Page 4 - Culture and Cultural Studies

AN INTRODUCTION TO 1

CULTURAL STUDIES

iven the title of this book – Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice – it would be rea-
Gsonable to expect a comprehensive account of cultural studies, including summaries
and discussions of its main arguments and substantive sites of intellectual enquiry.
Indeed, this is what has been attempted. However, I want to open this account of cultural
studies with a kind of ‘health warning’ regarding the scope of the book.

CONCERNING THIS BOOK

Selectivity

Any book about cultural studies is necessarily selective and likely to engender debate,
argument and even conflict. To offer a truly comprehensive account of cultural studies
would be to reproduce, or at least to summarize, every single text ever written within the
parameters of cultural studies. Not only would this be too mammoth a task for any writer,
but also the problem would remain of deciding which texts warranted the nomination.
Consequently, this book, like all others, is implicated in constructing a particular version
of cultural studies.
I do offer, under the rubric of ‘culture and cultural studies’, some (selective) history of
the field. However, most of the later chapters, the sites of cultural studies, draw on more
contemporary theory. Indeed, in order to make the book as useful as possible in as many
different geographical places as possible, there is a stress on theory over context-specific
empirical work (though theory is also context-specific and the text does try to link theory

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