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The Goal Of Cultural Studies Scholars, Per Stuart Hall,

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The goal of Cultural Studies scholars, per Stuart Hall, is to “…understand the ensemble of relations between the economic, political, cultural, ideological, and social spheres” (“The Last Interview”). Hall did not initially believe that Cultural Studies was an autonomous sphere. However, at the time of “The Last Interview”, Hall acknowledged that culture had largely become an autonomous “spectre” within the field which, according to him, was never supposed to happen. Nonetheless, despite the difference between the Cultural Studies of Hall’s time and the Cultural Studies of now, one thing is for certain – “the enterprise is incomplete” (“The Last Interview”).
Hall says that Policing the Crisis is a lot more political than the Cultural…show more content…
In other words, conjunctural analysis requires one to identify the complexities of specific historical events rather than view history as one continuous process. Conjunctural analysis involves a comparison between the similarities and differences of specific conjunctures, as well as what creates and resolves/fails to resolve them. One needs knowledge of other subordinate concepts to understand conjunctures. Thus, conjunctural analysis builds on itself. Hall believed that this type of analysis was important because it could capture emergent histories as they came into fruition. He says, for example, that the conjunctural analysis conducted in Policing the Crisis was an accurate predictor of the Liberal Authoritarianism that was to take place under Margaret Thatcher. Hall attributes Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser with the notion of conjunctural analysis and references each author throughout Policing the Crisis which, in his opinion, is the first example of a distinctly “English” conjunctural analysis.
In Policing the Crisis, Hall seeks to identify the driving forces behind the “moral panic” of 1970’s Britain. He is specifically concerned with the conjuncture between the August 15, 1972 murder of Arthur Hills and the subsequent reaction to an apparent increase in “mugging”. Hall says that there was a social reaction to “mugging” which preceded the actual “mugging” and murder of Arthur Hills (Hall 182). The
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