THE STUDY OF POPULAR

CULTURE:THENEEDFORA
CLEAR AGENDA
Lesley Johnson
History is the subject of a structure whose site
is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled
by the presence of the now.
Walter Benjamin (1939/1977:26) argued for a history to conjure up images of a
humane future. His preoccupation was with a history, a set of images, that not
only would stir the imagination, but feedaction. This paper takes as its starting
point that all history is a fabrication, formed always within the concerns of the
present, by the politics of the present. It argues that in studying popular culture
wemust ask what does it do, what is its agenda its project for the present and
the future? And it suggests that this field of study in Australia will be useful when
it provides a history that not only criticallyreassesses the nationalist myths of
Anzac and the rural tradition, but gives us quite different images of our past and
our present.
In a paper on the social production of popular memories, Keith Tribe warns of
the danger for women's history or people's history in believing their task to be one
of retrieval 'of a neglected point of view' (Tribe 1981) or of restoring the whole
truth to historical discourse. History, he argues, is not a collection of past events,
some of which have been neglected or excluded by previous historians. As
afabrication, a combining together of materials within a specific theo retical
framework, all history, he insists, is perpetually constructed within a specific
conjuncture. To put women into history is not tounlock its real truth, but to
engage in politics, to seek to strengthen the political demands of the women's
movement. But, by the same token, to engage in women's history or people's
history is not ofnecessity politically progressive. We have always to ask what does
it do, what is the object of this history?
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) has sought to deal
with contemporary and historical issues with a clear sense of engagement or
commitment, of being clear about the objectof their work. Popular culture as a
field of study in England is most closely identified with the style of analysis
developed by this Centre.
1

Aust. J. Cultural Studies, 4: 7 (1986)

This paper will proceed by giving a brief account of their cultural studies approach
as it has recently been discussed by two of the main figures associated with the
CCCS. It will then go on to discuss thoseaccounts and the subsequent agenda
which has been proposed for the study of popular culture. This proposal will be
explored and extended, and finally, compared with Australian trends in the field
ofpopular culture.
Cultural Studies
Founded by Richard Hoggart in 1964, the CCCS at first worked within a
framework heavily influenced by Hoggart, Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson;
a framework which has since been characterized by members of the Centre as
'culturalist' (Johnson 1979). In a discussion of cultural studies since the late
1950s, Stuart Hall analysed the projects of these three authors as acts of
'recovery,' ofconstituting traditions. Hoggart, in his book, The Uses of
Literacy, both re-presented a tradition of cultural debate about 'mass
society' and
a
tradition
of
English
working-class
culture.
Raymond
Williams in Culture and Society constituted the culture-and-society tradition of
a particular group of English intellectuals and E.P. Thompson's The Making of the
English Working Class recovered a tradition of working-class political culture.
Between them, says Hall, these books were the founding impulse for cultural
studies, but not, he insists, in the sense of their being text-books for a new
academic discipline. As intellectual works, they were 'focused by, organized
through and constituted responses to, the immediate pressures of the time and
society in which they were written' (Hall 1980:58). Their projects of recovery, of
constituting specific traditions, were clearly formed in this manner as a means
of engagement with contemporary concerns. In thus defining the space of cultural
studies, they had also prescribed an approach to culture.
In characterizing these authors as 'culturalist,' both Stuart Hall and Richard
Johnson have identified the focus of this paradigm (as they have described it) in
questions
about
how
people
experiencetheir
conditions
of
life.
The culturalist's method is to begin with experience or 'culture' and to read down
from there: to look at other structures and relations from a prior understanding of
how they arelived. The second moment of cultural studies, as depicted by
Hall and Johnson, was ushered in by the arrival of structuralism(s) on
the intellectual scene. Within this paradigm it was argued that, on the contrary,
experience was not the ground of analysis; it was not an authenticating source.
Experience was the effect or product of classifications, frameworks, language or
discourses; and the focus of cultural

Aust. J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

studies shitted to this arena. Questions of ideology and structures of domination

took over from questions about culture or experience.

