Jim Mcguigan
Biographic Data
| ID | 191996 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jim Mcguigan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jim |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcguigan |
| SIGNATURE | MCGUIGAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loughborough University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 205 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Tory stories’: Arguing for a critical cultural populism, again
Williams, Raymond (1921–1988)
Raymond Williams (1921–1988) was Britain's greatest socialist intellectual of the twentieth century. His Welsh working‐class background and sense of community always inflected his work as a theorist, novelist, and dramatist. Moreover, he developed and revised his thinking over time, influenced by western Marxism but always motivated by the critical possibility of a “common culture” facilitated by an educated and participatory democracy, including…
W illiams, R aymond
Williams was a scholar in the humanities yet his work is hugely relevant to the social sciences. In effect, he moved during his career from literary criticism and cultural history to social and political theory. Williams formulated a general methodology for the sociological analysis of signifying practices in their real circumstances of production, circulation, and consumption that he named, “cultural materialism.” It is a variant of Western Marx…
Neoliberal Culture
Neoliberal Culture presents a critical analysis of the impact of the global free-market - the hegemony of which has been described elsewhere by the author as 'a short counter-revolution' - on the arts, media and everyday life since the 1970s.
Cool Capitalism
This entry summarizes the cool capitalism thesis. The historical passage of “cool,” the expression of dignified embattlement and symbolic resistance to oppression, can be traced from West Africa to the Americas through the slave trade. Disaffection was famously articulated in the post‐ World War II bebop jazz scene. There was also a white take‐up of “cool” argot, style, and demeanor from that period onward, initially associated with the original …
The Work of Raymond Williams
This podcast is a recording of Jim McGuigan's talk "The Work of Raymond Williams" that he presented in the CAMRI Research Seminar at the University of Westminster on October 15, 2014.In the talk, Jim McGuigan surveys Williams’s work and its enduring relevance to media and cultural analysis and why Williams’ 1983 book was mistakenly entitled 'Towards 2000', since it is as fresh and relevant to understanding the world now as it was when originally …
Raymond Williams on Culture & Society: Essential Writings
The work of Raymond Williams remains hugely influential, not just in the humanities but across the social sciences too. This collection introduces a new generation of students to a major figure in sociology, media studies and cultural studies
Raymond Williams and Sociology
The purpose of this article is to recover Williams as a major theoretical inspiration for the social sciences, specifically, as the inaugurator of what might be regarded as a research paradigm, cultural materialism. In the first section, Williams's encounter with the discipline of sociology is traced and distinguished as a critical alternative to the presently ascendant - at least in the USA - neo-Durkeimian school of 'cultural sociology'. In the…
The Neoliberal Self
This article proposes an ideal type of the neoliberal self as the preferred form of life in the economic, political and cultural circumstances of present-day developed and developing capitalism. The neoliberal self combines the idealised subject(s) of classical and neoclassical economics - featuring entrepreneurship and consumer sovereignty - with the contemporary discourse of 'the taxpayer', who is sceptical of redistributive justice, and a 'coo…
Culture and the Public Sphere
Jim McGuigan discusses cultural policy as a manifestation of cultural politics in the widest sense. Illustrating his case with examples from recent cultural policy initiatives in Britain, the United States and Australia, he looks at:* The rise of market reasoning in arts administration* Urban regeneration and the arts* Heritage tourism* Race, identity and cultural citizenship* Censorship and moral regulation* The role of computer-mediated communi…
The Coolness of Capitalism Today
This paper is about the reconciliation of cultural analysis with political economy in Marxist-inspired research on communications. It traces how these two traditions became separated with the development of a one-dimensional and consumerist cultural studies, on the one-hand, and a more classically Marxist political economy of communications, on the other hand, that was accused of holding a simplistic and erroneous concept of ideology. The paper d…
From cultural populism to cool capitalism
During the 1980s, cultural studies in Britain – and elsewhere – took an uncritical populist turn. The field of study had hitherto focused, with a distinctly oppositional orientation, upon the arts, popular and mass culture as sites of ideological contestation. Yet, increasing concern with describing and indeed celebrating processes of cultural consumption – the active audience, resistance through rituals etc. – lost sight of economic and politica…
Creative labour: Working in the creative industries
Creative labour: working in the creative industries, edited by Alan McKinlay and Chris Smith, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 288 pp., £29.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-230-22200-7 This collect
Creative labour, cultural work and individualisation
This paper distinguishes between creative labour as a universal human attribute and cultural work as specifically a meaning‐making practice in order to offset the way in which that distinction has become blurred in recent cultural policy rhetoric. It discusses the enduring relevance of Marx’s theory of alienation, the separation of conception and execution in the modern labour process and issues concerning individualism and collectivism. Institut…
Naomi Klein, No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies
by Naomi Klein, London, Flamingo, 2000, 490 pp., ISBN 0‐00‐255919‐6 Academics tend to be snooty about Naomi Klein’s No Logo. They dismiss it as mere journalism. They say that we already knew everyt
Cool Capitalism
Doing a Florida thing: The creative class thesis and cultural policy
The work of Richard Florida has proven extremely influential in cultural policy circles in recent years. His arguments concerning ‘the rise of the creative class’ and the concentration of ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ in successful cities are grounded in certain theoretical assumptions and supported by specific kinds of evidence that should be submitted to critical interrogation in order to test their robustness. This paper addresses the fol…
Apprentices to cool capitalism
This article looks at the television series, The Apprentice, concentrating on the 2005 American edition and the 2007 British edition. The Apprentice is a game show that puts young business managers in competition with one another over several weeks. Every week someone is “fired”. The reward for the eventual winner is an executive job with Donald Trump in the USA or Alan Sugar in the United Kingdom in the respective national series. It is a popula…
Richard Hoggart: Public Intellectual
This article argues that Richard Hoggart is an exemplary public intellectual of the social democratic consensus that prevailed in Britain – and, indeed, elsewhere – from the Second World War until the 1970s. His public engagements have been many and various, including arts and broadcasting policy. The article also examines Hoggart’s role in the formation of cultural studies and its often problematic relationship with policy issues. A key theme of…
Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC
The Politics of Cultural Studies and Cool Capitalism
This article traces various trajectories of development in the field of Cultural Studies, identifying five in particular: theoreticism, methodism, pragmatism, subjectivism, and consumerism. The article concentrates on the consumerist trajectory as it emerged in Britain. While “the Birmingham School” and “British Cultural Studies” have been used to label this trajectory, it is more accurately named “Hallian Cultural Studies” since Stuart Hall was …
The Cultural Public Sphere
Media research that uses the concept of a public sphere in order to measure distortion against its ideal standard of dialogic democracy tends to concentrate upon the cognitive aspects of news and either ignores or disdains affective communications. Jurgen Habermas's original formulation distinguished between the literary and the political public spheres. While everyday news was a feature of the political public sphere, the literary public sphere …
Neo‐liberalism, Culture and Policy
This article looks at the hegemonic process of neo‐liberal globalisation and its implications for culture in general and cultural policy in particular from a critical perspective. A consideration of its ideological features is a necessary supplement to the economic analysis of neo‐liberal globalisation. Ideology mediates economics and culture. As it is used here, the concept of “ideology” refers to how dominant power relations and inequalities ar…
A Community of Communities
The Parekh Report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (Runnymede Trust 2000) was not well received on publication in October 2000. It was read as an attack on Britishness and as an expression of the New Labour government’s political correctness, although the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, managed simultaneously to launch the report publicly and distance himself from what he mistakenly construed to be its key argument. In this chapter I shall co…
Cultural Policy Studies
This chapter contains section titled: Policing Culture Becoming Useful Remaining Critical Postscript 2000 Notes References
The Cultural Public Sphere
Media research that uses the concept of a public sphere in order to measure distortion against its ideal standard of dialogic democracy tends to concentrate upon the cognitive aspects of news and either ignores or disdains affective communications. Jurgen Habermas's original formulation distinguished between the literary and the political public spheres. While everyday news was a feature of the political public sphere, the literary public sphere …
The Neoliberal Self
This article proposes an ideal type of the neoliberal self as the preferred form of life in the economic, political and cultural circumstances of present-day developed and developing capitalism. The neoliberal self combines the idealised subject(s) of classical and neoclassical economics - featuring entrepreneurship and consumer sovereignty - with the contemporary discourse of 'the taxpayer', who is sceptical of redistributive justice, and a 'coo…
Neo‐liberalism, Culture and Policy
This article looks at the hegemonic process of neo‐liberal globalisation and its implications for culture in general and cultural policy in particular from a critical perspective. A consideration of its ideological features is a necessary supplement to the economic analysis of neo‐liberal globalisation. Ideology mediates economics and culture. As it is used here, the concept of “ideology” refers to how dominant power relations and inequalities ar…
Creative labour, cultural work and individualisation
This paper distinguishes between creative labour as a universal human attribute and cultural work as specifically a meaning‐making practice in order to offset the way in which that distinction has become blurred in recent cultural policy rhetoric. It discusses the enduring relevance of Marx’s theory of alienation, the separation of conception and execution in the modern labour process and issues concerning individualism and collectivism. Institut…
Doing a Florida thing: The creative class thesis and cultural policy
The work of Richard Florida has proven extremely influential in cultural policy circles in recent years. His arguments concerning ‘the rise of the creative class’ and the concentration of ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ in successful cities are grounded in certain theoretical assumptions and supported by specific kinds of evidence that should be submitted to critical interrogation in order to test their robustness. This paper addresses the fol…
