Longhurst - Introducing and Progressing Cultural Studies Disciplinarity, Communication and Innovation

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DOI: 10.1177/0038038502036002011 2002; 36; 429 Sociology

Brian Longhurst Communication and Innovation

Introducing and Progressing Cultural Studies: Disciplinarity,

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Introducing and Progressing Cultural Studies:Disciplinarity, Communication and Innovation

■ Brian LonghurstUniversity of Salford

Chris BarkerCultural Studies:Theory and PracticeLondon: Sage, 2000, £60 hbk (ISBN: 0 761 95774 X), £18.99 pbk (ISBN: 0 76195775 8), xxii+424pp.

Nick CouldryInside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural StudiesLondon: Sage, 2000, £45 hbk (ISBN: 0 761 96385 5), £14.99 pbk (ISBN: 0 76196386 3), x+166pp.

C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby (eds)Popular Culture: Production and ConsumptionOxford: Blackwell, 2000, £50 hbk (ISBN: 0 631 21709 6), £16.99 pbk (ISBN: 0 63121710 X), xi+348pp.

Dominic StrinatiAn Introduction to Studying Popular CultureLondon: Routledge, 2000, £48 hbk (ISBN: 0 415 15766 8), £11.99 pbk (ISBN: 0 41515767 6), xvi+288pp.

ultural studies (like many other areas of academic inquiry) has been besetby a number of recurring issues or perhaps anxieties. In particular it hasbeen concerned by its status as a discipline and with the problems that

codification of its main ideas and boundaries might produce. This is of partic-ular concern when the activity has so often foregrounded issues of power in theconstruction, reproduction and communication of culture. The development ofresearch in the field as it reaches what some may consider its maturity might be

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seen as blunting the cutting edge of its cultural criticism. Cultural studies thenbecomes part of the ‘establishment’. There is of course a related issue of defini-tion here. If cultural studies has to stake its claim, especially in disciplinaryterms, it has to separate itself from neighbouring and competing disciplines, likesociology.

These issues are compounded by the need, for pedagogic if not for eco-nomic reasons, to communicate the findings of cultural studies to new audi-ences, especially to students. An important dilemma here is the way in whichany overview can become a static portrait, perhaps tending to downplay theongoing development of research. In turn, this raises issues of innovation, pos-ing questions of how innovation occurs in a field like cultural studies and more-over how this ongoing dynamism can be communicated to those new to thefield. There seem therefore, to be three key issues that can structure this review:first, of discplinarity and power, second, of communication, and third, of inno-vation. In different ways, and to differing extents they apply to the varied textsunder review.

These books can be seen to fall into a continuum. The most textbook-likeare the explicit introductions by Barker and Strinati. Harrington and Bielby’scollection of articles is also designed for students. Couldry’s text is presented inthis sort of way, but actually, as will be argued below, represents a rather dif-ferent sort of project. I begin with the books most explicitly addressed to stu-dents.

Chris Barker’s overview of the field of cultural studies offers a systematicintroduction, which will find its way very quickly on to many undergraduatereading lists, indeed it has already done so. The book is divided into three parts:Foundations of Cultural Studies; The Changing Context of Cultural Studies;and Sites of Cultural Studies. The first, most theoretical, part introduces thefield, considering ‘questions of culture and ideology’ and ‘the linguistic turn’.The second part usefully looks at the wider social context in a chapter on ‘ANew World Disorder?’ and intellectual context in ‘Enter Postmodernism’. Thethird, and by far the longest, part examines: subjectivity and identity; ethnicity,race and nation; sex, subjectivity and representation; television, texts and audi-ences; cultural space and urban place; youth, style and resistance; and culturalpolitics and cultural policy. The book also includes an extended glossary.

