Cultural Studies began as an insurgent sociology, rallying against a functionalist and positivistic social science. Three scholars were instrumental in a ‘break' in established ways of thinking. They are identified by the critic Stuart Hall in an essay entitled “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” (1981):

The onus was heavily on a materialist approach to cultural forms and practices as against idealist and metaphysical frameworks to understand why we live the kinds of life we live: