Page 129 - Decoding Culture

122 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE

paradigm in media studies' which is concerned to understand the
mechanisms by which ideological processes work, and the relation
in which such processes stand to 'other practices within a social
formation' (ibid). Structuralism provides Hall with a way into the
first issue, its emphasis upon signification offering concepts appro­
priate to grasping the ways in which systems of meaning ('cultural
inventories' is one term Hall uses for them) are constructed around
specific events and how, through the institutions of the mass
media, they are made legitimate over and above other possible
constructions. Conflict over such processes is centrally important:
' [ tlhe signification of events is part of what has to be struggled
over, for it is the means by which collective social understandings
are created - and thus the means by which consent for particular
outcomes can be effectively mobilized' (ibid: 70). Herein lies the
'politics of signification'. If privileged meanings are sustained by
their framing within particular signifying structures, then contest­
ing those meanings and revealing the significatory terms via which
they come to be 'taken-for-granted' is a vital political function of any
critical media studies.
The difficulty with this structuralist-inspired conception is that
its access to the 'deep structures' underlying diverse significatory
processes is too formalistic to meet the historical needs of Hall's
and the CCCS' commitment to a marxist analysis. Over the years,
he argues, the network of presuppositions on which taken-for­
grantedness (or 'naturalization') rests would change and develop
through 'accretion' and 'sedimentation', and any proper under­
standing of the workings of ideology would need to conceptualize
these processes. In effect, it is necessary to historicize structural­
ist method, replacing the timeless universalism of Uvi-Straussian
myth analysis with a more historical conception. It is to Gramsci
that Hall turns for appropriate terms, invoking his concept of
'common sense': 'the inventory of traditional ideas, the forms of

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