Richard Hoggart

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Richard Hoggart (born September 24, 1918 in Leeds , † April 10, 2014 in London ) was a British cultural sociologist . As a professor at the University of Birmingham , he founded the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1964 , which he directed until 1973. Hoggart is considered to be one of the founders of modern British cultural studies . In particular, his studies of workers' society are still one of the most important research bases in this discipline.

Hoggart became known through his work The Uses of Literacy (1957), in which he presented authentic popular culture with great empathy and defended it against the culture industry . He was heard as an expert in the Lady Chatterley Trial (1960). It is believed that his explanations have had a decisive influence on the lifting of the ban on the book.

life and work

Richard Hoggart was born in 1918 in the Potternewton district of Leeds , one of three children into a very poor family. His grandfather was a boiler maker and his father, who had served as a soldier in both the Boer War and World War I , died of brucellosis when Hoggart was only a year old. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was eight. The orphans were separated and he grew up with his grandmother. Richard's older brother Tom was the first Hoggart to enter high school, and Richard made it to high school with the help of short-term small loans. Although he failed his final math exam, he came to the University of Leeds on a scholarship .

During the Second World War he was stationed as a soldier in North Africa. After the war, he applied for a total of nine assistant chairs and, after eight rejections, was finally hired at the University of Hull , where he taught for 13 years. In 1957, Hoggart published The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life . In the book, he describes the destruction of the childhood culture of the working class by the growing influence of American mass culture. Today it is considered one of the key works both in the history of English and media studies , as well as in the foundation of British cultural studies .

In 1964, Hoggart founded the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies and hired Stuart Hall as the institute's deputy director.

In 2013, Didier Eribon took a very critical look at Hoggart, who he attested to have a reactionary image of young lower-class women.

Hoggart died in London at the age of 95 after a long illness.

Publications (selection)

  • The Uses of Literacy. Aspects of Working Class Life , Chatto and Windus, 1957, ISBN 0-7011-0763-4
  • Contemporary Cultural Studies. An Approach to the Study of Literature and Society , Univ. Birmingham, Center for Contemp. Cult. Studies 1969, ISBN 0-901753-03-3
  • with Janet Morgan: The Future of Broadcasting , Holmes & Meier, 1982, ISBN 0-8419-5090-3
  • A Sort of Clowning: Life and Times, 1940-59 , Chatto and Windus, 1990, ISBN 0-7011-3607-3
  • An imagined life. Life and Times 1959-91 , Chatto and Windus, 1992, ISBN 0-7011-4015-1
  • Townscape with Figures :. Farnham - Portrait of an English Town , Chatto and Windus, 1994, ISBN 0-7011-6138-8
  • The Way We Live Now. Dilemmas in Contemporary Culture , Chatto and Windus, 1995, ISBN 0-7011-6501-4
  • Mass Media in a Mass Society. Myth and Reality , Continuum International Publishing Group, Academi, 2004, ISBN 0-8264-7285-0

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/still-learning-from-the-scholarship-boy/
  2. ↑ LC process
  3. ^ The Guardian
  4. ↑ Stuart Hall: Culture, media, language: working papers in cultural studies. 1972-1979. Routledge 1992 ISBN 0415079063
  5. ^ Society as a judgment. Translated by Tobias Haberkorn. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017, especially in the section on popular culture and social reproduction, pp. 205–221, and often throughout the book. Eribon assumes that Hoggart was widely received in France.
personal data
SURNAME Hoggart, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British cultural sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Leeds
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 2014
Place of death London