Cultural studies

413 GSMC REVIEW AND CStlTICISM Roek, P., ft Mdotoih, M. (1974). Deviance and social control. London: Tavistock. Smith, A. a H. (1975). Paper voices: The popular press and todal change, 1935-1965 (with E. ImniiRi ft T- BUckweU). Tatiwa, NJ: Rowman and Litdefidd. Sparb, C. (1977). The evolutioa of cultural itudio. Screen Education, 22,16-30. Streeter. T. (1984). An alteniative appraadi to tdevigioa meardi: Devek^xnenti in Britiih cultural itudia at Binnin^iam. In W. R. Rowland, Jr. ft B. Watldni (Edi.), Interpreting television: Current research perspectives (pp. 74-97). Beverly HUIK Sage. Tobon,A.(1977). The Umiti of masculinity. honAaaiTanttack. Toboo, A. (1986). Popular culture: Practioe and inititution. ID G. MacCabe (Ed.), High theory/low culture: Analyting popular television and fUm (pp. 143-155). New York: SL Martin's Pms. Whannel. G. (1984). Blowing the whistle: The politics of sport. London: Pluta Williami, R. (1961). Thebngrevobitim. Hannondiwortii: Penguin. Williami, R. (Ed.) (1968). May Day mani^sto, 1968. Harmondiworth: Penguin. Willianu. R. (1974). Television: Technology and culturalform. Gla^ow: Fontana. WiUiami, R. (1977a). A lecture OD rcaUsm. Screen, 78(1), 61-74. Williami, R. (1977b). Marxism and literature. Oidbnl: Oxfonl Univenity Fren. Willii, P. (1977). Leammg to labor: How working class kids g^ woHung dass jobs. Loodan: Saxon House. Willis, P. (1978). Profane culture. London: Routledge ft Kegan PAul. Women*! Studiti Group (Edi.) (1978). Women take issue: Aspects of women's subon&nation. Londm: Hutdiinson. The Circulation of Cultural Studies LAWRENCE GROSSBERG Cultural itudies is moving rapidly into the mainstream of oontempnary intellectual and academic life in the United States. Within the disdjdine of communications, it seems that cultural studies is no longer merdy tolerated as a marginal (Hcsence; it is courted Mr. Grossberg is Associate Professor of Speech Communication, University of lUi- and even empowered—within limited parameten—by the diaci[riine*s nilii^ bloci. It it one of the few intellectually marginal and politicaily oppositional positions to be lcgitimated and incorpnated into the mainstream of Uds rdatively young discipline. And this, to some extent, has made it [voblematic for those in other still nuuginaliied positions, who see its success as an imperialistic attempt to represent them. At the same time. cultural studies has suddenly appeared in othrr disciplines including sociology and lit- 414 REVIEW AND CRITICISM er.irv sludics but wiih little srnse of its radical ihallrnge to these disciplinary tradi- DECEMBER 1909 ambiguous notion of critical theory; the result is that cultural studies is entirely dispersed, left without any sense of how its The TiU'i that rultural studies increasingly, intrllrctual and political history offers a difiind in new ways, is being commodiHed and ferent way of engaging questions of culture inxtitutiiinalized raises a number of disturb- and powrr. in^ questions (Allur, 1987; Morris, 1988). Those of us working in ^'cultural studies" As J ifimmfidity, it has little identity of its find ourselves i-aught between the need to own and is celeiirated only Tor its mobility deline and defend its speiificity and ihr nnd its capacity to generate further surplus desire to refuse to close off the ongoing cupiial. As an institutional site, it is rein- history of cultural studies by any such act (^ strilied intu thr academic and disciplinary definition. This is, it must be said, a very real pnihicfils against which it has always strug- dilemma that cannot be solved by a simple gled. 1 would like to address one consequence itssenion. It is not a question of "possessing" dl' ihr changing place of rultural studies: the cultural studies but of asking why it is that mnn* we talk about it, the less clear it is what ihe name has suddenly hern taken up by .ire talking about.' As cultural studies people in different theoretical, political, iuid something of an established posi- disciplinary positions. It is not a question of . it loses its spnificiiy. As the term "polinng" the boundaries but of recognizing p^ with increasing frequency, its rela- • hat ihere a a history of intellectual and tion IO .1 speiiflc British body of work disap- .aolitiial practices that is wonh struggling peai-s, and it Iwvmes less clear what space over. If there are real stakes in the struggle wr are supposed lo be inhabiting.