CSMC

405
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
The Problem of American Cultural Studies
ALAN O'CONNOR
This essay raises questions about cultural
studies in the United States and contrasts it
with cultural studies in Britain. It is argued
that cultural studies should be understood as
practice, institution, and cultural form. In
Britain, the practice is an effort at collective
intellectual work-a genuine attempt at a
democratic graduate research institute. The
typical published form in England is a cer-
tain kind of collectively written book. Cul-
tural studies in the United States is discussed
with particular reference to the work of
Grossberg. A concluding argument is made
for research that makes connections with
grass roots organizations, including the pro-
duction of alternative media forms.
Cultural studies in Britain is an intellec-
tual tradition. It is composed of several insti-
tutions and formations, and it has a charac-
teristic cultural form and teaching practice.
Cultural studies is not a science. It is neither
organized about a central problematic (or
paradigm), as Althusser argued a science
must be (Althusser & Balibar, 1970), nor
does it aspire to the almost mathematical goal
of semiotics. Neither is it organized as a
professional activity of liberal scholarship for
its own sake along the lines of the Modern
Language Association or other professional
associations. The tradition of cultural studies
is not one of value-free scholarship but of
political commitment. This includes a reflex-
ivity about its own activities that is not
exempt from its own kind of scrutiny and
analysis.
The founding institution of cultural stud-
ies, now the Department of Cultural Studies
at the University of Birmingham, has been
described many times (Hall, 1980; 1986, p.
Mr. O'Connor is Assistant Professor of Com-
munication, Ohio State University.
59; Tolson, 1986; Women's Studies Group,
1978, pp. 7-17). The intellectual forma-
tions-or invisible colleges and their affilia-
tions (Williams, 1977b)-of cultural studies
is a more difficult issue. It is nonetheless
crucial because the model of individual schol-
arship is particularly inappropriate. In the
work of the Birmingham Centre during the
1970s,1 for example, there are noticeable
affiliations with the radical sociology of the
National Deviancy Conference (Rock &
Mcintosh, 1974), the May Day Manifesto
group (Williams, 1968),' the Women's
Liberation Movement, and the analysis of
Race Today, as well as more obvious intellec-
tual debts to Raymond Williams in the early
years and later to the Althusser school. There
are also important debates with the forma-
tions around Screen magazine, and later with
the formation around Media, Culture and
Society.3
The characteristic cultural form of cul-
tural studies is a certain kind of collectively
produced book."This is directly related to the
tradition of group work and collective proj-
ects developed at the Birmingham Centre
and continued in the team teaching of the
Open University course on popular culture.
The best examples of English cultural stud-
ies are all of this kind. Resistance Through
Rituals (Hall & Jefferson, 1976), Women
Take Issue (Women's Studies Group, 1978),
Working Class Culture (Clarke, Critcher, &
Johnson, 1979), and Policing the Crisis
(Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, &
Roberts, 1978) are collectively written proj-
ects with a direct relation to their conditions
of production at a graduate research center
and the broader Left political culture in
which they are clearly embedded.
Cultural studies in Britain is character-
ized by the extraordinary diversity and origi-
nality of the topics that have been studied.
The studies of youth subcultures and televi-
406
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
sion news programs are well known. Equally
deserving of attention are studies of mascu-
linity (Tolson, 1977), the image of women
(Milium, 1975), ways in which the past is
presented in museums (Lumley, 1988),
young women at school and work (Griffin,
1985), job training (Finn, 1987), the politics
of sport (Whannel, 1984), the history of
sexuality (Mort, 1988), Caribbean music
(Hebdidge, 1987a), gender and expertise
(McNeil, 1987), James Bond (Bennett &
Woollacoll, 1987), dime novels (Denning,
1987b), the history of middle class intellec-
tuals (McNeil, 1987), and how white kids in
Birmingham respond to reggae music
(Jones, 1988).
Along with the diversity of topics there is a
wide range of theoretical approaches and
lively debate among them. Cultural studies is
not unified around a central theme or prob-
lematic but is characterized by a diversity of
concrete studies which are theoretically
informed. There has been a tendency, in
general discussions, to reduce the theoretical
diversity of cultural studies to a small num-
ber of alternative positions. The actual prac-
tice is a tradition of theorizing through con-
crete and historical studies which must be
read in their own terms.
