Is it ‘the economy, stupid’? Economic relations and cultural studies: Some reflections on Jim McGuigan’sCultural Populism

Abstract

This article argues that in the development of media studies and cultural studies, a gap opened between textual analysis and political economy that became a damaging schism. The roots of the schism between the economic and the cultural lie in the growing influence of French structuralism, and post-structuralism from the late 1960s onwards. Jim McGuigan’s book, Cultural Populism, appeared at a time when socialist politics, political analysis and cultural theory were, both together and separately, in a degree of flux, self-reflection and loss of direction. This article outlines the nature of the split between emphasis on the cultural and the economic, the ways in which it continues to mark the field and the importance of continuing to try and hold the two together in the analytic frame. Methodologically, this article involves analysis of Cultural Populism and utilises document and archive searching, interviews, syllabus analysis and personal communication.