Page 115 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

Chapter 4
British cultural studies and the return of the
‘critical’ In American mass communication

research
Accommodation or radical change?

Hanno Hardt

Communication and media studies in the United States throughout the
1980s have come under the influence of a body of British literature
identified with the intellectual traditions of Raymond Williams, Richard
Hoggart and the University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies, notably under the leadership of Stuart Hall. Indeed, the
writings of the British cultural studies group constitute a significant
contribution to the field of mass communication research, and they begin
to represent the most decisive theoretical ‘break’ that has captured the
attention of scholarly journals since the domination of traditional sociology
in the field of communication and media studies in the United States a
generation ago.
The fascination with new ideas, particularly the continuing challenge of
marxism, the appeal of a European renaissance in the study of culture and
society, particularly enhanced by its immediate accessibility as an English
language text, and a heightened sense of criticism concerning current
definitions of society as basic presuppositions for mass communication
research, provide the context for the reception of British cultural studies in
the realm of mass communication and communication scholarship in the
United States.
Since a major problem of American thought continues to be how to
mould its European heritage to fit the specific needs of American culture,
the American encounter with British cultural studies may serve as a
contemporary link in this intellectual tradition of re-creating social theories
as an exercise in cultural exploitation, in this case, for the development of
communication and mass communication studies. More specifically, this
essay will explore the development of mass communication research as a
problem of adapting and integrating theoretical constructs as they emerge

Reprinted from Journal of Communication Inquiry, (1986), 10(2), 117–24,
abridged.