ABSTRACT
This book has not been about ‘cultural studies’ but about the sociological study of culture. The two are not incompatible, but the latter, which subsumes the former, derives from a variety of philosophical antecedents and traditions of social theorizing that I have attempted to place some sense of order upon throughout this short monograph. ‘Cultural studies’, though drawing variously, and either explicitly or implicitly, from these traditions, is a relative newcomer and claims a difference for itself. I shall attempt here a brief sketch of this difference, or rather identity, and its background, which will not necessarily provide a justification for its particularity although, as in the case of postmodernism, I have confirmed its status by singling it out for special treatment. Many other scholars have attempted to provide a map of this emergent area of work and I shall offer two excellent summations of the territory before I begin my own. We should note that all pivot around the establishment of the Birmingham Centre. Milner and Browitt tell us that:
And McGuigan recommends:
Over no more than the last thirty years, initially in Britain and then spreading to North America and Australia, a new realm of research and publication activities has entered the academy under the guise of ‘cultural studies’. Within that period it has gained a legitimacy and a popularity, both inside and outside the academy, which is indicative of its appeal to important contemporary social currents. Research centres have been established and have flourished, academic appointments have been made specifically in that field (and one notes this in relation to, say, the significance of Durkheim gaining the first European Chair in sociology), graduate and, more recently, undergraduate degree programmes set up, numerous journals launched and heavily subscribed, and publishers have designated lists and promoted editors wholly in terms of ‘cultural studies’.
