The Divergence And Convergence Between Communication Studies And Cultural Studies In The United States

Communication studies and cultural studies emerged as two important thoughts in the middle of the 20th century. In about 1970s, when the administrative paradigm dominating communication studies faced crisis, Cultural Studies represented "the most decisive theoretical break in the field of communication and media studies in the united states" (Hanno Harldt, 1992). The purpose of this paper focuses on:How are the two thoughts articulated? What is the intellectual background of each thought? What are the characteristics of the cultural approach in communication studies due to the articulation? What is the influence to Chinese communication studies caused by articulation?At the beginning of the paper, the paper takes a historical review on the evolution of American communication history, point out that pragmatism and functionalism are the philosophical backgrounds of the administrative research and critical research of communication. The opposition between the two approaches makes the entrance of British Cultural Studies possible. And the emergence and development of Cultural Studies from Birmingham University are deeply articulated with "communication", which could be recognized from the communication-focused works of the early founders of cultural studies, such as Williams, Hoggart and Hall, and also from the status of communication in the whole history of cultural studies. When imported into the U.S., cultural studies of was deeply articulated with communication studies, which led to the Americanization of cultural studies and finally formed a cultural approach to communication studies. Under the same cultural approach, there are two different ways to study communication. One is American cultural studies represented by James Carey and the other is British cultural studies represented by Laurence Grossberg. For Carey, he proposed to combine the Williams'thoughts on culture with Dewey's ideas on "communication "& "community", arguing that "culture" and "communication "should be treated identically. Contrastively, from Grossberg's point of view based on the traditions of British cultural studies, he argued that "communication" should be seen as "site" in which cultural studies are taken. Further, he proposed the idea of "anticommunication philosophy of communication". The differences between Carey and Grossberg were caused by their different understandings on "culture" and "communication". North American Cultural Studies was gradually formed into a systematic approach through its long-term dialogue with political economy of communication in mid-1970s. The climax of the debate was marked by the seminal book Critical studies in mass communication in 1995, in which Grossberg and Carey argued and negotiated. The conflict between the two scholars reflected the different influences of popular thoughts on modern society in communication research. At last, the paper concludes the articulation between communication studies and cultural studies should be based on the consciousness of problem raised from "context". Although the cultural approach to communication does not form an integrated system, the articulation based on contextualized consciousness of problem would be beneficial to the development of Chinese communication studies.