Whither cultural studies in (US) communication studies? The problem of parochialism

ABSTRACT

This article critiques the US/UK centrism in cultural studies work in our field and the larger US academy. It addresses the limits of concepts in Cultural Studies that are popular in the Communication discipline when they are taken to the Global South and the Postcolonial Non-West. The article is an invitation to scholars to actively de-parochialize their research and teaching in light of dispossessions in the Global South.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural studies
• global south
• postcolonial non-west
• critical race studies
• US-centrism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While the journal has published much in cultural critique, it has not published much in cultural studies per se which has a specific way of working and a specific set of commitments.

2 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and its theoretical legacies,” in Cultural Studies, ed. L Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), 278.

3 Beatriz Sarlo, B, “Cultural Studies Questionnaire,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 6, no. 1, (1997): 87.

4 Handel Wright, “Dare We De-Center Birmingham? Troubling the ‘Origin’ and Trajectories of Cultural Studies,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 1, no. 1: 33–56

5 Kuan Hsing Chen, and Chua Beng Huat, ed., The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2007); Acbar Abbas and John Erni, ed., Internationalizing Cultural Studies: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); Wright, “Dare We De-Center Birmingham?; Raka Shome, “Postcolonial reflections on the internationalization of cultural studies,” Cultural Studies 5–6, (2009): 694–719; Raka Shome, “Thinking culture and cultural studies: from/of the Global South,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2019): 196–218.

6 For an excellent example in CCCS journal see Zara Vulvic, “Connecting the Disconnected: Balkan Culture Studies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 10, no. 2–3 (2013): 33–39. We need more of this kind of work.

7 See for example, Ben Agger B, Cultural Studies as Critical Theory (London: Spon Press, 2014); Chris Barker and Emma Jane, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice (SAGE, 2016); Gigi Durham, and Douglas Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks Eds (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005); Simon During ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2007); Linda Steiner and Clifford Christians, eds., Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010); Angela McRobbie’s The uses of cultural studies (London: SAGE Publications, 2005) while an important work, other than one inclusion of Homi Bhabha, the text definitely recenters British/US frames. I do not have space to list all texts here but one can take any number of texts to see this at work.

8 Lawrence Grossberg, “Does cultural studies have futures? Should it? (Or what’s the matter with New York?)” Cultural Studies 20, no. 1 (2006): 2.

9 Boaventura DeSousa-Santo, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (New York: Routledge, 2014), 92.

10 In US/UK academy, scholars such as Wendy Willems (UK), Tarik Sabry, Susan Harewood, Helga Tawil-Souri, Mehdi Semati, Fan Yang, Angharad Valdivia, Jafaar Aksikas – and a few others – who work in the CS vein in our field and adjacent ones, have been consciously attempting to alter its US/Eurocentric landscape for a while now. Cameron McCarthy et al. Globalizing Cultural Studies (New York: Peter Lang 2007), where editors include some communication scholars, is also important. Despite these, not much change has occurred. Toby Miller’s Cultural Studies podcast has also attempted to include voices from outside the Anglo western sphere.

11 Shunya Yoshimi, “The Condition of Cultural Studies in Japan,” Japanese Studies 18, no. 1 (1998): 72.

12 The journal Cultural Studies, edited by US based Communication scholars since the early 1990s (Lawrence Grossberg earlier, and Ted Striphas and Nabil Echabi now) has actively included cultural studies work from other locations.

13 Consider the Subaltern Studies group in South Asia.

14 One can find any number of syllabi through a web search to see how cultural studies is taught. The content mostly tends to draw on US/UK voices in cultural studies. I am reluctant to list them here because I do not want to point fingers at particular scholars.

15 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 28.

16 Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, “De-eurocentrizing cultural studies: some proposals,” in Internationalizing cultural studies, ed. Ackbar Abbas and John Erni (Malden: MA: Blackwell Press, 2005), 481.

17 Verso Books, “Angela Davis on international solidarity and future of black radicalism,” Interview, August 31, 2020. https://lithub.com/angela-davis-on-international-solidarity-and-the-future-of-black-radicalism/.

18 Raz Segal, director of Genocide Studies at Stockton University, has called this a textbook case of genocide. Recently, 56 scholars of genocide and holocaust studies, in an open letter, used the term ‘genocide’ to warn of what is happening in Gaza. https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/statement-of-scholars-7-october/

19 Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2016).

See also Davis in Gaza teach in at University of California Berkely, November 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_lL0eFchEY&ab_channel=HatemBazian.

20 Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publication, 2006).

21 For greater elaboration see Shome, “Thinking culture and cultural studies.”

22 Raymond Williams, “Culture is ordinary,” in The Everyday life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (London: Routledge, 2002), 93.

23 Shome, “Thinking culture and cultural studies.”

24 Helga Tawil-Souri, H., “The necessary politics of Palestinian Cultural Studies,” in Arab Cultural Studies, ed. T. Sabry (London: IB Tauris, 2012), 137–61.

25 For an excellent discussion see Ilan Pappe, Ten Myths about Israel (New York: Verso, 2017).

26 Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

27 Ibid., 40.

28 Partha Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 6 (1998): 282.

29 Hall, “Theoretical legacies,” 284.