The Politics of Cultural Studies and Cool Capitalism
This article traces various trajectories of development in the field of Cultural Studies, identifying five in particular: theoreticism, methodism, pragmatism, subjectivism, and consumerism. The article concentrates on the consumerist trajectory as it emerged in Britain. While “the Birmingham School” and “British Cultural Studies” have been used to label this trajectory, it is more accurately named “Hallian Cultural Studies” since Stuart Hall was …
Apprentices to cool capitalism
This article looks at the television series, The Apprentice, concentrating on the 2005 American edition and the 2007 British edition. The Apprentice is a game show that puts young business managers in competition with one another over several weeks. Every week someone is “fired”. The reward for the eventual winner is an executive job with Donald Trump in the USA or Alan Sugar in the United Kingdom in the respective national series. It is a popula…
The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting
(2002). The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting. International Journal of Cultural Policy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-20
British Identity and 'The People's Princess
This article treats the popular response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, as a manifestation of the cultural public sphere, by which is meant a symbolic space for affective communication and an emotional sense of democratic participation. The Diana phenomenon neither produced a 'revolutionary moment' nor, however, was it insignificant. Rather, it represented a vehicle for public debate on British identity, the role of the monarchy and, m…
Figuring out the dome
The New Millennium Experience ‐ an exhibition on the theme of time sited in a fibre‐glass dome on the Greenwich Peninsula adjacent to the Prime Meridian ‐ was the centrepiece of Millennium celebrations in Britain. From its inception in the mid‐1990s ‘the Dome’ had been controversial for several reasons, not least of which was its financial viability were it not to prove very popular with the general public. Within weeks of opening, it emerged tha…
Raymond Williams and Sociology
The purpose of this article is to recover Williams as a major theoretical inspiration for the social sciences, specifically, as the inaugurator of what might be regarded as a research paradigm, cultural materialism. In the first section, Williams's encounter with the discipline of sociology is traced and distinguished as a critical alternative to the presently ascendant - at least in the USA - neo-Durkeimian school of 'cultural sociology'. In the…
Problems of Cultural Analysis and Policy in the Information Age
The term culture is now used in so many different ways that its analytical util ity is in doubt. For policy-oriented cultural studies, it is wisest to concentrate on practices that are first and foremost about signification, identity, and pleasure. Also, policy-oriented research should not be reduced to adminis trative usefulness. From a critical perspective, technological determinism in communications and culture must be treated with skepticism.…
Serious writing and the state
Tory stories’: Arguing for a critical cultural populism, again
Creative labour: Working in the creative industries
Creative labour: working in the creative industries, edited by Alan McKinlay and Chris Smith, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 288 pp., £29.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-230-22200-7 This collect
National Government and the Cultural Public Sphere
This article introduces the concept of the cultural public sphere to examine public debate around national government policy in the cultural field when the nation-state is said to be of diminishing significance. The election of New Labour in Britain and the cultural politics of its first six months in office are taken as a case study. A distinction is made between cultural policy proper and cultural policy as display. New Labour is especially not…
Richard Hoggart: Public Intellectual
This article argues that Richard Hoggart is an exemplary public intellectual of the social democratic consensus that prevailed in Britain – and, indeed, elsewhere – from the Second World War until the 1970s. His public engagements have been many and various, including arts and broadcasting policy. The article also examines Hoggart’s role in the formation of cultural studies and its often problematic relationship with policy issues. A key theme of…
Conference review: Boiling the frog
CIRCLE ROUND TABLE, ‘PRIVATIZATION/DESETATISATION AND CULTURE‐LIMITATIONS OR OPPORTUNITIES FOR CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE’? Amsterdam, 11–14 June 1997
The Literary Sociology of Sartre
Serious writing and the state
Cultural populism
Cultural policy studies - or, how to be usefulandcritical
Cultural Methodologies
'Cultural Methodologies' is the first book to bring together the wide range of approaches which characterise research in cultural studies. The topics discussed include the use of qualitative and quantitative data, and the role of feminism in cultural studies
Conference review: Boiling the frog
CIRCLE ROUND TABLE, ‘PRIVATIZATION/DESETATISATION AND CULTURE‐LIMITATIONS OR OPPORTUNITIES FOR CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE’? Amsterdam, 11–14 June 1997
National Government and the Cultural Public Sphere
This article introduces the concept of the cultural public sphere to examine public debate around national government policy in the cultural field when the nation-state is said to be of diminishing significance. The election of New Labour in Britain and the cultural politics of its first six months in office are taken as a case study. A distinction is made between cultural policy proper and cultural policy as display. New Labour is especially not…
Modernity and postmodern culture
A critical introduction to claims concerning the postmodernization of culture and society, this text aims to explore what postmodernism culture is, if modern values still matter, and why life isn't as liberated as it seems
Technocities
