The Work of Raymond Williams

Abstract

This podcast is a recording of Jim McGuigan's talk "The Work of Raymond Williams" that he presented in the CAMRI Research Seminar at the University of Westminster on October 15, 2014.

In the talk, Jim McGuigan surveys Williams’s work and its enduring relevance to media and cultural analysis and why Williams’ 1983 book was mistakenly entitled 'Towards 2000', since it is as fresh and relevant to understanding the world now as it was when originally published.

Jim has recently edited a collection of writings for Sage selected from the whole of Raymond Williams’s career, 'Raymond Williams on Culture and Society'. He has also edited and added to Williams’s 'Towards 2000', originally published in 1983, to be republished this year with the new title, 'A Short Counter-Revolution – Towards 2000 Revisited', also by Sage.

Jim has also written several critical appreciations of Williams’s work, some of which have appeared in recent issues of 'Keywords', the journal of the Raymond Williams Society, and 'The Sociological Review'.

His previous book publications include 'Cultural Populism' (1992), 'Culture and the Public Sphere' (1996), 'Modernity and Postmodern Culture' (1999, 2006), 'Rethinking Cultural Policy' (2004), 'Cool Capitalism' (2009) and 'Cultural Analysis' (2010). He is currently writing a book for Palgrave Macmillan to be entitled, 'Neoliberal Culture'.

Until recently, Jim sold his labour power to Loughborough University. He is now a freelance scholar, writer and artist.

McGuigan, Jim, ed. 2014. Raymond Williams: A Short Counter-Revolution. London: Sage.
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book242744?siteId=sage-uk&prodTypes=any&q=mcguigan&fs=1

McGuigan, Jim, ed. 2014. Raymond Williams on Culture and Society. London: Sage.
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book234838?siteId=sage-uk&prodTypes=any&q=mcguigan&fs=1