Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)
Encyclopedia
Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist
and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom
since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart
and Raymond Williams
, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. He was President of the British Sociological Association
1995-1997.
At the invitation of Hoggart, Hall joined the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
at Birmingham University in 1964. Hall took over from Hoggart as director of the Centre in 1968, and remained there until 1979. While at the Centre, Hall is credited with playing a role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to deal with race and gender, and with helping to incorporate new ideas derived from the work of French theorists.
Hall left the centre in 1979 to become a professor of sociology at the Open University
. Hall retired from the Open University in 1997 and is now a Professor Emeritus. British newspaper The Observer
called him "one of the country's leading cultural theorists". He is married to Catherine Hall
, a feminist professor of modern British history at University College London
.
, James Joyce
, Freud
, Marx
, Lenin
and some of the surrounding literature and modern poetry," as well as "Caribbean literature."
In 1951 Hall moved to England
as part of the Windrush generation, the first large-scale immigration of West Indians
, as that community was then known. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College
at the University of Oxford
, where he obtained an M.A.
.
In the 1950 and 60s, after working on the Universities and Left Review, Hall joined E. P. Thompson
, Raymond Williams
and others to launch the New Left Review
in the wake of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary (which saw many thousands of members leave the Communist Party of Great Britain
(CPGB) and look for alternatives to previous orthodoxies). His career took off after co-writing The Popular Arts with Paddy Whannel
in 1964.
As a direct result, Richard Hoggart
invited Hall to join the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
at the University of Birmingham
. In 1968 Hall became director of the Centre. He wrote a number of influential articles in the years that followed, including Situating Marx: Evaluations and Departures (1972) and Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973). He also contributed to the book Policing the Crisis (1978) and coedited the influential Resistance Through Rituals (1975).
After his appointment as a professor of sociology at the Open University
in 1979, Hall published further influential books, including The Hard Road to Renewal (1988), Formations of Modernity (1992), Questions of Cultural Identity (1996) and Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997). He retired from the Open University in 1997.
and cultural studies
, taking a post-Gramscian
stance. He regards language-use as operating within a framework of power
, institution
s and politics/economics. This view presents people as producers and consumers of culture at the same time. (Hegemony, in Gramscian theory, refers to the cultural production of 'consent' as opposed to 'coercion'.)
For Hall, culture is not something to simply appreciate or study, but a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled."
Hall has become one of the main proponents of reception theory
, and developed Hall's Theory
of encoding and decoding. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on part of the audience. This means that the audience does not simply passively accept a text — social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.
His works — such as studies showing the link between racial prejudice
and media
— have a reputation as influential, and serve as important foundational texts for contemporary cultural studies
.
Hall has also widely discussed notions of cultural identity
, race and ethnicity, particularly in the creation of the politics of Black diasporic identities. Hall believes identity to be affected by history and culture, rather than a finished product, he sees it as ongoing production.
Hall's political influence extended to the Labour Party
, perhaps related to the influential articles he wrote for the CPGB's theoretical journal Marxism Today
(MT) which challenged the left's views of markets and general organisational and political conservatism. This discourse had a profound impact on the Labour Party under both Neil Kinnock
and Tony Blair
.
and provides insight into some of the main theoretical developments Hall was exploring during his time at Birmingham. The essay takes up and challenges longheld assumptions on how media messages are produced, circulated and consumed, proposing a new theory of communication.
Hall's essay challenged all three components of the mass communications model. It argued that (i) meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender; (ii) the message is never transparent; and (iii) the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning.
For example, a documentary film on asylum seekers that aims to provide a sympathetic account of their plight does not guarantee that audiences will also view them sympathetically. Despite its being realistic and recounting facts, the documentary form itself must still communicate through a sign system (the aural-visual signs of TV) that simultaneously distorts the intentions of producers and evokes contradictory feelings in the audience.
Distortion is built into the system, rather than being a 'failure' of the producer or viewer. There is a 'lack of fit' Hall argues 'between the two sides in the communicative exchange.' That is, between the moment of the production of the message ('encoding') and the moment of its reception ('decoding').
In 'Encoding/decoding', Hall suggests media messages accrue a common-sense status in part through their performative nature. Through the repeated performance, staging or telling of the narrative of '9/11' (as an example; but there are others like it within the media) a culturally specific interpretation becomes not only simply plausible and universal, but is elevated to "common-sense."
