Blackwell Reference Online

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Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores the linkages between society, politics, identity (or the person), and the full range of what is called “culture,” from high culture and the popular arts or mass entertainment, to beliefs, discourses, and communicative practices. Cultural studies has drawn on different national traditions of inquiry into these connections – from the Frankfurt School's studies of the mass culture industry, and of the psychological processes that undercut democracy in liberal and affluent societies, to French structuralist and poststructuralist critiques of ideology, constraining categorical frames, and a monadic and unified concept of the self. The branch of cultural studies that early drew the most attention from sociologists was that articulated by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, perhaps in part because Birmingham scholars were inspired by some aspects of American sociology, especially the Chicago School tradition, which gave their work a recognizably social dimension. Taking Birmingham as an example is instructive in pointing out some characteristics of cultural studies as a field. Conventionalized intellectual genealogies often begin with the work of Raymond Williams (1958, 1961) , Richard Hoggart (1957) , and E. P. Thompson (1963) . All three challenged dominant traditions in the humanities in post-war England. ... log in or subscribe to read full text