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| Manufactured Schema |
| Thatcher, the Miners & the Culture Industry |
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| Category: |
Business |
| Author: |
D. V. Khabaz |
| Publisher: |
Matador |
| Price: |
£9.95 |
| ISBN: |
1-905237-61-8 |
| Pages: |
200 |
| Reviewed in issue: |
5 |
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This book, the product I imagine of a PhD thesis, has some admirable qualities – chief among them the way it attempts to re-engage with under-analysed threads in the discourse of Thatcherism and make links to contemporary British life. It delves into archive tabloid editorials and headline splashes, and makes a comparative study of key words used in stories covered by the media at the time, arguing for an intended manipulation of opinion. It also draws on the work of Adorno and Horkheimer, which is a rare enough event these days.
Yet for all this it is basically an academic text, with the uncomfortable (and occasionally here, lax) style that requires – making it hardly engaging and accessible reading for most of us. It is therefore a book that falls between two stools, being marginal even in its over-specialised academic field (through no fault of its own), and yet despite a timely and populist theme, avoids connecting to a wider audience either.
So, unless you’re a Thatcher fetishist, a political junkie who really ought to get out more, or a member of faculty on some HE course interfacing culture, media and politics, well frankly its hard to see how you’d ever encounter this book, let alone want to read it. For me, I hope the PhD was worth the years of isolated slog, because that’s where the true merit of this work lies. |
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