Behind the Iron Purdah
Bina Shah August 25, 2005
#219 Posted by BeeJay on August 28, 2005 8:37:32 pm
#208 Saminasha
Although I sincerely do not have any intention of descending to the depths of dreary dialogue being doggedly dropped and devoured in this disgusting den of dames and demons, I must respectfully disagree with your wanton attack on NTSyed sahib – a gem who shines with a glitter all his own – unlike anyone else’s – among the few denizens of the chowk world who can hold their own no matter who the enemy – man, woman, child, dog, whatever. I must also respectfully point out to you that it is against our CULTURE to throw insults left and right at people who have the seniority of years (if not the advantage of ears) over us – among the very few true gems of this site whom I feel honored to welcome in bright red letters. In our CULTURE, this is simply not done! Alas!
Cultural Studies
Definition
Cultural studies combines sociology, literary theory, film/video studies, and cultural anthropology to study cultural phenomena in industrial societies. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, social class, and/or gender.
Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the reintroduction of Marxist thought in sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism, in order to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th and 19th century distinction between ``high`` and ``low`` culture is not appropriate to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods with which cultural studies is concerned, these scholars refer instead to popular culture. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies
Culture theory [...]
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) [...]
In 1964, Richard Hoggart established the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. Hoggart was followed by Stuart Hall, Richard Johnson and Jorge Larrain. The CCCS launched the study of subcultures. In 2002 the CCCS was closed. --jahsonic, 2004
Frankfurt - Paris - Birmingham
Perhaps the most influential British approach, dominated by the work of the CCCS, is more properly referred to as cultural studies, since the tendency is to see the mass media, as well as audiences as part of broader social and cultural practices. Unlike the Frankfurt School, whose `critical theorists` tended to celebrate the emancipatory potential of high modernist art and dismiss the products of the culture industries as debased and inauthentic, the British students of culture paid a great deal of attention to the products of `popular culture`, though it should be said that they too were, certainly in the early years, also suspicious of the mass produced products of popular culture, though they were prepared to engage with them, rather than simply dismiss them. Since the British owed much to the French research in semiotics, psychoanalytic theory and social theory, it became common to speak of the Birmingham - Paris axis in cultural studies. --http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/marxuk.html [Jul 2004]
Why Does Contemporary Cultural Studies Now Ignore Youth Culture? [...]
Contemporary cultural studies virtually ignores contemporary dance culture and contemporary dance music. For evidence that this is the case one need only glance at cultural studies’ most comprehensive publication concerning youth culture. Containing 55 essays, Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton’s The Subcultures Reader contains only one essay that deals explicitly with contemporary dance culture (see Gelder and Thornton, 1997). This is at a time when dance culture and dance music appear to have an almost hegemonic grip upon contemporary British youth, with dance culture’s opposition to state regulation and control, and the massive commercial success of dance music, the most significant developments since the rise of youth culture in the 1950s.
One need only look at the statistical evidence to see that this is the case. Social Trends suggest that dance club attendance over a three month period in 1995 was approximately 14 million. In 1996 Mintel Marketing Intelligence stated that 18% of all adults attended a nightclub at least once every three months, with 4% of all adults visiting a nightclub one or more times a week (see Mintel Leisure Intelligence, 1996)1. That makes an average weekend’s attendance (the majority of nightclubs are shut during the week) of over one million, with the Henley Centre, market analysts, estimating that the dance scene is worth £1.8 billion a year (cited in Collin and Godfrey, 1997, p.264), and therefore of a similar size to the newspaper industry. If one compares the amount of time spent by contemporary cultural studies analysing the production, distribution and consumption of newspapers with that spent analysing dance music, then there is practically a void at the heart of the discipline.
Whichever way you look at these statistics, and no matter how flawed the method used to obtain them, we are still left with a massively popular cultural activity that is severely under-represented in academia. To understand why this is the case we need to examine how and why contemporary cultural studies’ interest in youth culture collapsed in the late 1970s. --http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/mccsbort/thesis/ch2.html [Jul 2004]
Text [...]
In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of ``culture``. ``Culture`` for a cultural studies researcher not only includes the traditional high arts and popular arts, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
United Kingdom vs United States
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field`s inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies often promulgated overtly politically leftist views and criticisms of capitalist mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the ``culture industry`` (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams and Paul Gilroy. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
Culture [...]
What is culture?
Cultural Criticism [...]
Cultural critics and commentators contribute powerfully to the vitality of market art. Critics put artistic consumers in touch with artistic producers, and help us separate the wheat from the chaff. They support the process of taste refinement. Listeners who take a sudden interest in classical music do not have to sort through the entire eighteenth century repertoire, but can listen to Mozart and Haydn. Clement Rosenberg and Harold Greenberg helped the American Abstract Expressionist painters find a public audience and win their way into museums. Pauline Kael directs our attention to the best of recent film. I hope my own commentary - in the form of this book - boosts the interest in contemporary art and music. These forms of professional cultural criticism, all relatively new professions, owe their thanks to capitalist wealth. The modern world can support many thousands of intellectuals who specialize in arguing the merits of artistic products. -- Tyler Cowen [...]
Raymond Williams [...]
Raymond Williams was an early pioneer in the field of ``cultural studies`` -- in fact, he was doing cultural studies before the term was even coined. This excerpt is from an essay Williams wrote in 1958, entitled ``Culture is Ordinary.`` According to one of his editors, Williams here ``forced the first important shift into a new way of thinking about the symbolic dimensions of our lives. Thus, `culture` is wrested from that privileged space of artistic production and specialist knowledge [eg. ``high culture``] , into the lived experience of the everyday`` (Gray and McGuigan 1).
United Kingdom vs United States
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field`s inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies often promulgated overtly politically leftist views and criticisms of capitalist mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the ``culture industry`` (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams and Paul Gilroy. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
Cultural Critics and Schools
Frankfurt School, Birmingham School, French Schools
Mark Dery, Camille Paglia, Walter Benjamin, Kodwo Eshun, Steven Shaviro, James Gleick, Dick Hebdige, Simon During
Subculture [...]
Culturele Studies
www.culturelestudies.be
Cultural Studies in Belgium, I found their site while looking for info on Guy Rombouts
Dick Hebdige [...]
Dick Hebdige is a cultural critic and scholar who has written extensively on popular culture and design issues, the anthropology of consumption, and media and critical theory. He has published three books - Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge 1979 [translated into 9 languages]), Cut `n Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (Routledge, 1987) and Hiding In the Light. On Images and Things (Routledge, 1988). He has also published extensively in a wide range of journals including Art & Text, Art Forum, Block, Blueprint, Borderlines, Cultural Studies, London Time Out, New Formations, New Statesman and Society and Ten.8. His current research interests include the place of autobiographical and fiction writing in cultural studies; and issues in contemporary visual art. In addition, he has given a number of mixed-media presentations which set out to integrate an explicitly performative element into the lecture format. Hebdige has taught at universities and arts colleges throughout Western Europe, the United States and Canada. From 1984 till 1992 he was Reader in Communications at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmithsí College, University of London. He is currently Dean of the School of Critical Studies and Director of the Writing Program at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California. --School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Popular Culture Studies: A Background
``Popular culture studies`` is the scholarly investigation of expressive forms widely disseminated in society. These materials include but are not restricted to products of mass media such as television, film, print, and recording. Thus, popular culture studies may focus on media genres such as situation comedies, film noir, best-selling novels, or rap music. Other, non-mediated aspects of popular culture would include such things as clothing styles, fads, holidays and celebrations, amusement parks, both amateur and professional sports, and so forth. Ideally, the study of these or any other popular materials should be done holistically, viewing them both aesthetically and also within the social and cultural contexts in which the materials are created, disseminated, interpreted, and used. In this way the study of popular culture involves the use of methodologies from both the humanities and the social sciences in the effort to interpret expressive cultural forms, specifically those that are widely disseminated in a group (that is, that are popular) as part of dynamic social intercourse.
Popular culture scholars study these created, expressive and artistic materials as their primary data, much as literary scholars take the novel or the sonnet as their primary data. In this way, popular culture studies is within the tradition of the humanities. However, popular culture studies differs from traditional humanities studies in that it recognizes the existence of alternative systems of aesthetics which guide the creation of popular materials and the evaluation of those materials by an audience. Albert Lord, in his important work The Singer of Tales (1960), identified the ways singers of epics in Eastern Europe learn their art orally and how they compose as they perform. He suggests that these performances and the poems themselves be judged according to the specific goals of the artists and the audiences, and be judged according to an understanding of the problems unique to an oral poet. In other words, oral poetry is a different genre than written poetry. Each has its own aesthetic standards, and it is misguided to judge one by the standards of the other. Popular culture scholars recognize this principle and extend it to the popular arts such as television programs, popular films, popular music, best-selling novels, genre fiction such as mysteries or romances, and so on.
