Cultural studies, the sociology of culture and "Us".: Slightly methodological reflections

The essay deals with the recent history of three fields of study - cultural studies, East and Central European studies, and the study of culture in the Czech sociological context - and asks why there is a lack of communication among them. The author argues that the discipline of cultural studies, until recently dominated by Anglo-American topics, has paid very little attention to regional issues, while the field of regional studies has been overwhelmed with political and economic issues and has largely ignored cultural questions. At the same time, the Czech academic context has never undergone a "cultural turn" similar to that which emerged in the Euro-American social sciences in the 1980s. The author also discusses the left-oriented political background of the British tradition of cultural studies as a possible barrier to closer communication with the regional study of culture, She suggests that now is a good time to ask how the existing methodological framework of cultural studies can contribute to the research of culture in the region of East and Central Europe, and conversely how deeper insight into regional cultural history can reshape cultural studies.