Critical and Cultural Studies

Abstract

Critical and cultural studies of communication are focused on the analysis of cultural artifacts and practices in relation to the social formations in which they exist. The interrelationships of cultural signs, their conditions of production, and their reception by audiences are at the core of such studies. Critical and cultural studies derive from Marxist approaches to society and culture but have expanded to engage a broad range of theoretical and methodological areas, including semiotics and structuralism, literary theory, rhetoric, philosophy, sociology, ethnography, film theory, gender studies, critical race theory, cybercultures, politics, and the fine arts, among others. Critical theory is generally associated with the ideas of the University of Frankfurt’s Institute for Social Research, often referred to as the “Frankfurt School,” while cultural studies had its genesis in the UK, principally at the Birmingham Center for Critical and Cultural Studies. But critical theory and cultural studies are deeply mutually implicated, and their interrelationships are significant. Critical and cultural studies have proliferated internationally, with distinct perspectives and approaches characterizing their various national, political, and societal contexts. The project of critical and cultural studies of communication is tied to praxis. Critical and cultural studies represent a radical and subversive intervention in the academy because of their basic goal of troubling the term “culture” and linking it to social power and the construction and dissemination of knowledge.