Each medium or genre has an audience that can and does make evaluations according to aesthetic criteria. These criteria are usually unarticulated, but they are no less real because of it. People regularly make choices as to which book to read or movie to see, and just as regularly evaluate the experience: this was a good thriller, this is a great party song. Because these aesthetic criteria are generally unarticulated, it is the task of the researcher to identify them through ethnographic methods such as interviews and participant observation, as well as humanities techniques such as textual analysis. The term ethnography refers to the cultural description of any event or artifact, usually as expressed and perceived by those people who are participants in the event, producers, consumers or users of the artifact, or members of the cultural group in question. After these insider (or native) perceptions and categories are documented, the researcher may undertake the scholarly analysis of the materials as components of a dynamic social and cultural field of behavior. These methods enable the popular culture scholar to situate the discussion of any aspect of popular culture within the larger context of the meanings and values of the society within which it exists; to determine, as Clifford Geertz has suggested, what we need to know in order to make sense of something (1984). In this way, the scholarly discipline of popular culture studies employs methodologies from both the humanities and the social sciences. Social science methodologies enable the popular culture scholar to root an expressive form in its social context and to uncover the aesthetic system upon which it is judged. Humanities approaches provide models for the appreciation of aesthetic forms and enable the scholar to apply theories of genre and make comparative analytical statements. As social science and humanities methodologies are combined in the study of artistic forms of expression that are broadly based in society, scholars can begin to provide an understanding of the social and cultural significance of these artistic forms, and begin to determine the aesthetic, social, commercial, and technological considerations that underlie their creation, distribution, and reception.
The Discipline of Popular Culture
Although the study of popular culture -- expressive forms widely disseminated in society -- has a long history, scholars disagree about the origins of the study of popular culture. This disagreement reflects a more fundamental debate over the essential nature of popular materials themselves. Some scholars, such as Russell Nye (1970) and Herbert Gans (1974), equate the materials of popular culture to the mass media, and therefore maintain that popular culture did not exist prior to the Industrial Revolution, the rise of a large middle-class segment of society, and the concomitant rise of rapid printing. Gans accepts the tripartite model of culture as folk, popular, and elite, describing pre-industrial Europe as largely a folk culture ruled by a small elite group. Other scholars, most notably social historians such as Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie (1979), Natalie Z. Davis (1983), and Peter Burke (1978) use the term ``popular culture`` to refer to the expressive materials of any group, large or small, pre-industrial or post-industrial. By this definition, popular culture scholarship includes work that focuses on pre-industrial expressive forms. Indeed, one might argue that the study of popular culture as a scholarly discipline can be traced back at least as far as the writings of Giambattista Vico, who anticipated today`s cultural studies programs as he attempted to discover the ``principles of humanity`` in his New Science of 1775 (Feldman and Richardson, 1972: 50-61). Whatever their position on these issues, however, scholars agree that the last fifteen to twenty years has seen a significant movement among scholars of all backgrounds toward an awareness of a large body of cultural expression that has fallen outside of most research prior to that time.
In recent years the study of popular culture has become an area of interest in many disciplines. Social and cultural historians, for instance, attempt to recover aspects of everyday life of the past that have frequently been left out of the historical record. In doing so, many historians have focused on popular festivals, carnivals, rituals, and celebrations, such as Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie`s Carnival in Romans (1979); Natalie Zemon Davis`s Culture and Society in Early Modern France; and Robert Darnton`s The Great Cat Massacre (1984).
American studies scholars also are increasingly investigating popular culture. For instance, recent issues of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association, have featured articles such as George Lipsitz`s, ``Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies`` (42:4, 615-636). Broadly speaking, within the discipline of American studies, research has tended to view popular culture as being coterminous with the mass media.
Popular culture has become increasingly visible in the fields of anthropology, ethnomusicology and folklore as well. Anthropologists have been turning to the ethnographic study of contemporary culture for some time; this is especially apparent in the study of popular music (see for instance, Christopher A. Waterman, Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (1990), or Naomi Ware, ``Popular Music and African Identity in Freetown, Sierra Leone`` in Bruno Nettl, ed., Eight Urban Musical Cultures, 1978). It should be noted that both of these examples are African, which demonstrates that popular culture is not restricted to American materials.
Folklorists often study the popular use of mass culture, as in for instance Angus Gillespie`s book Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike(1990), or in ethnographic studies of movie fans who view a particular film repeatedly (Bacon-Smith 1991). Also, many folklorists research traditional aspects of popular music (Ferris 1977, Titon 1978, Santino 1982).
Even more recently, the rise of cultural studies and contemporary culture theory perspectives is very much centered on popular cultural materials. The emerging field of cultural studies often places popular culture within the perspective of the economic production of culture as set forth in Raymond Williams`s The Sociology of Culture (1982). Todd Gitlin`s study of the television industry, Inside Prime Time (1983), is an example. (See also ``Cultural Studies: Eclectic and Controversial Mix of Research Sparks Growing Movement,`` The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 31, 1990, p. A5) Much of this work is being done in Britain on popular music; an important early effort is sociologist Simon Frith`s Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock `n` Roll, (New York: Pantheon, 1981).
The Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University recognizes the historical and methodological importance of all of the above paradigms for the study of popular culture. The proposed Ph.D. program will provide students with the in-depth study of each of these, as well as provide the critical skills necessary for their scholarly critique, primarily in the two-sequence introductory courses, PCS 597: Methods and Materials and PCS 598: Contemporary Culture Theory. However, the proposed program espouses no single methodological or theoretical point of view. Indeed, the faculty as presently constituted, and as envisioned for the future, is representative of several different but complementary scholarly disciplines. These include literature, history, music, theology, American studies, folklore and folklife, and interpersonal communication. In addition, we intend to add a cultural anthropologist to the faculty to increase our strengths in the popular culture of other nations.
Nevertheless, despite the diversity of disciplinary backgrounds, members of the faculty approach the study of popular culture with certain shared points of view. These include the conviction that materials which are genuinely popular, whether we ourselves approve of or enjoy any particular item or genre, are socially and possibly aesthetically significant. Indeed, the ongoing controversies over censorship, rock music lyrics, and the content of music videos suggest the extent to which people in our society themselves recognize the impact and significance of these and other popular forms. --http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/popc/bkgrnd.html
Books
Cultural Studies - Lawrence Grossberg (Editor), Cary Nelson (Editor), Paula A. Treichler (Editor) [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
``Cultural Studies`` is a broadly international collection aiming to help shape research and teaching through the 1990s and beyond. The book investigates contemporary commitments of the field: its historical and intellectual positions, political and scholarly preoccupations, and the kinds of interventions it aims for now and in the future. ``Cultural Studies`` offers a number of specific cultural analyses while simultaneously defining and debating the common body of assumptions, questions and concerns that have helped create the field. Topics addressed include race and minority discourses; ethnicity and post-colonialism; post-modernism; feminism; cultural policy; the place of history in cultural studies; the politics of representation; popular culture; aesthetics; ethics; and technology. At the same time, ``Cultural Studies`` explores such diverse forms of cultural phenomena as rock music, Chicano art, detective novels, African-American writing, architecture, reproductive freedom, ``sati``, Star Trek fandom, and New Age technology. Contributors interrogate their own theoretical and methodological commitments. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in the field of cultural studies. --amazon.co.uk
``...the publication of Cultural Studies is an event no serious (or curious) reader can afford to ignore. Make no mistake: in American intellectual life, the ``undisciplines`` of cultural studies will very likely be the single most controversial and contested terrain of the 1990s, and Cultural Studies the most capacious text in the fray.`` -via amazon.com
About the Author
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler are all well known for their extensive publications on modern culture.
Featuring new essays by such prominent cultural theorists as Tony Bennett, Homi Bhaba, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Constance Penley, Janice Radway, Andrew Ross, and Cornel West, Cultural Studies offers numerous specific cultural analyses while simultaneously defining and debating the common body of assumptions, questions, and concerns that have helped create the field. --Book Description via amazon.com
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson - Camille Paglia [1 book, Amazon US]
From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.
