Romanticising resistance, romanticising culture: Problems in Willis’s theory of cultural production

Perhaps the chief characteristic of the version of cultural studies developed by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies has been an emphasis on the distinctness of the ‘cultural level’ and a tendency to look to culture – especially working class culture – as the major source of developments towards progressive social change. In the area of education and youth policy the work of Paul Willis has, of course, been provocative and influential. It also exemplifies the particular CCCS concern with and, I suggest, romanticising of, ‘culture’.