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Place, Space, and Mediated Communication explores how new
communications technologies are able to disrupt our spatial
understanding, and in so doing, reorganize the boundaries of human
experience: a phenomenon that can rightly be described as 'context
collapse'. Individual essays investigate 'context collapse' in a
variety of geographical and temporal settings, including: the US
drone war in Pakistan, social media and sexuality in Paris, privacy
and privilege in Brazil, and videogames and resistance in Iran.
This cross-disciplinary collection of essays demonstrates how
communication and space are co-constituted, and models exciting new
paths of inquiry for researchers. Place, Space, and Mediated
Communication is suitable for students and scholars of media and
communication studies, cultural studies, urban studies, and
sociology.
Place, Space, and Mediated Communication explores how new
communications technologies are able to disrupt our spatial
understanding, and in so doing, reorganize the boundaries of human
experience: a phenomenon that can rightly be described as 'context
collapse'. Individual essays investigate 'context collapse' in a
variety of geographical and temporal settings, including: the US
drone war in Pakistan, social media and sexuality in Paris, privacy
and privilege in Brazil, and videogames and resistance in Iran.
This cross-disciplinary collection of essays demonstrates how
communication and space are co-constituted, and models exciting new
paths of inquiry for researchers. Place, Space, and Mediated
Communication is suitable for students and scholars of media and
communication studies, cultural studies, urban studies, and
sociology.
The authors argue that American patriotism is a civil religion organized around a sacred flag, whose followers engage in periodic blood sacrifice of their own children to unify the group. Using an anthropological theory, this groundbreaking book presents and explains the ritual sacrifices and regeneration that constitute American nationalism, the factors making particular elections or wars successful or unsuccessful rituals, the role of the mass media in the process, and the sense of malaise that has pervaded American society during the post-World War II period.
This compelling book argues that American patriotism is a civil
religion of blood sacrifice, which periodically kills its children
to keep the group together. The flag is the sacred object of this
religion; its sacrificial imperative is a secret which the group
keeps from itself to survive. Expanding Durkheim's theory of the
totem taboo as the organizing principle of enduring groups, Carolyn
Marvin uncovers the system of sacrifice and regeneration which
constitutes American nationalism, shows why historical instances of
these rituals succeed or fail in unifying the group, and explains
how mass media are essential to the process. American culture is
depicted as ritually structured by a fertile center and sacrificial
borders of death. Violence plays a key part in its identity. In
essence, nationalism is neither quaint historical residue nor
atavistic extremism, but a living tradition which defines American
life.
In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the
nineteenth century holds a special place, for it was during this
period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless,
and cinema were all invented. In When old Technologies Were New,
Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions--the
telephone and the electric light--were publicly envisioned at the
end of the nineteenth century, as seen in specialized engineering
journals and popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the
telephone, describing how it disrupted established social
relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person
and family from the more public setting of the community. On the
lighter side, she describes how people spoke louder when calling
long distance, and how they worried about catching contagious
diseases over the phone. A particularly powerful chapter deals with
telephonic precursors of radio broadcasting--the "Telephone Herald"
in New York and the "Telefon Hirmondo" of Hungary--and the conflict
between the technological development of broadcasting and the
attempt to impose a homogenous, ethnocentric variant of Anglo-Saxon
culture on the public. While focusing on the way professionals in
the electronics field tried to control the new media, Marvin also
illuminates the broader social impact, presenting a wide-ranging,
informative, and entertaining account of the early years of
electronic media.
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