Page 78 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Genealogy of Cultural Studies 67

BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES

In 1964, Richard Hoggart (b. 1918), then professor of modern English litera-
ture, founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University
of Birmingham, giving cultural studies both a name and a home. In 1968,
Hoggart left the Centre to become assistant director-general at UNESCO, his
replacement being Stuart Hall. Hoggart’s 1957 book, The Uses of Literacy,
26
is by general consensus the first of three founding texts of British cultural
studies, the others being Culture and Society by Raymond Williams and The
Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson. All three books,
27
according to Hall, proposed that culture is tied closely to changes in industry,
democracy, class, and art. Moreover, all three placed “the ‘politics of intel-
28
lectual work’ squarely at the centre of Cultural Studies.” Furthermore, all
29
three are interdisciplinary, combining sociological, historical, political, ethno-
graphic, and economic analyses, going beyond textual analysis to speculate
on the relations between texts and patterns of lived experience. And all three
30
focus on class. For present purposes, though, their most significant shared
feature is their weaving seamlessly analyses of culture with what is now
known as critical political economy of media.

Richard Hoggart
As an adult educator, Richard Hoggart taught students who, for reasons of
class, income, or personal situation, had not attained normal entry into post-
secondary education. It was primarily for them that The Uses of Literacy
was written. 31 Hoggart was himself of working class origin, helping to ex-
plain his approach. In his book, Hoggart employed tools of literary criticism
as used by F. R. Leavis and others in their analyses of “high culture,” but ap-
plied these instead to “the full rich life” of working class communities. He
maintained that through close analyses of cultural artifacts and practices,
one can comprehend “the felt quality of life.” He addressed popular enter-
tainments (the pubs, the movies, the music), and related these to the social
practices, language patterns, community activities, and family relations. He
“read” the living culture as a text which, for Stuart Hall, was “a through-
going departure.” 32
33
Hoggart was reacting to the “canonical elitism” of theorists like Leavis
and Matthew Arnold, and more generally to cultural domination of wage-
earners by the upper class. He maintained that elite power stems partly from
the legitimacy accorded their cultural forms and hence contended that greater
political equality (democracy) must entail cultural struggle. Hoggart’s first
aim, therefore, was to elevate the stature of working class culture.