Between Criticism and Ethnography: Raymond Williams and the Invention of Cultural Studies

Abstract

According to conventional institutional history, the three founding spiritual parents of the intellectual movement known as “cultural studies” are E. P. Thompson, whose revival of historiography “from below” changed the face of history-writing for several generations; Richard Hoggart, who insisted on the continuing salience of a popular, working-class culture in the wake of the pervasive influence of the media, and who founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to document this culture and directed it for its first five years; and Raymond Williams, who, despite his lack of institutional connections to the CCCS and its progeny in some twelve British colleges and universities, was perhaps the most important influence on the movement.¹