ABSTRACT
There is a sense in which the contemporary field of ‘cultural studies’ could be said to be synonymous with interdisciplinarity itself, given that it draws variously on sociology, anthropology, history, linguistics, philosophy, textual criticism, visual culture, the philosophy of science, geography, politics, economics and psychology, among other areas. In this chapter, though, I am going to be more specifically concerned with the positioning of cultural studies at the intersection between the social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology, and the humanities. One of the effects of this has been to challenge the disciplinary identity of literary studies by dissolving the category of ‘literature’ into the more inclusive notion of ‘culture’. More broadly, it has meant that cultural studies has been characterized by its critical reflection on the confining nature of disciplines and the possibilities for interdisciplinary knowledge.