Cultural Studies m the United States. The
idea of cultural studies is fairly new in the
United States. However, a minority tradition
of communication scholarship has existed for
10 or 15 years which has made a claim for
cultural studies against the behavioral and
functionalist paradigms of mainstream com-
munication research.t Carey (1977) makes a
case for a "ritual" perspective in which
communication is understood as part of the
creation and transformation of a shared cul-
ture. However, the interpretive approach for
which he calls does not address the issue of its
own political intentions. It is presented as a
humanities subject in the university, beyond
politics.
Newcomb (1984; Newcomb & Hirsch,
1983) presents a more text-oriented version
which points to the multiple meanings in
television and other mass media. Like Carey,
Newcomb insists that communication media
DECEMBER 1989
are not in any way secondary but are an
important part of contemporary culture. He
rejects abstraction for a notion of the com-
plexity of experiences. His overall emphasis
on the complexity of texts and his existential
rejection of the idea of "mass" communica-
tion-because each viewer or reader makes
something different of it-is close in some
ways to 'he early work of Williams (1961).
Newcomb, however, has little sense of the
social or political structure, which appears in
his work only as the behaviorist and func-
tionalist social science research that he
rejects.
In Grossberg (1983), there is a critique of
Carey on the grounds that he ignores issues
of power. Whereas Carey and Newcomb
understand American media as part of every-
day life in the United States, Grossberg
argues that communication is the site of
symbolic struggles among antagonistic social
groups. This is a very important argument
indeed.
In his own subsequent work, Grossberg
(1983, 1984b) presents the British cultural
studies tradition as a series of failed attempts
to study the relationships between culture
and society. By this account Williams (1961 )
tried to study this relation with his concept of
a "structure of feeling." But Grossberg
argues, drawing on Althusser, that the con-
cept is flawed because it assumes a holistic
unity and excludes social and political con-
Ilict. Studies of encoding/decoding in televi-
sion discourse (Brunsdon and Morley, 1978,
Morley, 1980, 1981,983) also fail to connect
culture (encoding) and society (decoding).
Grossberg reads these studies as showing no
patterns of response by various social groups
and therefore failing in any systematic way
to conn en structures of television encoding
and audience decoding. Hebdige's study of
youth subculture (1979) also fails. According
to Grossberg, it tries to connect the encodings
of the fashion and entertainment industries
(culture) with the ways their products are
actually used by youth subcultures (society).
But Grossberg argues that the concept of
subcultural 'style' fails to accomplish this
research goal. Since he reads cultural studies
CSMC
in this way as a series of failed attempts to
connect culture and society1 Grossberg then
proposes that the concepts should be aban-
doned. There is no such thing as culture or
society. To replace cultural studies Gross-
berg (1983, 1984b) proposes a postrnodemist
research practice in which power and desire
are located in concrete anarchist examples.
Grossberg's more recent work is centered
around the description of the "affective econ-
omy" of the "rock music apparatus" (1984a;
1986b) and the "television apparatus"
(l986a). Instead of deconstructing categories
such as culture and society1 Grossberg now
proposes a nonunified theoretical discourse
about embodied experience (affect, the body)
which in part constructs a field (e.g., dif-
ferent groups of fans include different things
as "rock music") in particular epochs (e.g.,
the era of nuclear weapons). These and other
vectors intersect in different ways. Grossberg
stresses a situated diversity of form and
experience and rejects the possibility of a
unified theory of culture.
His own conceptual suggestions amount to
a kind of theoretical bricolage. Scattered
through these recent writings are the "no-
madic subject" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1977),
a "billboard world" (jameson, 1984), a "cul-
ture of pessimism" (Benjamin, 1968), "af-
fect" and "youth" (from mainstream social
psychology and sociology), and a notion of a
postmodern experience (Baudrillard, 1983).
This weird theoretical apparatus has been
criticized by Marcus (1986, p. 78), who says
that "The theory has no support other than
its ability to float in the air," and Nugent
(1986, p. 82), who points out that Gross-
berg's use of the word "hegemony" barely
connects with Gramsci's active interest in
politics. It may be that this theoretical appa-
ratus best fits Grossberg's interest in rock
music in the United States, a topic where
cognitive and directly political models seem
to be of little use.