* i)ver namings, then the project of articulating 1'his dilemma is constructed from two "cultural studies** involxTS a refusal to relinsides. On the one hand, cultural studies has quish the gains which a specific intellectual liern hijacked by an alliance between ihr Inrmation (with its own history, contradicappjireni demands ctf intellrctual work tions, unevm developments, conflicts, uni(which requires ihai it be condensed into a ties, and diHferrnces) brings to the study of ptisiiion that ran be defined and itumma- culture. rizrd), thr exigencies of the distribution of its Jhr Ftinnation nf Cultural Studies. The work (which have fumiionally erased its |X)wer and attractiveness of cultural studies history', iis internal diflferrnces, and its am- de|)ends panly upon three features that often linuiius reconstruction through ongoing dirrctly mniradict the forms of its contempodeUiies), and its own successes as a politically niry appn>pHation: First, it refuses to onn(committed and theoretically sophisticated struci itself as a finished or singular theoretiIxxly of work, lliis has meant that, too often, cal position which can freely move across a sprcinc exemplar of cultural studies—mint historical and political contexts. The history ccimnionly, a single position derived from of rultural studies can be read as the continusomewhere in the work of the Centre for ous effort to reixmstnia itself in the light of Contemporary Cultural Studies (whether (hanging historical projects atid intellectual delinrd in terms of theory, politics, oi ivllec- resources. This does not mean, however, as ti\f intellettual work)—is taken to be the some would have it, that there are no bounddefining position or model, the stablr repre- aries on that history, that every theory of sentation of the history and terrain of cul- c uhure, or even of culture and politics, repretural studies. On the other hand, the assimi- sents a viable position within the field of lation of rultural studies into the broader rultunil studies. It is not that cultural studies univrme of theories of cultural interpretation has no identity but rather that its identity is fr.g.. the forums held on cultural studies at always contested, always multiple, always thr 1988 meeting of the Modem Language changing; cultural studies is an historically AsMMialion) simply ends up substituting, articulated "unity-in-difference." meiiinymically, cultural studies for the morr .Srcond, cutural studies refuses to define its 415 CSMC own thecHvtical adequacy in academic or narrowly epistemological terms. Theory in cultural studies is measured by its rdation to, its enablemcnt of, strategic interventions into tbe spcdfic practices, structures, and struggles diaracterizing its place in the contemporary world. Cultural studies is (Hiopelled by its desire to construct possihilities, bath immediate and ima^ary, out of its histnical circumstances. It has no pretenuons to totality or universality; it seeks only to give us a better understanding oi where we are so that we can get somewhere else (some place, we hope, that is better—based on more just prindples of equality and the distribution of wealth and power), so that we can have a little more control over the history that %re are already making. This is not to say that it surrenders the efHStemological question; rather it historidzes and politicizes it. A theory's ability to "cut into the real," to use Benjamin's metaphor, is measured by the political positions and trajectories theory enables in response to the concrete contexts of power it confronts. Just like people in everyday life, cultural studies begins to grapple with and analyze difficult political situations using the resources and experiences at hand; ii draws upon and extends thecnies to enable it to break into experience in new ways. Thus, cultural studies' development is not a series of efMStemological ruptures a* paradigm shifts (the rationalist illusion) but the ongoing attempt to measure old theories against the emeiigence of new historical articulations, new cultural events, changes in the tempo and texture of social life, new stnu> tures of sodal relationships and new subjectivities. Cuhural studies refuses to be driven by purely thenrtical considerations; its agenda is always constructed by events and discourses that are located, in the first instance, outside of its own theoretical agenda. Hiis andior in history enables cultural studies to cope with the impossible cnnplexity of its own historical context—a context in which our theories demand more of us than we can reas(uiably accomplish, in which everything is evidence and evidence is changing more rapidly than we can document. REVIEW AND CRmCISM Third, the form of its interdistiplinary diaracter is buiit upon the recognitioi that mudi of what one requires to unHerstand cultural practices andrelationsis net, in any obvious sense, cultural. Whatever tHe effecu of cultural production, they are nevar autonomous facu to be located in, and c^pared with, other forms of sodal relationships. Culture exists in cnnidex relaticjns with other practices in the social formation, and these rdaticms determine, enaUe, and constrain the possitrilities of cultural practices. Cultural studies does not attempt to explain everything from the cultural point of view; rather, it attempts to exfdain culture usii^ whatever resources are intellectually and politically necessary and available, which is determined in part by the form and=place of its institutitmdization. Consequently, cultural studies has always been a doUcctive activity, although it is often produqed by a single author and the foims of its collectivity have varied greatly and can never bd defined in