Page 72 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Chapter Two

Genealogy of Cultural Studies

WHAT IS CULTURAL STUDIES?

John Hartley begins his book on the history of cultural studies with the fol-
lowing, possibly perplexing observation: “There is little agreement about
what counts as cultural studies. . . . The field is riven by fundamental dis-
agreements about what cultural studies is for, in whose interests it is done,
what theories, methods and objects of study are proper to it, and where to set
its limits.” 1
Some definers of cultural studies cast their nets far and wide. The entry in
Wikipedia, for instance, suggests that cultural studies “combines political econ-
omy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory,
film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and art
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history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies.” Likewise,
Blundell, Shepherd, and Taylor remark that among the “resources” available to
cultural studies are “the disciplines of English literature, sociology, communica-
tion, anthropology, linguistics and various forms of semiology, film and televi-
sion studies, and, more recently, art history and musicology.” They continue:
“Cultural studies takes these resources, interrogates them, adapts them to the
task at hand, and interpellates them within its own continuously developing the-
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oretical matrices.” Richard Johnson apparently agrees, declaring that cultural
studies is both winnower and scavenger, “stealing away the more useful ele-
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ments [of other disciplines] and rejecting the rest.” Blundell, Shepherd, and
Taylor claim that writing histories of cultural studies or describing its “schools”
is quite difficult, that really “the most that is possible are accounts from various
practitioners, each account being informed by the practitioner’s own biography
and relation to cultural studies.” Likewise, Sardar and Van Loon declare: “Cul-
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tural studies is . . . a collective term for diverse and often contentious intellectual
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