A civic and political commitment that must be acknowledged.
To address the dispersion of research in cultural studies in Portugal, nine universities and one polytechnic – the Polytechnic of Porto, through its Centre for Intercultural Studies (CEI) – all with solid histories of training and production in the area, came together to found RNEC – Rede Nacional em Estudos Culturais (www.rnec.org.pt), in late 2020. In May 2022, the network held its first national congress at the University of Aveiro, bringing together seven dozen academics, researchers and representatives of 25 university and polytechnic institutions, who have dedicated themselves in recent decades to this field of study. With over 300 views on its online transmission, the congress achieved one of RNEC’s main goals: mapping cultural studies in Portugal and promoting partnerships between the most diverse entities. At the same time, and for the first time in history, a Portuguese academic was elected to head the prestigious Association for Cultural Studies. Ana Cristina Mendes, from the University of Lisbon, will also be responsible for representing Europe in this world association of researchers, during her mandate from 2022 to 2026.
In the context of this very favourable national and international conjuncture, it is urgent to pose the question: what are cultural studies after all? More than a discipline in the traditional sense, cultural studies are today a trans- or post-disciplinary and sometimes counter-disciplinary research area, that is, an undisciplined and undisciplining one. It is not simply a matter of studies about culture, this field of studies is seen in the tensions generated between a broad, anthropological conception of culture and another, strictly humanistic conception of culture, in the words of Lawrence Grossberg. The field of cultural studies does not have a defined status, but this is precisely the basis of its challenge, as it reconstructs the concept of culture and is characterised by a diversity of both methods and objects.
In the trajectory of cultural studies emphasis is placed on the construction of interdisciplinary and interinstitutional ties, research on contemporary societies and the meeting between researchers with diverse backgrounds and origins, but strongly committed civically and politically to culture and democratic citizenship.
The evolution of cultural studies.
Originating in England in the late fifties of the twentieth century, cultural studies emerged in a definitive and autonomous form in 1963 with the creation of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCSS) at the University of Birmingham, led by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall. Names like Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, Roland Barthes and Henri Lefebvre were among its inspirers, marked by the structural Marxism of Althusser and Gramsci.
The interest in cultural studies spread across Europe and the United States with the critical impulse that swept through the humanities, and especially literary studies, during the sixties of the twentieth century, in the particular context of student struggles against institutional practices and traditions, which led to the transformation of universities that had been closed in on themselves until then. During the 1980s and 1990s, this self-critical reflection also crossed over into the social sciences, as was the case of sociology, which was also forced to question traditional concepts.
Cultural studies were thus born in a climate of successive and identifiable crises: the crisis of literary studies, the exhaustion of the formalist paradigm and the lack of interaction between the literary humanities and society in general. Over time, the humanities and social sciences converged in the area of cultural studies, while promoting cooperation with other areas of knowledge, themselves obliged to a global reflection, a decentring and redefinition of boundaries, as well as a critical reflection on the complexities of the cultural objects they address.
In this way, cultural studies stimulated transdisciplinary research by giving attention to marginalised discourses, bringing to the surface questions of race, ethnicity, gender and the media and linking them, in turn, to themes previously neglected by the academy but which influenced the debates in the cultural sphere. The blurring of disciplinary boundaries has led cultural studies researchers to extend their interests to other phenomena, such as globalisation and the deterritorialisation of culture, transnational movements of people, goods and images, networks, terrorism, civilisational clashes and the global environmental crisis.
With enormous influence and impact in academic and non-academic circles all over the world, from the United States of America to Latin American countries, India, China, Australia and Africa, cultural studies is today an autonomous area, with decades of training and knowledge production.
Cultural Studies in Portugal.
In Portugal, it was mainly after the Bologna reform, in 1999, that the area of cultural studies, traditionally dominated by literary studies or dispersed among other areas of the humanities and artistic studies, became an autonomous field of knowledge, but with a strongly interdisciplinary component with the social sciences, namely sociology, anthropology, media studies, gender studies and political science, among others. This interdisciplinarity is also crossed by an intense theoretical debate.
In terms of teaching and research, cultural studies have developed remarkably over the last decade, with a growing offer of master’s degrees and doctoral programmes and the organisation of national and international congresses. We highlight the seven congresses held by the Centre for Languages, Literatures and Cultures (CLLC) of the University of Aveiro, as well as the launching of several books and magazines, namely the Lusophone Journal in Cultural Studies, the first in Portugal dedicated specifically to cultural studies, co-created in 2013 by the universities of Aveiro and Minho.
In 2020, the constitution of the National Network in Cultural Studies (RNEC) established as main objective the formal recognition, by the competent entities, of the existence of this scientific area, fact that, by itself, would eliminate the difficulties in accessing support programmes and in the evaluation of courses in cultural studies. By establishing itself as an organisation and by holding its first national congress, under the theme “Cartographies, Challenges and Possibilities”, RNEC has managed to demonstrate the real dimension of cultural studies in Portuguese academia and, with that, to draw attention to an area of research that, although relatively recent, already has a firm place in our country in terms of undergraduate and post-graduate training. Simultaneously, by promoting the structuring of the field and stimulating national cooperation, RNEC fosters production and research in the area, by disseminating it through articulation with other national and international networks. The initiatives of RNEC will continue in April 2023, with the holding of the second congress of the network, this time at the University of Algarve and under the theme “Digital Citizenship and Contemporary Cultures”, always with the aim of affirming cultural studies as a growing national and international reference.