Australian Cultural Studies

Book excerpt: Cultural studies has emerged as a major force in the analysis of cultural systems and their relation to social power. "Rather than being interested in television or architecture or pinball machines themselves - as industrial or aesthetic structures - cultural studies tends to be interested in the way such apparatuses work as points of concentration of social meaning, as 'media' (literally)", according to John Frow and Meaghan Morris. Here, two of Australia's leading cultural critics bring together work that represents a distinctive national tradition, moving between high theory and detailed readings of localized cultural practices. Ethnographic audience research, cultural policy studies, popular consumption, "bad" aboriginal art, landscape in feature films, style, form and history in TV miniseries, and the intersections of tourism with history and memory - these are among the topics addressed in a landmark volume that cuts across myriad traditional disciplines.