KEY FIGURE 8: Stuart Ewen (1940 approx to present)

KEY IDEA: Style is political: visual signifiers encode systems of belief. While these visual codes are often long and complex histories their appropriation by consumer culture often dilutes their ideological potency. The ideological significance of the punk safety pin, example, is diminished when adopted by mass-produced clothing lines; what is left is in Ewen’s terms ‘cultural waste...

KEY FIGURE 6: Valentin Voloshinov (1895 to 1936)

KEY IDEA: Language is ideological: it reflects a dynamic system of beliefs or ideas; it is the key to what makes us human and the structure of the social networks we build. Volosinov views the meaning of words as arbitrary yet fluid: changing over time and according to context.

He coins the term ‘multi-accentuality’ to descibe this. Volosinov argues that it is in the interests of the ruling...

KEY FIGURE 7: Stuart Hall (1932 to present)

KEY IDEA: Proponent of audience reception theory, Hall looks at the way in which cultural interaction generates consent for hegemony (a term he borrows from Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci) – the dominant ideology of the ruling class. Hall views audiences as both the producers and consumers of texts: decoding the meaning encoded by the originator of the text. His approach to textual analysis is...

KEY FIGURE 5: Ferdinand de Saussure  (1857 to 1913)

KEY IDEA: Structuralist approach to semiology; Saussure argues that all signs are double entities made up of the signifier and the signified.

The signifier is the linguistic coding of a concrete object, abstract emotion or physical act.

The signified is that to which the signifier refers to.

The two things are inseparable; however, the relationship is arbitrary: meaning that there is no...

KEY FIGURE 4: Frederic Engels (1820 to 1895)

KEY IDEA: Influenced by Hegel and Heraclitus, Engels contribution to the Communist Manifesto is that of ‘Dialectic Materialism’. Change in the economic structure of society works through the dialectic principles of conflict between thesis and antithesis. In his logic the emergence of a synthesis of the two, i.e. a new economic thesis is characteristic of a new phase in history.

KEY TEXT: The...

KEY FIGURE 2: Pierre Bourdieu (1930 to 2002)

KEY IDEA: Social class is constructed by cultural taste; cultural taste is produced by education. Social class facilitates access to education and so cultural order replicates itself. In the process of education, the individual acquires cultural capital, which gives the individual the ability to identify culturally noble activity. Culture evolves through the nomination of new cultural activity as...

KEY FIGURE 3: Karl Marx (1818 to 1883)

KEY IDEA: The economy is at the base of society; everything else is determined by it. Under capitalism, the economy is exploitative: serving only the interests of the ruling class (the Bourgeoisie). This inequality will lead to revolution, which will be characterised by the workers (the proletariat) seizing control the means of production and the end of capitalist economic exchange.

KEY TEXT: The...

KEY FIGURE 1: Jean Baudrillard (1929 to present)

KEY IDEA: The proliferation of information technology alienates man from real lived social existence, forcing him to enter a new media induced reality known as hyper-reality: hyper-reality is characterised by the collapse of the distinction between the real and the simulated and the predominance of the simulacrum.

KEY TEXT: Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976; 1993 reprint; Sage Publications,...