Page 194 - Decoding Culture

THE RISE OF THE READER 187

there has been a sea-change that 'will reshape - for better or
worse - the development of media and cultural studies in Europe'.
Paradigm lost, then, is unlikely to be followed by paradigm
regained.
It may, however, be followed by 'paradigm changed' in as much
as there is a welcome inclination in modern cultural studies to
explore alternatives to both the older 'objectivist' traditions and
the current 'subjectivist' candidates to replace them. Murdock
(1989: 227) , for example, invokes Bourdieu, Giddens and philo­
sophical realism in arguing for a project that 'must move beyond
immediate acts of consumption and response to analyze the under­
lying structures that provide the contexts and resources for
audience activity and go on to demonstrate how they organize the
making and taking of meaning in everyday life'. This requires a
more positive response to the 'paradigm crisis' than that involved in
reasserting the primacy of previously established positions, though
it may - indeed, it should - draw upon those earlier traditions in
pursuit of a new synthesis. At various points in this chapter I have
suggested certain of the questions that I think such an attempt
should address. Here I want to pull some of those threads together
in an avowedly schematic account of the main parameters of the
'crisis' in cultural studies.
To the extent that there really is a paradigm crisis - and leaving
aside any difficulties that arise from the increasing diffuseness of
the very term 'cultural studies' - division and confusion seem to me
to operate along four main dimensions. One is largely theoretical,
though its consequences are more ramified, revolving around dif­
ferences in conceptualizing the most fundamental ontological
features of culture and social life. This is the area on which I have
touched most frequently in this book, generally in the form of the
'structure-agency problem'. The second dimension is method­
ological and epistemological, posing questions about the kinds of

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