ABSTRACT
Setting out to describe cultural studies of education as a field of inquiry, I begin with considerable ambivalence. One of the most notorious characteristics of cultural studies is that it is difficult to define; it is radically open, contextual, and always in tension. In fact, an entire edited collection is dedicated simply to addressing the question of what exactly cultural studies is (Storey, 1996b). When I talk about cultural studies with my colleagues in education, at best, most only have a vague sense of the field, more commonly they have never heard of it, though certainly they have their own ideas about what it means to “study” culture. Students and colleagues from the humanities and social sciences are more likely to be familiar with the “discipline” (or “anti,” “post,” “trans,” “counter” or “inter” discipline) of cultural studies, yet the range of what this might mean to them is wide, from a playful multi-method study of popular cultural artifacts to a leftist political project aimed at democratic social change. Scholars working in the field both celebrate its promise and bemoan its demise. I began writing about this topic over a decade ago, and at that time, I was excited about the future of cultural studies, especially within education, as I was drawn to the potential it had to disrupt the conservative pedagogical status quo and to offer more socially just visions and practices for schooling (Hytten, 1997, 1998, 1999). In the late 1990s, there seemed to be a flourishing of cultural studies work in education: conference presentations within a range of social foundations organizations addressed this topic (including the American Educational Studies Association and the Philosophy of Education Society), journals in the field were started (e.g., Taboo), book series dedicated to cultural studies and education were established (e.g., series editors Henry Giroux and Joe Kincheloe published 10 books between 1997 and 2001 in their Culture and Education serieswith Rowman and Littlefield), and cultural studies programs were created in colleges of education. Yet as I assess the current promise and potential of cultural studies in and of
education, I am a little less hopeful. While still committed to the vision and utopian impulses of cultural studies advocates, I fear that in its current iteration, it may actually be contributing to its own marginalization. This leads me to the project of rethinking and rearticulating a cultural studies of education that is relevant for our times.