Both Hall and Johnson in constructing the history of cultural studies emphasize
shifts in paradigms or significant breaks. Certainly the work of the CCCS, as
represented by works such as Resistance throughRituals (a collection of papers on
youth culture) and On Ideology (papers on various theoretical approaches to
ideology), appears remarkably different. The terms, the level of analysis, the foci
appearquite opposed. The first concentrates on popular resistance, detailed
empirical studies of culture, an emphasis on experience, and a reading of cultures
as expressions of class relations; the second on theoretical concepts, structures of
domination and the work of intellectuals. Both Hall and Johnson conclude their
accounts with a discussion of the necessity to make the best elements of both
paradigms and to pursue questions about the dialectic between conditions and
consciousness, between conditions and culture.
These assessments or histories of cultural studies by Hall and Johnson, which
now have appeared in a number of different contexts, can themselves be
interpreted as acts of recovery, of constituting traditions, precisely in the manner
of their predecessors. They are not simply engaged in providing an account of
cultural studies as handy references for students and academic courses.
Representing cultural studies as formed by two theoretical breaks or paradigms
serves as a means of hailing a new set of concerns, signalling its need and marking out the terrain. In particular, in re-calling theculturalist paradigm they place
on the agenda a particular style of analysis one that emphasizes detailed
studies of particular sites and an aspect of its politics the insistence that the
cultural is not merely a reflection of something else, but the site of a particular
politics which cannot merely be reduced to something else, nor be trivialized
as being outside the realm of real political struggle.
These histories have, in part, been formed by the intellectual con text in which
Hall
and
Johnson
work.
Numerous
critiques
of
structuralism
and its theoreticism have been mounted and vigorous debates have raged about
the value of this particular paradigm. E.P. Thompson's virtriolic attack in The
Poverty of Theory (1979) and the various replies to him have continued this
debate well beyond thepoint at which Hall and Johnson produced their histories
(Anderson 1980; Samuel 1981). But, at another level, these accounts have
been formed by and can be said 'to constitute responses to' the changing political
context of their work. In proclaiming the return to questions about how structures
of dominance are lived, and in asserting the need to look at both conditions and
consciousness, they announce a
3

A ust. J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

political agenda for intellectual work in the field of cultural studies. These
questions are proposed as political questions as ways of thinking about, and
intervening in, the present historical conjuncturein England. The turn to popular
culture as a field of study in the past four or five years is a product of this agenda.
Popular Culture
The Study of popular culture in England, as represented by Hall (1981), Johnson
(1979), the CCCS and the introduction of an Open University course in this field,
seeks to construct an understanding of what is seen as a profound shift in the
political and ideological consensus in that society. The transformation identified
became most noticeable with the increasing success of Margaret Thatcher;
but major changes had already been noted before this time. The CCCS, for
example, had begun to analyse what it identified as 'a crisis in hegemony' in a
number of different sites. In the work for Policing the Crisis,produced by Stuart Hall
and others, and the work of the Education group, whose book appeared much later
Unpopular Education the CCCS was examining the growing crisis for the
social democratic
consensus
and
the
manner
in
which
a
new,
conservative, authoritarian consensus was being constructed. In effect, the
success of Margaret Thatcher at the election polls in 1979 gave a
particular urgency to this project. The questions posed examined the construction
of a new consensus in sites such as the media, the courts and parliamentary
politics, but also asserted the need to analyse the manner in which these
processes had effected changes in the consciousness of large sections of the
population. Popular culture as a field of study, then, was to be conceived within
this terrain as being the study ofboth the production of ideologies, and the
relationship between these ideologies and the practical ideologies or common
sense, as it was now referred to, of different sections of the population.
Stuart Hall's paper 'Notes on Deconstructing the Popular' (l981) states these
issues in forceful terms. In this paper he defines popular culture as a site of
struggle. It is the site where 'the people' in various forms. The people, says Hall,
do not exist as such; 1 but ways of representing 'the people' do which seek either to
constitute them as saying 'yes' to power in forms, for example, such as 'the
nation,' unified and acquiescent to the present social and political arrangements
or, as a popular democratic force against the power bloc. The study of popular
culture examines those discourses, their sites and processes of production. But
it also seeks, says Hall, to examine how those discourses re-organize,
disorganize or become sedimented into

Aust. J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

the common sense or the consciousness of different sections of the population.