It seems clear that students will find this text of use. It covers all the mainground that one would expect in a clearly organized way. In particular theworks of authors like Derrida and Lacan were introduced in a way that shouldenable students to make the best they can of their theories. Therefore this is aproject and outcome to be welcomed in general. However, there are some morecritical points that might be made. Here, an interest should be declared. As co-author of what might be seen as a clear competitor to this text (Baldwin et al.,1999), my view will be affected by a different way of looking at that project.Three main critical points can be identified. First, a number of theories andconcepts were introduced quite quickly at the beginning of the book. I wouldalso have liked to see more examples run through these discussions to aid the

430 Sociology Volume 36 ■ Number 2 ■ May 2002




beginner. Second, the book consists completely of text; there are no pictures, nodiagrams and so on. There may be economic reasons for this, but it does tendto make the book look rather dull. This is a pity, especially given the potentialthat the material has to be presented in more engaging ways. Third, the book isoften written in short sections, some of which tend to the definitional. This isunavoidable in some areas, but might have the danger of fragmenting the mate-rial under consideration.

Dominic Strinati’s book is also clearly designed as an introduction for stu-dents. This book can be seen as complementing his earlier overview of theories(Strinati, 1995), which, in my experience, has been well liked and well used byundergraduate students. This book should have similar success. In effect, if notexplicitly, the book falls into two parts: the first on cinema and the second ontelevision. The examination of cinema discusses the rise of Hollywood and thenature of Hollywood popular cinema, before exploring in detail the genres ofthe gangster film, the horror film and film noir. The second, shorter, part of thebook introduces the nature of popular television, especially in the UK, beforeexamining the television audience, popular television genres and postmod-ernism and television in more detail.

Again, there is much to recommend the book to the undergraduate. Theexpositions are clearly written and cover the fields well. In particular Strinati’songoing concern throughout the book with general issues of genre and genredefinition will serve students well, as it foregrounds a number of difficulties, inareas where it might be easy just to plough ahead. More negatively, there againseem to be some difficulties. First, there is a clear disjuncture between the spaceaccorded to film and that to TV. I would have liked to see more on the latter,not just for equivalence, but because it might have allowed more discussion ofinternational television structures and programming. Second, and relatedly, Iam not convinced that the title of the book really reflects its content. While theyare obviously very popular forms of popular culture, film and television do rep-resent particular types and a narrower title might have explained the contentbetter, if maybe detracting from its promotion to a wide market. Finally, Strinatiis often and explicitly drawn to issues of the audience. He devotes a chapter tothe topic and suggests in his conclusion that his ‘book has placed great empha-sis upon the audience’ (p. 254). However, this issue often seemed to arise fromdiscussions elsewhere and then to be identified as where further research shouldgo. I would concur, but think that the existing body of research on audiencesmight have received a lengthier exposition. After all, there is now rather a lotof it.

C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby include more audience material, asone might expect from the authors of an excellent book on soap opera fans(Harrington and Bielby, 1995), and offer a wider sense of popular culture in theiredited collection. It is divided into five parts: What is Popular?; CulturalProduction/Commodification; Taste, Reception, and Resistance; AuthoringTexts/Readers; and Celebrity and Fandom. The editors contribute an introduc-tory essay. This usefully identifies ‘three predominant schools of thought: the

431Introducing and progressing cultural studies Longhurst




growing field of Cultural Studies, the Production of Culture perspective, and thePopular Culture Studies tradition’ (p. 3). This is helpful as it relates cultural stud-ies to those, especially North American, fields of research that have often takena more empirical approach to the study of culture. They suggest some areaswhere all these approaches are converging. This is a thought-provoking intro-duction, which obviously fed into the selection of articles for the book, some ofwhich are specially commissioned.

Space precludes the specific discussion of the contributions, but all willoffer much to the student and indeed to the researcher. Some are familiar (forexample, Becker on ‘Art as Collective Action’; Hall on ‘Encoding/Decoding’,Fiske on ‘Intertextuality’ and Allen on soaps), but others are completely newand offer less well-known authors the opportunity to grapple with significantissues. I have no quarrels with the coverage or the range of insights offered.However, it is possible to speculate about what the student might make of thecollection as a whole, especially as the editors confine their explicit interventionto the overall introduction. I would have liked the specific sections and theselections of the material for them to be further introduced to provide studentswith a more explicit contextualization and map. Teachers will obviously pro-vide aspects of this, but its absence still detracts from the usefulness of the book.

