论霍加特的工人阶级文化研究及其意义

On Richard Hoggart's Working-Class Cultural Studies and Its Meaning

理查德·霍加特作为文化研究的奠基人,终生致力于研究和维护英国的工人阶级文化。20世纪中期,他通过《识字的用途》一书展现了第一次世界大战至20世纪50年代的英国工人阶级文化面貌,从而开启了以阶级为维度的文化研究。其后,在八九十年代之交出版的《生活与时代》三部曲中,霍加特更是系统地梳理了上世纪英国工人阶级文化的存在、发展状况,展望了其未来前景。同时,随着英国80年代以后社会语境的变化,他开始坚持不懈地与相对主义作斗争,以此来维护工人阶级的文化防线。及至90年代中期,霍加特则将对相对主义的批判与对当今英国工人阶级文化存在状态的思考融合在《小镇风物》中。霍加特的工人阶级文化研究虽有不足,但其研究的对象、视角、方法等方面却值得我国的文化研究学者反思和借鉴。

As the founder of cultural studies, Richard Hoggart devoted himself to researching and preserving the British working-class culture all his life. In the mid-20th century, in The Uses of Literacy he presented the British working-class culture from the first World War to the 1950s and gave a new class dimension to cultural studies. Then in Life and Times, published at the turn of the 80s to 90s, Hoggart systematically analyzed the condition and development of the British working-class culture of the 19th century, and prospected its future. With the change of British social context in the 1980s, he began to struggle with relativism constantly to preserve the defense line of working-class culture. In the mid-1990s, Hoggart combined the criticism on relativism with reflection on contemporary British working-class culture in Townscape with Figures. Although there are some shortcomings in Hoggart＇s research, the subjects, perspective, methods and other aspects of his studies are worth studying and rethinking for Chinese scholars.