Decoding Culture: Theory and Method in Cultural Studies

Decoding Culture offers a concise and accessible account of the development of cultural studies from the late 1950s to the 1990s. Focusing on the significant theoretical and methodological assumptions that have informed the cultural studies project, Decoding Culture:

• Covers the key thinkers and key perspectives including: structuralism and post-structuralism, Screen theory, the Birmingham School, feminist cultural studies and audience analysis
• Offers a timely corrective to anti-sociological approaches to cultural studies
• Invites readers to reconsider the standard `textbook′ accounts of the development of cultural studies.

Through its straightforward account of complex ideas, Decoding Culture provides a more analytical understanding of the theoretical and methodological dynamics of cultural studies than has been hitherto available. It will be welcomed by all students of cultural studies, sociology and media studies. 

I began my academic life at the University of Leeds as a student in chemical engineering, but then moved into sociology in which subject I graduated in 1965. After four years teaching at the University of Essex I joined the Department of Sociology at the University of York in 1970, becoming successively Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor in that department. I was Head of the Sociology department for six years from 1988 to 1995.