Culture theory
Culture theory is the branch of anthropology and semiotics that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms....
and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart
Richard Hoggart
Herbert Richard Hoggart is a British academic and public figure, whose career has covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with a special concern for British popular culture.-Career:...
and Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. He was President of the British Sociological Association
British Sociological Association
The British Sociological Association is a scholarly and professional society for sociologists in the United Kingdom, and was founded in 1951. They publish the academic journals Sociology, Work, Employment and Society and Cultural Sociology as well as their membership newsletter...
1995-1997.
At the invitation of Hoggart, Hall joined the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director...
at Birmingham University in 1964. Hall took over from Hoggart as director of the Centre in 1968, and remained there until 1979. While at the Centre, Hall is credited with playing a role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to deal with race and gender, and with helping to incorporate new ideas derived from the work of French theorists.
Hall left the centre in 1979 to become a professor of sociology at the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
. Hall retired from the Open University in 1997 and is now a Professor Emeritus. British newspaper The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
called him "one of the country's leading cultural theorists". He is married to Catherine Hall
Catherine Hall
Catherine Hall is a feminist historian from Great Britain. Since 2009 she has been Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London...
, a feminist professor of modern British history at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
.
Biography
Stuart Hall was born into a middle class Jamaican family of African descent. In Jamaica he attended a primary school modelled after the British primary school system. In an interview Hall describes himself as a "bright, promising scholar" in these years and his formal education as "a very 'classical' education; very good but in very formal academic terms." With the help of sympathetic teachers, Hall expanded his education to include "T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and some of the surrounding literature and modern poetry," as well as "Caribbean literature."
In 1951 Hall moved to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
as part of the Windrush generation, the first large-scale immigration of West Indians
British West Indies
The British West Indies was a term used to describe the islands in and around the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire The term was sometimes used to include British Honduras and British Guiana, even though these territories are not geographically part of the Caribbean...
, as that community was then known. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College
Merton College, Oxford
Merton College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to...
at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, where he obtained an M.A.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
.
In the 1950 and 60s, after working on the Universities and Left Review, Hall joined E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
, Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts...
and others to launch the New Left Review
New Left Review
New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...
in the wake of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary (which saw many thousands of members leave the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
(CPGB) and look for alternatives to previous orthodoxies). His career took off after co-writing The Popular Arts with Paddy Whannel
Paddy Whannel
Atholl Douglas Whannel , was a key figure in the British Film Institute's educational work throughout the 1960s...
in 1964.
As a direct result, Richard Hoggart
Richard Hoggart
Herbert Richard Hoggart is a British academic and public figure, whose career has covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with a special concern for British popular culture.-Career:...
invited Hall to join the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director...
at the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
. In 1968 Hall became director of the Centre. He wrote a number of influential articles in the years that followed, including Situating Marx: Evaluations and Departures (1972) and Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973). He also contributed to the book Policing the Crisis (1978) and coedited the influential Resistance Through Rituals (1975).
After his appointment as a professor of sociology at the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
in 1979, Hall published further influential books, including The Hard Road to Renewal (1988), Formations of Modernity (1992), Questions of Cultural Identity (1996) and Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997). He retired from the Open University in 1997.
Ideas
Hall's work covers issues of hegemonyCultural hegemony
Cultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociological theory, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, that a culturally diverse society can be dominated by one social class, by manipulating the societal culture so that its ruling-class worldview is imposed as the societal norm, which then is...
and cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
, taking a post-Gramscian
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
stance. He regards language-use as operating within a framework of power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
, institution
Institution
An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community...
s and politics/economics. This view presents people as producers and consumers of culture at the same time. (Hegemony, in Gramscian theory, refers to the cultural production of 'consent' as opposed to 'coercion'.)
For Hall, culture is not something to simply appreciate or study, but a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled."
Hall has become one of the main proponents of reception theory
Reception theory
Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes the reader's reception of a literary text. It is more generally called audience reception in the analysis of communications models. In literary studies, reception theory originated from the work of Hans-Robert Jauss in...
, and developed Hall's Theory
Hall's Theory
Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding is a theory of reception theory, developed by Stuart Hall.To understand Hall's Theory, it is necessary to review his conception of the process of encoding and decoding...
of encoding and decoding. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on part of the audience. This means that the audience does not simply passively accept a text — social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.
His works — such as studies showing the link between racial prejudice
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
— have a reputation as influential, and serve as important foundational texts for contemporary cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
.
