Dare we de-centre Birmingham?

Abstract

This article challenges the widely held assumptions that cultural studies originated in Britain and that the CCCS at Birmingham was the first site of organized cultural studies. Drawing on the very characteristics ascribed to early cultural studies work, the article illustrates that various moments at various other locations, from the Folk Schools of Denmark in the 1920s to Highlander School in North America's Appalachia in the 1930s to the Kamiriithu project in Kenya in the 1970s could and should be identified as 'other' origins of cultural studies. The aim in generating a multiplicity of origins is not to suggest that the Birmingham origin is 'false' but to underscore the point that cultural studies has multiple origins rather than a singular origin; to provide concrete examples of those other origins that are too seldom suggested and almost never pinpointed; and, most importantly, to contribute to the evolution of a more international cultural studies as well as to keeping cultural studies in progressive, anti-disciplinary flux.

Provincializing Hegemonic Histories of Media and Communication Studies: Toward a Genealogy of Epistemic Resistance in Africa

“…In accomplishing this, I have drawn on key arguments in the debate on internationalizing cultural studies (cf. Abbas & Erni, 2004;Shome, 2009;Wright, 1998). I have highlighted the rise and fall of epistemic domination and resistance in the field of media and communication studies in Africa.…”

“…In the field of cultural studies, debates on the need for the internationalization of academic knowledge production already emerged in the 1990s through journals such as Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and contributions, for example, in the European Journal of Cultural Studies (cf. Ang, 1998;Tomaselli, 1998;Wright, 1998). These perspectives differed from-and have the potential to inform-the debates in the field of media and communication studies in a number of ways.…”

“…Their project is to make cultural studies "inclusive of a wide array of diverse speaking positions" (Abbas & Erni, 2004, p. 7) and to trace alternative genealogies of the field beyond simply the canonical history of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University often narrated in and reproduced by cultural studies textbooks and mainstream university curricula (cf. Wright, 1998).…”

Historicising Cultural Sport Psychology: Dare we De-centre Methodological Eurocentrism?

“…I (TR) use this title to invoke a seminal cultural studies paper by Handel Wright (1998), titled "Dare we de-centre Birmingham? : Troubling the 'origin' and trajectories of cultural studies," in which he challenged the widely held assumption that cultural studies originated in Britain.…”

“…Indeed, other sites of emergent CSP can be linked to the works by Mark Andersen (1993), Diane Gill (2001), Stephanie Hanrahan (2004), Anthony Kontos (Kontos & Arguello, 2005), Vikki Krane (2001), Kerry McGannon (McGannon & Mauws, 2000, Robert Schinke (Schinke & Hanrahan, 2009) and Brett Smith (Smith & Sparkes, 2009), who drew on other forms of cultural scholarship to address issues of difference in sport and exercise. The Wright's (1998) paper serves as a reminder that it is often misleading (if not colonising) to pinpoint specific and singular moments and figures of origin in telling the 'origin' stories of disciplines and of interdisciplinary work in particular. The aim in suggesting a multiplicity of origins is to keep the CSP discursive borders open for influx of characteristics defining the CSP project, especially from non-Western locations, and, most importantly, to avoid canonising the current, largely Anglo-American trajectories, as the prop-1 Conscientization is a principal concept in Paulo Freire's liberation pedagogy.…”