In this video, aimed at A-level media studies students and teachers, I explain Stuart Halls ideas about representation, including hegemony, stereotypes and re-presentation. ( Log Out /  ( Log Out /  Culture is defined as a space of ​​interpretative struggle. Biographie. (Originally published in 1988. Hall, Stuart. He argued that the media not only reflects reality but also “produces” it while “reproducing” the dominant cultural order, in particular the order inherited from the Empire. Birmingham, England: Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1973. Now, sometimes Hall’s concern with drawing attention to the complexity of communication is seen as downplaying the idea that the media have real a and strong effects on the world. London, Sage. La dénotation est assimilé au sens littéral du signe, qui est un sens reconnus de manière universelle, surtout dans un discours visuel (avec la télévision par exemple). He deconstructed the circulation of meanings and images through media practices and showed how identities based on age, class, race or gender may intersect with dominant representations (‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’). In Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, edited by United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 305. Paris: UNESCO. In line with the “organic intellectual” of Gramsci, for whom knowledge has to be shared beyond the realm of the intellectual, his epistemological posture was embedded within political and public commitments. This analytical framework challenges the national identity and the implicit racial homogeneity of Britishness while the coming of new ethnicities (from the Empire) shed light, in mirrored reflection, on the peculiarity of the majority as an ethnic group. Four decades earlier, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer found themselves living in Westside Los Angeles, German Jews exiled from the Nazi devastation of Europe. (For example, meaning or culture). What is the theory? Nothing could be further from the truth. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Stuart Hall is Professor of Sociology at the Open University in England and, for the last thirty years, has been at the forefront of work concerning the media’s role in society. The new ethnicities paradigm articulates a critical framing emphasising local and trans-local anchors of identities (hybridity, postcolonial, diaspora) while race is understood as a discursive system in which it is not only ideological or cultural but situated in social relations and structures that confine identity and social mobility. Your email address will not be published. All entries published by Global Social Theory are covered by a Creative Commons licence, allowing share alike for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to author and link to the Global Social Theory web-page for the entry. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Hall is very closely identified in media studies with an approach known as “cultural studies,” and he starts with one of its central concepts: representation. ( Log Out /  By examining it, asking the hard questions about it rather than just accepting it at face value. One way he does that is through what he calls interrogation of the image. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Why should we think this way about images? So, producers try to ‘fix’ a meaning (or way of understanding) people or events in their texts. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. Hall, S. (1991) ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, In A. We just swim through them, unthinkingly absorbing them as fish in water. Discuss the importance of Hall’s work to media studies. ), Hall, S. (1980) Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance. This engagement led him to deconstruct the foundations of New Right discourses and what he named as “Thatcherism”. The usual meaning of this term is connected with whether the depiction of something is an accurate or distorted reflection. King (Ed.) I hope your response mirrors my own when I first heard him lecture. "Crosland territory". Through his energy, his passion, his modesty, he convinced me of the value of what he calls the “intellectual vocation,” the notion that ideas matter, that they are worth struggling over, that they have something to tell us about and can influence the world out there beyond the academy. Marshall McLuhan once said he wasn’t sure who discovered water, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t the fish. Stuart Hall (né le 3 février 1932 à Kingston en Jamaïque, et mort le 10 février 2014 [1]) est un sociologue réputé qui compte parmi les figures centrales des Cultural Studies britanniques. This program examines this debate by focusing on the work of one of the world’s leading experts on media issues. Stuart Hall’s contribution to critical theory and to the study of politics, culture, media, race, diaspora and postcolonialism has been fundamental, hence his thought is difficult to summarise. Culture, Globalisation and the World System, Basingstoke, Macmillan. In other words, when we are immersed in something, surrounded by it the way we are by images from the media, we may come to accept them as just part of the real and natural world. In this video, aimed at A-level media studies students and teachers, I explain Stuart Halls ideas about representation, including hegemony, stereotypes and re-presentation. Stuart Hall is Professor of Sociology at the Open University in England and, for the last thirty years, has been at the forefront of work concerning the media’s role in society. This theory links directly to reception theory too, but focuses more on how stereotypes are constructed by the media and the hegemonic elite. Your email address will not be published. In contrast to this, Hall argues for a new view that gives the concept of representation a much more active and creative role in relation to the way people think about the world and their place within it. The role of culture in the construction of meanings for Hall is primary because it implies sharing conceptual maps and systems of classification and representations. Stuart Hall’s REPRESENTATION theory (please do not confuse with RECEPTION) is that there is not a true representation of people or events in a text, but there are lots of ways these can be represented. Hall wants to hold both these ideas: that messages work in complex ways, and that they are always connected with the way that power operates in any society, together at the same time. London: Macmillan, The Empire Strikes Back collection (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 1982). Stuart Hall developed reception theory, popularly known as Audience Theory or reader’s reception theory, in 1973.