Questions of Cultural Identity

Stuart Hall, Paul du Gay

SAGE Publications, Jun 6, 1996 - Social Science - 198 pages

Why and how do contemporary questions of culture so readily become highly charged questions of identity? The question of cultural identity lies at the heart of current debates in cultural studies and social theory. At issue is whether those identities which defined the social and cultural world of modern societies for so long - distinctive identities of gender, sexuality, race, class and nationality - are in decline, giving rise to new forms of identification and fragmenting the modern individual as a unified subject.

Questions of Cultural Identity offers a wide-ranging exploration of this issue. Stuart Hall firstly outlines the reasons why the question of identity is so compelling and yet so problematic. The cast of

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User Review  - Rita - Goodreads

I got a lot of questions so maybe this one would be good...probably researching my thesis using goodreads.com is not the best or most scholarly approach...oh well

About the author

Stuart Hall was born and raised in Jamaica and arrived in Britain on a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford in 1950. In 1958, he left his PhD on Henry James to found the New Left Review, which did much to open a debate about immigration and the politics of identity. Along with Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart he established the first Cultural Studies programme at a British university in Birmingham in 1964, bringing the study of popular culture into the understanding of political and social change.

After spending more than four decades as one of the UK’s leading public intellectuals, Hall retired from formal academic life in 1997 and since then has continued to devote himself to questions of representation, creativity and difference. He became the chair of two foundations, Iniva, the Institute of International Visual Arts, and Autograph ABP, which seeks to promote photographers from culturally diverse backgrounds, and championed the opening of Iniva’s new Rivington Place arts complex in east London in 2007.

Paul du Gay is Professor of Sociology and Organization Studies, and Co-Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance, in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. His research is located in the sociology of organizational life and cultural studies. His recent
publications include, In Praise of Bureaucracy (Sage, 2000) and Cultural Economy (ed. with M. Pryke, 2002). Culture, Person and Organization: Essays in Cultural Economy will be published by Sage in 2005.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Questions of Cultural Identity
• Editors: Stuart Hall, Paul du Gay
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, 1996
• ISBN: 0803978839, 9780803978836
• Length: 198 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural; Social Science / Anthropology / General; Social Science / Sociology / General