The Postmodern Turn gathers together in one volume some of the most important statements of the postmodern approach to human studies. In addressing postmodern social theory and emphasising the social role of knowledge, this book abandons the disciplinary boundaries separating the sciences and the humanities. The first collection of its kind, it provides the classic essays of authors such as Lyotard, Haraway, Foucault and Rorty. Contributors include well-known theorists in the fields of sociology, anthropology, women's and gay studies, philosophy, and history.
First published in 1989, Cultural Politics in Contemporary America is a radical attempt to lay out the complex ways in which the American media and American culture is powerfully interlocked. At the end of the 20th century, the media exerted an overwhelming influence on the formation of social identity through the production and consumption of images. The Hollywood Presidency of Ronald Reagan was founded on the skills of the 'Great Communicator'; Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' was used by Chrysler Corporation to assure that 'the pride is back'; feminists and right-wing militants converged to oppose pornography. The media, American culture, and political power were bound together in a gamble, the stakes of which increased daily. 'Cultural Politics' incorporates the struggles of race, gender and class; the economy of the commercial media system; the myths of hegemony and imperialism; the crises of privacy and of the intellectual; and such diverse issues as postmodernism, the American automobile, advertising as communication, and television. While political actors have changed and media technology has advanced rapidly, the outcome of this research still holds true for the 21st century and is of importance to students of media studies, cultural studies, postmodernism, postcolonial studies and political science.
Theater and Cultural Politics for a New World presents a radical re-examination of the ways in which demographic shifts will impact theater and performance culture in the twenty-first century. Editor Chinua Thelwell brings together the revealing insights of artists, scholars, and organizers to produce a unique intersectional conversation about the transformative potential of theater. Opening with a case study of the New WORLD Theater and moving on to a fascinating range of essays, the book looks at five main themes: Changing demographics Future aesthetics Making institutional space Critical multiculturalism Polyculturalism
This book of tightly woven dialogues engages prominent thinkers in a discussion about the role of culture-broadly construed-in contemporary society and politics. Faced with the conceptual inflation of the notion of 'culture, ' which now imposes itself as an indispensable issue in contemporary moral and political debates, these dynamic exchanges seek to rethink culture and critique beyond the schematic models that have often predominated, such as the opposition between "mainstream multiculturalism" and the "clash of civilizations." Prefaced by an introduction relating current cultural debates to the critical theory tradition, this book examines the politics of culture and the spirit of critique from three different vantage points. To begin, Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller provide a stage-setting dialogue, followed by discussions with two major representatives of contemporary critical theory: Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. Working at the horizons of this tradition, Judith Butler, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Cornel West then provide important critical perspectives on cultural politics. The book's concluding section engages with Michael Sandel and Will Kymlicka, who work out of the Rawlsian tradition yet are uniquely concerned with the issue of culture, broadly understood. The epilogue, an interview with Axel Honneth, returns to the core issue of critical theory in cultural politics. Ranging from recent developments and progressive interventions in critical theory to dialogues that incorporate its insights into larger discussions of social and political philosophy, this book sharpens old critical tools while developing new strategies for rethinking the role of 'culture' in contemporary society.
Emotions work to define who we are as well as shape what we do and this is no more powerfully at play than in the world of politics. Ahmed considers how emotions keep us invested in relationships of power, and also shows how this use of emotion could be crucial to areas such as feminist and queer politics. Debates on international terrorism, asylum and migration, as well as reconciliation and reparation, are explored through topical case studies. In this book the difficult issues are confronted head on. The Cultural Politics of Emotion is in dialogue with recent literature on emotions within gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Throughout the book, Ahmed develops a theory of how emotions work, and the effects they have on our day-to-day lives. New for this editionA substantial 15,000-word Afterword on 'Emotions and Their Objects' which provides an original contribution to the burgeoning field of affect studiesA revised BibliographyUpdated throughout.
This volume addresses these key issues through an analysis of important theoretical debates on issues such as digital democracy, cultural politics and transnational communities. Featuring contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, the book contains a series of case studies on new social movements including campaigns on the environment, gender, animal rights and human rights. It combines cutting edge research with theoretical material and makes an important contribution to this highly topical and rapidly growing area. This book will be invaluable reading for students in areas including Politics, Communications and IT, Sociology and Cultural Studies.
For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety of cultural artifacts, from Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing and Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire to the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. The result is a poignant collection of essays which, like all of hooks's work, is above all else concerned with transforming oppressive structures of domination.
This book is perhaps the first systematic treatment of politics from the perspective of cultural psychology. Politics is a complex that psychology usually fails to understand— as it assumes a position in society that attempts to be free of politics itself. Politics is associated both with an everyday practice, and the dynamics of globalization; with the way group conflicts, ideologies, social representations and identities, are lived and co-constructed by social actors. The authors of the book address these issues through their research grounded in different parts of the world, on democracy and political order, the social representation of power, gender studies, the use of metaphors and symbolic power in political discourse, social identities and methodological questions. The book will be used by social and political psychologists but is also of interest to the other social sciences: political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, educationalists, and it is at a level where sophisticated lay public would be able to appreciate its coverage. Its use in upperlevel college teaching is possible, and expected at graduate/postgraduate levels.
In a time of dynamism and contradiction in Pacific cultural production, a time of 'turning things over' and 'writing from the inside out, ' this far-reaching volume provides a comprehensive set of essays and interviews on the emergent literatures of the New Pacific. With its dynamic combination of important position papers, polemics, and decolonizing critiques by noted authors and of analysis by new and established post-colonial scholars, this volume exposes 'the maze and mix of literatures and cultural identities breaking down and building up across the Pacific Ocean.' This pioneering work will be the definitive resource for anyone researching or teaching Pacific literature and will be invaluable for bringing Pacific culture to readers outside the region
