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Research Direction and Cultural Quiescence
Given the state to which much social life has been reduced, there is no shortage of subjects which a critical cultural studies could address. But some commentators have pointed recently to the very limited nature of much academic work in cultural studies and its effect on students. (Ferguson and Golding 1997). In practice much work in communications and culture has been confined to speculating about the latest ‘popular’ tastes. Some academics have become culture industry groupies dedicated to excavating the most recent trends in music, fashion or popular culture and mistaking it for ‘resistance’ or viewing the transgression of boundaries as progressive political practice - cultural studies as a rationale for hanging out with what is cool. Others have examined the ‘social relations of media consumption’ which could come down to asking people if they listened to the radio whilst doing the ironing or whether they felt sad when they watched Eastenders . Empirical work in the area has often been extraordinarily slight in its concerns or poor in its methods such as guessing what people believe based on reading fan letters. There has been an absence of will to address the real and often brutal power relationships which have transformed our cultural life. For many in cultural studies a series of theoretical dead ends beckoned instead. Principal amongst these was what has become known as post-modernism. We will look briefly at some of its philosophical roots in arguments about reality and language. We have described above the social relationships of power and interest which structure our society as it is. The purpose of social ideologies is to justify and legitimise those relationships. Post-modernism would reject such an analysis of the ‘real’ structures which form a society. It offers instead a view of individuals as consumers in a sea of images, from which they construct their own meanings about the world. There can be no ‘over-arching’ narratives (either for the individual in society or the social scientist) about how the world works. One description of it (operating as a ‘discourse’) is as good as another. This effectively led to the abandoning of concepts such as ‘reality’ and truth’. Arguments about the relationship of language to the ‘real’ have a long history in philosophy and have affected many areas of social science. The essence of these arguments is that reality is always constituted for us through language. The meaning of language is negotiated, therefore ‘reality’ is negotiated. In this schema there cannot be a simple correspondence between an idea or a statement and an external objective reality. ‘Truth’ therefore becomes a function of how the text (be it a work of art, a written text or any moment of a language) is interpreted by the cognizing mind of the individual or the ‘speech community’. In some post-modern accounts truth is entirely relative to issues of textual representation and to the ‘textual strategies’, ‘signifying practices’ and ‘language games’ that are employed to give authority to a particular account. Claims to objectivity are no more than ‘strategic rituals’ to assert authority and establish the dominance of one form of discourse. The problem with all such assertions is that they imply a reality of social relationships. Who is playing the language games and for what purpose? Whose authority and power over who else is being established in discourse? There is a further problem with the textualist/relativist approach. To assert that truth is what is made through textual strategies or signifying practices necessarily involves assumptions about how language ‘really’ works - that texts really relate to each other, that meanings really are negotiated. It can only be argued that this is really what occurs by pointing to examples of how language is actually used. To argue this is in effect to say that all truth (reality) is constituted in discourse, except what we just said which really is true. In this way, the proclamation that ‘there is nothing but the text’ involves universal truth statements (that there really are texts, that they really relate to other texts). We can counter these statements with others - that the division between language and reality is a false dichotomy - that language is formed in a world of relationships and objects and is part of the measurable reality of that world - that judgements and expectations about what is true and what occurs are necessarily measured against the flow of actions and events in the world - that observable gaps between prediction and occurrence can undermine beliefs and expectations. If we expect the stairs to be there and they are not, then we trip. Now it may be that some post-modernists and relativists do not accept our statements of the true nature of the world. Then let them provide evidence to refute what we have said and to show what ‘really’ happens when people use language. We might for example ask for evidence of the view that ‘meaning is constituted by the encounter between the reader and the text’ (i.e. there are no intrinsic meanings which can be objectively measured). If we take this literally it follows that it is not possible to classify texts or to distinguish between them, as a new meaning is generated with each new encounter. But how could anyone know this except by indicating that there are different encounters with the text (by people from different speech communities) which generate different meanings. These would have to be perceived by the observer as ‘objectively’ different, albeit that observers generate their own meanings by their encounter with the new texts (of other people’s encounters). So the problem the textualists face is, how could they know it is true that meaning is generated in the encounter with the text, except through observation - and if it was true how could they have observed it?The focus on the text produces a relativism which founders on its inability to be clear about how they can make declarations about what is true and real. There are many contradictions in post-modernism but this one is central. The post-modern account assumes that we are ‘post’ something - that the old industrial society with its strong cultural positioning has disappeared to be replaced by something else. Yet at the same time the account espouses a philosophical position on language and reality which rejects the identification of any structures as real or determining. As we will argue, post-modernists have mistakenly understood a series of new responses to market relationships as being a new type of society. Though how they would demonstrate that an old society is really different from a new one or from anything else is left unexplained. The problem with post-modernism is that it mistakes developments in market capitalism and public responses to it for an absence of defining structures. But as we have already noted the market is itself a structure and constitutes a system of relationships and values in its own right. The counter-attack of the new conservatives and monetarists on social democratic capitalism together with the collapse of the soviet system has given the market and its values a new prominence. The growth of the market changes both individual relationships and corporate priorities. It signifies that we are not ‘post’ the period of modernism but rather are locked into a most vicious form of it. There are many different social responses to this. Some are traditional and collective such as the contemporary growth in trade union membership in the United States. In Britain, the impact of the new insecurity, stress at work and fear of unemployment has produced a situation in which approximately 5 million people who are non-unionised are now ‘keen’ to join a trade union (N.O.P. Poll, Guardian 15 March 1997). Other collective responses include the green movement and new types of ecological politics such as the protests against road building. Other responses, in contrast, celebrate the new individualism, interpersonal power and the definition of self by the capacity to consume. These responses are prominent in a popular media which constantly manufactures images of glamour, style and status. Some elements of media such as alternative television comedy can satirise free market culture and relate to public resentment at the effects of popular capitalism in every day life. But this multitude of social responses including the growth of consumption and fragmentation of styles does not signify a new type of society. Without understanding this there is little that media studies or social science can offer that is critical of the society which we do have. Reducing social critique to ironic commentaries does not remove the social structures which position and limit us as we are - it simply reduces our ability to do anything about them. The inability to address the real and change it, is implicit in the post-modern vision - what is its resort to irony, other than the gallows humour of the politically impotent.

   The encounter with philosophy and post-modern theory has left much cultural/ communications studies and indeed many other areas of social science, struggling with the notion of small groups or individuals ‘actively’ constructing their own interpretations and the meaning of their world. A key problem in such an approach is the neglect of outcomes or consequences. For example, asking about how people interpret texts cannot of itself answer questions about the influence of the media on ideology or belief. Such questions need to be asked directly. Furthermore, there are a series of highly complex moments between ‘belief’ and the reproduction of modern society which have been very sparsely investigated by this tradition and are hardly visible as research questions in contemporary media and cultural studies (Miller, 1997). There is a need to examine the relationship between beliefs about the world and the political conclusions drawn by the public, the relationship between political conclusions and taking political action, and between public action protest and political change continuity. Do people, as a result of viewing Neighbours, The Word or Newsnight , believe that the sun always shines in Australia, people will do anything to get on TV or that inequalities are necessary for the functioning of the economy? As a result of any of these, do they then make a cup of tea, refuse to do the ironing, join the Conservative Party or burrow under Manchester Airport? And what difference does public belief or action make to corporate or government decision making? Do governments respond to public opinion? On which occasions? Are corporations or governments able to resist concerted and organised public opposition, and in which circumstances? Do consumers actually subvert the meanings of commodities? If the meanings of products are subverted is capitalism in any way inconvenienced? Does the ‘subversion’ lead to a critique of the system that produced the commodities? Do people actually buy the products? How do public knowledge, belief and purchasing trends affect corporate and state planning and regulation? These and associated questions ought to be, but are not, central to the agenda of media and cultural studies. We do not intend this as an exhausted list of what should be studied. But we do think it is time for a serious debate about what could constitute the agenda for a critical media and cultural studies and we invite replies on this.

References
• Burton, J (1999) Report of Social Market Foundation, Guardian 5/7/99.
• Ferguson, M. and Golding, P. (1997) ‘Preface’ in Ferguson, M. and Golding, P. (eds.) Cultural Studies in Question, London: Sage.
• Herman, E. and McChesney, R.(1997) Global Media: Missionaries of International Capitalism, London: Cassell.
• Lapham, L. (1998) Waiting for the Barbarians, London, Verso. Excerpt in The Guardian 27 December 1997.
• Miller, D. (1994a) Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media, London: Pluto.
• Miller, D. (1995) ‘The Media and Northern Ireland: Censorship, Information Management and the Broadcasting Ban’ in Philo, G (ed.) The Glasgow Media Group Reader Vol. II, London: Routledge.
• Miller, D. (1997) ‘Dominant Ideologies and Media Power: The Case of Northern Ireland’ in Kelly, M. and O’Connor, B. (Eds.) Media Audiences in Ireland, Dublin: University College Dublin Press.
• Philo, G. (1995b) ‘Television, Politics and the Rise of the New Right’, in Philo, G. (ed.) Glasgow Media Group Reader, Vol. II London: Routledge.
• Robertson, G and Nicol, A (1992) Media Law, 3rd Ed. London: Penguin.

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