This volume appears at a critical moment for the future of cultural studies. The Anglo-American centres from which it first emerged have been displaced, but we are left with the question: how does cultural studies engage with the world? How to think beyond the local without descending into a glib globalisation? What is the future for this academic subject when the 'subject' itself has been so fragmented and dispersed?

In the first section, these crucial questions are addressed by international scholars such as Lawrence Grossberg, Meaghan Morris, Graham Murdock and bell hooks. In the second, a series of detailed case studies goes on to look at actual practices of cultural production.