Is There Any Hope for Cultural Studies?

Cultural studies has developed as a significant new academic discipline at the end of the 20th century. An important spawning ground for contemporary cultural studies was the intellectual ferment surrounding the British new left of the 1950s and 1960s. Associated with such figures as Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, cultural studies sought to link working-class culture to domination and social liberation. Although linked with socialist politics, cultural studies was among the new left currents that rejected some of the old left's tendency toward economism. It also revealed an openness to a range of complex cultural and social issues that the left had placed less emphasis upon in previous generations. In the 1970s, led by Stuart Hall and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, British cultural studies produced innovative studies of mass media and ideology. Since then cultural studies has spread rapidly across the globe and it has been especially well received in the English-speaking world, including the United States. Today cultural studies exerts a prominent influence in departments of communication, literature, film, American studies, modern languages, and some social sciences.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.