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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, around 25 million ethnic Russians have found themselves constituting a politically and culturally - as well as physically - diplaced "Russian minority", scattered throughout the newly independent states.;This text, which provides empirical data drawn from interviews with almost 200 forces migrants, explores the impact that these displaced "Russian minorities" have had on post-Soviet Russia. The scale of reintegration has caused many problems both for those returning to their ethnic homeland and the "receiving " populations. This study unravels the situation, focusing on the relationship between displacement, migration and identity and developing a critical appraisal of current Russian migration policy and the peculiar politics of migration in post-Soviet space. The study aims to contribute to wider debates about migration, displacement and identity, and illuminate issues which are being increasingly faced by the global community.
In a fascinating account of how technology is altering our postmodern consciousness, Celia Lury shows how the manipulation of photographic images and ways of seeing can so redefine the relation between consciousness, the body and memory as to create a "prosthetic culture" whose capacities both extend and threaten our humanity. We live in a society in which body parts are traded commodities, in which some memories can be falsely implanted in the individual while others are stored in video archives of images, in which the powers of cartoon superheroes break through the limitations of time and space. Using the examples of photo-therapy, family albums, Benetton advertising campaigns, the phenomenon of false memory syndrome and the "lives" of cartoon characters, this book argues that the "eyes" made available by contemporary visual technologies involve not simply specific ways of seeing, but also ways of life.
Is information technology enhancing democracy? Developments in information technology and the Internet are taking place at an almost bewildering pace. Such improvements, however, are believed to present opportunities for improving the responsiveness and accountability of political institutions and enhancing citizen participation. In this text the theoretical arguments for and against "electronic democracy" and the potential of information and communication technology are closely examined. The book is underpinned by a series of case studies in the US and Europe that demonstrate the application of "electronic democracy" in a number of city and civic projects. The book aims to provide a balanced and considered evaluation of the potential for "electronic democracy" based on empirical research.
The theme of this volume is the transformation of European Christianity into a world-wide religion. The spirit of crusade against Islam was one impulse driving the early expansion; these essays show how new ideologies of mission were developed and how perceptions have continued to evolve, notably in the light of Vatican II. They reveal the differing attitudes and roles of missionaries in such radically different environments as America and China, and the equally varied ways in which this activity was received, with the many problems of accomodation and sycretism. Topics covered include the development of new institutions to control missionary activity, notably the Roman Propaganda Fidei, tensions around race and the role of women, and the stimulus given, for instance to linguistic studies, by the need to communicate. Finally, they examine the belated awakening of the Protestant churches to the need to compete with Rome in the evangelization of the world.
This volume is a collection of public writings and insights of the German poststructuralist, Friedrich A. Kittler. It merges the discourse of literature, war and technology into a unified theme. His research results in a vision of the future in which the distinction between mediums is erased. The introduction by John Johnston explicates the theoretical and practical consequences of Kittler's insights into the social and psychological effects of the processes by which metaphor in one medium is made real by another.
First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Around the globe, people now engage with media content across multiple platforms, following stories, characters, worlds, brands and other information across a spectrum of media channels. This transmedia phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of transmedia studies in media, cultural studies and communication departments across the academy. The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies is the definitive volume for scholars and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of transmediality. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines, sets out to contextualize, problematize and scrutinize the current status and future directions of transmediality, exploring the industries, arts, practices, cultures, and methodologies of studying convergent media across multiple platforms.
Digital worlds and cultures-social media, web 2.0, youtube, wearable technologies, health and fitness apps-dominate, if not order, our everyday lives. We are no longer 'just' consumers or readers of digital culture but active producers through facebook, twitter, Instagram, youtube and other emerging technologies. This book is predicated on the assumption that out understanding of our everyday lives should be informed by what is taking place in and through emerging technologies given these (virtual) environments provide a crucial context where traditional, categorical assumptions about the body, identity and leisure may be contested. Far from being 'virtual', the body is constituted within and through emerging technologies in material ways. Recent 'moral panics' over the role of digital cultures in teen suicide, digital drinking games, an endless array of homoerotic images of young bodies being linked with steroid use, disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, facebook games/fundraising campaigns (e.g. for breast cancer), movements devoted to exposing 'everyday sexism' / metoo, twitter abuse (of feminists, of athletes, of racist nature to name but a few), speak to the need for critical engagement with digital cultures. While some of the earlier techno-utopian visions offered the promise of digitality to give rise to participatory, user generator collaborations, within this book we provide critical engagement with digital technologies and what this means for our understandings of leisure cultures. The chapters originally published in a special issue in Leisure Studies.
