The Mana of Mass Society
The Mana of Mass Society

Author: William Mazzarella

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-10-24

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 022643639X

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We often invoke the “magic” of mass media to describe seductive advertising or charismatic politicians. In The Mana of Mass Society, William Mazzarella asks what happens to social theory if we take that idea seriously. How would it change our understanding of publicity, propaganda, love, and power? Mazzarella reconsiders the concept of “mana,” which served in early anthropology as a troubled bridge between “primitive” ritual and the fascination of mass media. Thinking about mana, Mazzarella shows, means rethinking some of our most fundamental questions: What powers authority? What in us responds to it? Is the mana that animates an Aboriginal ritual the same as the mana that energizes a revolutionary crowd, a consumer public, or an art encounter? At the intersection of anthropology and critical theory, The Mana of Mass Society brings recent conversations around affect, sovereignty, and emergence into creative contact with classic debates on religion, charisma, ideology, and aesthetics.

Stateville
Stateville

Author: James B. Jacobs

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-07-31

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 022621883X

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Stateville penitentiary in Illinois has housed some of Chicago's most infamous criminals and was proclaimed to be "the world's toughest prison" by Joseph Ragen, Stateville's powerful warden from 1936 to 1961. It shares with Attica, San Quentin, and Jackson the notoriety of being one of the maximum security prisons that has shaped the public's conception of imprisonment. In Stateville James B. Jacobs, a sociologist and legal scholar, presents the first historical examination of a total prison organization—administrators, guards, prisoners, and special interest groups. Jacobs applies Edward Shils's interpretation of the dynamics of mass society in order to explain the dramatic events of the past quarter century that have permanently altered Stateville's structure. With the extension of civil rights to previously marginal groups such as racial minorities, the poor, and, ultimately, the incarcerated, prisons have moved from society's periphery toward its center. Accordingly Stateville's control mechanisms became less authoritarian and more legalistic and bureaucratic. As prisoners' rights increased, the preogatives of the staff were sharply curtailed. By the early 1970s the administration proved incapable of dealing with politicized gangs, proliferating interest groups, unionized guards, and interventionist courts. In addition to extensive archival research, Jacobs spent many months freely interacting with the prisoners, guards, and administrators at Stateville. His lucid presentation of Stateville's troubled history will provide fascinating reading for a wide audience of concerned readers. ". . . [an] impressive study of a complex social system."—Isidore Silver, Library Journal

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society
The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society

Author: Debra L. Merskin

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 2169

ISBN-13: 1483375528

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The reference will discuss mass media around the world in their varied forms—newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, books, music, websites, and social media—and will describe the role of each in both mirroring and shaping society.

Mass Society
Mass Society

Author: Salvador Giner

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1483261182

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Mass Society deals with the total outlook of human including modern politics culture, social inequality, community life, and problems. The book reviews the history of democracy and discontent. The text analyzes the mob rule, the disenchantment of progress, and the history of democracy. Modern sociological theory explains the opposition of two extreme societal models to describe the historical dynamics of mankind. The book is an attempt to explain that a mass society outlook exists and has some inner coherence and distinctive quality. The author argues that such outlook or theory is a prominent feature in the cultural imagination of man, and that modern secular society cannot be understood without such theory. The author then proceeds to identify majority with mass, and the identification of human with mass human. This identification will lead to a community vision, though the author argues the growth of a mass interpretation of society has a negative effect on the liberal theory of the individual. The text can be interesting for political science majors, sociologists, psychologists, and economists.

The Time of the Tribes
The Time of the Tribes

Author: Michel Maffesoli

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 1996-02-27

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780803984745

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In this exciting book Michel Maffesoli argues that the conventional approaches to understanding solidarity and society are deeply flawed. He contends that mass culture has disintegrated and that today social existence is conducted through fragmented tribal groupings, organized around the catchwords, brand-names and sound-bites of consumer culture. The book provides a rich backcloth against which to consider the rise of `identity politics' and the `proliferation of lifestyle cultures'.

Grasping Things
Grasping Things

Author: Simon J. Bronner

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0813182743

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America stocks its shelves with mass-produced goods but fills its imagination with handmade folk objects. In Pennsylvania, the "back to the city" housing movement causes a conflict of cultures. In Indiana, an old tradition of butchering turtles for church picnics evokes both pride and loathing among residents. In New York, folk-art exhibits raise choruses of adoration and protest. These are a few of the examples Simon Bronner uses to illustrate the ways Americans physically and mentally grasp things. Bronner moves beyond the usual discussions of form and variety in America's folk material culture to explain historical influences on, and the social consequences of, channeling folk culture into a mass society.