Greil Marcus - Lipstick Traces, a Secret History of 20th Century [1 book, Amazon US]
... In the 1989 ‘Lipstick Traces - A Secret History of the Twentieth Century’ Greil Marcus traces a subliminal trajectory where nearly-invisible connections arc across punk, the Situationists of 1968, Dada in 1916, the Enrages of the French Revolution and heretical millenarianism in medieval times. He isn’t describing the direct causal link of past and present but suggesting a more opaque entanglement. “Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured - new institutions, new maps, new rulers - or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?....If the language they are speaking, the impulse they are voicing, has it’s own history, might it not tell a very different story from the one we’ve been hearing all our lives?” [...]
The Cultural Studies Reader - Simon During [Amazon US]
The first edition of The Cultural Studies Reader [Simon During] established itself as the leader in the field, providing the ideal introduction to this exciting and influential discipline. This expanded second edition offers a wider selection of essays covering every major cultural studies method and theory, and takes account of recent changes in the field. There are added articles on new areas such as technology and science, globalization, postcolonialism and cultural policy, making The Cultural Studies Reader essential reading for anyone wanting to know how cultural studies developed, where it is now, and its future directions.
Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Theodor Adorno, Arjun Appadurai, Roland Barthes, Tony Bennett, Lauren Berlant, Homi K. Bhabha, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Rey Chow, James Clifford, Michel de Certeau, Teresa de Lauretis, Richard Dyer, David Forgacs, Michel Foucault, Nancy Fraser, Nicholas Garnham, Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Dick Hebdige, bell hooks, Max Horkheimer, Eric Lott, Jean Francois Lyotard, Angela McRobbie, Meaghan Morris, Hamid Naficy, Janice Radway, Andrew Ross, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Edward Soja, Gayatri Spivak, Peter Stallybrass, Carolyn Steedman, Will Straw, Michael Warner, Cornel West, Allon White, Raymond Williams.
Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods - John Storey [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
I am using ``Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture`` as the primary textbook in an ``Introduction to Popular Culture`` class. Now, on the one hand it is clear John Storey`s book is not written at an introductory level, which would have been a reason for me not to select it for my class. But this volume has two strengths that overcome that particular liability. The first is that Storey looks at six types of cultural texts: Television, Fiction, Films, Magazines & Newspapers, Popular Music, and Consumption (a.k.a. shopping). That pretty much covers everything you would want to look at in an introduction pop culture class so that students can get excited (relatively speaking) about analyzing their favorite television show or CD. The second strength is that each chapter focuses on two or three key concepts/theories. For example, with television Storey looks at Hall`s notions of encoding/decoding television discourse, how television represents the ideology of mass culture, and how there are competing economies of television. So even if the writing level is for the advances student (quality), students being introduced to cultural studies are being presented with only a few concepts to absorb (quantity). Even if he is writing chapters rather than providing essays, each chapter does offer a specific case study (e.g., James Bond novels) that will facilitate student comprehension of the concepts, which they, in turn, should be able to apply in their own papers. Storey does have another volume that is specifically ``An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture,`` but it is structured by theories (culturalism, structuralism, Marxism, etc.). Ideally I would like to be working with a book from Storey that had the structure of the book I am using with the writing style of the other, but clearly you have a choice here as to which way you can go given both your preferences and the level of your course. Storey does a nice job of explicating these concepts without rendering personal judgments, which I think is important when you are trying to get students to actually use such analytical tools. Final note: Storey`s ``Cultural Theory & Popular Culture: A Reader`` is intended as a companion volume for his ``Introduction`` text and not this one. -- Lawrance M. Bernabo for amazon.com
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals` Abuse of Science - Alan D. Sokal, Jean Bricmont [Amazon US]
In 1996, an article entitled ``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity`` was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text. Packed with recherché quotations from ``postmodern`` literary theorists and sociologists of science, and bristling with imposing theorems of mathematical physics, the article addressed the cultural and political implications of the theory of quantum gravity. Later, to the embarrassment of the editors, the author revealed that the essay was a hoax, interweaving absurd pronouncements from eminent intellectuals about mathematics and physics with laudatory--but fatuous--prose. [...]
Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) - Dick Hebdige [Amazon US]
NO CULTURAL STUDIES BOOK has been more widely read than Dick Hebdige`s 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style, from which this essay is taken. It brought a unique and supple blend of Althusser, Gramsci and semiotics (as propounded by Barthes and the ``Prague School``) to bear on the world of, or at any rate near to, the young British academics and students who first became immersed in cultural studies. That was the world of ``subcultures`` more visible in Britain than anywhere else: teds, skinheads, punks, Bowie-ites, hippies, dreads . . .
``Complex and remarkably lucid, it`s the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige is concerned with the UK`s postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.` --Rolling Stone Magazine [...]
Introducing Cultural Studies - Ziauddin Sardar [Amazon US]
Ziauddin Sardar`s ``Introduction to Cultural Studies`` is nothing more than the title indicates. This lenghty essay merely presents basic concepts that are prevalent in a postmodern discourse between societal values, power relations, and the value placed on cultural ``norms`` given in various communities. Sardar presents the history of Cultural Studies as a discipline, which begins in a social context, but the analysis of which, takes place by various sociologists, philosophers (primarily Freud, Nietzche, and Hegel), and literary minds. Overall, the essay is enlightening as an introduction, a good preface to the discourse(s) one finds in most disciplines today. --amazon.com
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction - John Storey [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In this third edition of his successful introduction to cultural theory and popular culture, John Storey has extensively revised the text throughout. As before, the book presents a clear and critical survey of competing theoriesof and various approaches to popular culture. In addition to the theories and approaches discussed in the the first two editions, there is a new section issues involved in the on Queer Theory. Four earlier sections have been extended, with new material on Reading Romance, Reading Women¹s Magazines, Feminism as Social Practice, Men¹s Studies and Masculinities. Illustrations have been added. Retaining the accessible approach of the the first two editions, and using relevant and appropriate examples from the texts and practices of popular culture, this new edition is bound to remain a favourite with students and lecturers alike. --amazon.com
Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Postwar Britain (1976) - Stuart Hall [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
This book is a must read for students of fashion, subculture, identity, and pop culture. Although the style of writing and some of the conclusions read as somewhat ``old-fashioned``, it was ground-breaking work at the time, one of the first serious scholarly treatments of youth and pop culture. More importantly, many of its arguments are still very relevant and need to be reconsidered in contemporary literature. The collection also discusses many styles which are all but forgotten to a younger audience and the variety British styles in the 60s is an education in itself for people who often think of past decades as having a particular ``look``. Excellent sociological analysis blended with ethnographic description. --A reader from Newfield, amazon.com
Although I sincerely do not have any intention of descending to the depths of dreary dialogue being doggedly dropped and devoured in this disgusting den of dames and demons, I must respectfully disagree with your wanton attack on NTSyed sahib – a gem who shines with a glitter all his own – unlike anyone else’s – among the few denizens of the chowk world who can hold their own no matter who the enemy – man, woman, child, dog, whatever. I must also respectfully point out to you that it is against our CULTURE to throw insults left and right at people who have the seniority of years (if not the advantage of ears) over us – among the very few true gems of this site whom I feel honored to welcome in bright red letters. In our CULTURE, this is simply not done! Alas!
Cultural Studies
Definition
Cultural studies combines sociology, literary theory, film/video studies, and cultural anthropology to study cultural phenomena in industrial societies. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, social class, and/or gender.
Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the reintroduction of Marxist thought in sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism, in order to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th and 19th century distinction between ``high`` and ``low`` culture is not appropriate to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods with which cultural studies is concerned, these scholars refer instead to popular culture. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies
Culture theory [...]
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) [...]
In 1964, Richard Hoggart established the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. Hoggart was followed by Stuart Hall, Richard Johnson and Jorge Larrain. The CCCS launched the study of subcultures. In 2002 the CCCS was closed. --jahsonic, 2004
Frankfurt - Paris - Birmingham
Perhaps the most influential British approach, dominated by the work of the CCCS, is more properly referred to as cultural studies, since the tendency is to see the mass media, as well as audiences as part of broader social and cultural practices. Unlike the Frankfurt School, whose `critical theorists` tended to celebrate the emancipatory potential of high modernist art and dismiss the products of the culture industries as debased and inauthentic, the British students of culture paid a great deal of attention to the products of `popular culture`, though it should be said that they too were, certainly in the early years, also suspicious of the mass produced products of popular culture, though they were prepared to engage with them, rather than simply dismiss them. Since the British owed much to the French research in semiotics, psychoanalytic theory and social theory, it became common to speak of the Birmingham - Paris axis in cultural studies. --http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/marxuk.html [Jul 2004]
Why Does Contemporary Cultural Studies Now Ignore Youth Culture? [...]
