"Stuart Hall is one of the founding figures of cultural studies. He was director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, famously coined the term 'Thatcherism' and assessed New Labour as the 'Great Moving Nowhere Show'. One of the leading public intellectuals of the postwar period, he has helped transform our understanding of culture as both a theoretical category and a political practice. James Procter's introduction places Hall's work within its historical, cultural and theoretical contexts, providing a clear guide to his key ideas and influences, as well as to his critics and his intellectual legacy, covering topics such as: popular culture and youth subcultures; the CCCS and cultural studies; media and communication; racism and resistance; postmodernism and the post-colonial; Thatcherism; and identity, ethnicity, diaspora.". "Stuart Hall is the gateway to the work of a critic described by Terry Eagleton as 'a walking chronicleof everything from the New Left to New Times, Leavis to Lyotard, Aldermaston to ethnicity'."--BOOK JACKET