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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > Censorship
This book is about Freedom of Speech and public discourse in the
United States. Freedom of Speech is a major component of the
cultural context in which we live, think, work, and write,
generally revered as the foundation of true democracy. But the
issue has a great deal more to do with social norms rooted in a web
of cultural assumptions about the function of rhetoric in social
organization generally, and in a democratic society specifically.
The dominant, liberal notion of free speech in the United States,
assumed to be self-evidently true, is, in fact, a particular
historical and cultural formation, rooted in Enlightenment
philosophies and dependent on a collection of false narratives
about the founding of the country, the role of speech and media in
its development, and the relationship between capitalism and
democracy. Most importantly, this notion of freedom of speech
relies on a warped sense of the function of rhetoric in democratic
social organization. By privileging individual expression, at the
expense of democratic deliberation, the liberal notion of free
speech functions largely to suppress rather than promote meaningful
public discussion and debate, and works to sustain unequal
relations of power. The presumed democratization of the public
sphere, via the Internet, raises more questions than it answers-who
has access and who doesn't, who commands attention and why, and
what sorts of effects such expression actually has. We need to
think a great deal more carefully about the values subsumed and
ignored in an uncritical attachment to a particular version of the
public sphere. This book seeks to illuminate the ways in which
cultural framing diminishes the complexity of free speech and
sublimates a range of value-choices. A more fully democratic
society requires a more critical view of freedom of speech.
Though literature and censorship have been conceived as long-time
adversaries, this collection seeks to understand the degree to
which they have been dialectical terms, each producing the other,
coeval and mutually constitutive. On the one hand, literary
censorship has been posited as not only inescapable but definitive,
even foundational to speech itself. One the other, especially after
the opening of the USSR's spekstrahn, those enormous collections of
literature forbidden under the Soviets, the push to redefine
censorship expansively has encountered cogent criticism. Scholars
describing the centralised control of East German print
publication, for example, have wanted to insist on the difference
of pre-publication state censorship from more mundane forms of
speech regulation in democracies. Work on South African apartheid
censorship and book banning in colonial countries also demonstrates
censorship's formative role in the institutional structures of
literature beyond the metropole. Censorship and the Limits of the
Literary examines these and other developments across twelve
countries, from the Enlightenment to the present day, offering case
studies from the French revolution to Internet China. Is literature
ever without censorship? Does censorship need the literary? In a
globalizing era for culture, does censorship represent the final,
failed version of national control?
A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media
platforms police what we post online-and the large societal impact
of these decisions Most users want their Twitter feed, Facebook
page, and YouTube comments to be free of harassment and porn.
Whether faced with "fake news" or livestreamed violence, "content
moderators"-who censor or promote user-posted content-have never
been more important. This is especially true when the tools that
social media platforms use to curb trolling, ban hate speech, and
censor pornography can also silence the speech you need to hear. In
this revealing and nuanced exploration, award-winning sociologist
and cultural observer Tarleton Gillespie provides an overview of
current social media practices and explains the underlying
rationales for how, when, and why these policies are enforced. In
doing so, Gillespie highlights that content moderation receives too
little public scrutiny even as it is shapes social norms and
creates consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and
the fabric of society. Based on interviews with content moderators,
creators, and consumers, this accessible, timely book is a
must-read for anyone who's ever clicked "like" or "retweet."
Tracking the relationship between the theory of press control and
the realities of practicing daily press censorship prior to
publication, this volume on the suppression of dissent in early
modern Europe tackles a topic with many elusive and
under-researched characteristics. Pre-publication censorship was
common in absolutist regimes in Catholic and Protestant countries
alike, but how effective it was in practice remains open to debate.
The Netherlands and England, where critical content segued into
outright lampoonery, were unusual for hard-wired press freedoms
that arose, respectively, from a highly competitive publishing
industry and highly decentralized political institutions. These
nations remained extraordinary exceptions to a rule that, for
example in France, did not end until the revolution of 1789. Here,
the author's European perspective provides a survey of the varying
censorship regulations in European nations, as well as the shifting
meanings of 'freedom of the press'. The analysis opens up
fascinating insights, afforded by careful reading of primary
archival sources, into the reactions of censors confronted with
manuscripts by authors seeking permission to publish. Tortarolo
sets the opinions on censorship of well-known writers, including
Voltaire and Montesquieu, alongside the commentary of anonymous
censors, allowing us to revisit some common views of
eighteenth-century history. How far did these writers, their
reasoning stiffened by Enlightenment values, promote dissident
views of absolutist monarchies in Europe, and what insights did
governments gain from censors' reports into the social tensions
brewing under their rule? These questions will excite dedicated
researchers, graduate students, and discerning lay readers alike.
Lyombe Eko carries out an historical and cultural survey of the
regulation of visual depictions of explicit human sexual conduct
from their earliest appearance on the clay tablets of the valley of
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in ancient Mesopotamia, to the
tablet computers of Silicon Valley. The Regulation of Sex-Themed
Visual Imagery analyzes the contemporary problem of the
applicability of the human right of freedom of expression to
explicit imagery in the face of societal interests in the
regulation of representations of human sexuality. This book will be
of interest to scholars, students, and broad audiences interested
in comparative studies in pornography regulation, the history of
pornography, the law of pornography and obscenity, and visual
culture and history alike.
In this comprehensive account of censorship of the visual arts in
nineteenth-century Europe, when imagery was accessible to the
illiterate in ways that print was not, specialists in the history
of the major European countries trace the use of censorship by the
authorities to implement their fears of the visual arts, from
caricature to cinema.
The New Iranian Cinema is considered by many to be the most
fascinating cultural phenomenon produced within the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Containing twelve first-hand interviews with the
most renowned film-makers living and working in contemporary Iran,
this book provides insights into film-making within a society often
at odds with its rulers. Reflecting upon the 1979 revolution and
its influence on their work, as well as the effect of their films
on Iranian audiences, film-makers such as Abbas Kiarostami and
Jafar Panahi highlight the key issues surrounding the reception of
Iranian cinema in the West and also its role in the development of
Iran's global image. Through these conversations Shiva Rahbaran
reveals that the seeds of the New Iranian Cinema were sown long
before the revolution, and that Iranian film-makers gave rise to a
cinema which became a global phenomenon despite censorship,
sanctions and political isolation.
Was Salman Rushdie right to have written The Satanic Verses ? Were
the protestors right to have done so? What about the Danish
cartoons? This book examines the moral questions raised by cultural
controversies, and how intercultural dialogue might be generated
within multicultural societies.
Though literature and censorship have been conceived as long-time
adversaries, this collection seeks to understand the degree to
which they have been dialectical terms, each producing the other,
coeval and mutually constitutive. On the one hand, literary
censorship has been posited as not only inescapable but definitive,
even foundational to speech itself. One the other, especially after
the opening of the USSR's spekstrahn, those enormous collections of
literature forbidden under the Soviets, the push to redefine
censorship expansively has encountered cogent criticism. Scholars
describing the centralised control of East German print
publication, for example, have wanted to insist on the difference
of pre-publication state censorship from more mundane forms of
speech regulation in democracies. Work on South African apartheid
censorship and book banning in colonial countries also demonstrates
censorship's formative role in the institutional structures of
literature beyond the metropole. Censorship and the Limits of the
Literary examines these and other developments across twelve
countries, from the Enlightenment to the present day, offering case
studies from the French revolution to Internet China. Is literature
ever without censorship? Does censorship need the literary? In a
globalizing era for culture, does censorship represent the final,
failed version of national control?
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