Page 28 - Introducing Cultural Studies

ichard
Hoggart

Richard Hoggart
started his academic
career as an adult
education tutor at the
University of Hull. As
professor of English
literature at
Birmingham
University, he
founded the Centre
for Contemporary
Cultural Studies. His
book The Uses of
Literacy (1957) gave
cultural studies its
first identifiable,
intellectual shape.
Basing his work on
F.R. Leavis's (1895-
1978) ideas on
literary criticism,
Hoggart argued that
a critical reading of
art could reveal "the
felt quality of life" of a
society. Only art
could recreate life in
all its rich complexity
and diversity.

The dominant elite expressed their power by giving legitimacy and
exposure to their cultural forms and practices - by projecting their
"fields of value". Cultural struggle thus involved a war for legitimacy
and cultural status.

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