Page 7 - Culture and Cultural Studies

6 CULTURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

KEY THINKERS

Stuart Hall (1932– )

A West Indian-born British thinker initially associated with the ‘New Left’ of the late-
1960s, Hall was the Director of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies from 1968 to 1979. It was during this time that an identifiable and particular
field called cultural studies began to emerge. Stuart Hall is perhaps the most significant
figure in the development of British cultural studies. His work makes considerable use
of Gramsci and the concepts of ideology and hegemony, though he also played a
significant part in deploying poststructuralism in cultural studies.

Reading: Morley, D. and Chen, D.-K. (eds) (1996) Stuart Hall. London: Routledge.

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Cultural studies has been reluctant to accept institutional legitimation. Nevertheless, the
formation of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University
(UK) in the 1960s was a decisive organizational instance. Since that time, cultural studies
has extended its intellectual base and geographic scope. There are self-defined cultural
studies practitioners in the USA, Australia, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, with
each ‘formation’ of cultural studies working in different ways. While I am not privileging
British cultural studies per se, I am pointing to the formation of cultural studies at
Birmingham as an institutionally significant moment.
Since its emergence, cultural studies has acquired a multitude of institutional bases,
courses, textbooks and students as it has become something to be taught. As McGuigan
(1997a) comments, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise, despite the concern that
professionalized and institutionalized cultural studies may ‘formalize out of existence the
critical questions of power, history and politics’ (Hall, 1992a: 286). Cultural studies’ main
location has always been institutions of higher education and the bookshop. Consequently,
one way of ‘defining’ cultural studies is to look at what university courses offer to stu-
dents. This necessarily involves ‘disciplining’ cultural studies.

Disciplining cultural studies

Many cultural studies practitioners oppose forging disciplinary boundaries for the field.
However, it is hard to see how this can be resisted if cultural studies wants to survive by
attracting degree students and funding (as opposed to being only a postgraduate research
activity). In that context, Bennett (1998) offers his ‘element of a definition’ of cultural studies:

01-Barker_4e-4300-Ch-01 (Part 1).indd 6 11/11/2011 7:54:47 PM