The Birmingham School (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies)

Overview

The Birmingham School (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) was housed at the University of Birmingham, in England, between 1964 and 2002. The center was integral to the creation and promotion of the field of critical cultural studies. A number of cultural theorists worked for and emerged from the center and have continued to support research regarding its efforts and pedagogy even after its closure. Although the center is now closed, an archive of material from the center is located in the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham.

The field of critical cultural studies emerged from a set of pressures at the end of World War II. At this time, older students were entering the university, and British universities were changing to more closely align with American university structures. This was also a time of radical change in England, when multiculturalism was growing and rigid class structures were beginning to break down. As new students entered the university they pressed for courses and studies that addressed their own experiences and ambitions. This required universities to address topics such as feminism, hegemony, and racism in new ways. The center also highlighted the ways that adult education could occur at the modern university. Rather than presuming that all students would be affluent young adults, the center supported students of all ages and from all different backgrounds. This allowed women and members of the working class access to the university in ways that were not previously possible in British universities.

The first director and founder of the center, Richard Hoggart (1964–1968), was well known for his text The Uses of Literacy (2017). This book explores the ways that the English working class interacts with the media and the ways that those interactions have changed working class attitudes, assumptions, and interactions with other classes. The second director was Stuart Hall (1969–1979), a Marxist sociologist and cultural theorist. Stuart Hall developed the journal New Left Review,which publishes Marxist academic articles regarding international politics, culture, and the economy. Since its closure, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies has maintained its reputation, becoming ubiquitous with New Left-influenced types of thinking and writing (Rowe, 2017).

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies closed in 2002. The University of Birmingham announced the closure, describing it as part of a restructuring of university funding. The rationale given was that the center had been poorly ranked during the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, in which British universities are first assessed and then ranked. The closure was part of a five-year plan to ensure that the university as a whole earned a much better ranking in the next assessment. This closure prompted many debates about the role of universities in advancing social deliberations and advancing public knowledge. Following the announced closure, students and faculty protested in an attempt to keep the center open. These protests were unsuccessful, but they did help ensure that faculty members found other jobs, and students were placed in new departments. Faculty working on social policy were moved into Sociology, while media and cultural studies faculty were sent to the Institute of Applied Social Studies. The fifteen staff members who supported the school were given some, but not complete assistance in finding other positions at the University of Birmingham.

Further Insights

Scholars have studied the intellectual outputs of the center, as well as attended to the ways that the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies organized labor (Connell & Hilton, 2015). Rather than utilizing graduate students to do all of their teaching, or strictly dividing faculty from students, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies worked to bring students into all aspects of university life and research. Faculty were encouraged to celebrate the processes of research and teaching, allowing students to have first-hand experience in the ways that academic research is produced and published. This hands-on approach was seen, and is still acknowledged, as especially important for first generation college students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. While students whose parents have attended university have a general idea of how faculty and students work at a university, those without a family background in education are frequently unprepared for university and may have difficulty integrating into the academic environment. For example, students may not feel comfortable approaching a professor to ask for help after class, or they may not know that they are able to apply to participate in faculty research projects or to publish their own work while still students. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies worked to demystify the process of education by encouraging students to learn about the functioning of the university and to engage in main parts of university education. They were tasked with working directly with professors, learning from research that was ongoing, and working to publish their own reports. The students attracted to the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies were also encouraged to study their own experiences, which had often been ignored by academic research. This attention to student life and experience radically changed the fields of sociology, anthropology, and communications by encouraging new perspectives from authors who had grown up in a wide diversity of communities.

Analyzing the pedagogy of the center, education theorists Giroux and McLaren (2014) discuss the ways that educational skills were brought to the forefront of work at the center. At the heart of many of these studies was the relationship between culture and power. Some of the work at the center was to uncover and discuss these relationships. This happened in investigations of working class communities; nations that had been colonized; social groups; protesters; and local governments. In all of these studies, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies examined both contemporary events and the historical events which made the contemporary possible. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies also paid great attention to how to correct historic injustices through academic study and advocacy. According to Stuart Hall, the work of centers such as the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies is to continue to press and ask questions about power, and why communities produce, support, and continue to perpetuate systems of oppression.

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies famously drew attention to the British working class and the ways in which the lives of working class citizens were changing. This study was politically contentious as it questioned many of the policies which had been designed to prevent class mobility. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies also turned its attention to international issues, studying the places that had been colonized by England, and communities that faced ongoing injustice due to consumerism, environmental problems, international wars, and labor issues. These studies were academic and the central faculty were engaged in academic research. However, as the center grew, they were also aligned with workers rights activists, scholars of postcolonialism, and other community groups which contributed to the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ unique pedagogy. Based on this example of interdisciplinary study and community networking, new cultural studies departments were developed in universities around the world. Many of these departments found their homes in education studies or in communication studies departments.