Music is an accumulation of mediators: instruments, languages, sheets, performers, scenes, media and so on. There is no musical object 'in itself'; music must always be made again. In this innovative book, Hennion turns the elusiveness of music into a resource for a pragmatic analysis: by which collective process do we make music appear among us? Rather than offering a sociology of music, The Passion for Music listens to the lesson provided by the case of music - this art of infinite mediations. Learning from music allows us to transform the paradigm to be offered by sociology, by confronting it (from Durkheim and Weber to Bourdieu) with a different way of considering objects. For this task, Hennion draws on aesthetics (Adorno) and art history (Haskell, Baxandall), as well as science and technology studies and popular music studies (Latour, Frith, DeNora). As part of that project, The Passion for Music presents a wide-ranging series of case studies, restoring attention to the rich and varied intermediaries through which music is brought to life: from the debate around the reinterpretation of baroque music, to the classroom, the rock scene, the classical music concert, Bach's 'social career' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the practices of music 'amateurs' today. This is the first English translation of one of the most important works of French scholarship on music and society.
A kaleidoscopic journey tracing the methods and means of visual communication from the cave paintings of the earliest humans to the 'photograph' of a black hole in deep space. Since the beginning of our time as humans, we have never stopped making images and inventing channels for visual communication. From the cave dweller creating paintings on a wall at the dawn of civilized time to Instagram influencers today, technology may keep changing, but our need to reach one another, to move one another, to persuade, inform and entertain, has never been so vital. Hello Human traverses the entire landscape of our diverse, expansive and yet familiar means of visual communication. From the use of the human hand as a symbol, the power and use of gestures and the genesis of the printed book, to the movement between dimensions of reality and the digital realm, pixilation, optics and the understanding of light, Horsham takes his readers on a journey full of unexpected twists and turns, laying out a temporal narrative in the form of an intricate map of objects, events and people tied together by a common purpose - to communicate.
The Basil Society's China mission, one of the ore successful Protestant missions in the nineteenth century, was distinguished by the fact that most of the initial proselytizing was conducted by Chinese converts in the interior rather than by Western missionaries in the treaty ports. Thus the first viable protestant communities were not only established by Chinese evangelists, they were established among an ethnic minority in south China, the Hakka people. The autobiographies of eight pioneer Chinese missionaries featured in this book offer an unusual opportunity to view village life and customs in Guangdong during the mid-nineteenth century by providing details on Hakka death and burial rituals, ancestor veneration, lineages and lineage feuds, geomancy, the status of Hakka women, widespread economic hardship, and civil disorder. The authors' commentary addresses the issue of conversion, which was fueled by individual desire for solace and salvation, the building of a support community amid social chaos and the possibility of social mobility through education. Despite an expanding role by Western missionaries, the Chinese origins, the rural interior locale, and the status of the Hakka as a disadvantaged minority contributed to successive generations of Christian families and to early progress toward an autonomous Hakka church.
Eating is a moral act: our choices of what, when and how we eat have a huge impact upon the Earth, our fellow human beings and other living creatures. Faith in Food is a unique vision, combining essays, scripture, storytelling, recipes, initiatives and general wisdom in one beautifully produced book, all seeking to change our relationship with what we eat and how we obtain our food. Altogether this is a groundbreaking collaboration between Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism and Hinduism, alongside secular organisations as well, to get people thinking, acting and eating!
The Eight Technologies of Otherness is a bold and provocative re-thinking of identities, politics, philosophy, ethics, and cultural practices. In this groundbreaking text, old essentialism and binary divides collapse under the weight of a new and impatient necessity. Consider Sue Golding's eight technologies: curiosity, noise, cruelty, appetite, skin, nomadism, contamination, and dwelling. But why only eight technologies? And why these eight, in particular? Included are thirty-three artists, philosophers, filmmakers, writers, photographers, political militants, and 'pulp-theory' practitioners whose work (or life) has contributed to the re-thinking of 'otherness, ' to which this book bears witness, throw out a few clues.
