History, Experience and Cultural Studies


Book Description

Pickering explores the attenuated relationship between social history and cultural theory, reappraising some of the positions and issues which have led to the impasse between them. He highlights the importance of using a combined approach.




History, Experience and Cultural Studies


Book Description

This elegantly written and illuminating book explores the attenuated relationship between history and cultural studies, reappraising some of the issues and positions which have led to the impasse between them and highlighting the contribution to be made by a new engagement between cultural and historical theory. Focusing on the contested concept of 'experience' as a central part of his argument, Pickering advances new ways of attending to the myriad voices of everyday cultures, past and present.




Cultural Studies 1983


Book Description

The publication of Cultural Studies 1983 is a touchstone event in the history of Cultural Studies and a testament to Stuart Hall's unparalleled contributions. The eight foundational lectures Hall delivered at the University of Illinois in 1983 introduced North American audiences to a thinker and discipline that would shift the course of critical scholarship. Unavailable until now, these lectures present Hall's original engagements with the theoretical positions that contributed to the formation of Cultural Studies. Throughout this personally guided tour of Cultural Studies' intellectual genealogy, Hall discusses the work of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and E. P. Thompson; the influence of structuralism; the limitations and possibilities of Marxist theory; and the importance of Althusser and Gramsci. Throughout these theoretical reflections, Hall insists that Cultural Studies aims to provide the means for political change.




Material Powers


Book Description

This edited collection is a major contribution to the current development of a ‘material turn’ in the social sciences and humanities. It does so by exploring new understandings of how power is made up and exercised by examining the role of material infrastructures in the organization of state power and the role of material cultural practices in the organization of colonial forms of governance. A diverse range of historical examples is drawn on in illustrating these concerns – from the role of territorial engineering projects in seventeenth-century France through the development of the postal system in nineteenth-century Britain to the relations between the state and road-building in contemporary Peru, for example. The colonial contexts examined are similarly varied, ranging from the role of photographic practices in the constitution of colonial power in India and the measurement of the bodies of the colonized in French colonial practices to the part played by the relations between museums and expeditions in the organization of Australian forms of colonial rule. These specific concerns are connected to major critical re-examination of the limits of the earlier formulations of cultural materialism and the logic of the ‘cultural turn’. The collection brings together a group of key international scholars whose work has played a leading role in debates in and across the fields of history, visual culture studies, anthropology, geography, cultural studies, museum studies, and literary studies.




Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain


Book Description

A history of British cultural Marxism. This book traces its development from beginnings in postwar Britain, through transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, to the emergence of British cultural studies at Birmingham, up to the advent of Thatcherism, to reflect a tradition, that represents an effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar British Left.




Jewish Cultural Studies


Book Description

Defines the distinctive field of Jewish cultural studies and its basis in folkloristic, psychological, and ethnological approaches. Jewish Cultural Studiescharts the contours and boundaries of Jewish cultural studies and the issues of Jewish culture that make it so intriguing—and necessary—not only for Jews but also for students of identity, ethnicity, and diversity generally. In addition to framing the distinguishing features of Jewish culture and the ways it has been studied, and often misrepresented and maligned, Simon J. Bronner presents several case studies using ethnography, folkloristic interpretation, and rhetorical analysis. Bronner, building on many years of global cultural exploration, locates patterns, processes, frames, and themes of events and actions identified as Jewish to discern what makes them appear Jewish and why. Jewish Cultural Studiesis divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the conceptualization of how Jews in complex, heterogenous societies identify themselves as a cultural group to non-Jews and vice versa—such as how the Jewish home is socially and materially constructed. Part 2 delves into ritualization as a strategic Jewish practice for perpetuating peoplehood and the values that it suggests—for example, the rising popularity of naming ceremonies for newborn girls, simhat bat or zeved habat, in the twenty-first century. Part 3 explores narration, including the global transformation of Jewish joking in online settings and the role of Jews in American political culture. Bronner reflects that a reason to separate Jewish cultural studies from the fields of Jewish studies and cultural studies is the distinctiveness of Jewish culture among other ethnic experiences. As a diasporic group with religious ties and varying local customs, Jews present difficulties of categorization. He encourages a multiperspectival approach that considers the Jewish double consciousness as being aware of both insider and outsider perspectives, participation in ancient tradition and recent modernization, and the great variety and stigmatization of Jewish experience and cultural expression. Students and scholars in Jewish studies, cultural studies, ethnic-religious studies, folklore, sociology, psychology, and ethnology are the intended audience for this book.




