Page 37 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

16 Mapping approaches and themes

between observed reality, truth claims and power interests, an approach developed
in the influential work of the Frankfurt School.
The main division between CPE and liberal pluralism concerns the analysis of
power and power relations. Liberal pluralist political thought conceives of interest
groups who vie for power in a manner which is open and contingent. Inequality
in power and resources between interest groups is acknowledged, but no group
dominates. Sustained dominance is rejected because it would undermine the
affirmation of the ‘democratic’ political system that liberalism defends, and dis-
tinguishes from authoritarian systems. This means that forms of systematic and
structured inequality are ‘downplayed in favour of an implicitly optimistic notion
of society as a level playing ground where different interest groups fight for their
interests’ (Hesmondhalgh 2007: 32). A rich strand of liberal media sociology
offers much needed empirical and ethnographic studies of media organisations,
media work, as well as participation and engagement by users. However, this
work has also been challenged for its relative neglect of economic influences
(Golding and Murdock 1979: 200). Differences between liberal pluralist and
radical approaches to media are examined more fully in the next chapter.

Cultural studies

Cultural studies emerged as another strand of radical scholarship. Its origins lie
in the work of British social historians and literary scholars including Richard
Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and later Stuart Hall. Cultural
studies explores the dynamics of power and culture across an unbounded terrain,
including cultural globalisation and diaspora, analyses of race, gender, sexuality
and disability. It has challenged narrow, often elitist, orderings of what constitutes
cultural value, to embrace a very wide range of phenomena and to apply
insights and approaches to broader sectors including the economy. It has drawn
on a wide range of sociocultural theory from work on psychoanalysis, semiotics,
language and affect, to cultural theories of social organisations, behaviour and
interaction, and cultural policy and politics.
Very much has been written on the ‘long-standing theoretical and methodological
affinities and tensions’ (Chakravartty and Zhao 2008: 10) between CPE and cultural
studies, and the institutionalised debate that has flared with often bitter heat for
nearly three decades. The 1980s and 1990s saw sometimes vitriolic exchanges
from traditions that both claimed a radical legacy and mission, and defended
themselves against the putative existential threat posed by the other. Divisions
between cultural studies and political economy structured the field of media
studies in some educational environments, notably the UK; relations between
these ‘camps’ became hostile, combative and ‘adversarial’ (Mosco 2009: 80).
There are compelling arguments both for and against revisiting this ‘cultural
studies vs. political economy’ divide. The principal case against is that many of
the heated divisions are of their time, marking out the intellectual and material
environment of the 1980s and 1990s, and are arguably of greatest interest