CCCS Gas! Politics and Science in the Work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

Abstract

The irony of studying social crises is that as they intensify and become increasingly politically charged they also appear to become less amenable to careful explanation and appraisal. We find it difficult to make cool assessments of those things which concern us most-the social changes which most seriously affect, disturb and interrupt course of our everyday lives. This is no great revelation. Sociologists have long conceded that values they hold are deeply influential on their explanations of social events, even though they might try to suppress that influence. But at times of crisis, when principles and even livelihoods are at stake, effects of values on social explanation often become so strong, pervasive and unchecked that they amount to systematic distortion; to social and political dogmatism of a particularly worrying kind. It is at such times that scholarly vigilance is most important; that efforts to counter effects of values on conduct of research must be redoubled. We must take utmost care not to be blinded by our own desires, preconceptions and stereotypes. Otherwise, 'knowledge' we produce will undoubtedly suffer, and any political action we pursue on basis of that knowledge might be misconceived as a result. Examples of political bias in explanations of our social condition are not hard to find. A case in point are notorious 'Black Papers' on education published during late 1960s and 1970s, and associated with figures such as Rhodes Boyson and other members of 'new right' (Cox & Dyson, 1969; Cox & Boyson, 1977). One group of critics, writing under aegis of Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at University of Birmingham, argue that these papers rested on pithy assertions, appealing to a sediment of 'common sense' and not to analysis and debate of (p. 201). What evidence there was was seen in broadly painted brush strokes of school truancy, anarchy and violence, and (was asserted) by repeated claims of decline in levels of achievement in basic skills. A blanket reiteration of key terms-standards, controls-served to drive out main social democratic concepts whose discrediting was suggested by continual inference (sic). (p. 201) In all this, so it seemed, the intellectual or 'scientific' value of new right's critique was secondary to its construction of an appeal to popular attitudes (p. 244). In their book, Unpopular Education (Baron et al., 1981), these critics locate Black Papers as a major element in eminently successful assault of 'new right' on social democratic assumptions which underpinned educational policies and practices during 1950s and 1960s.