A Critique of Grossberg. The main prob-
lem of Grossberg's influence is that in mak-
ing his case for postmodernism and more
concrete studies of "cultural apparatuses" he
apparently discards most of cultural studies
407
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
as it has developed in Britain. At conferences
in the United States, cultural studies has
become synonymous with various types of
postmodern theorizing.
There are two factors which encourage
this development. The first is the difficulty in
the United States of reading the cultural
studies style of theorizing through concrete
examples when most of the examples are
specific to British society. How many stu-
dents in the United States have read a copy of
Jackie magazine? How many have seen a
Nationwide television news show? Also,
there are difficulties of obtaining copies of
most cultural studies articles and books in the
United States. The more general overviews
and discussions of theory obviously cross the
Atlantic better. This has led to a tendency to
falsely unify the field around a small number
of articles by Stuart Hall. Given Hall's
strong advocacy of collective and committed
intellectual work, this is an ironic develop-
ment.
The second difficulty is the relative isola-
tion of cultural studies scholars in the United
States and the relative absence of a Left
intellectual tradition. Cultural studies in the
United States is being sponsored by scholars
who rarely have any connection to existing
political and cultural movements and are
somewhat surprised that this might even be
possible.
Grossberg's selective history of cultural
studies is mapped as an alternative paradigm
for communication studies. This highly
selective presentation concentrates mainly on
the early work of Williams, on research
using the model of encoding and decoding in
television, and on Hebdige's book on subcul-
tures. There is a logic in this selection.
Williams is read through a comparison with
Dewey's interest in community and commu-
nication. Hall's encoding/decoding model is
read through the dominant paradigm of
.American communication studies: the pro-
duction of media and their active reception
by audiences."
The reading of Williams, however, is par-
tial and reductionistic. Grossberg essentially
stops at about 1974 and nowhere discusses
408
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
Williams' major work of communication the-
ory, Marxism and Literature (1977b).
Grossberg treats Williams as if the notion of
a "structure of feeling" is a rigorous concept
which guides all of his work. It is actually a
contradictory and ad hoc formulation and
has only a residual role in Williams' work
after the mid-1970s (O'Connor, 1989b, pp.
83-85).' Grossberg's reading of Hall has lost
the sense of the rootedness of communication
processes in social reproduction and politics.
Hall becomes a theoretician of the super-
structure, of communication effectively iso-
lated from material and political limits and
pressures.
Grossberg's more recent work employs
theoretical vectors which frequently look
very similar to ideas he ruled out of court in
articles in the early 1980s. For example, his
sketch of a postwar "culture of pessimism" in
the United States after the 1950s seems in
effect very close in purpose to Williams'
sketch (1961) of the structure of feeling of
Britain in the 1960s. A wide diversity of
books which are somewhat similar to Gross-
berg's recent position, including Bennett
(1982), Bourdieu (1984), and Williams
(1977b), are rarely mentioned and for rea-
sons that are completely unclear.
The effect is a somewhat esoteric frame-
work that has little in common with the
much more generous boundaries of cultural
studies in Britain. What has happened under
the rubric of postmodernism is that the sense
of culture as practice, form, and institution
has been lost. This has resulted in confused
thinking about how cultural studies might
look as institution, practice, and cultural
form in the United States.
Cultural Studies In and Out oj the Class-
room: It appears to be difficult to reproduce
the institutional situation of the Birmingham
Centre or the Open University in North
America, although there is the example of
the Center for 20th Century Studies at the.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and
the Department of Cultural Studies at Trent
University in Canada. Individual instructors
in humanities or social science faculties have
to work, often in isolation, within their exist-
ing institutional framework. In particular,
DECEMBER 1989
collective work, while possible, is actively
discouraged in America's university system.
This does not, however, mean that the
activity has to become one of cultural theory
rather than the practice of cultural studies.
There are some traditions of research in the
United States which ought to be continued.
