Cultural Research Unit - Keele University
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Sociology

Cultural Research Unit

The purpose of the Cultural Research Unit is to bring together academics from across the Social Sciences and Humanities working in the field of cultural research in order to enable the sharing of ideas, knowledge, and expertise and create new synergies and inter-disciplinary collaborations.

Historically, the Social Sciences and Humanities have advanced two distinct approaches to the study of culture. Whereas the latter has understood culture in terms of the German tradition of bildung, learning, or enculturation, and focused on the study of text, the former has approached the study of culture through an anthropological understanding of culture as the totality of civilization or the meaningful human environment. While these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, the Humanities and Social Sciences have tended to separate over the Humanities’ tendency to prioritise text over context and the Social Sciences’ inclination to favour context over text. In providing a site for collaborations between Humanities and Social Science researchers working in the field of culture, the key aim of the Cultural Research Unit is to offer a scene to enable the production of a holistic study of culture. We believe that the value of this holistic approach to the study of culture is that it may enable the appreciation of the importance of both text and context and create a bridge between these two levels of analysis through the practice of cultural critique.

Given this holistic critical treatment of culture, the Cultural Research Unit focuses on culture as belief, representation, and practice and takes in researchers from Sociology, Anthropology, English, Film, Geography, and Cultural Studies itself, engaged in the study of culture in a variety of global, national, and ethnic contexts, including a range of European, Asian, and African forms.

For more information about the work of the Unit contact Dr Mark Featherstone.