Questions of Method in Cultural Studies

QUESTIONS OF METHOD IN CULTURAL STUDIES collects a lively group of scholars from across the social sciences and humanities to consider one of the most vexing issues confronting the proverbial ′anti–discipline′ of cultural studies. Covering such topics as the media, feminism, and politics, these original essays identify what methods have prevailed in the interdisciplinary pursuit of cultural studies. They also analyze what kinds of methodological choices are made, privileged, or even attacked in the academy and among the disciplines. Examining the relationship between cultural studies and traditional disciplines, the politics of knowledge, and spatial and temporal models, this book probes the possibility of method in explicit terms for scholars and students in media, communications, sociology, and allied fields.

Notes on Contributors..

Acknowledgments..

1. Introduction: The Questions of Method in Cultural Studies. (James Schwoch and Mimi White).

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Part I: Space/Time/Objects.

Introduction..

2. From the Ordinary to the Concrete: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Scale. (Anna McCarthy)3. Raymond Williams Culture and Society as Research Method. (John Durham Peters).

4. Read thy self. Text, Audience, and Method in Cultural Studies. (John Hartley).

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Part II: Production and Reception: The Politics of Knowledge.

Introduction..

5. Cultural Studies of Media Production: Critical Industrial Practice. (John Caldwell).

6. Feminism and the Politics of Method. (Joke Hermes).

7. Taking Audience Research into the Age of New Media: Old Problems and New Challenges. (Andrea Press and Sonia Livingstone).

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Part III: Cultural Studies and Selected Disciplines: Anthropology, Sociology, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Studies.

Introduction.

8. Mixed and Rigorous Cultural Studies Methodology––an Oxymoron? (Micaela di Leonardo).

9. Is Globalization Undermining the Sacred Principles of Modernity? (Pertti Alasuutari).

10. Engagement through Alienation: Parallels of Paradox in World Music and Tourism in Sarawak, Malaysia. (Gini Gorlinski)11. For the Record: Interdisciplinarity, Cultural Studies and the Search for Method in Popular Music Studies. (Tim Anderson).

Index.

Mimi White is Professor of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University. She is author of Tele–Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television (1992) and co–author of Media Knowledge (with James Schwoch and Susan Reilly, 1992).

James Schwoch holds a permanent faculty appointment at Northwestern University, where he conducts research on media history, diplomacy and international relations, science and technology studies, and research methodologies. He is the author of The American Radio Industry and Its Latin American Activities, 1900 1939 (1990).

"A multi–disciplinary intellectual masterpiece that explores the discourses of space, time and objects; the politics of knowledge; and the relationship between cultural studies and traditional as well as emergent disciplines.... Innovative and thought–provoking." ( Discourse Studies, October 2008)

White and Schwoch take on the challenge of delineating cultural studies methodology in this highly engaging collection. Leading scholars in the field scrutinize defining issues in theory and practice with penetrating insight. In seeking to forge a common ground for the field, this offers a major breakthrough. Denise Bielby, University of California at Santa Barbara