Moving to Nick Couldry’s book immediately shifts the ground of discus-sion. While it concludes several chapters with ‘suggestions for further thinking’,which appear to suggest a textbook function, the book is actually a verythought-provoking and timely consideration of the state of cultural studies andits futures. The discussion of some of its main themes will return us to the issuesintroduced at the beginning if this article.

Couldry argues that cultural studies is indeed a discipline, based ‘on its his-tory, values and overall methodological orientation’ (p. 9). He sees the signifi-cant methodological stance of the book as opening the way for empiricalresearch. Developing Raymond Williams’ groundbreaking attention to com-mon culture and ordinariness, Couldry builds his argument through attentionto a range of contemporary international authors to suggest the need for theconsideration of common culture today. For Couldry, this entails far more sys-tematic attention to the nature of individual experience and to the textual flowof popular culture around us, rather than to the construction of subjects andtextual analysis. In a way that is now becoming increasingly common, culturalflows are emphasized, as are the complexities of the ongoing constitutions ofselves and ‘communities’. Coudry’s cultural studies is the place where researchon these issues and dialogues with those who are learning about them can takeplace. This restates the political significance of cultural studies while offering aset of issues that embody a research agenda that can be communicated as adynamic field of inquiry.

My sympathies were engaged by much of Couldry’s argument. Two dimen-sions may be singled out for further development. Thus, Couldry argues thatresearch in cultural studies on television and film ‘has rarely, if ever, consideredthe engagements of people with high cultural and/or economic capital’ (p. 59)





and that cultural studies has paid ‘too little attention to the scale of the indi-vidual’s cultural experience’ and ‘relatively few insights into how individualsare formed, and how they act “inside” cultures’ (p. 45). Recent research on themiddle classes (see, Longhurst et al., 2001; Savage et al., 2001) and young peo-ple in Manchester (see Carrabine and Longhurst, 1999, 2000) has pursuedsome of these concerns.1 In particular in the former it is important to see howconstructions of the self as ordinary both negate and facilitate social and cul-tural identifications, but also how the consumption of ordinary culture (radioand popular music in these cases) plays a role in construction of the self as bothordinary and individual, as well as social inclusion and exclusion. This researchagenda has important key similarities with Couldry’s more theoretical overviewand perhaps not surprisingly leads me to feel that his book represents a very sig-nificant intervention.

However, some aspects of his argument seem rather shakier. In seeking toseparate his concerns for an empirical cultural studies from ‘(positivist) culturalsociology’ (p. 12), Couldry, in my view, underplays the potential of much of thesociological work on culture that is currently appearing in North America. Itcan be argued that some of this work offers important general arguments andevidence that can be combined with more reflexive, qualitative material to pro-duce important new sociological insights. A particular example can be found inthe ‘omnivore’ thesis expounded by Peterson and various colleagues (see, forexample, Peterson, 1992; Peterson and Kern, 1996). The argument, based onsurvey evidence (suitably qualified in assumptions), that the American middleclasses are becoming more omnivorous in cultural tastes, while the workingclasses are more univorous, seems to offer important pointers for rethinkingdebates about postmodernist trends in new ways, rather than detracting fromsuch inquiry. Of course such material may need to be recontextualized, espe-cially by Bourdieu (see Holt, 1997) and by further consideration in the Britishcontext (see Warde et al., 1999) but it can stimulate different types of empiricalwork rather than detract from it. This takes us back to the issues identified atthe beginning.

