Cultural studies in the present tense

Cultural studies professed ‘radical contextualism’ imbues the project with a particular orientation toward ‘the present,’ a consideration of ‘the current moment’ as a configuration of forces shaping possibilities for politically engaged practice and affording concrete potentials for telling better stories. This essay elaborates these claims by way of tribute to Lawrence Grossberg. It is neither retrospective nor prospective. Instead – and in a manner more befitting a figure who continues to champion the political-intellectual practice of cultural studies here and now, in the present – this essay reflects on the author’s experiences learning with and from Grossberg in order to explore the the temporality of the cultural studies project.     

BOURDIEU'S CONCEPT OF REFLEXIVITY AS METALITERACY

For Bourdieu, the extent to which agents can attain knowledge of, and negotiate, various cultural fields is dependent upon, and explicable in terms of, two epistemological types. The first is a practical sense (the ‘logic of practice’), while the second involves a sort of conscious comprehension that he names ‘reflexivity’. Bourdieu defines reflexivity as an interrogation of the three types of limitations (of social position, of field and of the scholastic point of view) that are constitutive of knowledge itself. But the reflexive relation to the habitus, the demands and influences exerted by cultural fields, and one's own practices within those fields, cannot be understood simply as something that is obtained by the subject; rather, any reflexive relation to the doxa and illusio of the field must be a constitutive part of that field. This paper identifies a number of principles taken from Bourdieu's work that clarify how, where and why the reflexive ‘surpassing’ of literacy might occur. But we also suggest, contra Bourdieu, that only fields that are informed or characterized by the scholastic point of view are likely to be characterized by the set of conditions constitutive of reflexive knowledge; and that the scholastic point of view is therefore, simultaneously, both a potential impediment to, and a condition (almost necessary) of the production of reflexive knowledge.     

Whole Curriculum Mapping of Assessment: Cartographies of Assessment and Learning

Approaches to curriculum design often occur at the unit or course level within social work education. Only rarely have ‘whole of curriculum’ approaches been discussed in the literature. This paper describes the creation of a ‘whole of curriculum approach’ to social work teaching and learning within an Australian University. The project involved the creation of a methodology and conceptual framework to map assessment across an entire social work curriculum. In doing so, the mapping exercise provided a way to evaluate the sequencing and integration of assessment tasks across the four-year degree pathway, and judge the effectiveness that such assessments fit with theories and research on assessment more broadly, and with the graduate outcomes for a social work degree. This paper outlines the background to the 2013 assessment project and its alignment to the curriculum mapping. It argues and explains how a systematic approach to mapping and improving social work curriculums can be achieved.     

Stuart Hall's pessimism of the intellect,optimism of the will: reflections on an intellectual life

Stuart Hall was a seminal figure in the development of cultural studies and his death in 2014 has left an intellectual and political void. This article, based on a memorial talk, offers a number of perspectives on Hall’s life and work: the relationship between his speeches/interviews and his written work; the cultural and political context of cultural studies’ emergence; the contradictory and productive relationship between cultural studies and Marxism; the centrality of ‘conjunctural analysis’ to the project of cultural studies; the continuing relevance of the recently republished book Policing the Crisis; the responsibilities of intellectuals to make ideas matter in the world beyond the academy, and the political nature of Hall’s version of cultural studies.     

DECENTERED MOVEMENTS: THE CASE OF THE STRUCTURAL AND PRECEPTUAL VERSATILITY OF THE RASTAFARI

Since the modus operandi of social movements varies across different social settings, their survival mechanism is not universally the same. All social movements, among other things, do not depend on formal organization. Whether a social movement adopts formal organization also depends on the metaphysics to which it adheres. An egalitarian movement, for instance, could be opposed to formal organization, as it amounts to replicating the structure of the establishment in which flat hierarchy is absent. Such movements, which rely on informal networks and provide greater interpretative leverage to their members, fall under the category of decentered movements. The study is intended to demonstrate the need and relevance of this alternative concept. The movement selected for this purpose is the Rastafari, the language of resistance of Jamaicans of African descent. This political religious protest movement, currently with dense cultural manifestations and despite structural and preceptual versatility that characterizes it has significantly exerted its influence not only in its place of origin, Jamaica, but also in other parts of the world. On the basis of the experience of the Rastafari, this article details the advantages of decenteredness over social movement organization for movements that find less accommodation in their respective societies. Data are derived from primary and secondary sources, including the writings of the movement articulators facilitators of the Rastafari.     