Labor and community programs that were developed at the center are fondly remembered by many of its former faculty. Stuart Hall writes of the center as a retreat, one in which individuals who had not anticipated work in the university, and did not find peace in larger university structures, could retreat to. Students who were in university, such as McCracken (2015), fondly remember the publications which emerged from the center, particularly, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in the 70s Britain, which served as a foundational document for how to study and discuss changes in society, racism, and changing cultural norms in both England and the world. Kay (2017) argues that texts such as this, and the Birmingham School in general, provided beacons of hope for individual scholars and the communities to which they belonged. Books published after the closure of the center continue to acknowledge the faculty and students of the Birmingham School.

Demand for the studies innovated at the center continues. For example, Willis’s (2017) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs,was first published in 1978. The text has been translated into a diversity of languages and is still in print. It assists students to understand the background of a community, where that community wants to go, and the steps that non-community members can take to support the community. What makes this text valuable is the combination of history, pedagogy, and practicality the Birmingham School stressed.

Issues

Although the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies is closed, scholars are working to continue the work of the center. For example, Highmore (2017) has worked to produce publications in the form that is supported by the work of the center. This work focuses on the ways that histories can be written in a way that authentically represents the messiness of history. Similarly, many graduate students are trained in the ways of research and writing that were practiced at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. This training occurs through reading the publications of famous alumni and faculty of the school, such as Richard Dryer, Lawrence Grossberg, Lucy Bland, Sadie Plant, Rosalind Brunt, and Paul Gilroy. Students are then tasked with understanding the ways that these scholars conducted their studies, collected information, and reported their findings. In this way, the pedagogy and academic style of the center has continued to be passed on, even after the center’s closure.

While there are many admirers of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, some critics, such as Brabazon (2016) have argued that the center has been given too much credit. These critics indicate that while it is true that the Birmingham School Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was the first of its kind, it was not the only center for long. They argue that since many new centers have emerged there is no reason to lament the closure of one center, and instead attention should be spent on the centers which still exist. Giroux and McLaren (2014) argue that the Birmingham School is at times praised for advancing the entire field of cultural studies, while the important work done at other centers remains overlooked. Additionally, focusing on the center’s closure has at times made it difficult to celebrate the work that occurred while it was open.

Students trained in the center and faculty who worked there have gone on to other academic settings, and the vast body of texts and documents produced at the center have been archived. The center has become central to discussions about interdisciplinary studies and the ability of universities to simultaneously support research, teaching, and social justice programs (McCulloch & Cowan, 2017). It has also served as an example for scholars working in programs that are having difficulty maintaining funding or support from the broader university. Scholars have spent a good deal of time learning from the closing of the Birmingham School and the ways in which other centers might avoid a similar fate. Kay’s (2017) examination of books published after the center’s closing, reflect on the critical location of the school in the intellectual history of university programing successes and failures. These publications indicate that the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies will continue to be at the center of debates regarding scholarship and pedagogy.

Bibliography

Andrews, S.J. (2020, Oct. 27). The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. Communication, https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-44

Brabazon, T. (2016). From revolution to revelation: Generation X, popular memory and cultural studies. Abingdon, UK: Routledge (Original work published 2005 by Ashgate).

Connell, K., & Hilton, M. (2015). The working practices of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Social History, 40(3), 287–311. Retrieved December 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=108394425&site=ehost-live

Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (2014). Between borders: Pedagogy and the politics of cultural studies. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Goery, H. (2022, Dec. 21). Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Criminology and Criminal Justice, doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.699

Highmore, B. (2017). Out of Birmingham: Towards a more peripatetic cultural studies. Cultural Studies Review, 23(1), 3–17. Retrieved December 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=125934633&site=ehost-live

Hoggart, R. (2017). The uses of literacy. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Kay, J. B. (2017). Arriving late to the party? Histories of cultural studies as resources of hope. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), 763–771. Retrieved December 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=126349073&site=ehost-live

McCracken, S. (2015). The Centre for Cultural Studies, Birmingham. ESC: English Studies in Canada, 41(4), 10–10.

McCulloch, G., & Cowan, S. (2017). An interdisciplinary project?: The case of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In A Social History of Educational Studies and Research. (pp. 111–125). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Rowe, D. (2017). Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 1–5.