Page 140 - Decoding Culture

RESISTING THE D O M I N ANT 133

in social life, its embodiment in signifying practices, and its ideo­
logical function in securing hegemonic domination. Of course, the
Centre produced much more work than that, some of it applying
these general theoretical terms in specific areas, some striking out
in different directions. Thus, the Race and Politics Group produced
a critical examination of racism in Britain which, although con­
cerned with both ideology and marxism, did not find ready-made
theoretical resources in prevailing CCCS ideas: ' t ilt was the frus­
trating search for an inter-disciplinary, historical approach which
was geared to the contemporary struggle against racism which
forced us to turn our own hands to analysis' (CCCS, 1982: 7) .
Similarly, the Women's Studies Group found itself in some tension
with other areas of the Centre's work, in consequence developing
its own critical response in which, among other things, it sought 'to
avoid a general tendency in CCCS towards an unself-conscious
use of theoretical language which is one element in perpetuating
knowledge as the property of the few' (CCCS W o men's Studies
Group, 1978: 8) . That response formed part of a wider feminist
input into cultural studies which will be pursued in more detail in
Chapter 6.
As well as these growing general concerns with forms of domi­
nation and subordination other than class, the Centre also
produced a striking range of empirical work. They documented
diverse features of working-class culture (Clarke et ai. , 1979) ,
engaged with the move toward more ethnographically oriented
methods that had become so prominent in 1970s sociology (Hall et
.
at , 1980: Part Two), and provided a foundation for well known and
well regarded individual studies such as those by Willis (1977)
and Hebdige (1979). As these diverse examples indicate, CCCS
projects were hardly homogeneous even during the Centre's
heyday. Nevertheless. the position captured in the theoretical
'snapshot' of this chapter does represent the high point of the

Copyrighted Material