we might mean by that difficult term ‘culture’. In particular, it has put for- ward powerful criticisms of essentialist notions of culture that see the cul- ture of a particular place and/or people as ‘one, shared culture’ (Hall, 1994: 323), as a bounded, fixed thing rather than as a complex space where many different influences combine and conflict. Again, work by writers outside the Euro-American metropolitan centre and migrants from former colonies to such centres has been vital in developing this understanding. Such chal- lenges to traditional ways of thinking about culture have important implica- tions in what follows. Through its richer understanding of the concept of culture, cultural studies has greatly advanced thinking about texts. Political economy writers and their allies in media studies and radical media sociol- ogy have been much concerned with the question of whose interests might be served by the texts produced by the cultural industries. Cultural studies, however, has extended this conception of interests beyond economic and political ones to include a strong sense of the politics involved in issues of recognition and identity. It has pointed out how certain texts and representa- tional practices, while seemingly progressive, (further) serve to exclude and marginalise the relatively powerless. Third, cultural studies has raised vital political questions about repre-
