Page 10 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 1

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Cultural studies and

cultural theory

Cultural studies emerged as one of the more significant academic
growth industries during the last quarter of the twentieth century,
especially in its last decade. It now has separate courses or
departments in every continent but Antarctica. If not quite the
‘genuinely global movement’ Simon During describes (During,
1999, p. 11), cultural studies has nonetheless grown into a puta-
tively international discipline, with a serious intellectual presence,
stretching beyond Europe, the Americas and Australia, into India,
Taiwan and South Korea (see Appendix). For all this apparent
ubiquity, the term ‘cultural studies’ remains an unusually ‘poly-
semic’ sign. At one level, of course, its meaning is obvious:
cultural studies is the academic study of culture. The problem,
however, is that there is absolutely no agreement as to what
exactly we mean by ‘culture’. The latter is one of the most widely
used abstract nouns in the lexicon. People worry about the inde-
pendence of their ‘national culture’, but also about whether they
are sufficiently ‘cultured’ as individuals to ‘get on’ in life. They
worry about the possibility and desirability of living in a ‘multi-
cultural’ society. Economists and politicians wonder about the
‘culture industries’ and the prospects of ‘culture-led’ economic
recovery. In our own profession as university teachers, we worry
about culture whenever we worry about the administrative
organisation of cultural studies in our university.
The odd thing about these worries, however, is that each is

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