Figuring out the dome
The New Millennium Experience ‐ an exhibition on the theme of time sited in a fibre‐glass dome on the Greenwich Peninsula adjacent to the Prime Meridian ‐ was the centrepiece of Millennium celebrations in Britain. From its inception in the mid‐1990s ‘the Dome’ had been controversial for several reasons, not least of which was its financial viability were it not to prove very popular with the general public. Within weeks of opening, it emerged tha…
British Identity and 'The People's Princess
This article treats the popular response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, as a manifestation of the cultural public sphere, by which is meant a symbolic space for affective communication and an emotional sense of democratic participation. The Diana phenomenon neither produced a 'revolutionary moment' nor, however, was it insignificant. Rather, it represented a vehicle for public debate on British identity, the role of the monarchy and, m…
Problems of Cultural Analysis and Policy in the Information Age
The term culture is now used in so many different ways that its analytical util ity is in doubt. For policy-oriented cultural studies, it is wisest to concentrate on practices that are first and foremost about signification, identity, and pleasure. Also, policy-oriented research should not be reduced to adminis trative usefulness. From a critical perspective, technological determinism in communications and culture must be treated with skepticism.…
The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting
(2002). The millennium dome: Sponsoring, meaning and visiting. International Journal of Cultural Policy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-20
Cultural Policy Studies
This chapter contains section titled: Policing Culture Becoming Useful Remaining Critical Postscript 2000 Notes References
Critical Renewal
The social construction of a cultural disaster: New Labour's millennium experience
This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Board project on London's Millennium Dome exposition in the year 2000. The Dome was generally considered to be a cultural disaster in the news media and public conversation. It became a political embarrassment for Britain's New Labour government but did not prove damaging in the 2001 general election. The article does not dispute the media's damnation of the Dome but questions …
A Community of Communities
The Parekh Report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (Runnymede Trust 2000) was not well received on publication in October 2000. It was read as an attack on Britishness and as an expression of the New Labour government’s political correctness, although the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, managed simultaneously to launch the report publicly and distance himself from what he mistakenly construed to be its key argument. In this chapter I shall co…
The Cultural Public Sphere
Media research that uses the concept of a public sphere in order to measure distortion against its ideal standard of dialogic democracy tends to concentrate upon the cognitive aspects of news and either ignores or disdains affective communications. Jurgen Habermas's original formulation distinguished between the literary and the political public spheres. While everyday news was a feature of the political public sphere, the literary public sphere …
Neo‐liberalism, Culture and Policy
This article looks at the hegemonic process of neo‐liberal globalisation and its implications for culture in general and cultural policy in particular from a critical perspective. A consideration of its ideological features is a necessary supplement to the economic analysis of neo‐liberal globalisation. Ideology mediates economics and culture. As it is used here, the concept of “ideology” refers to how dominant power relations and inequalities ar…
Richard Hoggart: Public Intellectual
This article argues that Richard Hoggart is an exemplary public intellectual of the social democratic consensus that prevailed in Britain – and, indeed, elsewhere – from the Second World War until the 1970s. His public engagements have been many and various, including arts and broadcasting policy. The article also examines Hoggart’s role in the formation of cultural studies and its often problematic relationship with policy issues. A key theme of…
Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC
The Politics of Cultural Studies and Cool Capitalism
This article traces various trajectories of development in the field of Cultural Studies, identifying five in particular: theoreticism, methodism, pragmatism, subjectivism, and consumerism. The article concentrates on the consumerist trajectory as it emerged in Britain. While “the Birmingham School” and “British Cultural Studies” have been used to label this trajectory, it is more accurately named “Hallian Cultural Studies” since Stuart Hall was …
Apprentices to cool capitalism
This article looks at the television series, The Apprentice, concentrating on the 2005 American edition and the 2007 British edition. The Apprentice is a game show that puts young business managers in competition with one another over several weeks. Every week someone is “fired”. The reward for the eventual winner is an executive job with Donald Trump in the USA or Alan Sugar in the United Kingdom in the respective national series. It is a popula…
Cool Capitalism
Doing a Florida thing: The creative class thesis and cultural policy
The work of Richard Florida has proven extremely influential in cultural policy circles in recent years. His arguments concerning ‘the rise of the creative class’ and the concentration of ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ in successful cities are grounded in certain theoretical assumptions and supported by specific kinds of evidence that should be submitted to critical interrogation in order to test their robustness. This paper addresses the fol…
Sociology (36 works) · Political science (31 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (18 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (17 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Social science (13 works) · Media studies (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works)