In marking out the field of popular culture, Hall examines a number of

definitions of this concept. The first definition is more akin to a concept of mass

culture; it is the culture provided for themasses or for the mass market. This is
the definition around which a debate has been constructed about popular culture
as manipulative versus popular culture as the truly authentic culture of the
people or the working-classes. In Australia the debate has been conducted frequently by recruiting figures such as Adorno and Benjamin as representing either
side (e.g. Docker 1982). Hall rejects this definition of popular culture and the
terms of the debate. Such modes of discussing culture, he says, raise important
questions about the cultural industries and the production of culture; but it is not
a matter of people being cultural dupes or there being an authentic popular
culture outside the field of cultural power and domination. Hall insists on the
need to examine culture as a site of 'continuous and necessarily uneven and
unequal struggle' in which the dominant culture works constantly to enclose and
confine all cultural forms within its definitions. Cultural forms are never wholly
corrupt or wholly authentic: they are 'deeply contradictory' (Hall 1981:233).
Precisely because they function on the terrain of the 'popular,' he argues, the
provided commercial cultural forms carry elements of recognition, of display ing
their responsiveness to, the forms in which the people already recognize
themselves, or experience their lives.
The second concept purports to be descriptive or anthropological: it equates
popular culture with all the things 'the people' do and enjoy. Embedded in this
notion, says Hall, is an opposition between the elite or dominant culture and the
culture of the 'periphery.' This distinction is valuable in drawing our attention to
the way in which particular institutions such as schools work to create and police
this opposition. But it is not a descriptive definition says Hall; it relies on a notion
of the people versus the non-people, a distinction precisely constituted by the
discourses about culture conducted in such institutional sites. Cultural forms
have no fixed position on this hierarchy, but move up and down according to
their recruitment to these discourses of legitimate and non-legitimate culture.
Stuart Hall rejects these two definitions, then, and proposes to speak of
popular culture as the site where 'the people' are constituted, are fought or
struggled over, and struggle. In particular, his concern is with the processes by
which 'the people' are defined as consenting to the exercise of power over their
lives, to the handing over of power; versus their being defined as opposed to
such relations of
5

Aust. J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

domination. It is thus a profoundly political concept of popular culture.

However, in this paper (and others he has written on the topic) Hall provides
only momentary glimpses of what this analysis of popular culture might look like.
The focus of this work in recent years has been the analysis of Thatcherism and
the construction of an authoritarian-popular consensus in Britain. In its attack on
trade unions, welfare bureaucracies, and more generally, the institutions of the
social-democratic state, Hall argues, this populist discourse con stitutes the people
as being opposed to the power bloc, precisely in order to construct a new
consensus. Similarly, Hall has examined theway in which consent was
constructed around the Falklands War crisis. 'The people' again were called on in
this instance by evoking memories of Britain in its 'finest hour' (a memory that
could be reliedupon because of its continual construction through television
and film, documentary and fiction). This constituting of the people, as Judy Brett
has noted in an interview with Stuart Hall, was selective(Hall/Brett 1983:194). It
claimed as 'the people' specifically those who had been in Britain (in fact or
tradition) during the Second World War; those who had no memory of this time
the immigrantswho had arrived in large numbers since then had no place
within this discourse. This populism has a 'racist subtext' (Hall/Brett).
In his published writings in this area Hall concentrates on Thatcherism as a
discourse being produced in a range of different sites. He makes references to
Thatcherism's success in changingpopular consciousness, of having awakened
'the strong elements of traditionalism and conservatism within popular workingclass culture' (Hall/Brett 1983:193), for example; but the thrust of his analysis is
not in this direction. It is not clear what a study of the common-sense
conceptions within which Thatcherism roots itself, or works upon, would look like.
A possible example of this type of analysis where a study of both the production
of ideologies and their effects in the popular consciousness or common sense is
announced may be the CCCS book heavily influenced by Hall: The Empire
Strikes Back (CCCS 1982). This book argues that 'the construction of an authoritarian state in Britain is fundamentally intertwined with the elaboration of a
popular racism in the 1970s' (CCCS:9). Yet the paper in this collection which is
most centrally concerned with the way in which racist ideologies have taken hold
in the common sense of the working-classes provides evidence only of the
elaboration of theseideologies in the populist discourses of daily newspapers, the
statements of certain politicians, the police and the practices of institutions such
as schools (Lawrence 1982:9).

