Stuart Hall and the Political Economy of Communication: An Uneasy Relationship

The paper focuses on the work of Stuart Hall within the well-known debate between cultural studies and the political economy of media and communication. The debate, which gained on importance after the cultural turn, represents one of the most important dichotomies within the study of communication. The opposition to economic reductionism of classical Marxist political economy was constitutive for cultural studies. As Hall argued in one of his essays, cultural studies and political economy were never a perfect match. But on the other hand, he argued—in a keynote speech from 2007, at one of the largest conferences—that cultural studies went too far, opposing the political economy approach by eliminating it altogether. According to Hall, the main question remains how to understand the economy after the cultural turn without falling into essentialism or determinism