"Cultural Studies"is an international journal committed to exploring the relationships between cultural practices and everyday life, economic relations, the material world, the State, and historical forces and contexts.
In Search of Ireland argues that Ireland's political problems are created by conflicts and confusions of identity. It brings together a number of distinguished contributors, each of whom examines a particular aspect of Ireland's diverse cultural geography and history. Issues covered include: the changing definitions of Irishness the roles of class and gender in constructing traditional alignments of identity the role of ethnicity in Irish society the invention and imagining of Irish 'place' the political implications of a pluralistic Ireland The contributors demonstrate that many people both inside and outside of Ireland continue to define themselves and their conflicts through simple sectarian stereotypes. The authors argue that politicians and others must reject these outdated either/or representations and accommodate instead the fluidity of Irish identity. James Anderson, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne S.J. Connolly, Queens's University, Belfast Neville Douglas, Queen's University, Belfast Brian Graham, University of Ulste
There has been an increased interest in both intercultural and
international communication, as well as ethical aspects of such
interactions. In spite of this, there are no books which address
this specific subject matter beyond limited surveys of different
types or forms of ethics, or attempted comparisons between various
ethical or value systems.
By addressing the issue of food and eating in Britain today, this book considers the way in which our food habits are changing, and shows how social and personal identities and perceptions of health and risk influence choices. It also looks at the increase of vegetarianism, and the relative ineffectiveness of official eating advice. The book should be useful to students of anthropology, cultural studies and health promotion as well as to those scientists and policymakers who are concerned with food. The introduction seeks to indicate how social scientists can help us understand why people eat what they do. In the following chapters anthropologists and sociologists discuss themes of change and continuities and identity in food and eating in Britain today.
This collection will present works that offer illuminating perspectives on the remarkably diverse Asian American populations of the United States. As a population that is neither black nor white, the range of experiences of these groups, many of whom arrived as refugees, presents other perspectives on the cultural mosaic that constitutes the United States. Studies of Asian Americans sheds light on issues related to immigration, refugee policy, transnationalism, return migration, cultural citizenship, ethnic communities, community building, identity and group formation, panethnicity, race relations, gender and class, entrepreneurship, employment, representation, politics, adaptation, and acculturation. The writings in this collection are drawn from a wide variety of disciplines to provide a broad and informative array of insights on these fascinating and diverse populations. Unique focuses on perceptions This study focuses on the discourse of aging. Its premise is that aging is a label, a symbol, and a myth of cultural stereotypes that is part of the condition of growing old in American society. One of the main goals of the research was to identify some features of aging talk, on the theory that aging is a world of cultural meaning. This book explores the language that governs the myth of aging, including ageism, age grading, senility, and functional aging, as well as the properties of this myth, the occasions when the myth creates tension, and its mode of expression. The study is unique because it addresses conceptions of aging rather than behaviors. The author interviewed people in the community, used participant observation, and analyzed media texts. Aging as a function of lossof independence The study found that aging is more closely associated with a loss of independence than with chronological age in American society. Independence is associated with certain forms of behavior related to family and financial status. The ways in which tensions are created and their expressed is tied in with the structural aspects that shape patterns of independence and their link to other variables, such as health and activity. The author finds that aging does not occur at a precise time and in precise categories, but rather through a shift in behavior. This shift is generally manifested by a deviation in the health status of the individual. It was found that labels indirectly affect health teams' image of the aging individual, which can lead to an inadequate assessment of their clients' needs.
Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.
Closer Together, Further Apart offers current unique insight into
the cultural shifts brought about by digital technology and the
Internet. It considers how these new connections are impacting not
only society as a whole, but more specifically communication in
relationships and across generations. Robert Weiss, MSW, is a therapist, international speaker, author, and a blogger on PsychCentral.com, where he writes regularly on the topic of sex and intimacy in the digital age. He was featured in LA Weekly 2013 People issue as one of LA's most fascinating people. He currently serves as Senior Vice-President of Clinical Development for Elements Behavioral Health. Jennifer P. Schneider, MD, PhD, is a physician, international speaker, and the author of nine books and numerous journal articles. |
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