Aust J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

The problem for Hall and others working within a similar frame work is not
simply a question of evidence. It is not a matter of it being easier to study the
production of ideologies in newspapers,political debates or police records. The
problem lies in the theoretical status of concepts such as consciousness, or the
popular consciousness or the national popular culture. In his papers on popular
culture and cultural studies Hall has argued for a necessarily dialectic

approach to conditions and consciousness, but this concept of consciousness

is not fully explored. Similarly, when he refers to lived cultures or 'common
sense,' their theoretical status is gestured towards rather than developed within
a clear framework, and terms such as 'working-class culture' or 'popular culture'
slide into the analysis.
But the problem does seem to be one which can be at least shelved in the
analysis of popular culture. Hall has argued that there is no fixed content to the
category 'the people,' that popular culture is the site where 'the people' are
constituted, and that popular culture is thereby a site of struggle. The nature of
cultural and ideological struggle is the struggle between forces which seek to
define 'thepeople' as saying yes to 'power,' opposed by definitions of
'the people' which constitute them as a genuinely popular, genuinely democratic
force. Thatcherism as a discursive formation elaborated in a range of different
sites constitutes the people, as Hall (1981:239) has stated, as needing to be
'disciplined more, ruled better, more effectively policed, whose way of life needs to
be protected from 'aliencultures'.' To study popular culture is to study the
production of such discourses. But most importantly, it is to study the way in
which these have effectively excluded other discourses, other modes of rep resenting
'the
people'
and
it
is
to
study
those
sites
where
oppositional representations have been or are being elaborated.
To take an example: Hall in his analysis of the Falklands War and in discussions
in Australia on his recent visit here talked of the way in which images of British
History had been activated during that crisis to establish particular
understandings of the Government's actions. Britain at war was evoked as the
time when the country was most united: 'the nation and the people [were brought
together]
in
a massively
effective
way
around
deeply
traditionalist
chauvinistic symbols' (Hall/Brett: 198). Histories with their images of 'the
people,' 'our past,' 'the nation,' thus have been effectively appropriated by the
new Right. Hall argues that the construction of a quite different set of historical
understandings of the past and the putting up of a fight, as it were, for the
symbols and images already operating in historical discourses is a central task for
'intellectual' work. 2 The terrain of popular culture includes, then, an analysis of
those sites where a different sense of 'the people' is to be furnished, to re-call
forms in
7

Aust. J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

which 'the people' were constituted as a democratic force and to draw

attention to the way in which alternative, oppositional definitions of the people
have consistently been eliminated or trivialized in those sites where they have
emerged.
This analysis can be most usefully clarified and extended by turn ing to the field
of popular culture studies in Australia to an examination of what has been done
in this field and then to a suggestion ofwhat could be done.
Popular Culture Studies in Australia
Just as the field is very new in England, so it is in Australia, but a number of
significant trends have emerged. Taking the field as marked out by discussions
in journals such as Arena and Overland andby the books edited by Spearitt and
Walker (1979) Australian Popular Culture, some major problems can be
identified. First, popular culture is frequently seen as a matter of the celebratory
recovery ofthose things which 'the people' have indulged in or enjoyed.
So Walker
(1979:2)
in
his
introduction
to
the
book Australian
Popular Culture speaks of its project in terms of providing a broader notion of 'our
cultural heritage.' This is very much in the vein of the 'retrieval of a neglected
point of view.' Apart from pointing out, then, that this approach neglects or
shelves crucial questions about the productionof culture and relations of power
and dominance in the field of culture, we have also to ask 'what does it do?' The
celebratory approach to poplar culture does nothing to challenge or disrupt the
dominantrepresentations of 'the people.' It works rather to constitute them
as acquiescing to the present social arrangements; popular culture is simply a
neglected part of our cultural heritage.
Second, this approach has also at times been linked with a claim to be
concerned with the authentic popular culture or the authentic working-class of
popular culture as identifying 'genuine' or 'authentic' working-class values and
enjoyments. These included the importance of luck and gambling, an insistence
on one's own language style, and enjoying activities in a group of family or
friends. 3 Although Docker gestures towards Hall's analysis of popular culture as a
contested site, he purports to be able to read particular television programmes as
giving expression to these authentic working-class values and preferences. Both
Hall and Johnson have dismissed the notion that there is an authentic workingclass or popular culture. They argue that the traditional working-class culture
which has consistently been identified as embodying these authentic values
as for example, depicted in Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy4 now

