Introduction to British Studies

Traditionally, the overwhelming majority of German students of English have become teachers who, in the classroom, have had to deal with historical, political and cultural issues relating to Britain. However, until very recently the study of British history, politics, and culture was only marginal in the context of English Studies (in West Germany. or , if it was on offer at all, was either thought to provide the indispensable context for linguistic and/or literary studies, or it was regarded as background knowledge, as a body of factual knowledge of British life and institutions added on to the language practice and, for that reason, taught mainly by native speakers. Both approaches were ancillary and therefore unsatisfactory: the former did not present any conceptual or systematic knowledge of the foreign culture in its own right which could then be applied to other questions; the latter did not sufficiently connect the knowledge of the 'facts and figures' with the concrete and current issues which might be relevant to the students and their future work. In the GDR attempts at providing systematic and transferable knowledge of the foreign culture were made, but were, at least in part, impaired by the fact that they represented instead of a variety of competing views of the foreign culture.

Since the late 1960s and, more resolutely, since the mid-1970s, a handful of university teachers of English have tried to argue for the relevance of what for the sake of convenience can summarily be called "Cultural Studies", including British Cultural Studies and British Studies. However, only during the last decade or so has a discernible change of attitude in favour of Cultural Studies taken place within the discipline of English Studies in Germany as a whole. It is not possible to ascribe the slow and uneven, but eventually positive, development of Cultural Studies to one single factor. More likely it is the result of quite different and even contradictory factors, interests and initiatives, e.g.

• the need of the discipline to re-think and re-locate itself within the Humanities, which were required to prove their social relevance (by protesting students in the late 1960s and early 1970s as well as by politicians bent on cutting the Humanities down to size in the 1980s)

• the related need to defend the tradition and, at the same time, re-define the nature of an expanding and complexifying discipline new and unfamiliar academic as well as political questions and terrains (in its national and international contexts)

• the challenge of having to re-organize and re-institutionalize the discipline under the combined pressures of a unifying Europe and a unified Germany

Nevertheless, the question still remains: WHAT CULTURAL STUDIES?

First of all, it is a re-imported product. Although a substantial part of Cultural Studies in Britain stems form the Continent, Cultural Studies has developed in Britain over the last thirty-five years as an academic discipline in its own right investigating the whole way of life of a multicultural society. It has been predominantly, but by no means exclusively, concerned with analytical categories (such as class, 'race'/ethnicity, gender, nation/nationality, language, generation) and with signifying processes, above all the mass media and their wide-spread cultural products. Thus, its main objective has been to analyse social and signifying processes on the one hand and processes of identity formation on the other.

Cultural Studies definitely does not imply a unified theory or method - there is not school of Cultural Studies -, but rather it is an umbrella term for a great diversity of approaches to matters of culture. Consequently, there is also a great diversity of 'tools' of critical analysis which are constantly under discussion and revision.

What, compared to the english scene, does british cultural studies mean in the german context?

First of all, it means the study of British cultures with all their different aspects, applying a great diversity of approaches adapted from the various disciplines involved. But it is certainly not possible to accept without testing the analytical tools developed by Cultural Studies people in Britain. In the German context attention must be paid to the fact that the British have been looking at their own ('native') cultures while we are looking at foreign ones. The complex problematic of autostereotype and heterostereotype, of what it implies to the venture of studying British cultures from the German vantage point. This, however, may be of interest to the British, too, since they can thus compare their 'native' view of themselves with one from the outside.

Secondly, the openness and flexibility with regard to the theories, methods and tools used in cultural analysis must also be insisted upon in the German context. What is needed is a critical debate on how to analyse and understand cultures, including our own, and as these cultures are constantly changing the tools of analysis should be constantly adapted, too.

Thirdly, conducting cultural analyses by making use of diverse approaches and academic disciplines raises questions of which have to be answered, if only tentatively. For example: How do we cope with the historical, sociological and political dimensions within Cultural Studies? How do we understand and, most importantly, mediate between the terminology and techniques of the different disciplines involved so that meaningful results can be obtained in Cultural Studies?

Finally, the study of British cultures in Germany certainly has political implications as well which cannot be evaded and should therefore be approached squarely. It follows from what has been said above that these implications are different from those Cultural Studies has in Britain, but they nevertheless exist. Approaching the social, political and cultural problems of a foreign country from one's own point of view, or comparing the cultures of two European states from the vantage point of one of the cultures involved, entails not only processes of description but also of evaluation. These evaluations imply critique, no doubt, but also self-reflection and self-critique. They imply the possibility of accepting difference and living with it, of learning from each other's experiences, and of jointly tackling problems that surpass what a single scientific community can effectively handle.

The need, acutely felt in Germany in the recent past, to present, discuss and disseminate new concepts, theories and research findings relating to the social, historical, political and cultural dimensions of English Studies () has lead to the launch of a new academic journal, the , edited by Jürgen Kramer, Bernd Lenz and Gerd Stratmann, which was first published in 1994 with the generous support of the British Council. Its main aim is to provide an appropriate platform for the study and discussion of British cultures through in-depth articles, case studies, reviews etc.