ABSTRACT

First Published in 2002. This lucid and concise overview brings a much needed sense and history and theoretical scale to the growth of cultural studies. The authors identify six major paradigms in cultural theory: utilitarianism, cultural materialism, critical theory and postmodernism. They outline social and discursive contexts within each of these has developed and provide the essential grounding to understand current debates in the field. This third edition has been extensively revised to include new material on the new historicism, queer theory, black and Latino cultural studies, cultural policy and posthumanism, and on the work of thinkers such as Zizek, Bourdieu, Deleuze and Guattari.

chapter |36 pages

Literature and society

From culturalism to cultural materialism

chapter |35 pages

Critical theory

From ideology critique to the sociology of culture

chapter |36 pages

Semiology

From structuralism to post-structuralism