Page 56 - Introducing Cultural Studies
P. 56
Second, cultural studies has accepted and accommodated, some
critics claim, the Marxist materialist notion of history. Certainly,
cultural studies attempts to analyse social structures in terms of
how cultural forces have given them an historic form. The reason
culture is important is that it shapes history as well as social
structures. Hence, cultural studies does not treat history and
culture as separate entities. However, on the whole, cultural
studies has tended to oppose reductionist Marxism, understood
as a hard determinism of both history and economics.
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