A ust J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

has to be understood as being one form through which the working-class has been
represented. Indeed, as Stuart Hall (unpub.:14) points out, these particular cultural
practices emerged at a specific historical moment the 1880s and 90s and
disappeared again fairly quickly. A cultural practice or style cannot be identified
as truly authentic or organic to a particular class.
Third, discussions of popular culture frequently become consumed by theoretical
debates: in particular, whether popular culture is totally manipulated or possibly
authentic, and whether to focus on the'text,' the 'context' or both: whether to
be culturalist, structuralist, formalist, semiotic and so on. These debates in the
Australian setting rarely address the politics of intellectual work except in
simplisticterms
of
'left
optimism' versus 'left
pessimism.' Nellie
Melba,
Ginger Meggs and Friends is an important example. The editors in their introduction
provide a useful summary of the cultural-to-structuralist history of cultural
studies as told by Hall and Johnson, but it is a bleached version of their
accounts. In this introductory essay, Dermody et al (1982:52) argue for the
necessity to break down the dichotomy between text and context, as they
characterize the debate, to study 'the text in all its aspects.' This project overrides
the political consideration that forms the Hall/Johnson histories. Similarly,
the articles which make up the book tend to veer to one side or the other of the
dichotomy as presented in the editors' introduction; the book as a whole evades
raising serious questions about the politics of popular culture. As Andrew Milner
(1982) points out, for example, the book fails to examine the centrality of images
of Australian nationalism to popular and radical cultural forms.
The reason for this lacuna is, ironically, partly recognized by the editors of this
book. They point to the way in which cultural studies emerges in England out of
the culturalist tradition; whereas inAustralia, cultural history derives from a
tradition of radical nationalism. But this insight is channelled into a consideration of
the way in which the text-versus-context issue has been posed in Australia, by this
tradition of left nationalism, rather than an analysis of the politics of its approach
to cultural studies. The failure to address the issue of nationalism in studies of
Australian cultural history in particular of popular culture stems from the way
in which they, the editors themselves, have been formed by this tradition and its
politics. This book represents a continuation of that tradition, rather than its deconstruction. The study of popular culture becomes the celebratory restitution of
a neglected past or point of view, where true, authentic, Australian values are to
be found in opposition to the manipulative, consumer culture of America or the
imperialist, elitist culture of Britain.
9

Aust J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

The terrain of popular culture, then, needs to be transformed so that it begins

to engage with those issues. As a field of study, popular culture is concerned with
the forms in which 'the people' have been constituted. If it fails to address the
politics of these cultural forms, practices or institutions, its stance becomes in
spite of itself political. To celebrate a cultural form, for example, because it ad dresses 'the people' as being authentic in comparison perhaps to a high cultural
form, which addresses 'not the people' those of 'distinctive,' 'superior' taste is
a form of populism which trivializeswhat is at stake here and negates or
mystifies the battles being fought. We need a study of popular culture which
examines the production of ideologies, cultural forms, practices and institutions
in which 'the people' are addressed. This will include those forms in which they
have been constituted as acquiescent to the structures, the processes, of power
and domination; it will include those forms in which they have been constituted as
an oppositional force to the structures of domination; and it will involve an
examination of the processes by which those 'popular democratic' forms have
been elaborated, contained or limited then eliminated or marginalized
in history.
Of central importance, will be the study of those sites in which popular
nationalist myths have been constituted. Anzac, for example, is our 'finest hour,' a
mythology which has been under attack in crucial ways by the
'Women Against Rape in War' movement. This movement has pointed to, among
other things, the way in which this image of 'the Australian people' excludes
women and those forwhom memories of those times mean quite other things
(the women who are survivors of rape in war and the migrants who have come
to Australia since those wars). Popular culture studies should similarly be
involved in deconstructing those myths and examining the pro cesses by which
they have displaced or blocked other images of 'the people.' As a field of study it
should be centrally concerned with these processes.
With such an agenda the study of popular culture will examine areas perhaps
which overlap with other fields. For example, it might examine the independent
working-class education movement in the early 20th Century, the move by the
NSW Trades and Labour Council to establish 2KY radio station in Sydney as a
means of class communication, the development of a popular women's
magazine such as the Women's Weekly, SP betting in the 1930s, Australian films
in the 1970s, or a women's collective during the Second World War. These topics
could be variously studied as labour history, women's history, social history,
media studies, educational history, and so on. As studies of popular culture, they
would focus on questions of the
10

Aust J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986

processes by which particular images of the people were produced, elaborated,

excluded, marginalized, or fought over in these sites. One of the major strengths
of popular culture studies should be theway in which they draws attention to the
range of sites in which political struggles are fought. They should also be central

to the processes of constructing, or fabricating, a history which provides posi tive

images of our past, images which point the way foreward to a future of
democratic, 'popular,' action or politics.
Lesley Johnson teaches at the University of Melbourne.
Notes
1.

This is a reference in Hall's work to Raymond Williams' claim in

Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (1966) that the 'masses' do not exist
as such, only ways of talking about them.

2.

Intellectual work is broadly defined here: that is in sites such as

the media, the schools, the universities, community arts, etc.

3.

Docker's (1982:82) viewpoint

is
shared
by
Keith Windschuttle
(l984:168f.) who, in his discussion of television and popular cul
ture, characterizes popular programs such as Paul Hogan specials,
as
giving
expression
to
an
authentic
Australian
working-class tra
dition of anti-authoritarian humour.

4.

Raymond Williams (1966) also speaks of the authentic cultural

forms of the working-class. Vestiges of his notion of a traditional
working-class culture in English cultural studies can still be seen
in works such as Paul Willis' Learning to Labour (1977).

5.

Milner also points out that some of the papers in this collection
themselves subscribe to a form of radical nationalizm.

6.

It is important to see these traditions as sharing preoccupations

too. The culturalist tradition arises at a specific conjuncture
which these intellectuals saw as re-posing the 'condition of En
gland' question as had the intellectuals of the culture-and-society
tradition.
This question shares many similar preoccupations with left nationalism
in Australia for example, with authentic national character versus
Americanization, or the search for an authentic radical popular tradition.

11

Aust. J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986)

References
Anderson, P., (1980) Arguments within English Marxism, London: Verso.
Benjamin, W., (1977) 'Theses on the Philosophy of
in Illuminations, (trans.) Harry Zohn, London: Fontana/Collins.

History,'

XIV,

Bennett, T., et al (eds.) Popular Television and Film, London: OU/BFI.

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1982) The Empire Strikes Back, London:
Hutchinson.
Clarke, J., et al (eds.) Working Class Culture, London: Hutchinson.
Davidson, A., (1983) 'People's History and Popular Culture,' paper delivered to the
Culture Studies Seminar, University of Melbourne, July 11, 1983.
Dermody, S., Docker, J., Modjeska, D., (1982) Nellie Melba, Ginger Meggs and
Friends, Sydney: Kibble Books.
Docker, J., (1982) 'In Defence of Popular Culture,' Arena, 60.
Hall, S., (1980) 'Cultural Studies: two paradigms,' Media, Culture and Society, 2.
.......... , (unpub.) 'Popular culture, politics and history', typescript
of paper to Open University Popular Culture course staff.
.......... , (1981) 'Notes on Deconstructing the 'Popular',' in Samuel,
R.,(ed.).
........... , (1983) 'Thatcherism, Racism and the Left,' interview by
Brett, J., Meanjin, Vol. 42 No. 2.
Johnson, R., (1979) 'Three Problematics: elements of a theory of working-class
culture' in John Clarke et al (eds.).
Lawrence, L., (1982) 'Just Plain Common Sense: the 'roots' of racism,' in CCCS.
Milner, A., (1982) 'Review of Nellie Melba, Ginger Meggs and Friends,' Thesis
II, 5/6, 311-316.

12

Aust J. Cultural Studies, 4:1 (1986

Samuel,
R.,
(ed.)
(1981) People's
Theory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

History

and

Socialist

Spearitt, P., and Walker, D., (eds.) (1979) Australian Popular Culture, Sydney: Allen
and Unwin.
Thompson, E.P., (1979) The Poverty of Theory, London: Merlin Press.

Tribe, K., (1981) 'History and the Production of Memories,' Popular Television and
Film, Tony Bennett et al {eds.).