Cultural Studies and the Debate on Marx (from the 1960s)

Cultural Studies emerged in the English-speaking world during the 1960s. In line with their strongly interdisciplinary approach, they have drawn attention to the significance of relations that are not directly economic or political, and which are often overlooked or dismissed as "superstructural phenomena" in other variants of Marxism. In Cultural Studies, by contrast, the specific logics of cultural practices and their significance for the reproduction of economic relations are emphasised. The practical significance of the cultural is to be seen not only in terms of the actions of certain actors, but also in terms of symbolic forms and communication.

Exponents of Cultural Studies influenced by Marx include the historian Edward P. Thompson, who got the ball rolling in 1963, when he published his book The Making of the English Working Class, and Stuart Hall, who was active at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, founded in 1964, and from whom anticolonial and anti-imperialist movement received important impulses.