One of these is an interest in studying alter-
native media (Downing, 1984). Another pos-
sibility is to critically appropriate the theme
of community and media, if this is an impor-
tant theme in North American culture,
sharply criticizing naive notions of "commu-
nity" and radicalizing the topic. It would also
seem sensible for cultural studies in the
United States to develop a strong interest in
doing cultural studies in Mexico and the rest
of Latin America-especially since the
"communication for development" paradigm
is almost completely discredited there, but
there is a strong interest there in semiology
and the work of Bourdieu. Cultural studies
in North America could be very different if a
strong feminist presence were there from the
start, rather than having to fight against an
already established formation. Connections
should be made to studies of the cultural and
political struggles of black, Latino, Asians,
and other minority fractions within the
United States."
It may be useful to make one further point
in conclusion. Williams (1977a) hassaid that
we live in a world that is in a sense rotten
with criticism. A work of theory and criti-
cism is today valued more highly than the
actual cultural production upon which it is a
commentary. Part of the reason for this in
England is the difficulty of doing rather than
writing about alternative cultural forms.
(Williams' own film projects were effectively
blocked, although he did script several televi-
sion productions.) But this is less the case in
the United States with its different organiza-
tion of radio and television. There is nothing
in England that corresponds to the Pacifica
group of radio stations or public access televi-
sion. Cultural studies in the United States
will be poorer if it neglects this alternative
experience. It surely also would be useful to
make the connection with alternative film
and television producers whose work deals
CSMC
critically with media issues and is itself an
example of an alternative cultural practice.
Examples include Lizzie Bardon's film Born
In Flames (1983) and "Paper Tiger Televi-
sion" (Halleck, 1984). Finally, it is usually
possible in American universities for stu-
409
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
dents to learn about cultural forms first
hand. Instead of theorizing about encoding
and decoding, students can learn by trying to
create and find an audience for an alternative
television program."
NOTES
'Articles by members of the Birmingham Centre include Hall (1980), Johnson (1979; 1986), Tolson
(1986), Lumley and O'Shaughnessy (1985), Connell and Mills (1985), Green (1982), and Sparks
(1977). American introductions include Becker (1984), Streeter (1984), and Grossberg (1983). See also
the Journal oj Communication Inquiry special issue on Stuart Hall (1986). Fiske's introductions from
an Australian formation (1986; 1987) give more emphasis to his own version of social semiotics and are
less politically engaged.
2Williams was editor of the May Day Manifesto, 1968, and the large working group included
Thompson, Hall, and others.
3For these debates, see Chambers et al. (1977-1978), Coward (1977), Hall (1980), and Johnson
(1979). On the history of the Screen formation, see MacCabe (1985). Hall (1980) should be understood
not as "cultural theory" but as part of a debate between the political economy arguments of the journal
Media, Culture and Society and cultural studies in general. This debate, initiated in Collins et al.
(1986), deserves to be taken much more seriously in the United States.
"Examples of the collective work from the Birmingham Centre include Smith (1975), Hall, Connell,
and Curti (1976), Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1978; 1981; 1982a; 1982b), Batsleer et
al. (1985), Women's Studies Group (1978), and English Studies Group (1979). Other books and
articles by past members of the Birmingham Centre include: Brunsdon and Morley (1978), Morley
(1981; 1983; 1986), Brunsdon (1981), Hebdige (1979; 1987a; 1987b), Langan and Schwarz (1985),
Milium (1975), Hobson (1982), Willis (1977; 1978), Denning (1987a; 1987b), Bromley (in press),
Chambers (1986), Jones (1988), McRobbie (1980; 1984), and McRobbie and McCabe (1981).
Although many of these were written after the authors left the Centre they are clearly extensions of
work done there and evidence of the fruitfulness of group work.
5This section is indebted to the very helpful response of CSMC reviewers of the first draft of this
essay.
'Sparks (1977) does not even mention the encoding/decoding model in his survey of cultural studies.
See also Johnson (1979; 1986). Cohen (1980, p. 83) says his interest in subcultures is not a matter of
studying deccdings of the dominant culture. Cultural studies narrowly interpreted as the study of
encoding/decoding is criticized by Corner (1986).
"See also my 1989a work, Raymond Williams on Television and, for an overview, my 1989b work.
Elsewhere (1981), I review Hebdidge (1979) and Clarke et al. (1979).
"Birmingham Centre books on issues of race include Hall et al. (1978), Hebdige (1979), Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies (1982a), Gilroy (1987), and Jones (1988).
