Performing Culture

A look at the strengths and weaknesses of cultural studies, providing a blend of performance and risk theory. It explores the need to erase the separation of "high" and "popular" culture studies, starting from the thesis that cultural studies has been too pre-occupied with popular culture. Performing Culture presents a detailed and probing account of cultural studies′ changing fixations with theory, method, policy, text, production, audience and the micro-politics of the everyday. John Tulloch encourages academics and students to take seriously the need to break down the separation between high and low cultural studies. Tulloch′s case studies show that the performance of cultural meanings occurs in forms as diverse as The Royal Shakespeare Company′s Shakespeare and Chekhov productions and our everyday work and leisure encounters. Drawing upon anthropological and dramatic studies of performance, the book emphasizes that academic research also performs cultural meaning. A central feature of the book is its reflexive consideration of the representations of culture constructed by academic ′experts′.