advance, outside of any spedfic hnstwicai and institutional cnitext. If there is no fixed definiticm oi cultural studies, perhaps the terrain on Which it operates can at least be identified: cultural studies is concerned with describing and intervening in the ways **texts' and "discourses" (i.e., cultural practices) are produced within, inserted into, and operate in the everyday life of human bdngs and sodal formations, so as to reproduce, struggle against, and perhaps transform the existing structures of power. That is, if people make history but in conditions not of thdr own making (Marx), cultural studies explores the ways this process is enacted within and through cultural practices, and the place of these practices within spedfic histnical b»mations. But such statements are fraught with danger for they suggest that the histcny of cultural studies, and the differences within it, can be represented as a continuous rephrasing of some original problematia Cultural studies is then redudble to a particular theory of the relationship between culture and sodety, or between culture and power, and the history of the formation is seen as the teleological or rational adiievement rf a REVIEW AND CRITICISM mure powerful and enlightening theory ol the relationship. 1 believe that we need lo begin with the more troubling recognition that the very questions—the problematic—at the heart of cultural studies are constantly being reshaped and reinflected. Cultural stutties is the ongnng effort to deBne its own local spedfidty. At any mmnent, the project of cultural studies involves locating '"culture" hy defining the spedfidty of both cuhtiral struggle and the historical context within and gainst which such siniggies are functiming. It is the historically constructed fonn, stnicture, and effectivity of the rdationihip itself as a terrain of power that defines the ute of cultural studies' intervention. In other words, the point of cuhural studies is that the relations between culture and sodety, or between culture and power, are always historically constituted. It follows, then, that cultural studies is not built upon a theory of the spedBdty of culture (usually defined in terms of s^nification, ideology, subjectivity, cu* community); rather, cultural studies examines how qwdfic practices are placed— and their productivity determined—between the sodal stniaures of power and the lived realities of everyday life. It is for this reason that current work on postmodemity intersects with cultural studies; it is not a matter of taking up postmodernism as a political and theoretical pontion but of rngaging its description of the nature of contemporary cultural and historical iife. DECEMBER (vnstantly being taken inio acoouni and new [lositions offered. But the history of cultural studies—the only place in whidi its spedficity (as an emci^gent set of cmnmitments and projects) can be found—is not a linear or progressive develofxnent. Cultural studies has always encompassed multiple positions, and it has always continuously engaged in debates, not »nly within these differences but also with positions whidi were never quite a parr of cultural studies (altbou^ they somrtimes were appropriated and rearticulated into it). Cutural studies has always pro(xeded discontinuously and erratically through a continuing struggle to rearrange and redefine the theoretical differences of the terrain itself in response to spedfk historical questions and events. Hius, ii has ofiten moved onto terrain it will later have to abandon and abandoned terrain it will later have to reoccupy. It has had its share of false starts which have taken it down paths it has had to struggle to escape; it has al times been forced to retrace its own steps and even, occasionally, lo leap onto paths it bad scarcdy imagined. In that sense, cultural studies involves cmstant theoretical work on already occupied—theoretically and politically—ground. Thus, practidng cultural studies is not simply a matter of taking up positions offered by various individuals or groups in the British tradition; sudi appropriatiiuui fail to recognize the complex ways in which these various efforts (e.g., tbe work of the BirmingObviously, any attempt to "define" cul- ham center, or Raymond Williams, or the tural studies is immediately caught in a Siireen adiective) were determined by thdr dilemma. There is not one cultural studies place within a spedfkally British topograposition, either synchronically or diachroni- phy and history. Nor is it a matter of erasii^ cally; there are always multiple, overlapping, tbe spedfic formations, trajectories and hischangii^ projects, commitments and vectCHrs tories of the British tradition. Such a "fetiaccording to whidi it has continued to rear- shism of the local" would contradict cuhural ticulate itself. Cultural studies is cmstantly studies' commitment to ex[d«c tbe comfdex renegotiating its identity and repositioning and cban^u^ relations between local cmitsdf within changing intdlectual and politi- texts and larger (perhitps even global) vec^ cal maps. Its identity—as well as the signifi- tors. Rearticulaling Cultural Studies. The task cance of any position or concept within cultural studies—can only be defined by an confronting us is to work on already occupied' always incomplete history of political en- ground, to rearticulate cultural, studies into gagements and theoretical debates in spedfic American contexts and in the proresponse to which alternative positions are cess, to transform cultqral studies itself.' But 417 CSMC this would seem to require some sense rfthe relevant ground, some map of the space we are to occupy and the ways we can take up places within it. I suggest that we can read the mobilities and stabilities of cultural studies, the various forms of its unity-in-diffei^ ence,* as a continuing struggle to articulate a set of commitments which would both differentiate it from other theoretical positions and empower the places from whidi it seeks to intervene into a political space. I am not daiming thai all of these commitments are unique to cultural studies, nor even that they "originate" within cultural studies. In fact, mudi of my description will refiect the radical way in which contemporary feminisms have transformed the sodid, intellectual and political conditions of cuhural studies. I offer my own take (motivated by my own coitext and project) on the "tendential lines of force" which have often propelled cultural studies, denned the Gonoepts it has struggled around, and articulated it in ways and directions it could not have foreseen. Materialism describes human reality in terms of material practices: what people do, how they transform the vrorld. But it is less a matter of intentions than of effects, and it is less a matter of oripns than of distribution (i.e., what practices are available to whan, and which are taken up). Materialism does not reduce the world to a collectiim of bodies, although it does recognize the reality of sodally constructed Uokjgical bodies. It addresses the world irf people in sodal, cultural, poUtical, tcdinolopCEd, and eamomic rdations; it talks about peojde with ideas, desires, pleasures, and emotions, all of which are defined by theformsand organizatiotis of practices that are available to transform these dimensions of reality. In that sense, ideas are real because they transform realities; they make a difference. But it is often less a matter of the content of ideas than the practices by which ideas are constructed and transformed and placed into the worid. Anti'fssentuilism describes' a contingent history in which nothing is guaranteed in advance, in which no relationship (correspondence) is necessary, in which no identity is intrinsic. Such "essences" may be histori- KEVIEW AND CRITICISM cally real, but they are not necessary. What we take for granted, the starting poim of whatever story we tdl, is always the end point of another story that has yet to be told. History is predsely the ongoing struggle to forge connections, to articulate practices together—linking this text to that meaning, this meaning to that experience, this experience to that political position, producing spedfic effecu and thereby constructing the structures of sodal and historical lifle. Articulation describes this ongoing construction of one set ofrelationsout of another: rearticulaUon always entails disarticulation. It is the continuous struggle to repoution practices within a shifting field of forces, to construct siructures, moments in which Uiings appear to be stitched into place, out of or on top of the differences. I do not mean to suggest that the field is ever entirdy open, that we are able to remake history at our whim. We are always constrained by a history we did not make, by the distribution of practices availiAile to us, by the efTective force of the multiple histories of articulation (leaving "traces without an inventory" that are often so tif^tly bound into place as to appear inevitable), by the tnulUple and often contradictory lopes of those articulations which define the "tendential forces" of larger historical spaces. Thus, the process of making history is always partly anonymous since we are never in conmil of the effects of our struggles. But it is carried out by the practices of real individuals and groups, consdously and unconsciously, through activity or inactivity, through victories—which may sometimes have disasutms consequences—or defeats. It is in this sense that cultural studies is often described as antihumanistic; cultural studies does not deny real people, but it does place them in equally real and overdeter^ mined historical realities. What they are, as individuals and human bdngs, is thus not imrinnc to them. Our practices produce our identity and our humanity, often bdiind our backs. In fact, the production of the individual as a soda] subject is a complex process by which different sodal positiois are produced—there are no necessary oorrc^xm- 418 REVIEW AND CIRITICISM denrcs among economic, poUiical, ideological, and aiKial subjecls. Individuals musi be wnn or intcrfxllatcd into