Book Review

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Notes

[1] See Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies. An Introduction (Boston: Unwin Hyman 1990), 83. In retrospect, although published more than a decade before Hartley's short history, Turner provides a superior introduction and overview of the field of British cultural studies.

[2] Turner.

[3] See Turner, 162ff. for discussion of the critique of Hartley's notion of the audience within British cultural studies.

[4] Ioan Davies, Cultural Studies and Beyond. Fragments of Empire (New York: Routledge, 1995), 123. In retrospect, we also find Davies's book on cultural studies to be richer and more stimulating and to provide a better overview of the field and history than Hartley's book under review.

[5] On neglect and misrepresentation of the Frankfurt School within British cultural studies, see Douglas Kellner, “Critical Theory and British Cultural Studies: The Missed Articulation,” in Cultural Methodologies, ed. Jim McGuigan (London: Sage, 1997), 12–41.

[6] While Hartley strives for the encyclopaedic in his short history and mentions every British figure imaginable, he seems to forget Jim McGuigan's widely discussed Cultural Populism (London: Routledge, 1992). For other critiques of the sort of cultural populism associated with Fiske and Hartley, see Douglas Kellner, Media Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995) and the anthology Cultural Studies in Question, ed. Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding (London: Sage, 1997).

[7] Several of Hartley's chapters have rather cryptic “destination” subtitles, such as in Chapter 2, “Culture From Arnold to Schwarzenegger. Imperial Literacy to Pop Culture (destination democracy?).” While the question mark probably lets him off the hook, in view of Schwarzenegger's problematic election as Governor of California through a manipulative recall process that many see as a corruption of democracy, simply associating Arnold Schwarzenegger with democracy in any form raises the question of what the author has in mind with his “destination democracy.” We see from this point (early 2004) and place (California) the jackboots of the Bush Reich behind Schwarzenegger and his Republican handlers who are viciously cutting back education, social welfare, environment regulation, and other positive aspects of the state of California and thus are disinclined to be amused by the consistently rightwing and reactionary figure of Arnold Schwarzenneger who should not be associated in any way à la Hartley with “democracy.”