Contemporary cultural studies virtually ignores contemporary dance culture and contemporary dance music. For evidence that this is the case one need only glance at cultural studies’ most comprehensive publication concerning youth culture. Containing 55 essays, Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton’s The Subcultures Reader contains only one essay that deals explicitly with contemporary dance culture (see Gelder and Thornton, 1997). This is at a time when dance culture and dance music appear to have an almost hegemonic grip upon contemporary British youth, with dance culture’s opposition to state regulation and control, and the massive commercial success of dance music, the most significant developments since the rise of youth culture in the 1950s.
One need only look at the statistical evidence to see that this is the case. Social Trends suggest that dance club attendance over a three month period in 1995 was approximately 14 million. In 1996 Mintel Marketing Intelligence stated that 18% of all adults attended a nightclub at least once every three months, with 4% of all adults visiting a nightclub one or more times a week (see Mintel Leisure Intelligence, 1996)1. That makes an average weekend’s attendance (the majority of nightclubs are shut during the week) of over one million, with the Henley Centre, market analysts, estimating that the dance scene is worth £1.8 billion a year (cited in Collin and Godfrey, 1997, p.264), and therefore of a similar size to the newspaper industry. If one compares the amount of time spent by contemporary cultural studies analysing the production, distribution and consumption of newspapers with that spent analysing dance music, then there is practically a void at the heart of the discipline.
Whichever way you look at these statistics, and no matter how flawed the method used to obtain them, we are still left with a massively popular cultural activity that is severely under-represented in academia. To understand why this is the case we need to examine how and why contemporary cultural studies’ interest in youth culture collapsed in the late 1970s. --http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/mccsbort/thesis/ch2.html [Jul 2004]
Text [...]
In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of ``culture``. ``Culture`` for a cultural studies researcher not only includes the traditional high arts and popular arts, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
United Kingdom vs United States
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field`s inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies often promulgated overtly politically leftist views and criticisms of capitalist mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the ``culture industry`` (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams and Paul Gilroy. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
Culture [...]
What is culture?
Cultural Criticism [...]
Cultural critics and commentators contribute powerfully to the vitality of market art. Critics put artistic consumers in touch with artistic producers, and help us separate the wheat from the chaff. They support the process of taste refinement. Listeners who take a sudden interest in classical music do not have to sort through the entire eighteenth century repertoire, but can listen to Mozart and Haydn. Clement Rosenberg and Harold Greenberg helped the American Abstract Expressionist painters find a public audience and win their way into museums. Pauline Kael directs our attention to the best of recent film. I hope my own commentary - in the form of this book - boosts the interest in contemporary art and music. These forms of professional cultural criticism, all relatively new professions, owe their thanks to capitalist wealth. The modern world can support many thousands of intellectuals who specialize in arguing the merits of artistic products. -- Tyler Cowen [...]
Raymond Williams [...]
Raymond Williams was an early pioneer in the field of ``cultural studies`` -- in fact, he was doing cultural studies before the term was even coined. This excerpt is from an essay Williams wrote in 1958, entitled ``Culture is Ordinary.`` According to one of his editors, Williams here ``forced the first important shift into a new way of thinking about the symbolic dimensions of our lives. Thus, `culture` is wrested from that privileged space of artistic production and specialist knowledge [eg. ``high culture``] , into the lived experience of the everyday`` (Gray and McGuigan 1).
United Kingdom vs United States
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field`s inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies often promulgated overtly politically leftist views and criticisms of capitalist mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the ``culture industry`` (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams and Paul Gilroy. -- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies [Jul 2004]
Cultural Critics and Schools
Frankfurt School, Birmingham School, French Schools
Mark Dery, Camille Paglia, Walter Benjamin, Kodwo Eshun, Steven Shaviro, James Gleick, Dick Hebdige, Simon During
Subculture [...]
Culturele Studies
www.culturelestudies.be
Cultural Studies in Belgium, I found their site while looking for info on Guy Rombouts
Dick Hebdige [...]
Dick Hebdige is a cultural critic and scholar who has written extensively on popular culture and design issues, the anthropology of consumption, and media and critical theory. He has published three books - Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge 1979 [translated into 9 languages]), Cut `n Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music (Routledge, 1987) and Hiding In the Light. On Images and Things (Routledge, 1988). He has also published extensively in a wide range of journals including Art & Text, Art Forum, Block, Blueprint, Borderlines, Cultural Studies, London Time Out, New Formations, New Statesman and Society and Ten.8. His current research interests include the place of autobiographical and fiction writing in cultural studies; and issues in contemporary visual art. In addition, he has given a number of mixed-media presentations which set out to integrate an explicitly performative element into the lecture format. Hebdige has taught at universities and arts colleges throughout Western Europe, the United States and Canada. From 1984 till 1992 he was Reader in Communications at the Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmithsí College, University of London. He is currently Dean of the School of Critical Studies and Director of the Writing Program at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California. --School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Popular Culture Studies: A Background
``Popular culture studies`` is the scholarly investigation of expressive forms widely disseminated in society. These materials include but are not restricted to products of mass media such as television, film, print, and recording. Thus, popular culture studies may focus on media genres such as situation comedies, film noir, best-selling novels, or rap music. Other, non-mediated aspects of popular culture would include such things as clothing styles, fads, holidays and celebrations, amusement parks, both amateur and professional sports, and so forth. Ideally, the study of these or any other popular materials should be done holistically, viewing them both aesthetically and also within the social and cultural contexts in which the materials are created, disseminated, interpreted, and used. In this way the study of popular culture involves the use of methodologies from both the humanities and the social sciences in the effort to interpret expressive cultural forms, specifically those that are widely disseminated in a group (that is, that are popular) as part of dynamic social intercourse.
Popular culture scholars study these created, expressive and artistic materials as their primary data, much as literary scholars take the novel or the sonnet as their primary data. In this way, popular culture studies is within the tradition of the humanities. However, popular culture studies differs from traditional humanities studies in that it recognizes the existence of alternative systems of aesthetics which guide the creation of popular materials and the evaluation of those materials by an audience. Albert Lord, in his important work The Singer of Tales (1960), identified the ways singers of epics in Eastern Europe learn their art orally and how they compose as they perform. He suggests that these performances and the poems themselves be judged according to the specific goals of the artists and the audiences, and be judged according to an understanding of the problems unique to an oral poet. In other words, oral poetry is a different genre than written poetry. Each has its own aesthetic standards, and it is misguided to judge one by the standards of the other. Popular culture scholars recognize this principle and extend it to the popular arts such as television programs, popular films, popular music, best-selling novels, genre fiction such as mysteries or romances, and so on.
Each medium or genre has an audience that can and does make evaluations according to aesthetic criteria. These criteria are usually unarticulated, but they are no less real because of it. People regularly make choices as to which book to read or movie to see, and just as regularly evaluate the experience: this was a good thriller, this is a great party song. Because these aesthetic criteria are generally unarticulated, it is the task of the researcher to identify them through ethnographic methods such as interviews and participant observation, as well as humanities techniques such as textual analysis. The term ethnography refers to the cultural description of any event or artifact, usually as expressed and perceived by those people who are participants in the event, producers, consumers or users of the artifact, or members of the cultural group in question. After these insider (or native) perceptions and categories are documented, the researcher may undertake the scholarly analysis of the materials as components of a dynamic social and cultural field of behavior. These methods enable the popular culture scholar to situate the discussion of any aspect of popular culture within the larger context of the meanings and values of the society within which it exists; to determine, as Clifford Geertz has suggested, what we need to know in order to make sense of something (1984). In this way, the scholarly discipline of popular culture studies employs methodologies from both the humanities and the social sciences. Social science methodologies enable the popular culture scholar to root an expressive form in its social context and to uncover the aesthetic system upon which it is judged. Humanities approaches provide models for the appreciation of aesthetic forms and enable the scholar to apply theories of genre and make comparative analytical statements. As social science and humanities methodologies are combined in the study of artistic forms of expression that are broadly based in society, scholars can begin to provide an understanding of the social and cultural significance of these artistic forms, and begin to determine the aesthetic, social, commercial, and technological considerations that underlie their creation, distribution, and reception.
