About the Book
This new textbook addresses the neglect of practical research methods in cultural studies. It provides readers with clearly written overviews of research methods in cultural studies, along with guidelines on how to put these methods into operation. It advocates a multi-method approach, with students drawing from a pool of techniques and approaches suitable for their own topics of investigation. The book covers the following main areas:
• Drawing on experience, and studying how narratives make sense of experience.
• Investigating production processes in the cultural industries, and the consumption and assimilation of cultural products by audiences and fans.
• Taking both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of cultural life.
• Analysing visual images and both spoken and written forms of discourse.
• Exploring cultural memory and historical representation.
The contributors, along with Michael Pickering, are Martin Barker, Aeron Davis, David Deacon, Emily Keightley, Steph Lawler, Anneke Meyer, Virginia Nightingale, and Sarah Pink. The book is designed for use by students on upper-level undergraduate and taught Masters-level courses as well as postgraduate research students and cultural studies researchers more generally. It will be of enormous value across all fields of study involved in cultural enquiry and analysis.
Contents
Introduction / Michael Pickering
Section One: Lives and Lived Experience
1 Experience and the Social World / Michael Pickering
2 Stories and the Social World / Steph Lawler
Section Two: Production and Consumption
3 Investigating Cultural Producers / Aeron Davis
4 Investigating Cultural Consumers / Anneke Meyer
Section Three: Quantity and Quality
5 Why Counting Counts / David Deacon
6 Why Observing Matters / Virginia Nightingale
Section Four: Texts and Pictures
7 Analysing Visual Experience / Sarah Pink
8 Analysing Discourse / Martin Barker
Section Five: Linking with the Past
9 Engaging with Memory / Emily Keightley
10 Engaging with History / Michael Pickering
About the Author / Editor
Michael Pickering is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. He has published in the areas of cultural history and the sociology of culture as well as media analysis and theory.
