Research Methods in Cultural Studies

by Michael Pickering

This new textbook addresses the neglect of practical research methods in cultural studies. It provides students with clearly written overviews of research methods in cultural studies, along with guidelines on how to put these methods into operation. It advocates a multi-method approach, with students drawing from a pool of techniques and approaches suitable for their own topics of investigation. The book covers the following main Drawing on experience, and studying how narratives make sense of experience. Investigating production processes in the cultural industries, and the consumption and assimilation of cultural products by audiences and fans. Taking both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of cultural life. Analysing visual images and both spoken and written forms of discourse. Exploring cultural memory and historical representation. The contributors, along with Michael Pickering, are Martin Barker, Aeron Davis, David Deacon, Emily Keightley, Steph Lawler, Anneke Meyer, Virginia Nightingale, and Sarah Pink. The book is designed for use by students on upper-level undergraduate and taught Masters-level courses as well as postgraduate research students and cultural studies researchers more generally. It will be of enormous value across all fields of study involved in cultural enquiry and analysis.

Genres: Cultural Studies

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

After having stumbled upon this book by accident while searching cultural studies research methodologies more generally, I can say that I appreciated its critiques of data-averse approaches to the eclectic discipline. Theorists are often right to interrogate the implicit assumptions, production processes, and ultimate objectivity of data sets, but it's high time these critiques were integrated into research as part of a more reflective and reflexive empiricism rather than serving as mere self-congratulatory sermons. The authors make a good case for learning from both sociology and anthropology, and I think combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of social and cultural (power) relations has obvious advantages. For me the glaring omission was any discussion of new forms of scientism and their relationship with increasingly technocratic governance strategies. For many researchers in the cultural studies field, it is the intellectual hegemony of a crude scientism that motivates them to adopt more hermeneutic and phenomenonological approaches as possible alternatives. Unfortunately, of course, such an approach--while valuable on one level--serves to obscure the third option of a worldview that is both critical and empirical, forcing researchers to choose sides in keeping with what is likely a false dichotomy (or binary, if you prefer). The book might have strengthened its arguments by attending to this concern, but overall a helpful volume.