‘Shared intelligibility’ and two reflexive strategies as methods of supporting ‘responsible decisions’ in a hermeneutic phenomenological study

Hermeneutic phenomenologists propose that researchers inescapably bring themselves into their research because interpretation must inevitably be influenced by their contexts and pre-understandings. They propose that interpretation is a dynamic and active part of the construction of a text’s meaning, and involvement in this construction process leads to deep empathic understanding of others’ experience, reappraisal of accepted social and cultural systems, and a level of self-enlightenment. The strengths of the hermeneutic methodological approach have led to its use in a number of disciplines, however, there remains concerns about interpretative validity. It is widely acknowledged that in order to support rigour and validity in hermeneutic studies, researchers are required to develop and integrate strategies within the research process to promote awareness of the interplay between their pre-understandings and interpretation. This paper discusses how episodic interviewing which capitalizes on ‘shared intelligibility’, and the reflexive strategies of ‘oppositional arrangement of perspectives’ and ‘backgrounding’ were used to shed light on data from a study of the experiences and views of nursing home nurses regarding their occupational role and status, and work identity.     

Museum acrobatics: artistic intervention and the work of cultural studies

This paper responds to questions posed to the panel regarding intellectual work and the division of labour in the academic and non-academic work of cultural studies. Using examples of ‘failed attempts’ at producing change at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the paper re-frames notions of transmission in the project of cultural studies in relation to questions of participation to provide a framework for thinking about how cultural studies practitioners engage with the public sphere.     

Heritage practices,indigenismo, and coloniality: studying-up into racism in contemporary Mexico

ABSTRACT

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork traveling with three ‘artesanos’ (mask-makers) from rural Michoacan and ‘studying up’ as they circulated through fairs and folk art competitions across Mexico, this paper describes how indigenous artists in rural Michoacan are routinely incentivized and sometimes cudgeled within majoritarian institutions of art in Mexico to enact self-racializing stereotypes and stigmatized indigenous identities and to produce and showcase the so called traditional works and performances that conform to static and primitivist stereotypes. At play here is the interlinked legacy and persistence of paternalism, indigenismo, nationalism, and primitivism. These logics continue to play out in reconstituted terms beyond or after the legal, political, and official embrace of pluriculturalism and the multiethnic community in Mexico. The embedded ethnographic vignette and the analysis that follows suggests how a strategy of ‘studying-up’ into coloniality furthers the delinking program. In line with the strategy of delinking, the ethnographic and conceptual work in this article proceeds by decentring or provincializing a set of dichotomous or binary oppositions that are commonly expressed and articulated within the Mexican heritage field, which would oppose indigenous tradition and culture against urban and mestizo modernity, civilization, and culture. The analysis diverges from a common or dominant approach to delinking in one crucial way – it does not engage in ‘borderthinking’ by looking towards the margins; it does not counterpose subaltern indigenous knowledge with privileged occidental knowledge. Instead, presenting an analysis that ‘studies up’, the paper applies the tools of decolonial theory and method and critical theory to analyse and interrogate elite Mexican patrimonial institutions and culture, which in fact epitomize coloniality and engender indigenous vulnerability. The article concludes by discussing the value and the potential pitfalls of this approach, in order to further the decolonizing project from within the space of cultural studies.     

The average child: Lewis Hine,statistics, and ‘social photography’

This project looks at the statistical turn in American sociology in the early twentieth century and its impact on Lewis Hine’s ‘social photography.’ Photographic studies of today are digital and often participatory, yet, their roots can be traced back to Hine’s work. The rise of statistical methods in the social sciences coincides with Hine’s development as a documentary photographer. Hine is often discussed alongside just one or two of his iconic images. This approach overstates the importance of the single, select print, subverting the essence of Hine’s statistical method. The conventional monographic approach is far too limiting for a photographer who produced thousands of images. In 1907, Hine enrolled in Columbia University to study sociology with Professor Franklin Giddings, who was responsible for establishing their leadership position in statistical methods. Hine’s longstanding affiliation with Columbia played an important role in shaping his sociological perspective. Hine never thought of his work in terms of individual photographs. What was central to his picture making was a belief in the veracity of a statistical norm. My project examines how the Columbia School provided Hine with the elements upon which his term ‘social photography’ found meaning and informed how a sociological philosophy might be manifest in photography.     

