From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure

"From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure" arises from reading and teaching Gramscian work in cultural studies, education, media studies, leisure and politics over the last 20 years. It argues that Gramscian work is undoubtedly powerful and persuasive. Indeed by the 1990s one can almost say that it has become the governing orthodoxy. Harris reads the work critically and in detail, tracing arguments across time and across different specialisms, assessing them, and trying to examine how they deal with critics and with new challenging topics. He maintains that cultural studies contains many absences, silences and closures, and that it deploys a number of narrative techniques to remain credible. Wide-ranging and critical, "From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure" provides a critical assessment of one of the most fashionable and powerful intellectual traditions in contemporary social science. This book aims to help students to read Gramscian work critically and decide where its strengths and weaknesses lie for themselves, and make them less dependent on the Gramscians' own accounts and agendas.

`This is by far the most complete and critical analysis of cultural studies which we possess. It is organised logically and written in a clear and accessible style. The criticisms of Gramsci's legacy with respect to data, narrowness, exclusive definitions of truth, elitism, circukarity of arguement, posturing etc, are well devolped. An obvious undergraduate textbook' - Bryan Turner, Professor of Sociology, Essex University`THis is a fine study ... I recommend this book strongly' - Roland Robertson, Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh

David Harris is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth.