Michael Keane, Anthony Y. H. Fung, and Albert Moran
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098206
- eISBN:
- 9789882207219
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098206.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
Challenging assumptions that have underpinned critiques of globalization and combining cultural theory with media-industry analysis, this book gives an account of the evolution of television in the ...
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Challenging assumptions that have underpinned critiques of globalization and combining cultural theory with media-industry analysis, this book gives an account of the evolution of television in the post-broadcasting era, and of how programming ideas are creatively redeveloped and franchised in East Asia. In this study of television-program adaptation across cultures, the authors argue that adaptation, transfer, and recycling of content are multiplying to the point of marginalizing other economic and cultural practices. This is happening in television, but also in many other media and related areas of cultural production. Looking at China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, the study details practices that are variously referred to as formatting, franchising, imitation, adaptation, hybridity, bricolage, and even emulation. The authors show that significant re-modelling of local TV-production practices occur when adaptation is genuinely responsive to local values. Examples of East Asian format adaptations include Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, The Weakest Link, Coronation Street, and Idol. The book offers alternatives models of media flow that demonstrate how Hollywood is losing its global grip. It deals with the history of the TV-format trade, a movement that has coincided with the rise of alternative centres of television production and distribution outside the US.Less
Challenging assumptions that have underpinned critiques of globalization and combining cultural theory with media-industry analysis, this book gives an account of the evolution of television in the post-broadcasting era, and of how programming ideas are creatively redeveloped and franchised in East Asia. In this study of television-program adaptation across cultures, the authors argue that adaptation, transfer, and recycling of content are multiplying to the point of marginalizing other economic and cultural practices. This is happening in television, but also in many other media and related areas of cultural production. Looking at China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, the study details practices that are variously referred to as formatting, franchising, imitation, adaptation, hybridity, bricolage, and even emulation. The authors show that significant re-modelling of local TV-production practices occur when adaptation is genuinely responsive to local values. Examples of East Asian format adaptations include Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, The Weakest Link, Coronation Street, and Idol. The book offers alternatives models of media flow that demonstrate how Hollywood is losing its global grip. It deals with the history of the TV-format trade, a movement that has coincided with the rise of alternative centres of television production and distribution outside the US.
James Davison Hunter
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199730803
- eISBN:
- 9780199777082
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730803.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The actual vitality of American Christianity’s cultural capital today resides almost exclusively among average people in the pew rather than those in leadership, on the periphery not the center of ...
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The actual vitality of American Christianity’s cultural capital today resides almost exclusively among average people in the pew rather than those in leadership, on the periphery not the center of cultural production, in tastes that run to the popular rather than the exceptional, the middle brow rather than the high brow, and almost always toward the practical as opposed to the theoretical or the imaginative. The collective impact of the Christian community of the nature and direction of the culture itself is negligible. They have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in culture is exerted.Less
The actual vitality of American Christianity’s cultural capital today resides almost exclusively among average people in the pew rather than those in leadership, on the periphery not the center of cultural production, in tastes that run to the popular rather than the exceptional, the middle brow rather than the high brow, and almost always toward the practical as opposed to the theoretical or the imaginative. The collective impact of the Christian community of the nature and direction of the culture itself is negligible. They have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in culture is exerted.
Chris Berry, Nicola Liscutin, and Jonathan D. Mackintosh
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099746
- eISBN:
- 9789882206793
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099746.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
These essays highlight regional cross-fertilization in music, film, new media, and popular culture in Northeast Asia. They include analysis of gender and labor issues amid differing regulatory ...
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These essays highlight regional cross-fertilization in music, film, new media, and popular culture in Northeast Asia. They include analysis of gender and labor issues amid differing regulatory frameworks and public policy concerning cultural production and piracy.Less
These essays highlight regional cross-fertilization in music, film, new media, and popular culture in Northeast Asia. They include analysis of gender and labor issues amid differing regulatory frameworks and public policy concerning cultural production and piracy.
Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter identifies some of the instances in which the denial of the denial of coevalness materializes itself by redressing and implementing long-lasting forces, sensibilities, and rationalities ...
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This chapter identifies some of the instances in which the denial of the denial of coevalness materializes itself by redressing and implementing long-lasting forces, sensibilities, and rationalities repressed by the one-sided ideology of the “civilizing mission/process,” and its complicity in the subalternization of knowledges and cultural production throughout the planet. Remapping new world order implies remapping cultures of scholarship and the scholarly loci of enunciation from where the world has been mapped. The crisis of “area studies” is the crisis of old borders, be they nation borders or civilization borders. It is also the crisis of the distinction between hegemonic (discipline-based knowledges) and subaltern (area-based knowledges), as if discipline-based knowledges are geographically disincorporated.Less
This chapter identifies some of the instances in which the denial of the denial of coevalness materializes itself by redressing and implementing long-lasting forces, sensibilities, and rationalities repressed by the one-sided ideology of the “civilizing mission/process,” and its complicity in the subalternization of knowledges and cultural production throughout the planet. Remapping new world order implies remapping cultures of scholarship and the scholarly loci of enunciation from where the world has been mapped. The crisis of “area studies” is the crisis of old borders, be they nation borders or civilization borders. It is also the crisis of the distinction between hegemonic (discipline-based knowledges) and subaltern (area-based knowledges), as if discipline-based knowledges are geographically disincorporated.
Tania Lim
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098923
- eISBN:
- 9789882206885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098923.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter demonstrates how media producers in East Asia mutually appropriate celebrities, icons, contents and program formats of East Asian pop culture for their own productions in their bid to ...
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This chapter demonstrates how media producers in East Asia mutually appropriate celebrities, icons, contents and program formats of East Asian pop culture for their own productions in their bid to garner stronger positions in their respective TV territories and the regional TV marketplace. It starts by addressing the general trends in programming and consumption, and structural changes that have contributed to the rise of regional networks of cultural production in East Asia. It also illustrates with examples how the Asian media productions form regional networks of cultural production that impact everyday lives. In addition, four modes of renting strategies that media producers or local broadcasters use to circulate popular cultural commodities from the region are explored, as responses to competition in the multi-channel universe of readily available international satellite TV channels and digital entertainment. Finally, there is a brief reflection on the potential of East Asian popular culture as a mechanism for compressing space among the diverse East Asian cultures and cities.Less
This chapter demonstrates how media producers in East Asia mutually appropriate celebrities, icons, contents and program formats of East Asian pop culture for their own productions in their bid to garner stronger positions in their respective TV territories and the regional TV marketplace. It starts by addressing the general trends in programming and consumption, and structural changes that have contributed to the rise of regional networks of cultural production in East Asia. It also illustrates with examples how the Asian media productions form regional networks of cultural production that impact everyday lives. In addition, four modes of renting strategies that media producers or local broadcasters use to circulate popular cultural commodities from the region are explored, as responses to competition in the multi-channel universe of readily available international satellite TV channels and digital entertainment. Finally, there is a brief reflection on the potential of East Asian popular culture as a mechanism for compressing space among the diverse East Asian cultures and cities.
Jesse Zuba
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164472
- eISBN:
- 9781400873791
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164472.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter discusses the unique trajectories of poetic careers throughout contemporary history. It briefly follows the twentieth-century poets discussed in this volume in engaging ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the unique trajectories of poetic careers throughout contemporary history. It briefly follows the twentieth-century poets discussed in this volume in engaging career from a variety of angles. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's influential sociology of cultural production, this chapter takes as a basic premise the idea that poets' trajectories generally lead across the field of production from a dominated position to a dominant one through the accumulation of recognition in the forms of publications, honors, and profits. This gradually intensifying alignment with the establishment comes at a cost, and a particularly significant one for poets, insofar as poetry defines “the most perfectly autonomous sector of the field of cultural production.”Less
This introductory chapter discusses the unique trajectories of poetic careers throughout contemporary history. It briefly follows the twentieth-century poets discussed in this volume in engaging career from a variety of angles. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's influential sociology of cultural production, this chapter takes as a basic premise the idea that poets' trajectories generally lead across the field of production from a dominated position to a dominant one through the accumulation of recognition in the forms of publications, honors, and profits. This gradually intensifying alignment with the establishment comes at a cost, and a particularly significant one for poets, insofar as poetry defines “the most perfectly autonomous sector of the field of cultural production.”
