Understanding Richard Hoggart
A Pedagogy of Hope
1. Edition December 2011
232 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Short Description
With the resurgent interest in his work today, this is a timely reevaluation of this foundational figure in Cultural Studies, a critical but friendly review of both Hoggart's work and reputation.
With the resurgent interest in his work today, this is a timely reevaluation of this foundational figure in Cultural Studies, a critical but friendly review of both Hoggart's work and reputation.
* Re-examines the reputation of one of the 'inventors' of Cultural Studies
* Uses new archival sources to critically evaluate Hoggart's contribution and influence, set his work in context, and determine its current relevance
* Addresses detractors and their positions of Hoggart, delineating long-term ideological battles within academia
* Brings cultural studies, literary criticism, and social history to bear on this figure whose interests spread across disciplines, to create a text which blends many threads into a coherent whole
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Literature, Language, and Politics 16
The Uses of Literature 18
Hoggart in Context: Post-war Britain and the Leavises 21
The Language of 'Theory' 30
The Common Reader 34
Democratic Criticism 38
2 The Politics of Autobiography 49
Cultural Studies and Autobiography 51
Generic Conventions 54
Representing Working-Class Lives 59
Situating the Critic 66
3 Working-Class Intellectuals and Democratic Scholarship 73
Scholarship Boy 74
University Adult Education and the Varieties of Learning 76
The Grammar School and Working-Class Education 79
'Working-Class Intellectuals' and the 'Great Tradition' 85
4 Cultural Studies and the Uses of History 94
History and Cultural Studies 94
Locating Richard Hoggart 96
Richard Hoggart and the Emergence of Social History 102
Historians and Richard Hoggart 119
'Nostalgia', 'Romanticism', and 'Sentimentality': Recuperating Hoggart 122
5 Media, Culture, and Society 134
The BBC and Society 135
The Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting and Pilkington 138
Diversity, Authority, and Quality 145
The Limits and Possibilities of Broadcasting in the Twenty-First Century 154
6 Policy, Pedagogy, and Intellectuals 181
An International Servant 183
The Idea of University Adult Education 189
The Role of the Intellectual 194
Index 209
- Dave Russell, Leeds Metropolitan University
"A fascinating and insightful analysis of a leading public intellectual, obsessive auto-biographer, founder of a new academic discipline and original cultural critic." - James Curran, Goldsmiths, University of London
"The authors of Understanding Richard Hoggart highlight, with rigor and respect, the continuing relevance of Hoggart's work to anyone with an interest in how the cultural landscape at once shapes, and is shaped by, our individual habits." - Lynsey Hanley, journalist and author of 'Estates: an Intimate History'
Ben Clarke is Assistant Professor of Twentieth-century British Literature, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), USA. His Orwell in Context: Communities, Myths, Values, appeared in 2007. His research interests include working-class culture, the public house, and Englishness.
John K. Walton is IKERBASQUE Research Professor, Department of Contemporary History, University of the Basque Country, Spain. He edits the Journal of Tourism History, and his most recent book, with Keith Hanley, is Constructing Cultural Tourism: John Ruskin and the Tourist Gaze (2010).