Hall has also widely discussed notions of cultural identity
Cultural identity
Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....
, race and ethnicity, particularly in the creation of the politics of Black diasporic identities. Hall believes identity to be affected by history and culture, rather than a finished product, he sees it as ongoing production.
Hall's political influence extended to the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
, perhaps related to the influential articles he wrote for the CPGB's theoretical journal Marxism Today
Marxism Today
Marxism Today was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was disestablished in 1991. It was particularly important during the 1980s under the editorship of Martin Jacques...
(MT) which challenged the left's views of markets and general organisational and political conservatism. This discourse had a profound impact on the Labour Party under both Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
and Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
.
Encoding/decoding
Hall's paper 'Encoding/decoding' published in 1973 had a major influence on cultural studies, and many of the terms it set forth remain influential in the field. Generally the essay is viewed as marking a turning point in Hall's research, towards structuralismStructuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
and provides insight into some of the main theoretical developments Hall was exploring during his time at Birmingham. The essay takes up and challenges longheld assumptions on how media messages are produced, circulated and consumed, proposing a new theory of communication.
Hall's essay challenged all three components of the mass communications model. It argued that (i) meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender; (ii) the message is never transparent; and (iii) the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning.
For example, a documentary film on asylum seekers that aims to provide a sympathetic account of their plight does not guarantee that audiences will also view them sympathetically. Despite its being realistic and recounting facts, the documentary form itself must still communicate through a sign system (the aural-visual signs of TV) that simultaneously distorts the intentions of producers and evokes contradictory feelings in the audience.
Distortion is built into the system, rather than being a 'failure' of the producer or viewer. There is a 'lack of fit' Hall argues 'between the two sides in the communicative exchange.' That is, between the moment of the production of the message ('encoding') and the moment of its reception ('decoding').
In 'Encoding/decoding', Hall suggests media messages accrue a common-sense status in part through their performative nature. Through the repeated performance, staging or telling of the narrative of '9/11' (as an example; but there are others like it within the media) a culturally specific interpretation becomes not only simply plausible and universal, but is elevated to "common-sense."
1960s
- Hall, S. (1968) The Hippies: An American Moment Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
1970s
- Hall, S (1972) Situating Marx: Evaluations and Departures
- Hall, S. (1973) Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
- Hall, S. (undated paper) Deviancy, Politics and the Media Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
- Hall, S. (1973) Reading of Marx's 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse
- Hall, S. & Jefferson, T. (1977) Resistance Through Rituals, Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain London: Hutchinson
- Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. & Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis, London: Macmillan
- Hall, S. (1979) 'The Great Moving Right Show', Marxism TodayMarxism TodayMarxism Today was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was disestablished in 1991. It was particularly important during the 1980s under the editorship of Martin Jacques...
, January
1980s
- Hall, S. (1981) 'Notes on Deconstructing the Popular' In People's History and Socialist Theory, London: Routledge
- Hall, S. & Scraton, P. (1981) 'Law, Class and Control' In: Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. & Pawson, J. eds. Crime and Society, London: RKP
- Hall, S. (1988) The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, London: Verso
1990s
- Hall, S. (1992) "The Question of Cultural Identity" Ed. Hall, D. Held, T. McGrew 'Modernity and it's Future' Cambridge: Polity Press p. 274-316
- Hall, S. (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices
Further reading
- Rutherford, Johnathan, ed. Identity:Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, 223-237, Chapter Titled "Cultural Identity and Diaspora")
External links
- John O'Hara interview with Stuart Hall for the Australian Broadcasting CorporationAustralian Broadcasting CorporationThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's Doubletake program, originally broadcast 5 May 1983: The Narrative Construction of Reality - Stuart Hall. Republished in centerforbookculture.org's "Context" online edition, No. 10. Retrieved on 2008-04-16. - Mitchell, Don. Chapter 24: Stuart Hall. In: Key Thinkers on Space and Place. Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, Gill Valentine (2004), pp. 160ff. ISBN 0761949631. Retrieved on 2008-01-12. (Google Books)
- Marxist Media Theory
- A brief biography
- darkmatter Journal: Stuart Hall discussing globalization and power (2003, audio)
- darkmatter Journal: Stuart Hall in conversation with Les Back (2010, audio)
- Listing on the "people" section of Marxists.org
- Stuart Hall in conversation with Pnina Werbner, March 2006 (film)