British cultural studies

Abstract

We cannot end our examination of various conceptualizations of race without including British cultural studies, which here will be synonymous with the so-called “Birmingham School.” Indeed, here is a school of thought that has made race, racism, and post-colonialism the central features of its inquiry – coupled with class. Its unique combination of Marxist theory, post-structuralism, and political engagement have led the Birmingham School to make a distinctive contribution to social theories of race and ethnicity, which we shall illustrate with the work of Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was opened in 1964 at the University of Birmingham; after 1968, under the leadership of Stuart Hall, it quickly became the center of the emerging cultural studies field. Hall was to stay almost ten years at the CCCS; along with his colleagues and students, he revolutionized the new field by theorizing and practicing a new social science: fundamentally interdisciplinary, opposed to what was at the time a very static and empiricist British sociology, the Birmingham School was also practically engaged and oriented toward social change in a concrete way. Most of the important figures in the development of the CCCS – such as Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and Stuart Hall – were active in leftist politics and in particular in the New Left.

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