In recent years cultural studies perspectives have proliferated through a range of traditional academic disciplines and have been a fertile source of new ideas beyond the sphere of the academy; at the same time, cultural studies has been subject to critical scrutiny. Cultural Studies in Question is a major new text that offers a critical reappraisal of the contemporary practice of cultural studies. Focusing on the contribution of cultural studies to understanding media, communication, and popular cultures in contemporary societies, the authors offer a major reassessment of the domain of cultural studies. Elements examined include: + different strands of cultural studies, their sources, and whether there is a coherent project in cultural studies today + tensions and debates within cultural studies, and between cultural studies and alternative or related approaches to contemporary media and society + the movement by cultural studies revisionists toward more empirical and sociological modes of analysis Drawing on an outstanding group of internationally acclaimed scholars representing a broad cross-section of perspectives in media theory and communication studies, Cultural Studies in Question will provide a benchmark for substantive reflection on the state of the field of media and cultural analysis for academics and researchers and will stimulate reflection, understanding, and insight among students of media, communications, journalism, popular culture, and cultural studies.

Overcoming the Divide: Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Overcoming the Divide: Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Overcoming the divide: Cultural studies and political economy
DouglasKellner

For some decades now, advocates of media studies based in cultural analysis have been at war with those who advocate a political economy approach.1 In this chapter, I want to argue that the hostility between political economy and cultural studies reproduces a great divide of the field of media studies between two competing approaches with different methodologies, objects of study, and, by now, bodies of texts. This bifurcation pits social science-based approaches that take communications as their object against a humanities and text-based approach that focuses on culture. I will argue that the divide is an artificial one, rooted in an arbitrary academic division of labor, and that media and ...

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