Page 191 - Decoding Culture

184 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE
1970s sociology is exactly paralleled in modern cultural studies,
bringing with it all the familiar conceptual and methodological dif­
ficulties born of an unreflective dualism of structure and agency.

Paradigm lost?

Is there, then, a 'paradigm crisis' in cultural studies? Certainly
there are those who would suggest as much on the basis of exactly
those reader-centred developments that we have been considering
in this chapter. On this account, cultural studies (and media studies
too, for the 'crisis' is also seen there) was making some progress in
its neo-Gramscian form, if, perhaps, still too text oriented.
However, the spread of subjectivism in the form of audience
ethnography and cultural populism has undermined such
progress, and their claims to innovative thinking are no more than
old ideas given new currency. As a result, the project of a distinc­
tively critical cultural studies has been set back.
Curran's (1990) attack on what he calls the 'new revisionist
movement' in media and cultural studies is a good instance of this
kind of argument. To appreciate how the case is made it is neces­
sary to have some idea of the recent history of media research as
Curran views it. According to him, the 1970s saw the development
of critical alternatives to the prevailing pluralist views of the role of
the media in society. One of those alternatives - that in which
Curran himself was closely involved - adopted a political economy
framework and was concerned especially with ownership of the
media and the relation of that to the workings of the state. The
other was broadly that associated with the CCCS in the heyday of
its focus upon ideology and hegemony. Although these two schools
of thought differed in many ways, they coincided in their commit­
ment to a broadly marxist analysis of the media and thus

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