Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism
Sage Publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi viii + 207 pp, 2002
Re-Imagining Cultural
Studies traces the continuing influence on contemporary
cultural studies of Raymond Williams, a theorist whose enduring and
original work concerns the materiality of culture itself.
The book seeks to restore Williams to a central position in the formation and development of cultural studies. Milner argues that Williams stands essentially in an analogous relation to the British 'culturalist' tradition, as do Foucault and Bourdieu to French structuralism and Habermas to German critical theory, and that his cultural materialism is not so much culturalist as positively 'post-culturalist'.
Through reappraising Williams's work on topics such as media studies, Marxist literary theory, new historicism and postcolonial studies, a consistent way of 'doing cultural studies' emerges that successfully challenges many of the dominant approaches in the field.
Making a strong case for Williams's relevance both to the academic disciplines of literary and cultural studies and to the new politics of the anti-globalisation movement, this book will prove instructive to people working in literature, sociology, media, and cultural studies.
'His wealth of scholarship and sharp insights make this a very fine book indeed. It is probably the fullest statement of Raymond Williams's enduring influence upon cultural studies' - Jim McGuigan, University of Loughborough.