these positions or, if yriu prefer, they have lo Uilcr them up in spedfir ways, and these positions can ihcn bfarticulated to each other (as well as to other structures of meaning and practice) so that a certain cultural or ideological identification appears to pull its subjects into specific political positions. Anlihumanism does not deny individuality, subjectivity, experience, nr agency; il simply historicizes and politicizes them, their constniaioii, and their relationships. If there is no essential human nature, we are always struggling to produce its boundaries, to constitute an effective (and hence real) human nature, but one which is different in different social formations. In other words, human nature is always real but never universal, sii^iar, orfixed.It is in ihe history of struggles, of articulation, thai history itself is given shape and direction, and lhat historically constituted relationii of power are put into platv. Pmuer operates at every level of human life; it is neither an abstract universal structure nor a subjective experience. It is both limiting and [Hoductive: producing differences, diaping relations, structuring identities and hierarchies, but also enabling practices and empowering social subjects. After all, every articulation provides the conditions of possibility for other articulations even as it structures and limits the field. At the level »f of social life, power involves the historical production <^ "economies"—the sodal production, distribution, and consumpUon—of different forms of value (e.g., ca(»tjU, money, meanings, information, representations, identities, desires, emotions, pleasures).' It is the spedfic articulation of social subjects into these droiiu of value, drcuits which organize sodai ponbilities and differences, that UHUtructs the structured inequalities i>f sodal power. While there in no guarantee that different economies trace out the same lines of inequality, the inequalities are rarely random. On the contrary, they drculate around, and are articulated to, systems of sodai difference which are themselves historically constructed. Moreover, different econ- may uperatr in diffeirnl ways; wfignore the fact thac mmetlmes thr distribution n\' rcsoumx is strategicallv manipulatnl Through ixmspiracin, iniimidH • iMiii. misrepresentation, eu.-. [n these t.' ways, thr sodal formation is alwayii nizrd into relations of domination and subordination. The xiru^lr uver power, then, involves ihe sinqtgle i« deconstruct and reconstruct correspnndemcs between systnns of the unequal distributiun of resources and systems of WH'iHl identities and differences. Anli-reductiomsm claims that people and praciices nrc always implicated, in contradictory ways, m hierarrhical structures ol' power. It tells us to avoid assuming dther too simple a beginning or too iieat an ending to »ur story. Histor>' is never all tied up into a single knot waiting Lo be unraveied. There is no single structure whidi stitches all of history into place, the patterns of whic4i arr indielibly sewn into the fabric fif history. ConsequCTitly, power cannot be redutxd to any sii^le dimension of value which can br assumed is necessarily and always fundamental. Nor can power be reduced to any single sodal structure of difference. No single plane of disempovrerment, suli'ering, w oppression has a guaranteed privileged rclalinn to history. The canjumiure defines cultural studies' methodological commitment to spedfidty. It dictates that we can only deid widi, and from within, specific contexts, for it is only there thai identities and relations exist effectively. The struggle to articulate a practice n the struggle to construct its context. Slnictures arc real and effective only within a spedfic context, always defined at a particular level of abstraction. For example, the commodity is a necessary structure of capitaJism. But having said that, vrc must recognize that, it operates at such an abstract level — describing many centuries and many national a>ntexts—that it tells us very little about more concreie- contexts. If we i^m^in at the h i ^ level of abstraction ai which Marx wrote Cupilal, the effecu of the commodity seem simple and direct. As we move to other levels, attemptii^ to construct *She concrete," its effiecis are increasingly delayed. 419 CSMC deferred, detoured, hybridized, etc. And the only way to arrive at its actual "kxal" effectivity is to recognize (a) how it is articulated by other rdations and (b) its spedfic ability to produce effects—iu readi or penetration into the sodal formation—across time and space. Thus, the [vactice d cultural studies involves the attempt to construct the spedficiiy of a conjuncture, the appropriateness of whidi is only ^ven by the intellectual and political project at hand. This, then, is not merdy a matter of aduiowledgjng the context, of interpreting texts and taking the context into account. It involves the movement of cultural studies from an interpretive or iransactional view to "a more historical and structural view" (Hall, et al, 1978, p. 