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Chapter 1, "From Culture to Hegemony"

What definitions of "culture" does Hebdige see as opposed? Which does he select?

With which prior critics does Hebdige credit the founding of "cultural studies"? (2450, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart) Which methods did they apply to the interpretation of "culture"?

What does he see as added to this methodology by Roland Barthes' semiotic approach? (2451, codes of a society or subgroup may be read as a language encoding "mythologies")

How did his method reconcile the notions of culture as moral conviction and as the study of a society's way of life? (2451, combination of Marxist beliefs and anthopological approach)

In Hebdige's view, what did E. P. Thompson add to the view that one should study the "relations between elements in a whole way of life"? (2452, added notion of conflict)

How does ideology operate, according to Hebdige and Marxist tradition? (beneath consciousness, in appeals to alleged "common sense," 2452)

What example does he give of such structuring from educational establishments? (1453) Can you apply his approach to the campuses/educational institutions you have known?

How do individuals come to appropriate these implied beliefs? ("only through the forms in which they are represented to those individuals," both validated and mystified by "common sense," 2453)

What does it mean to say that "ideology has no history" (a quotation from Althusser)? ("Particular sets of social relations, particular ways of organizing the world appear to us as if they were universal and timeless," 2454)

What is "hegemony" in this context, and how do non-dominant or oppressed portions of the population respond to it? (according to Marx, ideas of the ruling class dominate society as a whole, 2455)

How is the consent of members of the non-ruling classes gained?

What does it mean to say that hegemony is a moving equilibrium? Who had first enunciated this idea? (Antonio Gramsci, 2455)

In what ways may hegemony be challenged? ("The consensus can be fractured, challenged, overruled, and resistance to the groups in dominance cannot always be lightly dismissed or automatically incorporated," 2456)

What does it mean to say that the different classes struggle within signification? What everyday examples does he give of this phenomenon? (use of safety pins for body piercing, tubes of vaseline as sexual lubricants)

Where within this process do "deviants" such as the British subculture of "punks" fit? What irony does Hebdige find in the use of punk subculture to test the methods of reading signs devised in the debate over the sanctity of culture?

Is Hebdige's response to resistant and deviant signs an optimistic one? Are these forms of resistance most often liberatory or redeeming for those who employ them?

If there are creative or liberatory potentials within forms of cultural resistence, are these diffused, appropriated or distorted by the responses of the media or wider culture?

Page numbers are from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2001 edition.