British Cultural Studies (Pt. 1): E.P. Thompson and The Making of the English Working Class

Three foundational works exemplified a socially-based critical and populist examination of mass culture after World War II: E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963), Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy (1958), and Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society (1958). Operating from positions on the margins, these works formed a consensus that culture is conjoined with industrial, democratic, class, and artistic cleavages. They also placed political intellectualism squarely within the purview of cultural studies (Hall, 1980 P. 58). There were other commonalities as well. They all: 1) embraced interdisciplinarity (sociology, history, politics, ethnography, and economic analysis); 2) moved beyond text analysis to speculate on the relationship between texts and individuals’ lived experiences (Goodwin, 1998, P. xiv); 3) analyzed economic class; and 4) wove together seamlessly an analysis of culture and critical political economy of media (Babe, 2009, P. 67).

Sources
Babe, R.E. (2009). Cultural studies and political economy: toward a new integration. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

Goodwin, A. (1992). “Introduction to the Transaction edition: The uses and abuses of in-discipline” In The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Hall, S. (1980). “Cultural studies: Two paradigms.” Media, culture and society, 2(1), 57-72.

Thompson, E. P., & Thompson, D. (2001). The Essential E.P. Thompson. The New Press.

Thompson, E.P. (1963). The making of the English working class. New York: Pantheon.

Thompson, E.P. (1963). The making of the English working class. London: Victor Golancz.

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