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Product Description
Product Description
When a society becomes more affluent, does it lose other values? Are the skills that education and literacy gave millions wasted on consuming pop culture? Do the media coerce us into a world of the superficial and the material - or can they be a force for good?
When Richard Hoggart asked these questions in his 1957 book The Uses of Literacy Britain was undergoing huge social change, yet his landmark work has lost none of its pertinence and power today. Hoggart gives a fascinating insight into the close-knit values of Northern England's vanishing working-class communities, and weaves this together with his views on the arrival of a new, homogenous 'mass' US-influenced culture. His headline-grabbing bestseller opened up a whole new area of cultural study and remains essential reading, both as a historical document, and as a commentary on class, poverty and the media.
About the Author
Richard Hoggart was born in Leeds in 1918. He served with the Royal Artillery in North Africa from 1940 to 1946, after which he taught literature at the University of Hull, was visiting professor of English at the University of Rochester in America and senior lecturer in English at the University of Leicester. Professor Hoggart has been a member of numerous bodies and at different times was an Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, Chairman of the New Statesman and Vice-Chairman of the Arts Council.
The Uses of Literacy, his most widely acclaimed work was partly autobiographical and drawn from his own boyhood growing up in the North of England.
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Customer Reviews
"Most mass-entertainments are in the end what D.H.Lawrence described as "anti-life". They are full of corrupt brightness, of improper appeals and moral evasions...progress is conceived as a seeking of material possessions, equality as a moral levelling, and freedom as the ground for endless irresponsible pleasure...nothing which can really grip the brain or heart."
it seems to be the present day rather than the 1950's that he is writing about, and he clearly foresees a uniform public culture, devoid of discernment or criticism, in which those who accuse it of being empty and valueless are mocked and ridiculed.
"The Uses of Literacy" is an important and stimulating book that provides valuable insight into the journey from the 1950's to the cultural malaise of the present day.
What is equally scary is that he describes a set of values and attitudes that I have inherited from my parents - values that seem almost alien in today's culture.
A brilliant book, recommended to anyone with an interest in what makes us what we are as a people. Hoggart offers something close to the definitive study of what makes up the mass media ethos, content and consumer.
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