Raymond Williams on Culture and Society

Jim McGuigan is a freelance researcher, writer and artist. He is also Emeritus Professor of Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University UK. Previously, he taught at Coventry, Leeds, Leeds Trinity, Open and Wolverhampton Universities. He was a research officer at the Arts Council of GB and a script editor in the BBC TV Drama (Plays) Department. He has been a visiting scholar at, amongst others, the Universities of Bergen, Canberra, Canterbury (Christchurch NZ), Catalonia, Copenhagen, Eastern Finland, Izmir, Jyvaskyla, Rostock and at IFK Vienna. He has delivered keynote addresses at conferences and guest lectures in Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Norway as well as at various universities in Britain and elsewhere. He has, for instance, served on the Art and Humanities Research Council and the European Commission. Jim's main academic interests are in social theory, cultural studies and policy. He has published in many book collections and journals, including Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Keywords, New Left Review, New Statesman, Social Semiotics, Sociological Review and Sociology. His books include Cultural Populism (1992), Culture and the Public Sphere (1996), Cultural Methodologies (1997), Modernity and Postmodern Culture (1999, 2006), Rethinking Cultural Policy (2004), Cool Capitalism (2009), Cultural Analysis (2010), Raymond Williams on Culture and Society (2014), A Short Counter-Revolution - Raymond Williams's Towards 2000 Revisited (2015) and Neoliberal Culture (2016). He is currently working on a book about Raymond Williams.

Introduction: Raymond Williams on Culture and Society Culture is Ordinary Mass, Masses and Mass Communication Structure of Feeling and Selective Tradition Advertising - The Magic System Communication Systems The Idea of a Common Culture Social Darwinism Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory The Technology and the Society Drama in a Dramatized Society Communications as Cultural Science Developments in the Sociology of Culture Realism and Non-Naturalism A Lecture on Realism Means of Communication as Means of Production 'Industrial' and 'Post-Industrial' Society The Culture of Nations Resources for a Journey of Hope State Culture and Beyond The Future of Cultural Studies

Commentary on Raymond Williams tends to stress either his role in the formation of the British New Left or his intellectual status as a literary and cultural critic or his significance as a distinctively Welsh writer. The cumulative effect of McGuigan's closely argued introduction and carefully chosen set of extracts is to mount a powerful case for a surprisingly original addition to this repertoire: that of Williams as a major sociological thinker in his own right. -- Andrew Milner The most important Marxist cultural theorist after Gramsci, Williams' contributions go well beyond the critical tradition, supplying significant insights for cultural sociology today. The structure of feeling, drama in a dramatized society, advertising as magic - these are fundamental ideas. I have never read Williams without finding something worthwhile, something subtle, some idea of great importance. -- Jeffrey C. Alexander