Inside Culture offers a fresh and stimulating reassessment of the direction of cultural studies. Nick Couldry argues without apology for cultural studies as a discipline centred around the interrelations of culture and power, with a clear focus on accountable empirical research that deals with the real complexities of contemporary lives - `inside′ culture. Chapters discuss the broad conceptual issues around `cultures′, `texts′, `the self′, and the individual. There are detailed discussions of a range of cultural studies authors which demystify the elaborate language of contemporary cultural studies, with suggestions for further thinking at the end of chapters.
Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and communications at LSE. As a sociologist of media and culture, he approaches media and communications from the perspective of the symbolic power that has been historically concentrated in media institutions.