Thompson Cultural Studies

Narrow sense of culture study could be traced back to the research Matthew Arnold and F. R. Leavis did on the popular culture. However, the culture study aimed to working class culture and popular culture should owe to the three founders of contemporary culture study: Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart and E. P. Thompson. A series of classic works they finished during the Fifty and Sixty were the most famous volumes in the field of culture study in that period and influenced the realm deeply .As one of the three ,Thompson played his unchangeable and unique role. By analyzing his academic results, the author hopes to grasp the outstanding impact Thompson had on the political and ideological tradition of contemporary culture study.Three parts can be found in this dissertation .In the first part ,the author simply introduces E.P.Thompson., and then concludes that there are three significant levels in Thompson's thought. At last present an analysis in detail on the close relationship between Interdisciplinary studies , Marxism and History .The second part gives a careful scrutiny on Thompson's thought in the New Left context .Culture studies has political tradition and thought tradition respectively. As the banner man of the New Left and the major member of the New Marxism, Thompson animadverted about reductionism of economy and looked culture as the social process itself in which economy as well as politics were merely the making factor .With the ingrained humanism Marxism , Thompson insisted the contribution of the common people when they participated in constructing history and culture .Combining the history research and culture study together, Thompson expatiated his viewpoint on the meaning of CULTURE .The author tries to discuss Thompson's culture theory through five aspects: the first, class-consciousness and culture tradition; the second ,the Making of class-consciousness and class struggle; the third , agency and socialist humanism, the forth , History from below; the fifth ,empiricism , the method of Culturalism .