Destabilisation and cultural literacy

There is a growing body of work on the field of what is now known as ‘cultural literacy’, but little has been written about its application, and even less on how to teach it in the context of higher education. This article discusses ‘destabilisation’ as an approach to teaching cultural literacy in higher education in the context of the global challenges that universities face today. It defines the characteristics of destabilisation and highlights its advantages in relation to other teaching approaches that have a similar focus on developing cultural competence in students. The article also situates ‘destabilisation’ as a pedagogical term within a spectrum of experiential learning methods and techniques that are focused on developing cultural competence.     

CULTURAL STUDIES IN AUSTRIA

One of the two main lines of argumentation of this text turns around the idea of ‘intellectual practices’. This idea is used here to criticize the hegemony that both academic institutions and publishing industries have been exerting on representations of the idea of ‘the intellectual’. In ­addition, the idea of ‘intellectual practices’ is useful to make more visible the diversity of forms in which intellectual work informs current social practices, as well as to show that this work assumes forms not limited to writing practices. The other line of argumentation turns around the conceptual pair ‘culture and power’. This pair, explicitly or implicitly used by many intellectuals, allows the formerly mentioned reflection to be grounded in a relatively more limited universe of practices. Moreover, the reference to this pair highlights the importance of the particular set of practices that explicitly or implicitly relate to it. These practices may be characterized as simultaneously involving a cultural approach (focusing on socio-symbolic dimensions) of issues of power, and a political approach (focusing on relations of power) of the cultural (socio-symbolic) dimensions of social processes. Finally, this article also presents a critic of the idea of ‘Latin American cultural studies’, which fundamentally criticizes a de-contextualized and de-contextualizing application of certain representations of the idea of cultural studies in Latin America, as well as studies about Latin America from abroad. Such de-contextualization impoverishes the critical impulse of such an intellectual perspective, and at the same time diminishes the visibility of other significant practices in culture and power developed in Latin America.     

The structure of everyday narrative in a city market: An ethnopoetics approach

This paper considers the value of Hymesian ethnopoetics as a means of analysing everyday narrative in conditions of mobility and change. The paper offers an account of the development of ethnopoetics as a means to make visible and valorize narrative in the Native American oral tradition, and as a method of revealing culturally specific relations of form and meaning. Hymes’ ethnopoetic approach viewed narrative structure as a reflection of a cultural tradition of meaning‐making. Hymes’ analysis proposed that traditional narrative was a culturally shaped way of speaking, and analysis of narrative structure could reveal and recreate culture. His orientation rested on an assumption that the culture of a group was more or less stable and fixed. This paper adopts an approach to analysis based on ethnopoetics, representing everyday narrative dramatically, organized not only as lines and verses, but also as scenes and acts. Representation in scenes and acts makes visible the dynamic nature of the narrative. The paper asks whether Hymes’ ground‐breaking work on ethnopoetics still has currency and purchase in 21st‐century conditions of mobility, change, and unpredictability. Analysis of everyday narrative in a city market concludes that, notwithstanding the complexity of notions of ‘culture’ and ‘language’ in such conditions, ethnopoetics can be productively applied to everyday contexts for the analysis of narrative.     

Merchant networks,the guarantee system and the British slave trade to Jamaica in the 1790s

This paper contributes to the literature on payments for slave sales in the later phase of the British slave trade. It analyses the procedures used in the ‘guarantee’ system in transatlantic slaving whereby merchants in British ports forged close connections with African factors in British America and with British businessmen who guaranteed to pay the factors’ bills presented as payments for slave sales. This was an important institutional procedure in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Though the ‘guarantee’ system has been explained in outline in previous studies, the case study presented here offers the most detailed appraisal of this system. Examining the British slave trade to Jamaica in 1790s, then the most significant disembarkation centre for enslaved people taken on British vessels, the paper explains the coordination necessary between groups of British merchants, their African factors in Jamaica and their British guarantee in order to secure payments for slave sales at a time of considerable volatility in the demand for slaves in Jamaica. The paper suggests that cooperation between merchants in different British ports in connection with the slave trade is as worthy of investigation as the rivalry between the British ports involved in the ‘Guinea’ traffic.     

Organisational Gothic

This paper illustrates and theorises a tradition of ‘gothic’ representations of organisation in the last two centuries. It links Marx’s conjunction between capital and the vampire, Dickensian melodrama, and Weber and Kafka’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, to contemporary films that show power‐crazed lunatics at the top of corporate skyscrapers. I argue that this represents a powerful form of cultural critique through representation. Organisational gothic is, I believe, one cultural trope that has commonly been employed in order to reframe sanitised visions of a brave new world. More generally, the paper also exemplifies a certain approach to the cultural aspects of organization, in this case by making a claim for the importance of a cultural history of representations of industry and organisation.     

Homework: Routine,social aesthetics and the ambiguity of everyday life

Routine is a central feature of everyday life, yet its peculiar rhythms, and the range of experiences associated with it, are often neglected within cultural studies and sociology. Simmel’s attempt to provide a sociological aesthetics is seen as a project that needs reanimating for the study of everyday life routines. This does not mean, however, that Simmel is the only, or the best, guide to the aesthetic dimensions of everyday routine life. In an attempt to provide some co-ordinates for instigating a socio-aesthetic approach to routine, this paper discusses a number of writers who couple aesthetics and the everyday, and who might provide frameworks for the study of experiential aspects of routine life. It also suggests that an inverted reading of John Dewey could provide socio-aesthetic study with the ‘formless’ forms required to bring everyday background routines into the foreground. The socio-aesthetic study of cooking undertaken by Luce Giard provides an example of the complexity of such an approach. Lastly the article looks briefly at new directions for ‘everyday life aesthetics’, more specifically at Henri Lefebvre’s unfinished project of rhythmanalysis.     

The power of discourse: Michel Foucault and critical theory

Abstract

The debate that contrasts Marxism and the work of Michel Foucault often overlooks that both projects share a political and ethical commitment. Both have moreover engaged that commitment by challenging what Marx called ‘traditional ideas’, viewing them as historically compilcit with the exercise of power. This ‘radical rupture’ with traditional ideas has been the hallmark of the critical theory project since The Communist Manifesto. By challenging traditional notions of power and language, however, Michel Foucault went further than the Marxist tradition in carrying out the critical theory project. Foucault's alternative ideas of discourse/practice and of power as ‘positive’ are moreover intricately linked in a way that has not been sufficiently appreciated. This is evident in a genealogy of Foucault's early work, where neither notion is able to take hold in the absence of the other. It only after The Archaeology of Knowledge, where Foucault rethought the relationship of language to reality, that he was able to formulate the notion of power as positive in works to come. This link should cause us to rethink our relationship to Foucault's work, of it to Marxism, and of the critical theory project to the power.     

‘Birds of a feather stick together’? Negotiating community,family and intimate relationships between ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ Caribbean migrants in Britain

This article explores the ‘invisible’ boundary separating and informing social relations among ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ Caribbean migrant communities in Britain. To briefly note, ‘established’ migrants are characterised in the analysis as those Caribbean migrants who settled in Britain from the 1940s, their offspring and subsequent generations. In contrast, the ‘newcomer’ represents a new influx of Caribbean that arrived and settled in Britain from the late 1990s onwards, either with a legal or illegal resident status. The common assumption is that ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ groups are bonded together through shared cultural and ethnic background. Therefore any differences that exist between the two groups tend to be ignored because it is assumed that the newcomers are automatically absorbed into existing Caribbean communities. However, this empirical study of Caribbean families suggests that inherent differences exist between these two groups. To discuss issues of intra-ethnic diversity the analysis is guided by a social capital approach. It also draws on the views and perspectives of Caribbean people to highlight the social hierarchies and cultural stereotypes that exist between ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ migrants. Concentrating on the ‘invisible’ and intra-ethnic boundaries between the ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ migrants, the discussion explores issues of change and continuity, and also problems and opportunities that emerge within Caribbean family networks and their intimate relationships.     

WHAT ABOUT THE OLD CULTURAL INTERMEDIARIES? AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ADVERTISING PRODUCERS

Critical work on advertising is underscored by a teleological conception of its object. This often emerges in the form of an emphasis on advertising as an evolving, hybrid institutions that increasingly mixes the ‘economic’ with the ‘cultural’. It is in this vein that advertising practitioners have been characterized as ‘new cultural intermediaries’ deploying distinctive aesthetic sensibilities. Similar patterns of knowledge and behaviour, however, can be traced amongst early producers of advertising suggesting a generation of ‘old’ cultural intermediaries. This unexpected phenomenon, it is argued, arises for two reasons. The first is that much critical work addressing the nature of contemporary advertising lacks historical context. The second is that culture and economy are normatively conceptualized as separate spheres. This separation underplays the multiple interconnections between the cultural and the economic in instances of material practice. Accordingly it is proposed that advertising be reformulated as a constituent practice that has historically relied upon the juxtaposition of ‘cultural’ and ‘economic’ knowledges.