Page 19 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

8 Introduction to Part One

humane, and more ecologically benign ways. Hence, they recommend re-
structuring institutions in terms of accountability and lines of control, so that
instrumental knowledge (scientific, social scientific, technological, psycho-
logical, social-psychological, financial, rhetorical, and so on) will be so de-
ployed. Some, such as Harold Innis, have recommended, too, that instru-
mental knowledge be counterbalanced (as opposed to de-authenticated) by
other types of knowledge—moral, aesthetic, historical, communal.
Part I of this book, among other things, contradicts Grossberg’s assertion
that cultural studies and political economy were never very close. In fact, as
we will see, political economy was fully integrated in the writings of the
British authors commonly acknowledged as inaugurating cultural studies—
Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and E. P. Thompson. That finding
alone, developed in chapter 2, is sufficient to overturn Grossberg’s con-
tention. But also, as shown in chapter 1, cultural studies and political econ-
omy were highly integrated in inaugural political economy writings, too. In
that regard, I turn to Harold Innis and Theodor Adorno. In doing so, I depart
from conventional thinking, but as developed in chapter 1 these writers un-
questionably were first off the mark in developing political economy analy-
ses of media; they predated the English cultural studies theorists, too, by a
number of years. In any event, and this is the far more important point, all of
these figures—Innis, Adorno, Williams, Hoggart, Thompson—point to means
whereby political economy and cultural studies can be (re)integrated today,
and hence for that reason alone they are worth studying together.
Even among those who agree that integration (or rather, re-integration) be-
tween political economy and cultural studies is desirable, however, there is
controversy. Some maintain that culture “contains,” or is much larger than
merely the economy and polity, that not only are important aspects of cultural
production, transmission, and interpretation separate from markets, classes,
and other predominantly economic/political categories, but that political
economy should be regarded at most as a subfield within cultural studies; in-
tegration for these scholars means absorption of political economy by cultural
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studies. Others contend, however, that the economy “contains” culture, that
the pursuit of the material means of existence touches all major belief systems
and modes of understanding and acting; these writers consequently speak of
a political economy of culture. The median and dialectical position (cultural
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materialism), which I will argue characterized both critical political economy
and cultural studies at their beginnings, acknowledges mutual interaction and
mutual dependency in the systems theory sense among culture, economy, and
polity/policy.
It was in a spirit of reconciliation between cultural studies and political
economy that in the fall of 2002 Professor Jody Berland invited me to prepare