Page 38 - Culture and Cultural Studies

AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL STUDIES 37

Reception studies

Exponents of reception or consumption studies argue that whatever analysis of textual
meanings a critic may undertake, it is far from certain which of the identified meanings,
if any, will be activated by actual readers/audiences/consumers. By this is meant that audi-
ences are active creators of meaning in relation to texts. They bring previously acquired
cultural competencies to bear on texts so that differently constituted audiences will work
with different meanings.
On the theoretical front, two fields of study have proved to be particularly influential:
first, Hall’s (1981) ‘Encoding–Decoding’ model; and, second, hermeneutic and literary
reception studies. Hall argues that the production of meaning does not ensure consump-
tion of that meaning as the encoders might have intended. This is so because (television)
messages, constructed as a sign system with multi-accentuated components, are polyse-
mic. That is, they have more than one potential set of meanings. To the degree that audi-
ences participate in cultural frameworks with producers, then audience decodings and
textual encodings will be similar. However, where audience members are situated in dif-
ferent social positions (e.g. of class and gender) from encoders, and thus have divergent
cultural resources available to them, they will be able to decode programmes in alterna-
tive ways.
Work within the tradition of hermeneutics and literary reception studies (Gadamer,
1976; Iser, 1978) argues that understanding is always from the position and point of view
of the person who understands. This involves not merely a reproduction of textual mean-
ing but the production of meaning by the readers. The text may structure aspects of mean-
ing by guiding the reader, but it cannot fix the meaning. Rather, significance is the outcome
of the oscillations between the text and the imagination of the reader (Chapter 10).

The place of theory

A significant strand of work in cultural studies is not empirical but theoretical.

Theory can be understood as narratives that seek to distinguish and account
for general features which describe, define and explain persistently perceived
occurrences.

Theory does not picture the world more or less accurately; rather, it is a tool, instrument
or logic for intervening in the world. This is achieved through the mechanisms of descrip-
tion, definition, prediction and control. Theory construction is a self-reflexive discursive
endeavour that seeks to interpret and intercede in the world.
Theory construction involves the thinking through of concepts and arguments, often
redefining and critiquing prior work, with the objective of offering new ways to think

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