Kevin N. Laland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691182810
- eISBN:
- 9780691184470
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691182810.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for cultural production, from the arts and language to science and technology. How did the human mind—and the uniquely human ability to devise and transmit ...
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Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for cultural production, from the arts and language to science and technology. How did the human mind—and the uniquely human ability to devise and transmit culture—evolve from its roots in animal behavior? This book presents a new theory of human cognitive evolution. It reveals how culture is not just the magnificent end product of an evolutionary process that produced a species unlike all others—it is also the key driving force behind that process. The book shows how the learned and socially transmitted activities of our ancestors shaped our intellects through accelerating cycles of evolutionary feedback. The truly unique characteristics of our species—such as our intelligence, language, teaching, and cooperation—are not adaptive responses to predators, disease, or other external conditions. Rather, humans are creatures of their own making. The book explains how animals imitate, innovate, and have remarkable traditions of their own. It traces our rise from scavenger apes in prehistory to modern humans able to design iPhones, dance the tango, and send astronauts into space. This book tells the story of the painstaking fieldwork, the key experiments, the false leads, and the stunning scientific breakthroughs that led to this new understanding of how culture transformed human evolution. It is the story of how Darwin's intellectual descendants picked up where he left off and took up the challenge of providing a scientific account of the evolution of the human mind.Less
Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for cultural production, from the arts and language to science and technology. How did the human mind—and the uniquely human ability to devise and transmit culture—evolve from its roots in animal behavior? This book presents a new theory of human cognitive evolution. It reveals how culture is not just the magnificent end product of an evolutionary process that produced a species unlike all others—it is also the key driving force behind that process. The book shows how the learned and socially transmitted activities of our ancestors shaped our intellects through accelerating cycles of evolutionary feedback. The truly unique characteristics of our species—such as our intelligence, language, teaching, and cooperation—are not adaptive responses to predators, disease, or other external conditions. Rather, humans are creatures of their own making. The book explains how animals imitate, innovate, and have remarkable traditions of their own. It traces our rise from scavenger apes in prehistory to modern humans able to design iPhones, dance the tango, and send astronauts into space. This book tells the story of the painstaking fieldwork, the key experiments, the false leads, and the stunning scientific breakthroughs that led to this new understanding of how culture transformed human evolution. It is the story of how Darwin's intellectual descendants picked up where he left off and took up the challenge of providing a scientific account of the evolution of the human mind.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels ...
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This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.Less
This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.
Caroline Bassett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719073427
- eISBN:
- 9781781700907
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719073427.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book is a defence of narrative in an age of information. Stressing interpretation and experience alongside affect and sensation, it argues that narrative is key to contemporary forms of cultural ...
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This book is a defence of narrative in an age of information. Stressing interpretation and experience alongside affect and sensation, it argues that narrative is key to contemporary forms of cultural production and to the practice of contemporary life. Re-appraising the prospects for narrative in the digital age, the book insists on the centrality of narrative to informational culture and provokes a critical re-appraisal of how innovations in information technology as a material cultural form can be understood and assessed. It offers a careful exploration of narrative theory, a critique of techno-cultural writing, and a series of tightly focused case studies. All of which point the way to a restoration of a critical — rather than celebratory — approach to new media.Less
This book is a defence of narrative in an age of information. Stressing interpretation and experience alongside affect and sensation, it argues that narrative is key to contemporary forms of cultural production and to the practice of contemporary life. Re-appraising the prospects for narrative in the digital age, the book insists on the centrality of narrative to informational culture and provokes a critical re-appraisal of how innovations in information technology as a material cultural form can be understood and assessed. It offers a careful exploration of narrative theory, a critique of techno-cultural writing, and a series of tightly focused case studies. All of which point the way to a restoration of a critical — rather than celebratory — approach to new media.
