Page 116 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

104 BRITISH CULTURAL STUDIES AND THE RETURN OF THE ‘CRITICAL’

from a continuing intellectual exchange of social and political ideas
located within the specific historical context of a marxist perspective.
There seems to be a specific interest in the exploration of ideological
representations and the process of ideological struggle with and within the
media, emphasizing the relationship between the media and the
maintenance of social order. This perceived need for an alternative
explanation of media and communication in society stresses the importance
of culture and cultural expressions and has focused on the work of British
cultural studies as an appropriate alternative, although there have been
earlier encounters with a critical tradition in the American social sciences.
The development of social theories in the United States under the
guidance of a liberal-pluralist perspective was based upon an assumption
of consensual unity, and reduced complex social and political issues of
power and authority to an examination (and legitimation) of the dominant
social system; that is to say, the practice of normative functionalism,
including the assumptions of behavioural research, surveys, and the
contributions of social psychology led to the reproduction of the dominant
view of society in mass communication research. Furthermore, the
influence of pragmatism, rising through the social reform movement of the
1920s and supported by social research of the 1940s and 1950s, had
remained a strong and persistent element in the changing climate of the
1960s and guided the expressions of the social sciences in the 1970s and
1980s. Its prevailing disposition was the result of an optimistic belief in the
individual as a free and creative participant in the social and political life of
the community. The promise of a place and a share in the benefits of the
‘great society’ for everyone continued to be reflected in theoretical issues
and practical concerns and produced a vision of mass society as a
community of cultures.
The field of communication and media studies remained identified with
the mainstream perspective of social science research. Based upon a
pragmatic model of society, it related to the values of individualism and
operated on the strength of efficiency and instrumental values in its pursuit
of democracy and the American dream. Thus, conditions of society were
defined in terms of individuals as members of a large-scale, consensual
society and their encounter with the social and cultural order.
For instance, the persistent growth of mass communication research
agendas, involving conspicuous topics like children, advertising,
pornography, violence, crime and the media produced a spontaneous
definition and an extensive compilation of social problems. But mass