90n "activist" cultural studies, see McRobbie and McCabe (1981) and McRobbie (1982). For
activist cultural studies research in the United States, see Kahn and Neumaier (1985), Halleck (1984),
Lippard (1984), and Kellner (1985).
REFERENCES
Althusser, L. & Balibar, E. (1970). Reading capital. London: New Left Books.
Batsleer-, j., Davies, T., O'Rourke, R., & Weedon, C. (1985). Rewriting English: Cultural politics of
gender and class. London: Methuen.
410
REVIEW AND CRITICISM DECEMBER 1989
Baudrillard, J. (1983). The ecstasy of communication. In H. Foster (Ed.), The anti-aesthetic: Essays orz
pustmodem culture (pp. 126-134). Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press.
Becker, S. L. (1984). Marxist approaches to media studies: The British experience. Critical Studies in
Mass Communication, 1,81-109.
Benjamin, W. (1968). Theses on the philosophy of history. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations
(253-264). New York: Schocken.
Bennett, T. (1982). James Bond as popular hero. Birmingham: Open University Press.
Bennett, T., & Woolacott, J. (Eds.) (1987). Bond and beyond: The political career of a popular hero.
New York: Methuen.
Borden, L. (1983). Born in flames. Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Poluics, 16, 12-16.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique oj the judgement oj taste (R. Nice, Trans.).
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bromley, R. (in press). Memory making: The representation oj the period 7978-7945 in contemporary
umungs. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Brunsdon, C., & Morley, D. (1978). Everyday television: "Nationwide." London: British Film
Institute.
Brunsdon, C. (1981). "Crossroads": Notes on soap opera. Screen, 22(4), 32-37.
Carey, J. W. (1977). Mass communication research and cultural studies: An American view. In
J. Curran, M. Gurevitch, & J. Woolacou, (Eds.), Mass communication and society (pp. 409-425).
London: Edward Arnold.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. (1978). On ideology. London: Hutchinson.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. (1981). Unpopular educatum: Schooling and social
democracy since 7944. London Hutchinson.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. (l982a). The empire strikes back: Race and racism In 70s
Britain. London: Hutchinson.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. (1982b). Making histories: Studies In history umtmg and
politics. London: Hutchinson.
Chambers, I., Clarke, j., Connell, I., Curti, L., Hall, S., & Jefferson, T. (1977-1978). Marxism and
culture. Screen, 18(4), 1 0 9 ~ 119.
Chambers, I. (1986). Popular culture: The metropolitan experience. London: Methuen.
Clarke, J., Critcher, C., & Johnson, R. (1979). Working class culture: Studies In history and theory.
London: Hutchinson.
Cohen, P. (1980). Subcultural conflict and working-class community. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe,
& P. Willis, (Eds.), Culture, media, Language: Working papers in cultural studies (pp. 78-87).
London: Hutchinson.
Collins, R., Curran, J., Garnham, N., Scannell, P., Schlesinger, P., & Sparks, C. (Eds.) (1986). Media,
culture and society, London: Sage.
Connell, I., & Mills, A. (1985). Text, discourse and mass communication. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.),
Discourse and communicanon: New approaches to the analysis oj mass media discourse and
communication (pp. 26-43). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Corner, J. (1986). Codes and cultural analysis. In R. Collins, J. Curran, N. Garnham, P. Scannell,
P. Schlesinger, & C. Sparks (Eds.), Media, culture and society. London: Sage.
Coward, R. (1977). Class, "culture" and the social formation. Screen, 18(1), 75-105.
Deleuze, G., & Guauari, F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. New York: Viking.
Denning, M. (1987a). Cover stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British. spy thriller. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
CSMC
411
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
Denning, M. (t 987b). Mechanic accents: Dime novels and working class culture in America. London:
Verso.
Downing, J. (1984). Radical media: The political experience of alternative communication. Boston:
South End Press.
English Studies Group, (1979). Thinking the thirties. In F. Barker, J. Bernstein, J. Coombes,
P. Hulme, D. Musselwhite & J. Stone (Ed,.), 1936: The sociology of literature (Vol. 2. PP 1-20)
Colchester: University of Essex Press.
