This reassessment of the current state of cultural studies focuses on its contribution to the understanding of the media, communication and popular studies in contemporary societies. The contributers examine from a range of perspectives: the different strands of cultural studies and how they have developed; whether cultural studies is a coherent discipline; tensions and debates within and between cultural studies; alternative and related approaches to cultural studies; and "culture wars" and public controversies.
Peter Golding was Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University from 1990 until coming to Northumbria in August 2010. He was Head of Social Sciences at Loughborough from 1991-2006, and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) 2006-2009. He was a member of the national Research Assessment Exercise panel for communications, media and cultural studies in 1996 and 2001, and its Chair in 2008, Vice-Chair of the ESRC postgraduate Recognition Panel for sociology and media and cultural studies, and chair of the HEFCE Media Studies Advisory Committee. He is an editor of the European Journal of Communication, Hon. Chair of the European Sociological Association Media Research Network, and was Co-Chair of the European Science Foundation Programme 'Changing Media, Changing Europe'. He was founder Chair of the subject association for his field, from 1993-1999, since when he has been Hon. Sec. of its successor body, the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association, and is a member of the UK UNESCO Commission Communications and Information Committee. Professor Golding has been a Visiting Professor at universities in Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan, Estonia and Brazil and has lectured and taught in over 20 countries.
Cultural Studies and Changing Times - Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding An Introduction PART ONE: QUESTIONS AND CRITIQUE Reflections on the Project of (American) Cultural Studies - James W Carey The Anti-Political Populism of Cultural Studies - Todd Gitlin Policy Help Wanted - Denis McQuail Willing and Able Media Culturalists Please Apply Political Economy and the Practice of Cultural Studies - Nicholas Garnham Dominance and Ideology in Culture and Cultural Studies - Sari Thomas Base Notes - Graham Murdock The Conditions of Cultural Practice Overcoming the Divide - Douglas Kellner Cultural Studies and Political Economy PART TWO: ANSWERS AND ALTERNATIVES Theoretical Orthodoxies - David Morley Textualism, Constructivism and the 'New Ethnography' in Cultural Studies Cultural Populism Revisited - Jim McGuigan Imagining the Audience - Joli Jensen and John J Pauly Losses and Gains in Cultural Studies The E's and the Anti-E's - Angela McRobbie New Questions for Feminism and Cultural Studies Cultural Studies, Communication and Change - John D H Downing Eastern Europe to the Urals From Codes to Utterances - Michael Billig Cultural Studies, Discourse and Psychology
`Cultural Studies in Question is a much needed confrontation with the most challenging questions engaging cultural studies and communication today. It is at once sympathetic to the goals and political purposes of cultural studies, yet frustrated with excessive idealization, textualism, and distance from concrete practice or public policy. This collection, carefully assembled by Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding, is criticism at its best, aimed not at destroying but improving, not at negation but shared progress through intellectual struggle. Squarely in the tradition of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, the central figures in the debates around cultural studies, both its advocates and its critics, here confront the hard questions of purpose, emphasis, method, implicit ideology, and real world consequences in what may be the most important intellectual movement of this and recent decades. The result is of great value to all those seeking to better grasp the current crises in communication and culture' - Michael R Real, San Diego State University `If you are a social scientist wanting an overview of contemporary debates in cultural studies research on both sides of the Atlantic this commissioned collection of articles is an excellent place to start' - Sociology