185). The popular defines a necessary focus and commitment of cultural studies. As a political commitment, it is anti-ditist; it demands that we not separate ourselves entirdy from the masses. We are, as it were, part of the people who are always trying to infiuence thdr own march throng history. This does not assume that "the people" exists as a reified category always defmcd by some intrinsic property; "the people'* is an historically constructed sodal category, a site of struggle articulated by spedfic interpellations (e.g., as nomadic subjects in media culture [Grossberg, 1987] and as the nation in hegemonic stn^Ics [Hall, 1988]). Cultural studies recognizes that subordination is, after all, not the same as manipulation, nor total subjection. People live thdr positions in complex, contradict«y, and active ways; they n^iroduce and resist their subordinatim; they seek ways vi transforming and improving thnr position accwding to their own imagined possitnlities and resources; they live with, within, and against their subordinaticm, attemptii^ to make the best of what they are given, to win a bit more control over thdr lives, to extend thansdves and their resources, lliis is not to say that they are always struggling, or that when they do, it is always effective or victorious, or even that thdr victory will be progressive. To say that people are always empowered in some ways by thdr positions does not require us to equate empowerment with struggle, resis- REVIEW AND CRITICISM tance, or opposition; it merely requires us to recognize the active complexity in which peojrie live their lives. Nor does it require us to deny that sometimes people are manipulated, misled, misinformed, mystified; but we cannot take sudi passive pontionings to be the totality or constitutive nature of the people. We needtorecognise that subordination, empowerment, pleasure, resistance, and even struggle refer to complex sets of local effects and that the relations among them are never guaranteed in advance. Only in this messy terrain can we b ^ n to sort out how people recognize and transform themselves and thdr m»id within and through popuiar cultural practices. Thus, we needtoaddress how spedfic fams of popular culture, forms which may produce a variety of pleasures and which may empower thdr audiences in a variety of ways, are themselves struggled over and articulatedtolarger historically spedfic political projects. Heiue, "the popular" also defines a focus, for cultural studies' interventions will not succeed if it does not enter onto the terrain of people's own lives in ordertooffer them new possibilities, and to locate the ways in wbidi "the people" are themselves amstructed through thdr cultural practices. It is only by enteriiq; into the popular—popular l^wg^iagrs, cultures, l ogg^^ emotions,, experiences, p , moralii h ties, desires, consciousnesses—that we can gain a better sense of the field of forces, that we can see where struggles are actualized and possible, that v/t can hdp articulate, nurture, and support them. It is in the popular that we can discover how subordination is lived and resisted, that we can understand the possibilities <k subordination and resistance that are opened by and within the structures of dominatitai and whidi point beyond these structures. It is the popular—as a field of culture and everyday lifie—that makes available to us the cnnplex field (tf power in which people live thdr lives. Tht popular—as both commitment and focus—forces us back into a stratqpc engage ment with real peo[rie, existing in real rdations <d power. It is ndther our task to condemn them nor to define thdr Utopian aspirations. Cultural studies does not vaki- 42(t REVIEW AND CRITICISM IJKCEMBER rize every moment of local and popular activity, nor does it erase its own intellectual labor in order "to let the subordinate speak." It does not always and only speak the Ianguages of the masses, but it must refuse the luxury of perpetual self-analysis. Cultural studies is a a u i s u n t s t r a t ^ c effort to artioulate its own local idendty—both as intelleclual mtiquc and as political intervention—tu Imd a place for itself from which it can struggle to reronstruct the larger spacer of nur historical lives. NOIES "Thii esiay representi my latot cfTort to think throi^ the spedfidty of cultwal studies; however, it is in many ways better icprcKnted ai the bteit take in an oBBpiiig polykgue, my own atatement of a truly fxiUective efliiHi. Thus, I am indibtad to many people, and 1 apokyic br not haviqg attempted tu document their individual ooatributiou, ideas, and phruei. 1 aui only a^nawledge their great hdpand oontrihution to thii enay: Martin AUor, Jamei Hay, Mea^ian Morrii, jaaiee Radway, Andrew Ron, Jennifer Daryl Slack, and Ellen Wartella. In addition, I acknowledgt a very real dehi to Tony Branett. John Clarke, and Stuart Hail. 