Finn, D. (1987). Training without jobs: New deals and broken promises. London: Macmillan.
Fiske, J.(1986). Television and popular culture: Reflections on British and Australian critical practice.
Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 3, 200-216.
Fiske, J. (1987). British cultural studies and television. In R. C. Allen (Ed.), Channels of discourse (pp.
254-289). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Gilroy, P. (1987). There ain't no black in the union jack. London: Hutchinson.
Green, M. (1982). The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In P. Widdowson (Ed.),
Re-reading English (pp. 77-90). London: Methuen.
Griffin, C. (1985). Typical girls? Young women move from school to work. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Grossberg, L. (1983). Cultural studies revisited and revised. In M. S. Mander (Ed.), Communication in
transition (pp. 39-70). New York: Praeger.
Grossberg, L. (1984a). I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all: Rock and roll, pleasure and
power. Enclitic, 8, 94-110.
Grossberg, L. (1984b). Strategies of Marxist cultural interpretation. Critical Studies in Mass
Communication, 7,392-421.
Grossberg, L. (1986a). The in-difference of television or mapping in TV's popular (affective) economy.
(ERIC report No. 293516.)
Grossberg, L. (1986b). Is there rock after punk? Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 3, 50-74.
Hall, S. (1980). Cultural studies: Two paradigms. Media, Culture and Society, 2, 57-72.
Hall, S. (1986). On postmodernism and articulation: An interview. Journal of Communication Inquiry,
10(2),45-60.
Hall, S., Connell, I., & Curti, L. (1976). The "unity" of current affairs programmes. In T. Bennett,
S. Boyd-Bowman, C. Mercer & J. Woollacott (Eds.), Popular television and film (pp 88-117).
London: British Film Institute.
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J.,& Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the crisis: Mugging, the
state and law and order. London: Macmillan.
Hall, S., & Jefferson, T. (1976). Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain.
London: Hutchinson.
Halleck, D. (1984). Paper tiger television: Smashing the myths of the information industry every week
on public access cable. Media, Culture and Society, 6, 313-318.
Hebdige, D. (1979). The meaning of style. London: Methuen.
Hebdige, D. (1987a). Cut 'n' mix: Culture, identity and Caribbean music. London: Comedia.
Hebdige, D. (1987b). Hiding in the light. London: Comedia.
Hobson, D. (1982). Crossroads: The drama ofa soap opera. London: Metheun.
Jameson, F. (1984). Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism. New Left Review, 746,
53-92.
Johnson, R. (1979). Three problematics: Elements of a theory of working-class culture. In J. Clarke,
412
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
DECEMBER 1989
C. Critcher, & R. Johnson (Eds.), Working class culture: Studies In history and theory (pp.
201-237). London: Hutchinson.
Johnson, R. (1986). What is cultural studies anyway? Social Text, 16,38-80.
Journal ufCommunication Inquiry. (1986). 10(2). [Special issue on Stuart Hall].
Jones, S. C. (1988). Black culture, udute youth. London: Macmillan.
Kahn, D., & Neumaier, D. (1985). Cultures in contention. Seattle: The Real Comet Press.
Kellner, D. (1985). Public access television: Alternative views. In Radical Science (Ed.), Mahmg tnaoes:
The politics of communications (pp. 79-92). London: Free Association Books.
Langan, M., & Schwartz, B. (Eds.). (1985). the crises in the British state: 1880-1930. London:
Hutchinson.
Lippard, L. R. (1984). Get the message? A decade oj art for social change. New York: Dutton.
Lumley, 8., & O'Shaughnessy, M. (1985). Media and cultural studies. In Z. G. Baranski & J. R. Short
(Eds.), Developing Contemporary Marxism, (pp. 268-292). London: Macmillan.
MacCabe, C. (1985). Class of '68: Elements of an intellectual autobiography 1967-81. In Theoretical
f')jays: Film, linguistics, literature (pp. 1-32). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Marcus, G. (1986). Critical Response. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 3, 77-81.
McNeil, M. (Ed.) (1987). Gender and expertise. London: Free Association Books.
McRobbie, A. (1980). Settling accounts with subcultures. Screen Education, 34, 37-50.
McRobbie, A. (1982). The politics of feminist research: Between talk, text and action. Feminist review,
12,46-57.