The Discipline of Popular Culture
Although the study of popular culture -- expressive forms widely disseminated in society -- has a long history, scholars disagree about the origins of the study of popular culture. This disagreement reflects a more fundamental debate over the essential nature of popular materials themselves. Some scholars, such as Russell Nye (1970) and Herbert Gans (1974), equate the materials of popular culture to the mass media, and therefore maintain that popular culture did not exist prior to the Industrial Revolution, the rise of a large middle-class segment of society, and the concomitant rise of rapid printing. Gans accepts the tripartite model of culture as folk, popular, and elite, describing pre-industrial Europe as largely a folk culture ruled by a small elite group. Other scholars, most notably social historians such as Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie (1979), Natalie Z. Davis (1983), and Peter Burke (1978) use the term ``popular culture`` to refer to the expressive materials of any group, large or small, pre-industrial or post-industrial. By this definition, popular culture scholarship includes work that focuses on pre-industrial expressive forms. Indeed, one might argue that the study of popular culture as a scholarly discipline can be traced back at least as far as the writings of Giambattista Vico, who anticipated today`s cultural studies programs as he attempted to discover the ``principles of humanity`` in his New Science of 1775 (Feldman and Richardson, 1972: 50-61). Whatever their position on these issues, however, scholars agree that the last fifteen to twenty years has seen a significant movement among scholars of all backgrounds toward an awareness of a large body of cultural expression that has fallen outside of most research prior to that time.
In recent years the study of popular culture has become an area of interest in many disciplines. Social and cultural historians, for instance, attempt to recover aspects of everyday life of the past that have frequently been left out of the historical record. In doing so, many historians have focused on popular festivals, carnivals, rituals, and celebrations, such as Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie`s Carnival in Romans (1979); Natalie Zemon Davis`s Culture and Society in Early Modern France; and Robert Darnton`s The Great Cat Massacre (1984).
American studies scholars also are increasingly investigating popular culture. For instance, recent issues of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association, have featured articles such as George Lipsitz`s, ``Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies`` (42:4, 615-636). Broadly speaking, within the discipline of American studies, research has tended to view popular culture as being coterminous with the mass media.
Popular culture has become increasingly visible in the fields of anthropology, ethnomusicology and folklore as well. Anthropologists have been turning to the ethnographic study of contemporary culture for some time; this is especially apparent in the study of popular music (see for instance, Christopher A. Waterman, Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (1990), or Naomi Ware, ``Popular Music and African Identity in Freetown, Sierra Leone`` in Bruno Nettl, ed., Eight Urban Musical Cultures, 1978). It should be noted that both of these examples are African, which demonstrates that popular culture is not restricted to American materials.
Folklorists often study the popular use of mass culture, as in for instance Angus Gillespie`s book Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike(1990), or in ethnographic studies of movie fans who view a particular film repeatedly (Bacon-Smith 1991). Also, many folklorists research traditional aspects of popular music (Ferris 1977, Titon 1978, Santino 1982).
Even more recently, the rise of cultural studies and contemporary culture theory perspectives is very much centered on popular cultural materials. The emerging field of cultural studies often places popular culture within the perspective of the economic production of culture as set forth in Raymond Williams`s The Sociology of Culture (1982). Todd Gitlin`s study of the television industry, Inside Prime Time (1983), is an example. (See also ``Cultural Studies: Eclectic and Controversial Mix of Research Sparks Growing Movement,`` The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 31, 1990, p. A5) Much of this work is being done in Britain on popular music; an important early effort is sociologist Simon Frith`s Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock `n` Roll, (New York: Pantheon, 1981).
The Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University recognizes the historical and methodological importance of all of the above paradigms for the study of popular culture. The proposed Ph.D. program will provide students with the in-depth study of each of these, as well as provide the critical skills necessary for their scholarly critique, primarily in the two-sequence introductory courses, PCS 597: Methods and Materials and PCS 598: Contemporary Culture Theory. However, the proposed program espouses no single methodological or theoretical point of view. Indeed, the faculty as presently constituted, and as envisioned for the future, is representative of several different but complementary scholarly disciplines. These include literature, history, music, theology, American studies, folklore and folklife, and interpersonal communication. In addition, we intend to add a cultural anthropologist to the faculty to increase our strengths in the popular culture of other nations.
Nevertheless, despite the diversity of disciplinary backgrounds, members of the faculty approach the study of popular culture with certain shared points of view. These include the conviction that materials which are genuinely popular, whether we ourselves approve of or enjoy any particular item or genre, are socially and possibly aesthetically significant. Indeed, the ongoing controversies over censorship, rock music lyrics, and the content of music videos suggest the extent to which people in our society themselves recognize the impact and significance of these and other popular forms. --http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/popc/bkgrnd.html
Books
Cultural Studies - Lawrence Grossberg (Editor), Cary Nelson (Editor), Paula A. Treichler (Editor) [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
``Cultural Studies`` is a broadly international collection aiming to help shape research and teaching through the 1990s and beyond. The book investigates contemporary commitments of the field: its historical and intellectual positions, political and scholarly preoccupations, and the kinds of interventions it aims for now and in the future. ``Cultural Studies`` offers a number of specific cultural analyses while simultaneously defining and debating the common body of assumptions, questions and concerns that have helped create the field. Topics addressed include race and minority discourses; ethnicity and post-colonialism; post-modernism; feminism; cultural policy; the place of history in cultural studies; the politics of representation; popular culture; aesthetics; ethics; and technology. At the same time, ``Cultural Studies`` explores such diverse forms of cultural phenomena as rock music, Chicano art, detective novels, African-American writing, architecture, reproductive freedom, ``sati``, Star Trek fandom, and New Age technology. Contributors interrogate their own theoretical and methodological commitments. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in the field of cultural studies. --amazon.co.uk
``...the publication of Cultural Studies is an event no serious (or curious) reader can afford to ignore. Make no mistake: in American intellectual life, the ``undisciplines`` of cultural studies will very likely be the single most controversial and contested terrain of the 1990s, and Cultural Studies the most capacious text in the fray.`` -via amazon.com
About the Author
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler are all well known for their extensive publications on modern culture.
Featuring new essays by such prominent cultural theorists as Tony Bennett, Homi Bhaba, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Constance Penley, Janice Radway, Andrew Ross, and Cornel West, Cultural Studies offers numerous specific cultural analyses while simultaneously defining and debating the common body of assumptions, questions, and concerns that have helped create the field. --Book Description via amazon.com
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson - Camille Paglia [1 book, Amazon US]
From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.
Greil Marcus - Lipstick Traces, a Secret History of 20th Century [1 book, Amazon US]
... In the 1989 ‘Lipstick Traces - A Secret History of the Twentieth Century’ Greil Marcus traces a subliminal trajectory where nearly-invisible connections arc across punk, the Situationists of 1968, Dada in 1916, the Enrages of the French Revolution and heretical millenarianism in medieval times. He isn’t describing the direct causal link of past and present but suggesting a more opaque entanglement. “Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured - new institutions, new maps, new rulers - or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?....If the language they are speaking, the impulse they are voicing, has it’s own history, might it not tell a very different story from the one we’ve been hearing all our lives?” [...]
The Cultural Studies Reader - Simon During [Amazon US]
The first edition of The Cultural Studies Reader [Simon During] established itself as the leader in the field, providing the ideal introduction to this exciting and influential discipline. This expanded second edition offers a wider selection of essays covering every major cultural studies method and theory, and takes account of recent changes in the field. There are added articles on new areas such as technology and science, globalization, postcolonialism and cultural policy, making The Cultural Studies Reader essential reading for anyone wanting to know how cultural studies developed, where it is now, and its future directions.
Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Theodor Adorno, Arjun Appadurai, Roland Barthes, Tony Bennett, Lauren Berlant, Homi K. Bhabha, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Rey Chow, James Clifford, Michel de Certeau, Teresa de Lauretis, Richard Dyer, David Forgacs, Michel Foucault, Nancy Fraser, Nicholas Garnham, Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Dick Hebdige, bell hooks, Max Horkheimer, Eric Lott, Jean Francois Lyotard, Angela McRobbie, Meaghan Morris, Hamid Naficy, Janice Radway, Andrew Ross, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Edward Soja, Gayatri Spivak, Peter Stallybrass, Carolyn Steedman, Will Straw, Michael Warner, Cornel West, Allon White, Raymond Williams.
Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods - John Storey [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
I am using ``Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture`` as the primary textbook in an ``Introduction to Popular Culture`` class. Now, on the one hand it is clear John Storey`s book is not written at an introductory level, which would have been a reason for me not to select it for my class. But this volume has two strengths that overcome that particular liability. The first is that Storey looks at six types of cultural texts: Television, Fiction, Films, Magazines & Newspapers, Popular Music, and Consumption (a.k.a. shopping). That pretty much covers everything you would want to look at in an introduction pop culture class so that students can get excited (relatively speaking) about analyzing their favorite television show or CD. The second strength is that each chapter focuses on two or three key concepts/theories. For example, with television Storey looks at Hall`s notions of encoding/decoding television discourse, how television represents the ideology of mass culture, and how there are competing economies of television. So even if the writing level is for the advances student (quality), students being introduced to cultural studies are being presented with only a few concepts to absorb (quantity). Even if he is writing chapters rather than providing essays, each chapter does offer a specific case study (e.g., James Bond novels) that will facilitate student comprehension of the concepts, which they, in turn, should be able to apply in their own papers. Storey does have another volume that is specifically ``An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture,`` but it is structured by theories (culturalism, structuralism, Marxism, etc.). Ideally I would like to be working with a book from Storey that had the structure of the book I am using with the writing style of the other, but clearly you have a choice here as to which way you can go given both your preferences and the level of your course. Storey does a nice job of explicating these concepts without rendering personal judgments, which I think is important when you are trying to get students to actually use such analytical tools. Final note: Storey`s ``Cultural Theory & Popular Culture: A Reader`` is intended as a companion volume for his ``Introduction`` text and not this one. -- Lawrance M. Bernabo for amazon.com
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals` Abuse of Science - Alan D. Sokal, Jean Bricmont [Amazon US]
In 1996, an article entitled ``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity`` was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text. Packed with recherché quotations from ``postmodern`` literary theorists and sociologists of science, and bristling with imposing theorems of mathematical physics, the article addressed the cultural and political implications of the theory of quantum gravity. Later, to the embarrassment of the editors, the author revealed that the essay was a hoax, interweaving absurd pronouncements from eminent intellectuals about mathematics and physics with laudatory--but fatuous--prose. [...]
Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) - Dick Hebdige [Amazon US]
NO CULTURAL STUDIES BOOK has been more widely read than Dick Hebdige`s 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style, from which this essay is taken. It brought a unique and supple blend of Althusser, Gramsci and semiotics (as propounded by Barthes and the ``Prague School``) to bear on the world of, or at any rate near to, the young British academics and students who first became immersed in cultural studies. That was the world of ``subcultures`` more visible in Britain than anywhere else: teds, skinheads, punks, Bowie-ites, hippies, dreads . . .
``Complex and remarkably lucid, it`s the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige is concerned with the UK`s postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.` --Rolling Stone Magazine [...]
Introducing Cultural Studies - Ziauddin Sardar [Amazon US]
Ziauddin Sardar`s ``Introduction to Cultural Studies`` is nothing more than the title indicates. This lenghty essay merely presents basic concepts that are prevalent in a postmodern discourse between societal values, power relations, and the value placed on cultural ``norms`` given in various communities. Sardar presents the history of Cultural Studies as a discipline, which begins in a social context, but the analysis of which, takes place by various sociologists, philosophers (primarily Freud, Nietzche, and Hegel), and literary minds. Overall, the essay is enlightening as an introduction, a good preface to the discourse(s) one finds in most disciplines today. --amazon.com
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction - John Storey [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In this third edition of his successful introduction to cultural theory and popular culture, John Storey has extensively revised the text throughout. As before, the book presents a clear and critical survey of competing theoriesof and various approaches to popular culture. In addition to the theories and approaches discussed in the the first two editions, there is a new section issues involved in the on Queer Theory. Four earlier sections have been extended, with new material on Reading Romance, Reading Women¹s Magazines, Feminism as Social Practice, Men¹s Studies and Masculinities. Illustrations have been added. Retaining the accessible approach of the the first two editions, and using relevant and appropriate examples from the texts and practices of popular culture, this new edition is bound to remain a favourite with students and lecturers alike. --amazon.com
Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Postwar Britain (1976) - Stuart Hall [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
This book is a must read for students of fashion, subculture, identity, and pop culture. Although the style of writing and some of the conclusions read as somewhat ``old-fashioned``, it was ground-breaking work at the time, one of the first serious scholarly treatments of youth and pop culture. More importantly, many of its arguments are still very relevant and need to be reconsidered in contemporary literature. The collection also discusses many styles which are all but forgotten to a younger audience and the variety British styles in the 60s is an education in itself for people who often think of past decades as having a particular ``look``. Excellent sociological analysis blended with ethnographic description. --A reader from Newfield, amazon.com
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#218 Posted by Bina_Shah on August 28, 2005 7:52:41 pm
Re: # 177
Dear TMRTR:
If you marry me I promise I won`t act like that.
Sincerely,
Bina
Dear TMRTR:
If you marry me I promise I won`t act like that.
Sincerely,
Bina
#217 Posted by teshah on August 28, 2005 7:06:55 pm
What a subjct; Woman versus Man! As the story goes, Adam got bored in heaven and cried for a companion. Got gifted him with the woman. Alas! Adam did not call her `Baaji` or `Aapaan` and so both of them were turned out of heaven as a punishment for that sin. They are suffering but never repented. They are equal in suffering because the woman chose to be a wife, a creative being. Today she is not only clamouring for equality but for `empowerment` as well despite the fact that all power flows out of her `gun`. Once men called her `Sunfe Naazak` but today she is empowering herself and the man is suffering from `Mardana Kamzori` as quack advertisements and the family courts degrees indicate abundantly, as `Naan-nufqah` is still the responsibility of the man. Men are being sent to jail for not providing Naan Nufqah even to a rebellious woman. As a result the young are showing increasing tendency of avoiding wedlock which actually is the institution catering mainly to the need of the woman. One wonders what this compaign of equality and empowerment of the woman will lead to. It will most likely destroy the family institution and the looser will ultimatey be the woman as a result of gender confrontation which this compaign is likely to lead to.
#216 Posted by hamidm2 on August 28, 2005 6:52:34 pm
Re: # 213
aphrabehen,
``god knows we`ve reached the age where women go out and fight while these men sit at home and play with their bangles`` ........... what would you have us do ? ........
...... but look, if we menfolk hadn`t done our part and defended our women from neanderthals who wanted to drag them to their caves by their hair, womankind would have been extinct ...... no? ..... but then we would have been extinct too ?........
.......anyway, ya`ll should not look at men to do anything for you, specially muslim men who, battered and abused and beaten at everything that matters by other men, have only their women to pick on .......... beating up on our women and keeping them in their place is the only way we can prove our manhood - heck, most of us can`t even take a leak standing up like real men.............. so please cut your brothers some slack
aphrabehen,
``god knows we`ve reached the age where women go out and fight while these men sit at home and play with their bangles`` ........... what would you have us do ? ........
...... but look, if we menfolk hadn`t done our part and defended our women from neanderthals who wanted to drag them to their caves by their hair, womankind would have been extinct ...... no? ..... but then we would have been extinct too ?........
.......anyway, ya`ll should not look at men to do anything for you, specially muslim men who, battered and abused and beaten at everything that matters by other men, have only their women to pick on .......... beating up on our women and keeping them in their place is the only way we can prove our manhood - heck, most of us can`t even take a leak standing up like real men.............. so please cut your brothers some slack
#215 Posted by AphraBehen on August 28, 2005 6:09:58 pm
Re: # 214
Saminasha,
Case in point...and...nutcase without a point....
Saminasha,
Case in point...and...nutcase without a point....
#214 Posted by NYPD on August 28, 2005 6:03:08 pm
213, //So I was walking along on the Upper East Side looking for love and getting the gas face from every Tom, Dick and Harry//
And we`ve been lookin for you ever since.
And we`ve been lookin for you ever since.