Research Methods for Cultural Studies


Book Description

This new textbook addresses the neglect of practical research methods in cultural studies. It provides readers with clearly written overviews of research methods in cultural studies, along with guidelines on how to put these methods into operation. It advocates a multi-method approach, with students drawing from a pool of techniques and approaches suitable for their own topics of investigation.The book covers the following main areas:* Drawing on experience, and studying how narratives make sense of experience.* Investigating production processes in the cultural industries, and the consumption and assimilation of cultural products by audiences and fans.* Taking both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of cultural life.* Analysing visual images and both spoken and written forms of discourse.* Exploring cultural memory and historical representation.




Arab Cultural Studies


Book Description

This book seeks to both showcase and further develop innovative research and debates on contemporary Arab cultural production. Popular culture in the form of cinema, popular music, literature, visual media and cyber-cultures, both local and imported, enjoy a central role in Arab cultural life, and the contributors to this innovative collection showcase the tremendous cultural output emerging from the Arab world. They present sensitive, conceptual readings whilst remaining mindful of the place of this work within a wider framework that seeks to prevent isolationist readings of cultural phenomena. Making sense of the place of culture in the Arab world, and agreeing upon a broadly recognisable and commonly accepted set of terms within which to discuss this output, is a new and urgent challenge. Arab Cultural Studies aspires to understand, communicate and theorise these forms. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.




History, Power, Text


Book Description

History, Power, Text: Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies is a collection of essays on Indigenous themes published between 1996 and 2013 in the journal known first as UTS Review and now as Cultural Studies Review. This journal opened up a space for new kinds of politics, new styles of writing and new modes of interdisciplinary engagement. History, Power, Text highlights the significance of just one of the exciting interdisciplinary spaces, or meeting points, the journal enabled. ‘Indigenous cultural studies’ is our name for the intersection of cultural studies and Indigenous studies showcased here. This volume republishes key works by academics and writers Katelyn Barney, Jennifer Biddle, Tony Birch, Wendy Brady, Gillian Cowlishaw, Robyn Ferrell, Bronwyn Fredericks, Heather Goodall, Tess Lea, Erin Manning, Richard Martin, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Stephen Muecke, Alison Ravenscroft, Deborah Bird Rose, Lisa Slater, Sonia Smallacombe, Rebe Taylor, Penny van Toorn, Eve Vincent, Irene Watson and Virginia Watson—many of whom have taken this opportunity to write reflections on their work—as well as interviews between Christine Nicholls and painter Kathleen Petyarre, and Anne Brewster and author Kim Scott. The book also features new essays by Birch, Moreton-Robinson and Crystal McKinnon, and a roundtable discussion with former and current journal editors Chris Healy, Stephen Muecke and Katrina Schlunke.




Design and Culture


Book Description

Design and Culture: A Transdisciplinary History offers an inclusive overview that crosses disciplinary boundaries and helps define the next phase of global design practice. This book examines the interaction of design with advances in technology, developments in science, and changing cultural attitudes. It looks to the past to prepare for the future and is the first book to offer an innovative transdisciplinary design history that integrates multidisciplinary sources of knowledge into a mindful whole. It shows design as a process that expresses goals through values and beliefs, functioning as a major factor in contemporary cultural life. Starting with the development of the Industrial Revolution, the book focuses on the evolution of design and culture in the twentieth century to predict where design will go in the future. Given the major social and political shifts currently unfolding across the globe, and the resulting changing demographics and environmental degradation, Design and Culture encourages collaboration and communication between disciplines to prepare for the future of design in a rapidly changing world.