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The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was a research centre at the University of Birmingham. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director. Its object of study was the then new field of cultural studies.
The Centre was the locus for what became known as the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, or, more generally, British cultural studies. Birmingham School theorists such as Stuart Hall emphasized the reciprocity in how cultural texts, even mass-produced products are used, questioning the valorized division between "producers" and "consumers" that was evident in cultural theory such as that of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School.
Methodology
Some areas studied by the Birmingham Centre and those associated with it include subculture, popular culture, and media studies. The Birmingham Center for Cultural Studies, and the theorists associated with it, tend to take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture, incorporating diverse elements such as Marxism, post-structuralism, feminism, and critical race theory, as well as more traditional methodologies such as sociology and ethnography. The Birmingham Center studied representations of various groups in the mass media and evaluated the effects and interpretations of these representations on their audience.
It is notable for producing many key studies and researchers. Stuart Hall, who became the centre's director in 1968, developed his seminal Encoding/Decoding model here.
Empirical researchers included David Morley and Charlotte Brunsden, who produced The Nationwide Project at the Centre. Dorothy Hobson's research about the reception of Crossroads was based on her MA dissertation.
A specific department for the study of Cultural Studies was closed in 2002, a move that the university's senior management described as 'restructuring'. Professor David Marsh, a Political Sociologist from the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) was appointed Chair of the reopened Department of Sociology in 2003. The Department continues to excel in British Cultural Studies and Sociology. The Department was recently ranked fourth in Guardian league tables for Sociology. The expertise of the staff is wide ranging, with particular strengths in the fields of: sociological theory; ethnicity; gender studies; media studies; criminology; and political sociology.
External links
- * "Conditions of their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham" by Norma Schulman
- CCCS Publications - Stencilled Papers by CCCS
- Department of Sociology, University of Birmingham
"Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies"