From Cultural Studies to Cultural Research: Engaged Scholarship in the Twenty-first Century

Is, or should cultural studies be, a discipline or not? What exactly is its object? Should cultural studies be focused on influencing policy or be an agent of critique? What is the role of theory? What kind of theory? Should textual analysis or ethnography predominate? The regular reiteration of such questions reveals an ongoing sense of crisis, a general apprehensiveness over the question whether cultural studies is able to live up to its own self-declared aspirations, both intellectually and politically.