Page 13 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

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Cultural Studies and the Centre: some
problematics and problems*
Stuart Hall

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The first issue of Working Papers in Cultural Studies appeared in 1972. The
title ‘Working Papers’ was deliberately intended to set the terms of our approach
in a number of respects. This was not the scholarly journal of the field—which,
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indeed, hardly as yet existed. We laid no proprietary claim on it. We recognized
that, if Cultural Studies ‘took off’, it would deploy a greater variety of approaches
than we could reproduce within the Birmingham Centre (at that time, less than
half its present size). We also recognized that a particular ‘mix’ of disciplines
woven together at Birmingham to form the intellectual base of Cultural Studies
would not necessarily be reproduced exactly elsewhere. We could imagine
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Cultural Studies degrees or research based, just as effectively, on visual (rather
than literary) texts, on social anthropology (rather than sociology) and with a
much stronger input of historical studies than we drew on in the early days. Such
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courses have indeed been initiated since then—with conspicuous success. The
Centre had, perforce, to work with the intellectual raw materials it had to hand. It
chose to specialize in those areas which the small staff felt capable of
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supervising. It approached the problems of interdisciplinary research from those
more established disciplines already present in the complement of staff and
students working in Birmingham at that time. But we tried not to make the
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mistake of confusing these starting positions— over which we had relatively
little control—with a theoretically informed definition of Cultural Studies as
such. Hence, the journal specifically refused, at the outset, to be a vehicle for
defining the range and scope of Cultural Studies in a definitive or absolute way.
We rejected, in short, a descriptive definition or prescription of the field. It
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followed that, though the journal did not offer itself as a conclusive definition of
Cultural Studies, it did confront, from its first issue, the consequences of this
refusal: namely, the need for a sustained work of theoretical clarification.
On the other hand, the journal was conceived as an intellectual intervention. It
aimed to define and to occupy a space. It was deliberately designed as a ‘house
journal’—a journal or tendency, so to speak. Nearly all of its contributors were
Centre members. Its aim was to put Cultural Studies on the intellectual map. It
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declared an interest in advancing critical research in this field. The phrase,