The authors of the texts under review vary in their approaches to disci-plinarity. As we have seen, Couldry is explicit in his claims for the disciplinarystatus of cultural studies and Barker suggests ‘that it is hard to see how this canbe resisted if cultural studies wants to survive by attracting degree students andfunding (as opposed to being only a postgraduate research activity’ (p. 7). Myown inclination is to describe cultural studies as ‘an interdiscursive space’(Baldwin et al., 1999: 41) that refreshes more established disciplines and isrefreshed by them. This is not to decry the importance of cultural studies or itscontribution. Indeed the opposite is true, for in bringing together literary stud-ies and sociology it provided an immense stimulus to both. However, debatesabout disciplinarity should not get in the way of research into power and cul-ture and all the books illustrate this well. Moreover, there is still much to bedone in taking the insights of particular, and perhaps more disciplinary-basedinquiries in new directions. I have already suggested the importance in this





respect of the omnivore thesis, but another example can be found in the workon the decline of social capital in the USA associated with the political scientist,Robert Putnam (2000). It can be argued that this has the potential to contex-tualize debates about culture, power and politics in many fruitful ways, torefresh cultural studies’ understandings of culture and policy, but it will need tobe brought into dialogue with understandings on television and everyday lifefrom cultural and media studies (for example, Silverstone, 1994; Gauntlett andHill, 1999).

Such dialogues will continue to facilitate the development of cultural stud-ies as an energetic way of researching, which can be seen to foster understand-ing of the everyday lives of those who study it. It is to be hoped that suchinnovations will mean that more textbook versions of cultural studies havemany new insights to report in the future in ways that mean that some of theolder literatures surveyed are increasingly superseded.

Notes

1 As supported by grants from ESRC, R0002236929, for ‘Lifestyles and SocialIntegration: A Study of Middle Class Culture in Manchester’ and fromManchester Airport for ‘Music, Identity and Lifestyle in ContemporaryManchester’.

References

Baldwin, E., Longhurst, B., McCracken, S., Ogborn, M. and Smith, G. (1999)Introducing Cultural Studies. London: Prentice Hall Europe.

Carrabine, E. and Longhurst, B. (1999) ‘Mosaics of Omnivorousness: SuburbanYouth and Popular Music’, New Formations 38: 125–40.

Carrabine, E. and Longhurst, B. (2000) ‘What Difference does a Course Make?Music, Education and Everyday Life’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 9/10(dated 1997–1998): 79–91.

Gauntlett, D. and Hill, A. (1999) TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life.London: Routledge.

Harrington, C. Lee and Bielby, D.D. (1995) Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasureand Making Meaning in Everyday Life. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UniversityPress.

Holt, D. (1997) ‘Distinction in America: Recovering Bourdieu’s Theory of Tastesfrom its Critics’, Poetics 25: 93–120.

Longhurst, B., Bagnall, G. and Savage, M. (2001) ‘Ordinary Consumption andPersonal Identity: Radio and the Middle Classes in the North West ofEngland’, in J. Gronow and A. Warde (eds) Ordinary Consumption. London:Routledge.

Peterson, R.A. (1992) ‘Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Massto Omnivore and Univore’, Poetics 25: 75–92.





Peterson, R.A. and Kern, R.M. (1996) ‘Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob toOmnivore’, American Sociological Review 61: 900–7.

Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of AmericanCommunity. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Savage, M., Bagnall, G. and Longhurst, B. (2001) ‘Ordinary, Ambivalent andDefensive: Class Identities in the North West of England’, Sociology 35(3):875–92.

Silverstone, R. (1994) Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge.Strinati, D. (1995) An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. London:

Routledge.Warde, A., Martens, L. and Olsen, W. (1999) ‘Consumption and the Problem of

Variety: Cultural Omnivorousness, Social Distinction and Eating Out’,Sociology 33: 105–27.

Brian Longhurst

Is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of English, Sociology, Politics and

Contemporary History at the University of Salford. His books include Popular Music and

Society (Polity, 1995), Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination

(with N. Abercrombie, Sage, 1998) and Introducing Cultural Studies (with E. Baldwin, S.

McCracken, M. Ogborn and G. Smith, Prentice Hall Europe, 1999).

Address: Institute for Social Research, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]





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Longhurst - Introducing and Progressing Cultural Studies Disciplinarity, Communication and Innovation