This special 35th anniversary edition contains the original, unchanged text that inspired a generation, alongside two new chapters that explore the book's continued significance for today's readers. The Preface provides a brief retrospective account of the book's original structure, the rich ethnographic, intellectual and theoretical work that informed it, and the historical context in which it appeared. In the new Afterword, each of the authors takes up a specific theme from the original book and interrogates it in the light of current crises, perspectives and contexts.

Stuart Hall is one of the founding figures of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, was formerly President of the BSA (1995-97) and is now Professor Emeritus at the Open University, UK. He is widely regarded as one of the leading cultural theorists of our time and is the author of many influential and highly-respected texts, including: The Hard Road to Renewal, Formations of Modernity, Questions of Cultural Identity and Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices.  Chas Critcher is Visiting Professor in Media and Communications at Swansea University and Professor Emeritus at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He originally studied at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Amongst his most recent publications are Moral Panics and the Media and the edited collection Critical Readings in Moral Panics and the Media. Tony Jefferson is Professor Emeritus at Keele University, UK. He has held Visiting Professorships in Denmark, Sweden, Australia and the USA. Throughout his career he has written many highly-respected texts, including Interpreting Policework, Doing Qualitative Research Differently and Psychosocial Criminology. John Clarke is Professor of Social Policy at the Open University, UK and has been a visiting scholar at a number of other institutions including NOVA in Oslo, the Danish Social Research Institute (SFI) in Copenhagen, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Central European University in Budapest. His publications include Changing Welfare; Changing States, Creating Citizen-Consumers and Publics, Politics and Power. Brian Roberts is Visiting Professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, UK. His writings and research interests include biographical sociology, identity and communal change, Welsh social history, performative social science, and the relation between the arts and social science. His publications include: Biographical Research; Micro Social Theory; and Getting the Most out of the Research Experience.