Stuart Hall (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

Stuart Hall is the leading figure in cultural studies today - noone else has had the same influence in the shaping of the field.This book is the first full-length study of Hall's work. Itexamines every aspect of his work and constitutes a major criticalintroduction and appraisal of Hall's contribution.The book guides the reader through Hall's formative experience inJamaica and Oxford. It examines the increasing politicization ofhis thought and his identification with emancipatory, socialistpolitics. In Birmingham, during his Directorship of the seminalCentre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Hall created a genuinelycollaborative approach to the study of culture. In a series ofdazzling publications in the 1970s, the Birmingham Centre changedthe way in which social scientists think about culture. The bookprovides a complete guide to the debates and contribution of theBirmingham School. It explores Hall's relation with Marx, Gramsci,Althusser and a variety of traditions in continental sociology andphilosophy. In the 1980s Hall occupied the vanguard of criticism againstThatcherism and Reaganism. His passionate, principled attack on theNew Right and his critique of authoritarian populism reached areadership well beyond the confines of the academy. His later work has moved on to the terrain of hybridity, identity,Occidentalism, race relations. multiculturalism and the politics ofdifference. All of these areas are methodically explored in thebook, making it the most complete study of Hall's work andsignificance. It will be required reading by students and lecturersin cultural studies, media studies and sociology.