'Hall (1980) and Johnion (1986-1987) are the "Standard" deicripuoiu of cultural studuiL 'See my 1988 work for a critique of the Britiafa mdiiioa in the aervkr of an effort to define an American practiee of cultural Mudies respandiDg to the ipedfk political context comtructed by the me of the New Right. Part of the labor ai diii tranrfonution invdni reading one history into another: Cultural studies in the United States has to locate itself within the tnyecuiriei of the American Left, including the various uriian-imnugram, labor and agrarian-populist fonnatiom, the cultunilism of ihe New Left, the various feminist i t n i g | ^ and the diffieitnt intdectually invfMred prefects of Monthfy Review, Cultural Correspondence, and Sodtd Text. It would have to recogniae the spedfic amjiinaural limiti of the American Left: the United States never formed an integrated and institutionaUtatl Left which could occupy a place in comnon lenK. I am grateful to Jody Beriand for this point. ^For hiitorid of cultural rtudiei, n e my "in press" article and my eariier—and flavred—effort (1983). "CeitaiDly, within the British tradition, cultural studies focused o i a limited set nf thtK values— ipedfically meaning, repreaentation, and identity. It ii the articulation of thoK three eanoniies that Hall dexribes ai ideidogy. Allor, M. (1987). pRgecthre readingi: Cultural studies from hen. Canadian fovmal ttf Political and Social Theory. 11, ly^-iyr. Gnoafaerg, L. (1983). Gukuril Miidfei revaiied aiift Tcviaed. In M. S. Maadgr (Ed.), Ommumeations in transition ( ( ^ 39-70). New York: Miger. Groasberg, L. (1987). The In-differtnce of television. Scrten, 28,2B-46. Granbeig, L. (1988). It's a sin: Essays on postmodernism, polikcs,- and culOtre. Sydney: Power PuUic^iom. Gronberg, L. On pren). The fonnatioai of oilturd midiei: An American in Birnini^kam. Strategies. Hall, S. (1980). Culture studies and the Centre: Soane proNrmatin and fmhlcns. In S. Hail, O. Hobun, A. Lowe A P. WiBb (Bdb;), CWter*. meliia, languor (pp: 15-47). Lmdon-Huichiason. Hall,S. (1988). The hard road to renewal: Thatdurism and the crisis cf the Lefi. Londcm: ytxwo. Hall. S., Criicher, C , Jeffenon, T., Cbute, J. and B. Roberts (1978). PoUdng the crisis: Mugging, the 'MiU State and law and order. 421 CSMC REVIEW AND CRITICISM Johiuon, R. (1986-1987). What is eultural ttudiei anyway? Social Ttxt, 16, Morrii. M. (1988). Banality in cultural studies. Discourse, 10,2,3-29. Between Pragmatism and Marxism HANNO HARDT This cxpkHBttuy essay outlines the notion of culture as a context f v Gnnmunication and media research. It reviews established houndaries of traditional sociology of mass communication and the pnigmatist and the Marxist challenges to danical approaches to culture. The seardi for answers to numerous sodal and pcditical {voUenis has resulted in renewed efforts to glean answers from the I^losophical traditions of American pragmatism and- iu refwmist goals and in a discovery of contemporary European Marxist thought as a potential source of theoretical insights about the nature of communicatim and media practices. The cmsideration of culture has become a central concern of both non-Marxist and Marxist scholarship. The idea of culture as the cmtext fiv the creation of meaning includes notions of culture as a communicatim system (Leach, 1965), views of participation and democracy (Dewey, 1939), and suggestions of ways of life (Williams, 1961). In fact, where culture is less associated with the study of how people live together throu^ communication or with an analysis of spedfic intellectual or artistic activities (after an engaged exdiange about the demise of high culture and the rise of popular culture in the 1970s), it has been for the purposes <i studying human behavior and sodal control. However, when an understanding of communication is reduced to its potential effects or its power to manipulate or transfonn society, culture becomes a set of control medianisms. Thus, Geertz (1973, p. 249) observes that the dominant concept of culture in American social sdence identifies it with learned behavior. When concepts like partidpation, public opinion, or democracy are used to support a variety of theoretical positions thai range from a narrow definitioi of communication as exerdsing infiuence over others to supporting a view of communication as sharing in the experience of life, the result is the [vxxluction of varying understandings at "culture" as potential theoretical turning points in the arguments of pragmatiit and Marxist writing^. Although some advocates of a critical approadi to media and cnnmunication may labor under the impression that a critique of sodety justifies a merging «* obfuscation of these spedfic pontions, they are competing ideologies. In particular, the vested interests of dasucal sociology emphasiie questions of individualism, rationality, freednn, and cmtrol of the marketplace, while a [vagmatist tradition of culture provides ideas of community and a pluralist notion of democracy which help confirm the bdief in the path of progress. Thus, Connolly (1983, p. 131), in his Mr. Hardt is Professor of Journalism and critique of modem-day pragmatism, writes Mass Communication, University of Iowa. that "Rorty*s language tranquiliaes and