Political economy/cultural studies: exploring points of convergence

Abstract

Cet article compare des critiques des domaines interdisciplinaires d'économie politique et études culturelles. Il s'intéresse plus particulièrement à trois catégories de critiques: la crise du Marxisme, les challenges du féminisme et les calendriers politiques et discours public. La discussion est basée sur des exemples de recherche et l'exploitation de ressources en économie politique et de sociologie de l'éducation pour les études culturelles. L'argument présenté est que l'incorporation d'un concept renouvelé de communauté, en tant que site intermédiaire où les expériences locales et personnelles des individus se heurtent aux structures institutionnelles universalisantes de la société, servira à répondre à certaines critiques enregistrées contre ces deux domaines. This paper compares critiques of the interdisciplinary fields of political economy and cultural studies. It focusses on three categories of critique: the crisis of Marxism, challenges of feminism, and political agendas and public discourse. The discussion is grounded in examples from resource exploitation research in political economy and the sociology of education for cultural studies. The argument is made that incorporating a renewed concept of community, as a mediating site where the local and particular experiences of individuals encounter the universalizing institutional structures of society, will serve to meet certain criticisms registered against both fields.

Half a Century of Sociological Scholarship in the CRS(A)

“…Remarkably, two years after the appearance of From Culture to Power , a special issue on the challenge of cultural studies to Canadian sociology and anthropology appeared, edited by Raymond A. Morrow. The challenge could be seen as two fold: (1) studies in the discourses that partially constitute the social (Valverde ) call into question the adequacy of a sociology centered upon political economy; and (2) a sociological poetics alive to the complex relations between lived and official cultures (Jackson and Nielsen ) creates a pluralized, decentered social imaginary, and subverts a unified conception of “Canada.” Yet, there was also space in this collection for exploring convergences between political economy and cultural studies (Harp ). A 1992 special issue edited by Neil Guppy featured research on social inequality—a theme central within Canadian sociology since Porter's and Blishen's studies of the 1950s—and continued the Canadianist project, with articles on inequality in landed wealth in nineteenth‐century Ontario, the changing ethnic composition of Canadian elites, and the economic implications of Quebec sovereignty for rest of Canada, among other papers.…”