘Encoding and decoding’, in S. Hall, et al. (eds) Culture, Media, Language. London:
Hutchinson.
Hall, S. (1997) ‘The centrality of culture: notes on the cultural revolutions of our time’, in
K. Thomson (ed.) Media and Cultural Regulation. London: Sage.
Williams, R. (1988) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana.

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