McRobbie, A. (1984). Dance and social fantasy. In A. McRobbie & M. Nava (Eds.), Gender and
Oenerauon (pp. 130-161). London: Macmillan.
McRobbie, A., & McCabe, T. (1981). FeminismJar girls. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Milium, T. (1975)./mages oj women. London: Chatto and Windus.
Morley, D. (1980). The Nationunde audience: Structure and decoding. London: British Film
Institute.
Morley, D. (1981). The "Nationwide" audience: A postscript. Screen Education, 39, 3-14.
Morley, D. (1983). Cultural transformations: The politics of resistance. In H. Davis & P. Walton
(Eds.), Language, Image, Media (pp. 104-117). Oxford: Basil BlackwelL
Morley, D. (1986). Family television: Cultural power and domestic leisure. London: Comedla.
Mort, F. (1988). Boys own? Masculinity, style and popular culture. In R. Chapman & J. Rutherford
(Eds.), Male order: Unwrapping masculinity (pp. 193-244). London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Mosco, V., & Wasko,]. (Eds.) (1985). Popular culture and media events: The Critical Communications
Review (Vol. 3). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Newcomb, H. M. (1984). On the dialogic aspects of mass communication. Cntical Studies in Mass
Communication, 1,34-50.
Newcomb, H. M. & Hirsch, P. M. (1983). Television as a cultural forum: Implications for research.
Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 8(2), 45-55.
Nugent, S. L. (1986). Critical response. Critical Studies in Mass Communicatum, 3,82-85.
O'Connor, A. (1981). Cultural studies and common sense. Canadian Journal oj Political and Social
Theo,y,5,183-195.
O'Connor, A. (Ed.) (1989a). Raymond Williams on television. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
O'Connor, A. (1989b). Raymond Williams: Writing, culture, politics. London: Basil Blackwell.
CSMC
413
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
Rock, P., & McIntosh, M. (1974). Deviance and social control. London: Tavistock.
Smith, A. C. H. (1975). Paper voices: The populor press and social change, 7935-7965 (with
E. Immirzi & T. Blackwell). Totawa, Nj: Rowman and Littlefield.
Sparks, C. (1977). The evolution of cultural studies. Screen Education, 22,16-30.
Streeter, T. (1984). An alternative approach to television research: Developments in British cultural
studies at Birmingham. In W. R. Rowland, Jr. & B. Watkins (Eds.), Interpreting television: Current
research perspectives (pp. 74-97). Beverly Hills: Sage.
Tolson, A. (1977). The limits of masculinity. London: Tavistock.
Tolson, A. (1986). Popular culture: Practice and institution. In C. MacCabe (Ed.), High theory/low
culture: Analyzing popular television andfilm (pp. 143-155). New York: 81. Martin's Press.
Whannel, G. (1984). Blowing the whistle: The politics of sport. London: Pluto.
Williams, R. (1961). The long revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Williams, R. (Ed.) (1968). May Day manifesto, 7968. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technologyandeulturalform. Glasgow: Fontana.
Williams, R. (1977a). A lecture on realism. Screen, 78(1),61-74.
Williams, R. (J 977b). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. London: Saxon
House.
Willis, P. (1978). Profane culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Women's Studies Group (Eds.) (1978). Women take issue: Aspects of women's subordination. London:
Hutchinson.
The Circulation of Cultural Studies
LAWRENCE GROSSBERG
Cultural studies is moving rapidly into the
mainstream of contemporary intellectual and
academic life in the United States. Within
the discipline of communications, it seems
that cultural studies is no longer merely
tolerated as a marginal presence; it is courted
Mr. Grossberg is Associate Professor of
Speech Communication, University oj Illi-
nOIs.
and even empowered-within limited pa-
rameters-by the discipline's ruling blocs. It
is one of the few intellectually marginal and
politically oppositional positions to be legiti-
mated and incorporated into the mainstream
of this relatively young discipline. And this,
to some extent, has made it problematic for
those in other still marginalized positions,
who see its success as an imperialistic
attempt to represent them. At the same time,
cultural studies has suddenly appeared in
other disciplines including sociology and lit-
Copyright 2003 EBSCO Publishing