Robert J. Patterson (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042775
- eISBN:
- 9780252051630
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042775.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical ...
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Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical paradox by which unprecedented civil rights gains coexist with novel impediments to collectivist black liberation projects. At the beginning of the 1970s, the ethos animating the juridical achievements of the civil rights movement began to wane, and the rise of neoliberalism, a powerful conservative backlash, the co-optation of “race-blind” rhetoric, and the pathologization and criminalization of poverty helped to retrench black inequality in the post-civil rights era. This book uncovers the intricate ways that black cultural production kept imagining how black people could achieve their dreams for freedom, despite abject social and political conditions. While black writers, artists, historians, and critics have taken renewed interest in the historical roots of black un-freedom, Black Cultural Production insists that the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies. Black cultural production and producers help us think about how black people might achieve freedom by centralizing the roles black art and artists have had in expanding notions of freedom, democracy, equity, and gender equality. Black cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics.Less
Through its analysis of film, drama, fiction, visual culture, poetry, and other cultural -artifacts, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights offers a fresh examination of how the historical paradox by which unprecedented civil rights gains coexist with novel impediments to collectivist black liberation projects. At the beginning of the 1970s, the ethos animating the juridical achievements of the civil rights movement began to wane, and the rise of neoliberalism, a powerful conservative backlash, the co-optation of “race-blind” rhetoric, and the pathologization and criminalization of poverty helped to retrench black inequality in the post-civil rights era. This book uncovers the intricate ways that black cultural production kept imagining how black people could achieve their dreams for freedom, despite abject social and political conditions. While black writers, artists, historians, and critics have taken renewed interest in the historical roots of black un-freedom, Black Cultural Production insists that the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies. Black cultural production and producers help us think about how black people might achieve freedom by centralizing the roles black art and artists have had in expanding notions of freedom, democracy, equity, and gender equality. Black cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics.
Christina Dunbar-Hester
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691192888
- eISBN:
- 9780691194172
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691192888.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of ...
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Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in industry and academia. This book investigates the activists engaged in free and open-source software to understand why, despite their efforts, they fail to achieve the diversity that their ideals support. The book shows that within this well-meaning volunteer world, beyond the sway of human resource departments and equal opportunity legislation, members of underrepresented groups face unique challenges. The book explores who participates in voluntaristic technology cultures, to what ends, and with what consequences. Digging deep into the fundamental assumptions underpinning STEM-oriented societies, the book demonstrates that while the preferred solutions of tech enthusiasts—their “hacks” of projects and cultures—can ameliorate some of the “bugs” within their own communities, these methods come up short for issues of unequal social and economic power. Distributing “diversity” in technical production is not equal to generating justice. The book reframes questions of diversity advocacy to consider what interventions might appropriately broaden inclusion and participation in the hacking world and beyond.Less
Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in industry and academia. This book investigates the activists engaged in free and open-source software to understand why, despite their efforts, they fail to achieve the diversity that their ideals support. The book shows that within this well-meaning volunteer world, beyond the sway of human resource departments and equal opportunity legislation, members of underrepresented groups face unique challenges. The book explores who participates in voluntaristic technology cultures, to what ends, and with what consequences. Digging deep into the fundamental assumptions underpinning STEM-oriented societies, the book demonstrates that while the preferred solutions of tech enthusiasts—their “hacks” of projects and cultures—can ameliorate some of the “bugs” within their own communities, these methods come up short for issues of unequal social and economic power. Distributing “diversity” in technical production is not equal to generating justice. The book reframes questions of diversity advocacy to consider what interventions might appropriately broaden inclusion and participation in the hacking world and beyond.
Katherine Verdery
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520072169
- eISBN:
- 9780520917286
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520072169.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This chapter presents a theoretical framework for analyzing “real socialism” as a social order. The nature of socialist systems has a purpose to clarify the environment in which socialism's cultural ...
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This chapter presents a theoretical framework for analyzing “real socialism” as a social order. The nature of socialist systems has a purpose to clarify the environment in which socialism's cultural producers work. On this theme, theories of socialist systems tend toward the inarticulate. They rarely pursue the full implications of their new-class theory or ownership theory or goal-function theory for how meaning is produced and controlled in socialist systems. The literature on cultural production in other social orders is not of much help, because thinkers frame their analyses explicitly in terms of capitalist markets; yet the suppression of the market in socialist systems means that except when reforms reintroduce market mechanisms into its sphere, culture ceases to be a commodity.Less
This chapter presents a theoretical framework for analyzing “real socialism” as a social order. The nature of socialist systems has a purpose to clarify the environment in which socialism's cultural producers work. On this theme, theories of socialist systems tend toward the inarticulate. They rarely pursue the full implications of their new-class theory or ownership theory or goal-function theory for how meaning is produced and controlled in socialist systems. The literature on cultural production in other social orders is not of much help, because thinkers frame their analyses explicitly in terms of capitalist markets; yet the suppression of the market in socialist systems means that except when reforms reintroduce market mechanisms into its sphere, culture ceases to be a commodity.
Derek Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814743478
- eISBN:
- 9780814743492
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814743478.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
While immediately recognizable throughout the United States and many other countries, media mainstays like X-Men, Star Trek, and Transformers achieved such familiarity through constant reincarnation. ...
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While immediately recognizable throughout the United States and many other countries, media mainstays like X-Men, Star Trek, and Transformers achieved such familiarity through constant reincarnation. In each case, the initial success of a single product led to a long-term embrace of media franchising—a dynamic process in which media workers from different industrial positions shared in and reproduced familiar culture across television, film, comics, games, and merchandising. This book examines the corporate culture behind these production practices, as well as the collaborative and creative efforts involved in conceiving, sustaining, and sharing intellectual properties in media work worlds. Challenging connotations of homogeneity, the book shows how the cultural and industrial logic of franchising has encouraged media industries to reimagine creativity as an opportunity for exchange among producers, licensees, and even consumers. Drawing on case studies and interviews with media producers, it reveals the meaningful identities, cultural hierarchies, and struggles for distinction that accompany collaboration within these production networks. The book provides a nuanced portrait of the collaborative cultural production embedded in both the media industries and our own daily lives.Less
While immediately recognizable throughout the United States and many other countries, media mainstays like X-Men, Star Trek, and Transformers achieved such familiarity through constant reincarnation. In each case, the initial success of a single product led to a long-term embrace of media franchising—a dynamic process in which media workers from different industrial positions shared in and reproduced familiar culture across television, film, comics, games, and merchandising. This book examines the corporate culture behind these production practices, as well as the collaborative and creative efforts involved in conceiving, sustaining, and sharing intellectual properties in media work worlds. Challenging connotations of homogeneity, the book shows how the cultural and industrial logic of franchising has encouraged media industries to reimagine creativity as an opportunity for exchange among producers, licensees, and even consumers. Drawing on case studies and interviews with media producers, it reveals the meaningful identities, cultural hierarchies, and struggles for distinction that accompany collaboration within these production networks. The book provides a nuanced portrait of the collaborative cultural production embedded in both the media industries and our own daily lives.
Xueping Zhong
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834173
- eISBN:
- 9780824870010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834173.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This introductory chapter first highlights the “fate” of Chinese mainstream culture and debates about it in the West, with a brief observation about their own sociocultural particularities. It argues ...
