Page 105 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

and objectivist (from the point of view of structure) accounts. Bourdieu argues that
practice is always imbued with a sense of agency and subjective point of view, but
needs to be understood in relation to and put in the context of the ‘objective’
82 structures of culture and society. However, the fact that Bourdieu reads the
classificatory schemes of the habitus as ‘ultimate values’ that are more basic than
consciousness or even language does seem to tip the balance of his explanations
towards the structural end of the scale. Some critics would argue that the concept
of habitus is thus a reductionist one, an argument reinforced, for example, by the
very tight fit Bourdieu reads between class structure and cultural tastes and
attitudes.
Links Agency, cultural capital, practice, reductionism, structuration, structure,

Hall, Stuart (1932– ) If there can be any single person most identified with the
development of cultural studies as a distinct domain of study it would be Stuart
Hall. A West Indian-born British thinker initially associated with the ‘New Left’ of
the late 1960s, Hall was the Director of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies from 1968 to 1979 and it was during this time that an identifiable
and particular field called cultural studies began to emerge. Though identified with
Marxism, Hall has also been critical of its reductionist tendencies and set out to
study popular culture in its own right. Hall has made considerable use of the work
of Gramsci and the concepts of ideology and hegemony, for example in his
exploration and critique of Thatcherism in Britain. However, he also played a
significant part in deploying the poststructuralism of Derrida and Foucault to
develop a form of post-Marxism concerned with discourse, representation and the
new post-1960s configuration of capitalism, identities and politics that emerged in
Western cultures.
• Associated concepts Articulation, circuit of culture, cultural politics, encoding–
decoding, ethnicity, hegemony, identity, ideology, New Times, popular culture.
• Tradition(s) Cultural studies, Marxism, post-Marxism, poststructuralism.
• Reading Hall, S. (1996) ‘On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with
Stuart Hall’ (ed. L. Grossberg), in D. Morley and D-K. Chen (eds), Stuart Hall.
London: Routledge.

Haraway, Donna (1944– ) American feminist Donna Haraway trained as a scientist
and her cultural writings reflect her continued concern with the epistemological
and social issues raised by science. She rejects the claims of science, and some
branches of feminism, to hold the God-like neutral knowledge of a disembodied
gaze. Instead she advocates ‘partial perspectives’ that recognize their inherent
limitations and remind us that no single perspective is complete. In her ‘Cyborg
manifesto’ Haraway suggests that the boundaries between animal, human and
machine are breaking down. She also rejects the distinction between sex and gender
on the grounds that biology is a partial perspective that privileges sexuality.
Consequently she describes herself in terms of multiple identities that include the
cyborg, a position that she argues has advantages for women.