Page 9 - Decoding Culture

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

sociological evangelism. I had no way of knowing then, of course,
that in terms of previous critical discussions Hoggart's book was
actually a significant move in my direction, for all its antagonism to
the popular culture that so fascinated me. Nor did I suspect that
both the author and his book would play a vital role in initiating the
field of 'cultural studies' and that much of my subsequent academic
life would be caught up in the ramifications of that innovation. Had
I known, I would probably have been horrified at the thought of
such inter-disciplinary miscegenation, let alone at the prospect of
playing any part in it. These were crusading years in British soci­
ology, and mine and my contemporaries' commitment to our
embattled discipline was deeply felt.
By the time I graduated I was rather less puritan in my beliefs,
and when I first met Hoggart in 1965 - he gave me a peripatetic job
interview which began, somewhat unusually, with an appointment
outside the main entrance of a well known Leeds department
store - I was no longer of a mind to cast him or his ideas out of the
window. As far as I recall (and this is not reliable since the 'inter­
view' involved a pint or two of Tetley's mild) I never even confessed
to my earlier indiscretions with his book. Nor, however, did I go to
work at the newly created Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies of which Hoggart was the founding Director. Had
I done so, perhaps my relationship to the next 30 years of cultural
studies history would have been quite different. Certainly I would
have experienced it much more from within, compared to the
rather sceptical and somewhat distanced position that I have main­
tained over the subsequent decades.
I tell this story less in a nostalgic frame of mind than with the
aim of giving my reader some sense of the background from which
this book emerges - where I am coming from, to borrow an ugly
but apposite phrase. Indeed, shorn of its youthful exuberance, my
ballistic response to The U s es o f Literacy could stand as a micro-

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