Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times PDF Download

Author: Marvin Harris
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780761990215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In this book, Marvin Harris presents his current views on the nature of culture addressing such issues as the mental/behavioral debate, emics and etics, and anthropological holism.

Author: Pamela Odih
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1848605064
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
How does advertising position itself in consumer culture? In what ways does it ′create′ desire and wants? This richly illustrated, incisive text produces the most complete critical introduction to advertising culture. Advertising in Modern and Postmodern Times: provides a comprehensive discussion of the main theories shows you how real adverts work, together with reproductions of advertising images and copy demonstrates how advertising constructs subjects provides an instructive historical overview of advertising explores the relationship between advertising and industrial capitalism.

Author: Rita Felski
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814728170
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Contemporary theory is full of references to the modern and the postmodern. How useful are these terms? What exactly do they mean? And how is our sense of these terms changing under the pressure of feminist analysis? In Doing Time, Rita Felski argues that it makes little sense to think of the modern and postmodern as opposing or antithetical terms. Rather, we need a historical perspective that is attuned to cultural and political differences within the same time as well as the leaky boundaries between different times. Neither the modern nor the postmodern are unified, coherent, or self-evident realities. Drawing on cultural studies and critical theory, Felski examines a range of themes central to debates about postmodern culture, including changing meanings of class, the end of history, the status of art and aesthetics, postmodernism as "the end of sex," and the politics of popular culture. Placing women at the center of analysis, she suggests, has a profound impact on the way we thing about historical periods. As a result, feminist theory is helping to reshape our vision of both the modern and the postmodern.

Author: Kathryn Tanner
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451412369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Since the 1970s exciting new directions in the study of culture have erupted to critique and displace earlier, largely static notions. These more dynamic models stress the indeterminate, fragmented, even conflictual character of cultural processes and completely alter the framework for thinking theologically about them. In fact, Tanner argues, the new orientation in cultural theory and anthropology affords fresh opportunities for religious thought and opens new vistas for theology, especially on how Christians conceive of the theological task, theological diversity and inculturation, and even Christianity's own cultural identity.

Author: Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387324585
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 731

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Book Description
Sociology is experiencing what can only be described as hyperdifferentiation of theories - there are now many approaches competing for attention in the intellectual arena . From this perspective, we should see a weeding out of theories to a small number, but this is not likely to occur because each of the many theoretical perspectives has a resource base of adherents. As a result, theories in sociology do not compete head on with each other as much as they coexist. This seminal reference work was brought together with an eye to capturing the diversity of theoretical activity in sociology - specifically the forefront of theory. Contributors describe what they themselves are doing right now rather than what others have done in the past. The goal of this volume is to allow prominent theorists working in a variety of traditions - who wouldn't usually come together - to review their work. The chapters in this volume represent a mix of theoretical orientations and strategies, but these these theories are diverse and represent the prominent theoretical discussions in sociology today. Some areas included are: Section I: Theoretical Methodologies and Strategies Section II: The Cultural Turn in Sociological Theorizing Section III: Theorizing Interaction Processes Section IV: Theorizing from the Systemic and Macrolevel Section V: New Directions in Evolutionary Theorizing Section VI: Theorizing on Power, Conflict, and Change SectionVII: Theorizing from Assumptions of Rationality This handbook will be of interest to those wanting a broad spectrum and overview of late 20th - early 21st century sociological theory.

Author: Fredric Jameson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822310907
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.

Author: Don Slater
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745603049
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the issues, concepts and theories through which people have tried to understand consumer culture throughout the modern period, and puts the current state of thinking into a broader context. Thematically organized, the book shows how the central aspects of consumer culture - such as needs, choice, identity, status, alienation, objects, culture - have been debated within modern theories, from those of earlier thinkers such as Marx and Simmel to contemporary forms of post-structuralism and postmodernism. This approach introduces consumer culture as a subject which - far from being of narrow or recent interest - is intimately tied to the central issues of modern times and modern social thought. With its reviews of major theorists set within a full account of the development of the subject, this book should be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the many disciplines which now study consumer culture, including communications and cultural studies, anthropology and history.

Author: Marvin Harris
Publisher: AltaMira Press
ISBN: 0759116962
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Cultural Materialism, published in 1979, was Marvin Harris's first full-length explication of the theory with which his work has been associated. While Harris has developed and modified some of his ideas over the past two decades, generations of professors have looked to this volume as the essential starting point for explaining the science of culture to students. Now available again after a hiatus, this edition of Cultural Materialism contains the complete text of the original book plus a new introduction by Orna and Allen Johnson that updates his ideas and examines the impact that the book and theory have had on anthropological theorizing.

Author: Mike Featherstone
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780803984158
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Implicit within claims that society itself is in some sense postmodern is an argument about the priority of consumption as a determinant of everyday life. In this view, mass media advertising and market dynamics lead to a constant search for new fashions, new styles, new sensations and experiences. Material goods are consumed as `communicators'; they are valued as signifiers of taste and of lifestyle. This volume examines the viability of this portrait of contemporary society. Mike Featherstone explores the roots of consumer culture, how it is defined and differentiated and the extent to which it represents the arrival of a `postmodern' world. He examines the theories of consumption and postmodernism among contemporary social theorists such

Author: Martin P. Davidson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136109722
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Advertising is no longer on the defensive. It has survived the snobbery of the 50s, the conspiracy theories of the 60s and the semiology of the 70s to be embraced and apotheosised by the 80s. The Consumerist Manifesto is the first book to examine the advertising process from within the agency itself, and from the wider perspective of advertising's dual relationship as both consumer and object, with contemporary cultural theory. Martin Davidson follows the creation of successful campaigns and explores how advertising has succeeded in setting the tone for even larger aspects of our material and personal lives. With the impact of postmodernism and popular culture, and the subsequent collapse of the old anti-advertising critique, the books reveals how advertising came to be embraced as the idiom of the enterprise culture, and how it became central to the decades assault on traditional notions of political and cultural value. Martin Davidson explores the wider implications of advertising's dominance for cultural theory, art, anthropology and language. Finally, Martin Davidson asks how this new critique will have to develop if the industry's new credibility is to be maintained.