Presentation

Meaning, identity and power form a dynamic hub in the lively research field known as cultural studies. It focuses on the interplay between cultural forms, social practices and institutionalised structures of domination, in order to understand how texts, subjects and contexts interact to reinforce or challenge relations of meaning, identity and power. Cultural studies exist within all areas, not as a sharply delimited and exclusionary discipline but rather as a interdisciplinary field where new phenomena, methods and theories are tried out in the borderlands between established disciplines and traditions. What unites the field is the wish to investigate urgent issues of meaning, identity and power through contextualizing interpretations, transgressive dialogues and reflexive critiques.

ACSIS - Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden - is a national centre for transnational cultural studies. It has been established by Linköping University in order to develop advanced research and higher education in the field of interdisciplinary cultural studies in Sweden. It serves as a national resource for exchange between disciplines, universities, countries and intellectual currents, striving to develop diversified networking between Swedish cultural research and the transnational field of cultural studies. This field may provisionally be divided into three mutually interacting zones: "interpretations" for texts, media and aesthetics; "interactions" for practices, identities and relations; and "interventions" for power, institutions and movements.

ACSIS was established early in 2002 as an independent unit within Linköping University. The centre is administratively connected to the Department for Studies of Social Change and Culture (ISAK). Its linking, driving and quality rising tasks are realized through programmes for visiting scholars, research, publications, seminars, conferences, PhD courses and various forms of networking. The national character of ACSIS is guaranteed by a board with members chosen by all Swedish universities and a chair appointed by the rector of Linköping University. Activities are headed by a director and administrative staff.

In cultural borderlands

A series of wide-ranging transformations have taken place in culture and society. The role and extent of the cultural field and sector has grown, but also been problematised. Modernisation, globalisation, individualisation, hybridisation, identity movements, aestheticisation, culturalisation, mediatisation and digitalisation are aspects of late modern tendencies in the postindustrial and postcolonial world, which put cultural issues on the agenda. Such challenges place new demands on cultural research. Old borders between countries, cities, disciplines and traditions quickly become antiquated when it comes to understanding how media and symbolic forms increasingly mix, how cultural, social, political, economic and technological factors converge, and how different social groups interact and shape new communities and differences cut across traditional structures, how societal institutions are given new forms and functions, and how new global power structures and movements confront each other on new battlefields. This demands interdisciplinary cultural studies with sharp interpretations, wide dialogic communication and brave critical interventions.

"Cultural studies" is the name of an internationally expanding and diversifying field for interdisciplinary research from cultural perspectives. The intensified global exchange between local and regional directions in this field creates a strong potential for development. Cultural studies mainly focus on contemporary phenomena and tendencies that demand new ways of interpretation and analysis, where traditional disciplinary borders need to be transgressed. In Sweden - and not least at Linköping University - there is a wide range of promising attempts in that direction.

This is where ACSIS has been established to participate in efforts to "advance" cultural studies - make them known and strengthen their positions, assist with communicative resources for development of theories and methods, and raise the quality of those interdisciplinary efforts that today are largely fragmented across the country or between disciplines. ACSIS links disciplines, subfields and traditions which otherwise have little contact, but who need to co-operate in order to deal with contemporary social problems and cultural processes. ACSIS also opens channels between cities and universities that else risk being isolated from each other in restraining competition. ACSIS also builds axes between different domestic and Nordic branches of cultural research, Anglo-American cultural studies and a series of often marginalized but innovative directions in other parts of Europe and the world at large. Thus ACSIS is itself a borderlands project. It has grown through a process where scholars from a wide range of academic areas all over the country have participated, and with financial support by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), the Science Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Linköping University and the city of Norrköping.

Three zones

The field of activity is roughly divided into three overlapping "zones".

The interpretations zone deals with texts in a wide sense, interpretations of meanings of symbolic forms in the contexts where they are shaped and used. It relates to various traditions for interaesthetic, intermedial, hermeneutic, semiotic and discourse analytical research. Culture in an aesthetc sense is here a key word, in studies of the wide cultural sector as well as in the development of methods for contextualizing interpretations of cultural artefacts in general.

The interactions zone deals with everyday practices and the forming of identities, relations and communities in groups and networks. It connects to strong Swedish traditions for co-operation in cultural analysis that have specifically engaged ethnological, anthropological, linguistic and historical perspectives. Here, in studies of intersubjective interaction and in the communicative dialogues of interdisciplinary cultural studies themselves, communication is a key word.

The interventions zone deals with societal structures and institution, politics and economy, power and resistance. It links to existing networks that engage with changes in welfare societies and power relations, the material conditions of culture and new social movements with strong cultural components. Critique is a key word, in studies of how dominance and marginalisation are today transformed, and in the development of an intellectual reflexivity that scrutinises the role and responsibility of academic knowledge production itself.