The Politics of Culture

The history of the so-called "Kulturwissenschaften" in Germany and in Austria can be seen as a hidden chapter in the history of sciences - while the tradition of British cultural studies has been evaluated in a number of publications. We can find the origins of the cultural studies project in adult education in Great Britain in the 1930s and the 1940s. They were established as an transdisciplinary study on the university level in the 1960s in Birmingham. In adult education, a concept of culture as a socially determined way of life and a field of class struggle has been established. Cultural studies dealt with popular culture and mass culture. It was often combined with the political demand for the democratication of culture and education. There has been little effort to find links between the German speaking and the Austrian tradition. This is the aim of the following research project. It contextualizes an Austrian formation - austromarxism as an intellectual and cultural movment - in a new way. In the research project we refer to this formation as the "austromarxist cluster". It is closely connected with scholars such as Otto Neurath and Edgar Zilsel and the cultural milieu of the Austrian Social Democratic movement in Vienna in the 1920s and the 1930s. With respect to the working class, Austromarxist scholars interpreted culture as a way of life and formed a political theory within the intellectual tradition of cultural Marxism and cultural materialism. They combined their activities in adult education with political engagement. Remarkable parallels between the austromarxist cluster and the Birmingham Group become evident. To make them clear, the relation of text, context and social practice of both formations will be analyzed in a comparative way. The analysis of these parallels should not neglect differences due to the respective historical periods and political and cultural traditions. But it allows us to show the importance of the Austromarxist cluster in the history of "Kulturwissenschaften" - and therefore to see this history in a new light.

The research project compared the early history of British cultural studies and the intellectual tradition of Austro- Marxism. Objects of comparison were two different scientific groups. The so-called "founding fathers" of cultural studies on the one hand (Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Edward P. Thompson und Stuart Hall), the Austro- Marxist scholars Otto Neurath, Edgar Zilsel, Paul Lazarsfeld und Marie Jahoda on the other. Therefore the project was focussed on different time frames, namely the 1920s and 1930s (in Austria) and the 1950s and 1960 (in Great Britain). The systematic comparison was performed on two different levels: The discourse on cultural theory and cultural studies on the one hand, the institutional and political structure, wherein both intellectual groups operated, on the other. It could be demonstrated that despite of some university links both the representatives of British cultural studies and Austro-Marxist scholars were extra-mural phenomena. They worked in institutions of science transfer and workers or adult education. Both represented models of alternative institutionalization. In this context the objects and the orientation of cultural studies changed. The scientific groups dealt with culture in the context of society, economy and politics. Culture appeared as mass culture, popular culture, class culture and youth culture. It became the object of a trans-disciplinary work which was addressed to an even non-academic audience. As one of its most important results the projects demonstrates in a number of examples the interrelation between the model of alternative institutionalization on the one hand and fundamental changes in cultural studies or Kulturwissenschaften on the other. A new idea of culture has been established which was groundbreaking even with respect to its actual meaning. Furthermore the comparative perspective put the general opinion of a sharp contrast between the German and the Anglo-Saxon tradition of cultural studies into perspective.