Page 173 - Introducing Cultural Studies

urther Reading

The literature of cultural studies is notorious for being voluminous, impenetrable
and trite. But there are important and good books out there. Here is a brief guide for
the discerning.
Some of the general readers on cultural studies are surprisingly good, if a bit bulky.
The best is Cultural Studies edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and
Paula Treicher (Routledge, London 1992).
There is no real substitute for reading the British "founding fathers": Richard
Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Penguin, London 1958); Raymond Williams,
Culture and Society 1780-1950 (Penguin, London 1966, first published 1958); and
the groundbreaking E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
(Penguin, London 1978, first published 1963). Students and friends of Stuart Hall
(Routledge, London 1996) provide a highly abstract introduction to his thought and
life in the guise of "critical dialogues in cultural studies".
Graeme Turner provides an excellent introduction to British Cultural Studies
(Routledge, London 1990). Jill Forbes and Michael Kelly give an enthralling tour of
French Cultural Studies (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995). A worthy
discussion of issues in Canadian cultural studies can be found in Relocating
Cultural Studies, edited by Valda Blundell, John Shepherd and Ian Taylor
(Routledge, London 1993). What is Cultural Studies?, edited by John Storey,
(Edward Arnold, London 1996) contains some good papers on American and
Australian cultural studies.
For those who want to know more about Louis Althusser, try Reading Capital (New
Left Books, London 1970), or the more accessible For Marx (Penguin University
Books, London 1969 or Vintage Books, New York 1970). James Joll gives a good
short account of Antonio Gramsci in Gramsci (Fontana Modern Masters, London
1977); but you should try Gramsci himself, in Selections from the Prison
Notebooks (Lawrence & Wishart, London 1971).
The dazzling brilliance of Ashis Nandy can be sampled in The Intimate Enemy
(Oxford University Press, Delhi 1983); A Secret History of Our Desires (Zed,
London 1997) entertainingly examines the influence of Indian cinema both in India
and on the Asian community in Britain. Vinay Lai's South Asian Cultural Studies
(Manohar, Delhi 1996) provides a bibliographical map of the thriving cultural
studies industry in the Subcontinent.
An insightful discussion of post-colonialism can be found in Robert Young's White
Mythologies (Routledge, London 1990). The Post-Colonial Reader, edited by Bill
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (Routledge, London 1995) provides key
writings of influential figures in one (very large) volume. If you haven't read Edward
Said's Orientalism (Routledge, London 1978) where have you been? It should,
however, be read in conjunction with Aijaz Ahmad's penetrating critique, In Theory
(Verso, London 1992) and Sara Suleri's The Rhetoric of English India (University
of Chicago Press, 1992).
Sandra Harding's anthology, The Racial Economy of Science (Indiana University
Press, Bloomington 1993), is essential reading for understanding how science
shapes attitudes, culture and economy. Michael Adas' Machines as the Measure of
Men (Cornell University Press, London 1989) gives a penetrating insight into

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