CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Intellectual Practices in Culture and Power: Transnational Dialogues

Session organiser: Daniel Mato

Intellectual Practices in Culture and Power: Transnational Dialogues 1/2

Piña, Álvaro (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal) INTELLECTUAL SPACES OF PRACTICE AND HOPE: POWER AND CULTURE IN PORTUGAL FROM THE 1940S TO THE PRESENT
The divisions between society and culture, the everyday and the spheres of specialised knowledges, the masses and the elites, the non-academic and the academic, have been theorised in cultural studies in a number of ways. I propose to contribute to the transnational dialogues in this session with a brief review of such theorisings as a starting point for the analysis of intellectual practices in power and culture in Portugal in three different periods: the late 1930s and early 40s, the late 1960s and the early 70s, and the 1990s to the present. By focusing on key democratic themes and struggles in each of these three periods, I shall argue for a cultural studies project as a theory of intellectual spaces of practice and hope.

Tomaselli, Keyan G. (University of Natal, Durban, South Africa) REVERSE CULTURAL STUDIES, AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHY AND FIELDWORK METHODOLOGY: A NEW APPROACH FOR AFRICA
A reflexive argument for reverse cultural studies in discussing problems in fieldwork, academic access and research accountability is developed. I reflexively analyze tensions and contradictions set in motion by the writing of articles on observer-observed relations within both San Bushmen communities themselves and between myself and development and other agencies working in one of these areas. Questions addressed relate to ownership of information; the relationship between the local/particular and the national/policy, and on how to ensure campfire dissemination/involvement of, and popular access to, the written product by a-literate and non-English-speaking communities.

Gray, Ann (University of Birmingham, United Kingdom) INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE 'TEACHING MACHINE'
This paper will question the perceived division between the academy(non political) and what goes on outside (political). It will argue that our activities as academics are intensely political, most especially in the micro-practices of engagement with students. 'Our' discourse often excludes this very important group - our students and their potential as cultural workers. The paper will therefore explore the politics of teaching and the potential for graduates of cultural studies programmes to enter the cultural industries and other practices.

Intellectual Practices in Culture and Power: Transnational Dialogues 2/2

Wright, Handel Kashope (University of Tennessee, USA) BITING THE HAND THAT (FORCE-)FEEDS YOU: RESISTING THEORETICISM IN PROMOTING CULTURAL STUDIES AS PRAXIS
This paper seeks to promote the articulation of cultural studies as praxis. Starting from two related premises, cultural studies is (or ought to be) praxis, and cultural studies as praxis is endangered by theoreticism. The paper points to both the proper place and role of theory in cultural studies, and various projects representative of cultural studies praxis (from Manthia Diawara's performative American black studies to the "dismantle Fremantle" project, and Ien Ang's advocacy of empirical research in Australia, from the protest theatre of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena in Latin America and the US, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o in Kenya to empirical research on subcultures at the CCCS in England). The paper focuses on a cultural studies model being developed at the University of Tennessee (a blend of theory, empirical research, and service learning) as an example of a model that constructs and promotes cultural studies as praxis.

Graham, Janna (Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada) MUSEUM ACROBATICS: ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS AND THE WORK OF CULTURAL STUDIES
This paper will articulate the influence of Cultural Studies on artistic practice in museums in Canada and internationally, relaying the trend towards community collaboration and artistic intervention. Drawing from current debates in Cultural Studies and Education, Museology, Art Theory, and Cultural Geography the paper will focus on artistic interventions into historical collections and their ability to re-route museums, navigating between disciplines, practices and cannons. It will argue that these practices, while unable to fulfill utopian goals (or Public Relations slogans) of social inclusion, provide a model for a multi-disciplinary critical approach to museum education. The focus will be on a project entitled Private Thought/Public Moments, an intervention project through which Toronto's South Asian Visual Arts Collective responded to ehancement and didactic materials in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Canadian Wing, interrogating its role as propogator of historical narratives about Canadian culture and identity. The paper will articulate both the opportunities provided by interventions for opening public debates in musuems and the challenges that exist in the implementation of interdisciplinary work in the often ferociously guarded cannons of art history.

Niaah, Jalani (University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica) POVERTY LAB(ORATORY)
Requirements for future leaders in British colonies were anticipated by administrators in the West Indies as early as the 18th Century, however it was not until after WWII that hurried decisive actions were taken to establish a University in the Caribbean region. In 1948 the University College of the West Indies, a department of London University was put in place with 33 students enrolled to study medicine. Today this now independent institution is a regional giant shaping the societies of the region and the world. It is the "shape" of the region and the world that this paper ultimately explores through a focus on the ethos of the University as a training ground for visions, architects and builders of society. Through an examination of Planno's thesis "a new faculty of interpretation", this paper explores the present shape of the University as a concept which seemingly could / might be summarised as a poverty lab(oratory).

Chen, Kuan Hsing (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan) CULTURE AND POWER OF 'CONSUMPTION': NOTES ON THE FORMATION OF CULTURAL STUDIES IN TAIWAN
The essay attempts to place the formation of cultural studies in Taiwan in the culture and power of consumption. Critical intellectual practices have been conditioned by the historical shaping of a society of consumption in interaction with social and democratic movements from the 1980's onward. To be able to intervene politically, the earlier wave of cultural studies was operating through daily newspaper, magazines and journals in the form of cultural criticism. These sites of cultural consumption have mediated intellectual practices and the social power. In the 1990's, the 'retreat' of cultural studies into the academic institutions, however, has not lost its contacts with the social, in that forums for debating cultural and political issues have been set up in the social space, and commercial publication mechanism has continued to exist to mediate intellecual practices and the culture and power dynamics. Whether cultural studies could maintain a balance between academic institutionalisaiton and intervention in the social space will be challenge in the future.