Cultural Studies

Cultural studies summary

At its core, cultural studies is a field of academic study that looks at:

1. how culture is created, maintained, shared, and reproduced.
2. how structures of power in society influence this process.
3. the relationships between culture, power, and social identities (such as ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, etc.).

Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field, meaning that it has its roots in many different subjects, including anthropology, philosophy, history, psychology, literary criticism and theory, and more.

What is culture?

It's not surprising that cultural studies involves so many different subjects, as culture is perhaps one of the biggest topics there is. So, before we delve further into cultural studies, history, and theories, let's first define what we mean by 'culture'.

The first things that pop into your mind when you think about culture may include food, music, religion, clothes, sports, language, and social rules. Culture is all of these things and more: culture is everything that makes up a 'way of life'¹ for one person, a group of people, a nation of people, or even the whole of humanity.

The most important thing to remember when talking about culture in cultural studies is that culture is a process, meaning that it never stays in one place – it's always on the go as it changes and develops.

Fig. 1 - Culture is a process, seen here in the contrast between old and new architecture.

History of cultural studies

Richard Hoggart (1918–2014) founded the University of Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in the UK in 1964. This marked the beginning of the academic field of cultural studies.

The CCCS was groundbreaking because it challenged the idea that only elite 'high culture' was worth analysing. Scholars at the CCCS argued that 'low' popular culture and mass media – such as advertisements and TV shows – are also rich in meaning to be researched and explored.

Since it began, cultural studies has been highly focused on identifying systems of oppression and resistance in culture. Although the CCCS closed in 2002, it left a strong and widespread legacy. Cultural studies is a global field, and it has changed the way many of us look at the media we consume and its relationship to power in society.

However, cultural studies is not without its critics. Some argue that the field is just too broad, leading to it being about everything and nothing at the same time. The literary critic Harold Bloom (1930–2019) also said that cultural studies' focus on left-wing politics limits the enjoyment of art and the discussions we can have about it.

Cultural studies theory

In cultural studies, 'texts' are more than just pieces of writing. Cultural texts can be anything made to convey meaning, such as speeches, advertisements, radio shows, photographs, food, and fashion choices.

Just like books, these cultural texts can also be analysed. Let's look at some of the theories cultural studies theorists use when studying cultural texts.

Semiotic theory

In linguistics, semiotics is the study of language, its parts, and how it is interpreted. Semiotics has been highly influential within cultural studies, which sees culture as a kind of language and vice versa.

Culture and language are deeply connected as they both 'represent the world'.³ Like language, culture uses 'signs' to communicate certain meanings.

In cultural studies, the creation of signs is a never-ending process that is influenced by and influences the way we perceive the world. Because of this, cultural studies theorists say that meaning is never 'fixed'; it is constructed and always subject to change. This process is influenced by many factors, explained further by the theory of cultural materialism.

Cultural materialism

Cultural materialism is a theoretical approach developed by Raymond Williams (1921–1988).

The key idea of cultural materialism is that cultural texts are produced like any other consumer item, such as a television or cosmetics. These products don't just come out of nowhere; cultural texts and the meanings they convey are influenced by many factors before, during, and after their production, including the economic and social backgrounds of their producers and audiences.

Cultural materialism is rooted strongly in Marxism, however, it is not the same.

It is from Karl Marx's theory that the term 'hegemony' emerged.

The idea of hegemony has been very influential within cultural studies and its argument that analysing cultural texts can reveal how hegemonic values, ideas, and interests in society are maintained or resisted.

Active audience theory

For cultural studies theorists, hegemony doesn't mean that non-ruling classes have no influence over culture. This is partly explained by the active audience theory, popularised by cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall (1932–2014).

Stuart Hall argued that audiences of cultural texts are active. Instead of being passive couch potatoes, audiences engage with cultural texts by interpreting (or 'decoding') meaning based on their own personal experiences, even unconsciously.³

Scholars at the CCCS were also interested in how hegemony was actively resisted and looked at contemporary youth subcultures (such as punks) as examples of resistance.

Fig. 2 - CCCS scholars saw youth subcultures, such as punks, as examples of resistance against hegemonic values.

Cultural studies in literature

When you study literature from a cultural studies perspective, you analyse meaning by looking at the text in combination with the economic, social, and cultural context in which the text was produced.

Because of cultural studies' interest in the resistance of hegemonic power structures in society, it has incorporated political theories such as Marxism, disability theory, and postcolonial literary theory. When looking at literature from a cultural studies perspective, these are all lenses through which literature can be analysed.

Furthermore, as cultural studies is concerned with questioning hegemonic ideas, literary and cultural studies scholars also work with texts outside of the literary canon, such as pop culture and literature, representing more diverse voices.

Cultural studies examples

When you're analysing literature from a cultural studies perspective, you'll want to keep these three keywords at the front of your mind: power, identity and representation. Guided by these three keywords, ask yourself the following questions about your chosen text or texts that you want to analyse:

¹ Raymond Williams. 'Culture is Ordinary'. 1958.

² Stuart Hall. 'Encoding, Decoding'. 1973.

³ Stuart Hall. 'The Work of Representation'. 1997.

⁴ 'Press Release Number CB21-TPS.49'. United States Census Bureau. April 29, 2021.