Cultural studies

For the journal, see Cultural Studies (journal).
Not to be confused with Culture theory or Cultural theory of risk.

Cultural studies is a politically engaged postdisciplinary academic field that explores the dynamics of especially contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations.[1] Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes.[2] The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields.[3]

Cultural studies was initially developed by British Marxist academics in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around the world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as anti-disciplinary. A key concern for cultural studies practitioners is the examination of the forces within and through which socially organized people conduct and participate in the construction of their everyday lives.[4]

Cultural studies combines a variety of politically engaged critical approaches drawn including semiotics, Marxism, feminist theory, ethnography, post-structuralism, postcolonialism, social theory, political theory, history, philosophy, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, communication studies, political economy, translation studies, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies and historical periods. Cultural studies seeks to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, contested, bound up with systems of power and control, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a particular social formation or conjuncture. The movement has generated important theories of cultural hegemony and agency. Its practitioners attempt to explain and analyze the cultural forces related and processes of globalization.

During the rise of neoliberalism in Britain and the US, cultural studies both became a global movement, and attracted the attention of many conservative opponents both within and beyond universities for a variety of reasons. A worldwide movement of students and practitioners with a raft of scholarly associations and programs, annual international conferences and publications carry on work in this field today.[5][6] Distinct approaches to cultural studies have emerged in different national and regional contexts.

  1. ^ See Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Also see Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, 3rd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2007.
  2. ^ "Cultural studies" is not synonymous with either "area studies" or "ethnic studies," although there are many cultural studies practitioners working in both area studies and ethnic studies programs and professional associations (e.g. American studies, Asian studies, African-American studies, Latina/o Studies, European studies, Latin American studies, etc.).
  3. ^ "cultural studies | interdisciplinary field". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 1 August 2017. Retrieved 28 June 2017.
  4. ^ Pain, R. and Smith, S. eds., 2008. Fear: Critical geopolitics and everyday life. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
  5. ^ Bérubé, Michael (2009), "What's the Matter with Cultural Studies?" Archived 12 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  6. ^ "Cultural Studies Associations, Networks and Programs" Archived 9 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine, extensive, but incomplete, list of associations, networks and programs as found on the website for the Association of Cultural Studies, Tampere, Finland.