#213 Posted by AphraBehen on August 28, 2005 5:56:25 pm
Saminasha
re: ``Apparently humiliation has you frothing and yelping like the proverbial Pavlovian dog to the electrified bone....one can only wonder which hallmarks of your pathological delusions are more troubling: your refusal to admit when you are deconstructed, your creepy reflexiveness towards sexualized body parts, your latent racism that would do an English lord with gout glory, or your ineffectual, yes, unbelievably, ineffectual threats? Such a considerable list of competing disturbances-its a wonder you know your metaphor from your *....if your post is any proof, you havent seen either in ages....``
Gorgeous parallelism...but afraid your references will sail above the heads of the average trog here...the gout metaphor, one that Calvin Trillin once famously essayed as the disease of the shamefully harumphing and conservative feudal lord is too subtle...these ``beeyatches`` as you so aptly put it, understand only the crudest terminology....also, mention the subtext of racism inherent in the ``zebra`` metaphor and these ``beeyatches`` will have less idea of what you mean than an anger management workshop for those arab klansmen responsible for Darfur....In addition Saminasha of my heart, this is not a typically discerning audience apart from Shankar and on a good day, hamidm....they are just happy enough fools show up to slap that nyet sahib on the rump....god knows we`ve reached the age where women go out and fight while these men sit at home and play with their bangles.
love,
a
re: ``Apparently humiliation has you frothing and yelping like the proverbial Pavlovian dog to the electrified bone....one can only wonder which hallmarks of your pathological delusions are more troubling: your refusal to admit when you are deconstructed, your creepy reflexiveness towards sexualized body parts, your latent racism that would do an English lord with gout glory, or your ineffectual, yes, unbelievably, ineffectual threats? Such a considerable list of competing disturbances-its a wonder you know your metaphor from your *....if your post is any proof, you havent seen either in ages....``
Gorgeous parallelism...but afraid your references will sail above the heads of the average trog here...the gout metaphor, one that Calvin Trillin once famously essayed as the disease of the shamefully harumphing and conservative feudal lord is too subtle...these ``beeyatches`` as you so aptly put it, understand only the crudest terminology....also, mention the subtext of racism inherent in the ``zebra`` metaphor and these ``beeyatches`` will have less idea of what you mean than an anger management workshop for those arab klansmen responsible for Darfur....In addition Saminasha of my heart, this is not a typically discerning audience apart from Shankar and on a good day, hamidm....they are just happy enough fools show up to slap that nyet sahib on the rump....god knows we`ve reached the age where women go out and fight while these men sit at home and play with their bangles.
love,
a
#212 Posted by NYPD on August 28, 2005 5:45:47 pm
nt 206, //Apparently it worked like a spanish-fly on you and you came running in with your tail high up in the air.
Like I said, I`m a very busy man these days and don`t have time to undo your zebra stripes in order to reveal the ass. Before you start groping yourself, the ``ass`` referred to herein is the animal synonymous to stupidity and not your backside.//
These two lines are the funniest insults ever posted on Chowk. :)
Man, you are funny, you had me rolling and laughing loudly.
Like I said, I`m a very busy man these days and don`t have time to undo your zebra stripes in order to reveal the ass. Before you start groping yourself, the ``ass`` referred to herein is the animal synonymous to stupidity and not your backside.//
These two lines are the funniest insults ever posted on Chowk. :)
Man, you are funny, you had me rolling and laughing loudly.
#211 Posted by hamidm2 on August 28, 2005 5:22:59 pm
shankar,
...... you will be glad to know that my fish are doing fine - six african cichlids ....... by the way do you know how to tell a male from a female ?.......... also, why is it that all of them are ganging up on one poor thing that is clinging to the filter thingy in a vertical position ? (reminds me of mr ntsyed) ............ and why does one of them keep on digging up the rocks ? (reminds me of the diligent ms saminasha) ............ is it a male making a nest to entice a female, or is a female doing her own thing to lay eggs ?...........
........ to be honest, i find what is happening in the aquarium a more interesting than the happenings on chowk ......... mrs hamidm also watches them more than she watches the tv - the kids think that we are going nuts in our middle age and think we should ``get a life`` ?.......... what is your opinion as a professional shrink and fishkeeper ?
...... you will be glad to know that my fish are doing fine - six african cichlids ....... by the way do you know how to tell a male from a female ?.......... also, why is it that all of them are ganging up on one poor thing that is clinging to the filter thingy in a vertical position ? (reminds me of mr ntsyed) ............ and why does one of them keep on digging up the rocks ? (reminds me of the diligent ms saminasha) ............ is it a male making a nest to entice a female, or is a female doing her own thing to lay eggs ?...........
........ to be honest, i find what is happening in the aquarium a more interesting than the happenings on chowk ......... mrs hamidm also watches them more than she watches the tv - the kids think that we are going nuts in our middle age and think we should ``get a life`` ?.......... what is your opinion as a professional shrink and fishkeeper ?
#210 Posted by hamidm2 on August 28, 2005 4:06:38 pm
ntsyed sahib,
.... welcome back !........... i feel a lot better now that you are here to defend our collective muslim manhood which is so threatened by these horrible women who want to be treated like people .......... no siree ! we will never allow pigs, ahmedis and women to beat us like the hindoos, jews and decadent westerners have done and continue to do - we can only take so much ass-whopping ......... you are a true momin and may al-lah grant you victory against the source of all fitna on earth .......... ameen, sum ameen ........
.... welcome back !........... i feel a lot better now that you are here to defend our collective muslim manhood which is so threatened by these horrible women who want to be treated like people .......... no siree ! we will never allow pigs, ahmedis and women to beat us like the hindoos, jews and decadent westerners have done and continue to do - we can only take so much ass-whopping ......... you are a true momin and may al-lah grant you victory against the source of all fitna on earth .......... ameen, sum ameen ........
#209 Posted by Saminasha on August 28, 2005 3:16:51 pm
And NyetSahib,
Notice how I dont need a bunch of mediocre netwits cheering me on. So telling that you do....
Notice how I dont need a bunch of mediocre netwits cheering me on. So telling that you do....
#208 Posted by Saminasha on August 28, 2005 3:05:51 pm
Nyetsyed Beeyatch,
(and this should be some indication that this post is not going to go well for you)
Apparently humiliation has you frothing and yelping like the proverbial Pavlovian dog to the electrified bone....one can only wonder which hallmarks of your pathological delusions are more troubling: your refusal to admit when you are deconstructed, your creepy reflexiveness towards sexualized body parts, your latent racism that would do an English lord with gout glory, or your ineffectual, yes, unbelievably, ineffectual threats? Such a considerable list of competing disturbances-its a wonder you know your metaphor from your *....if your post is any proof, you havent seen either in ages....
To paraphrase Dan Ackroyd, NyetSahib, you ignorant beeyatch. You can`t hide from the very examples you bring up in your attempt to dismiss someone else`s argument. You cant fart up smokescreens when this is pointed out, regardless of how smelly you might make the room. Eventually, the smoke clears.
And so, as you brought up labor and how Islam systematically addresses labor and gender inequity, it is up to you, dear ignorant beeyatch, to explain how.
What is patently clear to everyone is that you have no answer. Your backside (and this is to borrow the metaphor that seems to be the defining trope for you) had a alot to say, and now it is up to your brain to either admit defeat or more excruciatingly for you, come up with some support.
Btw, NyetSahib, your loathsome and disgusting online personality only reflects on you and your inabilities to maintain any equilibrium in a discussion. Do you think any woman worth her mettle takes a beeyatch like you seriously?
Go home and cry.
(and this should be some indication that this post is not going to go well for you)
Apparently humiliation has you frothing and yelping like the proverbial Pavlovian dog to the electrified bone....one can only wonder which hallmarks of your pathological delusions are more troubling: your refusal to admit when you are deconstructed, your creepy reflexiveness towards sexualized body parts, your latent racism that would do an English lord with gout glory, or your ineffectual, yes, unbelievably, ineffectual threats? Such a considerable list of competing disturbances-its a wonder you know your metaphor from your *....if your post is any proof, you havent seen either in ages....
To paraphrase Dan Ackroyd, NyetSahib, you ignorant beeyatch. You can`t hide from the very examples you bring up in your attempt to dismiss someone else`s argument. You cant fart up smokescreens when this is pointed out, regardless of how smelly you might make the room. Eventually, the smoke clears.
And so, as you brought up labor and how Islam systematically addresses labor and gender inequity, it is up to you, dear ignorant beeyatch, to explain how.
What is patently clear to everyone is that you have no answer. Your backside (and this is to borrow the metaphor that seems to be the defining trope for you) had a alot to say, and now it is up to your brain to either admit defeat or more excruciatingly for you, come up with some support.
Btw, NyetSahib, your loathsome and disgusting online personality only reflects on you and your inabilities to maintain any equilibrium in a discussion. Do you think any woman worth her mettle takes a beeyatch like you seriously?
