Repurposing literacy

the uses of Richard Hoggart for creative education

John Hartley

pp. 137-157

in: Sue Owen (ed), Richard Hoggart and cultural studies, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

If we do live in a commercial but humane democracy, as Richard Hoggart fervently hoped that we would, then the popular media are a chief means for interconnecting both the human and the democratic parts of the community, and for linking experts and specialists in government, business and the professions to the general population of "ordinary people". As is well known, Hoggart thought that the "commercial" part was getting out of step with the "humane" part (to say nothing of the "democratic"). Commercially catered entertainments seemed to be propagating a new form of literacy — purposeless, consumptive, selfish — that was out of step with both the goals of formal schooling and the home and class culture of the industrialised working population. Hoggart was among the first to think about how commercial entertainment intersects with and extends formal literacy, and how that might affect culture and citizenship. In The Uses of Literacy, published in 1957, he wrote mostly about popular printed materials — he did not consider the "uses of television" until 1960, when he published an interesting article in Encounter under that title (Hoggart, 1960). Since then, it may be argued that popular media have evolved not once but twice, first through television (1950s to 1970s) and then via interactive and online media (since the Clinton Presidency).

Cited authors

Hoggart Richard