Les limites du Centre : Nature, Place et Héritage du CCCS au sein du monde Académique et Politique (1964-1988)

Is there room for marginal practices within universities? By contributing a comprehensive institutional history of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) between its founding year in 1964 in Birmingham and its merger with the University of Birmingham’s Department of Sociology in 1988, this dissertation offers possible answers to that question. Building on seminal work assessing the significance of the CCCS in the academic and political world of the second half of the 20th century, this study reveals the entire institutional trajectory of the Centre per se, and lays emphasis on its lesser-known periods and practices. By examining the CCCS’s various networks which supported its founding, endorsed its early production, disseminated its publications and built on its framework to expand the burgeoning field of cultural studies — while coming to its rescue in times of crisis (and sometimes overusing its slender resources) — this dissertation seeks to focus on the working practices which turned the Centre into the so called “Birmingham school”. To do so, it focuses on CCCS’s archival material held at the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Research Library and on three series of qualitative interviews with former CCCS members including one conducted especially for this work. By articulating such material, in connection to the historical context during which the Centre evolved for close to a quarter of a century, to a sociological understanding of the power struggles at play within the academic field, this work establishes that the CCCS’s marginality was both a source of strengths and weaknesses: the Centre achieved creating something beyond its own walls, as it became a place where an experience grounded in academic freedom could develop. Nevertheless, the CCCS, its growing fame notwithstanding, was never entirely safe and never ceased to be fragile on the institutional, theoretical and operational levels. Such is the crest line which has been explored in this work. By highlighting these findings, this research contributes one answer (there are many others) to the question of what can be achieved from the margins of the university.

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