Culture' has hit the limelight as a 'buzz' word in many areas of life. People increasingly talk of 'my culture', some feel threatened by 'global culture', others excluded by 'national culture', while no self-respecting business now lacks a 'company culture'. Popular magazines are geared to different aspects of young people's culture and governments recognise that 'culture industries' make important contributions to their balance of payments.
Cultural studies combines issues of creativity with questions of power.
We seek to understand how culture is staged in arenas ranging from the local and the everyday to the formal, global and official cultures which structure all our lives. Through a variety of research approaches we illuminate the ways social relations are played out in specific spatial contexts, giving close attention to the particularities of place and of local an global interactions. We examine the continuing processes of social discrimination and we contribute to efforts to achieve the inclusion of previously marginalised sections of society. Cultural studies in Britain was pioneered at Birmingham. The Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology remains strongly interdisciplinary in nature, drawing together critical contemporary work in cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, media analysis, psychoanalysis, film and literary studies.