Phil Cohen, Rethinking The Youth Question; Education, Labour and Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. ix + 434 pp. $54.95 cloth; $18.95 paper.

Abstract

Whatever credit Britain might take for having given birth to the subject of cultural studies must, ironically enough, be attributed largely to its receptivity to outside influences in the 1970s and beyond. Its originators in the New Left were unusual in British terms by being both unashamedly intellectual and open to Continental theorizing. Its relationship to the common-sensical homegrown tradition of cultural criticism of George Orwell and Richard Hoggart was accordingly double-edged: at once acknowledging its influence and criticizing its rigid empiricism. Its subjects were those subcultures which refracted American pop culture through the peculiarities of the British class structure. Immigration not only provided cultural studies with its big stars in Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy but also demanded that reassessment of national identity which the discipline was alone prepared to undertake.