This lucid and concise overview brings a much-needed sense of historical and theoretical scale to the growth of cultural studies. The authors identify six major paradigms in cultural theory: utilitarianism; culturalism and cultural materialism; critical theory and the sociology of culture; structuralist and post-structuralist semiology; difference theory; and postmodernism. They outline the social and discursive contexts within which each of these has developed, and provide the essential grounding to understand current debates in the field. This third edition of Contemporary Cultural Theory has been extensively revised to include new material on the new historicism, Zizek, Bourdieu, Deleuze and Guattari, queer theory, black and Latino cultural studies, cultural policy and posthumanism. A rigorous and accessible guide to the often tricky manoeuvres of literary, social and cultural theorists in recent years, Contemporary Cultural Theory is an invaluable resource for all students of the many disciplines now informed by cultural theory.