This is a book about the practice of researching culture. It offers, as our title suggests, a clarification and elaboration of the methodological basis for ‘cultural studies’, which we understand to be a particular approach within the study of culture. It reflects both on the range of methods used in cultural research and their integrity or possibilities for combination. It asks what the implications for method are of being inside your object of study, of seeking to produce knowledge about cultural processes. It addresses in detail and in sequence all the main clusters of methods that are used in cultural studies, often grouped in terms of ‘reading texts’ on the one side and ‘talking to people’ on the other. While we start from this division in Part III – Readings – and Part IV – Meetings – we seek to break it down. Although we are very concerned to be practical (see under the heading Research practice – an approach to method below) this book is not a guide or handbook in the usual sense; nor is it another introduction to cultural studies as a whole. Our chapters are typically rather argumentative and the book itself is an extended argument. This is because we are trying to clarify questions of approach in a field where they have often remained quite implicit. We often begin a chapter by arguing for a broad orientation towards research as a process, then illustrate this argument with reference to particular points of practice. We do not, in any chapter, try to cover in detail all the practical choices involved in a particular method, nor cover all the work in a particular subfield of cultural research. On the other hand, in almost every chapter we discuss some aspects of research as a daily practice and certain chapters are primarily of this kind (see especially Chapters 4 and 10). We think that this book is quite rich in advice of many different kinds, but it is always governed by the advice to think for yourself.

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