Go home and cry.
#207 Posted by BeeJay on August 28, 2005 2:57:41 pm
Dear NTSyed sahib,
Since I am trying to cut back on interactions (especially of the political variety) and also since I’m already finished saying everything I intended to say on this board (with the exception of this shrunk shrink Shankar (SSS, or S3), with whom I intend to deal in my own sweet time), I am not going to say anything. But I would like to make ONE exception and say:
WELCOME BACK!
Sincerely,
BeeJay.
Dear SSS (or S3),
I intend to deal with your foolish comments in my own sweet time.
Sincerely,
BeeJay.
#206 Posted by ntsyed on August 28, 2005 2:49:42 pm
Re: # 182
Semi-nasha
aray mujhay maaf ker meray gadhon ki ma!
If simple metaphors and analogies can be above your proud post-graduate self, then I couldn`t be more sorry for anyone in the whole mankind than your husband. I can understand why your parents may love you...but the husband...No one could have that much patience with your diatribes.
Your post was amply answered if only you could put your selective-reading aside and take some magic pills for apparent dyslexia. Bina Shah`s point was also well-taken, and the reason that particular part was used for sarcasm was that the rest of the rant had nothing else worth my time to tease her with. Apparently it worked like a spanish-fly on you and you came running in with your tail high up in the air.
Like I said, I`m a very busy man these days and don`t have time to undo your zebra stripes in order to reveal the ass. Before you start groping yourself, the ``ass`` referred to herein is the animal synonymous to stupidity and not your backside. Only your parents and/or husband may be able to tell the actual difference, though. You do perfectly fine yourself in revealing the ass - the four legged animal - within you.
For future references, watch your language when you start name calling without provocation. It is not difficult for me to shower you with titles and honors that`ll make it impossible for you to see your face or any of your other body parts ever again. The only reason I`ve refrained so far is because Allah may not like me afterwards. But testing my patience should be like walking on thin ice for you...very thin ice. If you surpass my threshold, then Allah will forgive me for the language I unleash on you. Your haughty attitude clearly indicates you ain`t seen nothing yet.
You have only learned to spell the words `gender` and `equality`. You have no idea how to use the two or what they mean. Nor do you have any idea how to treat different people equally.
See ya when I see ya!
:-)~~
P.S.:
#188 by Saminasha on August 28, 2005 11:58am PT
#192 by trmntr_x on August 28, 2005 12:07pm PT
Something very insidiously fishy-assed (again not a reference to anyone`s behind) going on here....ahem....hahahaha
Semi-nasha
aray mujhay maaf ker meray gadhon ki ma!
If simple metaphors and analogies can be above your proud post-graduate self, then I couldn`t be more sorry for anyone in the whole mankind than your husband. I can understand why your parents may love you...but the husband...No one could have that much patience with your diatribes.
Your post was amply answered if only you could put your selective-reading aside and take some magic pills for apparent dyslexia. Bina Shah`s point was also well-taken, and the reason that particular part was used for sarcasm was that the rest of the rant had nothing else worth my time to tease her with. Apparently it worked like a spanish-fly on you and you came running in with your tail high up in the air.
Like I said, I`m a very busy man these days and don`t have time to undo your zebra stripes in order to reveal the ass. Before you start groping yourself, the ``ass`` referred to herein is the animal synonymous to stupidity and not your backside. Only your parents and/or husband may be able to tell the actual difference, though. You do perfectly fine yourself in revealing the ass - the four legged animal - within you.
For future references, watch your language when you start name calling without provocation. It is not difficult for me to shower you with titles and honors that`ll make it impossible for you to see your face or any of your other body parts ever again. The only reason I`ve refrained so far is because Allah may not like me afterwards. But testing my patience should be like walking on thin ice for you...very thin ice. If you surpass my threshold, then Allah will forgive me for the language I unleash on you. Your haughty attitude clearly indicates you ain`t seen nothing yet.
You have only learned to spell the words `gender` and `equality`. You have no idea how to use the two or what they mean. Nor do you have any idea how to treat different people equally.
See ya when I see ya!
:-)~~
P.S.:
#188 by Saminasha on August 28, 2005 11:58am PT
#192 by trmntr_x on August 28, 2005 12:07pm PT
Something very insidiously fishy-assed (again not a reference to anyone`s behind) going on here....ahem....hahahaha
#205 Posted by trmntr_x on August 28, 2005 2:34:41 pm
Oye, Shankar Mian,
Listen, if Allah wanted us to see head doctors, he would have invented them! I am a perfectly functioning bipolar with borderline features of narcissism! What would you be if your wife wouldnt let you wear her bangles, even if you are really good?
Listen, if Allah wanted us to see head doctors, he would have invented them! I am a perfectly functioning bipolar with borderline features of narcissism! What would you be if your wife wouldnt let you wear her bangles, even if you are really good?
#204 Posted by trmntr_x on August 28, 2005 2:29:50 pm
``Men are bad but good daughters also change in company of bad men. They become mean and hateful, greedy and worse...``
Madani Mian,
After getting this sochalism textbook off my kumur, so to speak, I thought I would look at it to see what kind of magik eight ball answers it has to your queschuns. Magik eight balls are bohut masruff inventions, hain? No bakwas shakespere answers, just ``maybe``, ``no``, ``yes``. ``it looks that way``.....no soul searching, or critical citical methodologies....abey fatso bibi has hidden my eight ball-she wont let me make any more decisions with it....i had a system, see, when we could only pay electric OR phone bill, I ask teh eight ball, kuch ho jatha hain...but fatso bibi and her gentlemen nakras makes me now call each company and promise to pay them by such and such date....I dont know why she is so roti shakal about not having light before the day of her big inthihan...you are soooo smart, fatso bibi!, i tell her, you already know everything! Just write ``black power`` and the goras dont understand anything, but the kaaley have too many problems and we as muslim people should be respected and that your husband already calls you his queen and diwaan, and you will get A Number 1 grade!
bUT anyway....this society book has a whole section on women in society...baba, these women are out of control....abey, giving a light tapar now is ``domestic violence``...this is on foundation our society is based on, the right to give tapars to jahil auratay, hain! Also, this comment you made about beykaar son in laws, I know exactly what you mean. My sister`s son married a girl. He took her too the UK where she lived like a rani in a one room apartment, plenty of cold fresh water in flat! She worked at Blimpies to pass the time, no real need....Then when our mother went to visit them, the girl said she was too busy to cook! Too busy to listen to my mother`s complaining about not enough presents and clothes for the family in Pakistan! Too busy to listen about her being a spoiled daughter of a princess! This makes my heart hurt so, madani mian, that now this working has made our women too busy to listen to our insults! Hain?! OK, must go, fatso bibi is looking for her book
Madani Mian,
After getting this sochalism textbook off my kumur, so to speak, I thought I would look at it to see what kind of magik eight ball answers it has to your queschuns. Magik eight balls are bohut masruff inventions, hain? No bakwas shakespere answers, just ``maybe``, ``no``, ``yes``. ``it looks that way``.....no soul searching, or critical citical methodologies....abey fatso bibi has hidden my eight ball-she wont let me make any more decisions with it....i had a system, see, when we could only pay electric OR phone bill, I ask teh eight ball, kuch ho jatha hain...but fatso bibi and her gentlemen nakras makes me now call each company and promise to pay them by such and such date....I dont know why she is so roti shakal about not having light before the day of her big inthihan...you are soooo smart, fatso bibi!, i tell her, you already know everything! Just write ``black power`` and the goras dont understand anything, but the kaaley have too many problems and we as muslim people should be respected and that your husband already calls you his queen and diwaan, and you will get A Number 1 grade!
bUT anyway....this society book has a whole section on women in society...baba, these women are out of control....abey, giving a light tapar now is ``domestic violence``...this is on foundation our society is based on, the right to give tapars to jahil auratay, hain! Also, this comment you made about beykaar son in laws, I know exactly what you mean. My sister`s son married a girl. He took her too the UK where she lived like a rani in a one room apartment, plenty of cold fresh water in flat! She worked at Blimpies to pass the time, no real need....Then when our mother went to visit them, the girl said she was too busy to cook! Too busy to listen to my mother`s complaining about not enough presents and clothes for the family in Pakistan! Too busy to listen about her being a spoiled daughter of a princess! This makes my heart hurt so, madani mian, that now this working has made our women too busy to listen to our insults! Hain?! OK, must go, fatso bibi is looking for her book
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