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This introductory chapter first highlights the “fate” of Chinese mainstream culture and debates about it in the West, with a brief observation about their own sociocultural particularities. It argues for a need to move beyond the existing mode of state–market dichotomy in order to arrive at a historically informed understanding of the production of contemporary Chinese mainstream culture in general and television drama in particular. The chapter then sets out four seemingly straightforward terms—television set (dianshi ji), television industry (dianshi chanye), television culture (dianshi wenhua), and television drama (dianshiju)—in order to both focus and expand the discussion regarding the relationship between state and market forces and cultural production. These four terms indicate television’s role among “global” and globalizing technology-aided cultural phenomena, but they are also socially and historically particular to modern and contemporary Chinese history, rich with specific implications. They illustrate the complex relationship between the state and the collective imaginary of “modernization” shared by different social groups, and between the state and different players who have participated in the development of television culture as mainstream popular culture in ways specific to the social characteristics in contemporary China.Less
This introductory chapter first highlights the “fate” of Chinese mainstream culture and debates about it in the West, with a brief observation about their own sociocultural particularities. It argues for a need to move beyond the existing mode of state–market dichotomy in order to arrive at a historically informed understanding of the production of contemporary Chinese mainstream culture in general and television drama in particular. The chapter then sets out four seemingly straightforward terms—television set (dianshi ji), television industry (dianshi chanye), television culture (dianshi wenhua), and television drama (dianshiju)—in order to both focus and expand the discussion regarding the relationship between state and market forces and cultural production. These four terms indicate television’s role among “global” and globalizing technology-aided cultural phenomena, but they are also socially and historically particular to modern and contemporary Chinese history, rich with specific implications. They illustrate the complex relationship between the state and the collective imaginary of “modernization” shared by different social groups, and between the state and different players who have participated in the development of television culture as mainstream popular culture in ways specific to the social characteristics in contemporary China.
Xueping Zhong
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834173
- eISBN:
- 9780824870010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834173.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter highlights a theme that implicitly runs through this book, namely, the changing relationship between mainstream culture and the role of intellectuals in the postrevolutionary ...
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This chapter highlights a theme that implicitly runs through this book, namely, the changing relationship between mainstream culture and the role of intellectuals in the postrevolutionary socioeconomic transformation in contemporary China. It suggests that future studies of Chinese mainstream (popular) culture must take into account the formation and development of, for a lack of a better word, a “cultural ecosystem” in the last three decades in China with four major forces or groups dominating meaning production: guan (officials), mei (the media), chan (industry), and xue (the academy). It is no longer accurate to assume a monolithic entity called “Chinese intellectuals” independent of these forces when the cultural production of meaning has become multifaceted and tension-filled. Nor is it accurate to apply ready-made labels to voices from within these forces without fully understanding their contextual, dialogic, and ideological implications.Less
This chapter highlights a theme that implicitly runs through this book, namely, the changing relationship between mainstream culture and the role of intellectuals in the postrevolutionary socioeconomic transformation in contemporary China. It suggests that future studies of Chinese mainstream (popular) culture must take into account the formation and development of, for a lack of a better word, a “cultural ecosystem” in the last three decades in China with four major forces or groups dominating meaning production: guan (officials), mei (the media), chan (industry), and xue (the academy). It is no longer accurate to assume a monolithic entity called “Chinese intellectuals” independent of these forces when the cultural production of meaning has become multifaceted and tension-filled. Nor is it accurate to apply ready-made labels to voices from within these forces without fully understanding their contextual, dialogic, and ideological implications.
Chong Chon-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462050
- eISBN:
- 9781626745292
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462050.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book provides an understanding of the inspiring, contradictory, hostile, resonant, and unarticulated ways in which Asian American and African American cultural formation occurs. Through the ...
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This book provides an understanding of the inspiring, contradictory, hostile, resonant, and unarticulated ways in which Asian American and African American cultural formation occurs. Through the interpretation of labor department documents, popular journalism, and state discourses, the book historicizes the formation of both the construction of black “pathology” and the Asian “model minority.” Beginning with the Moynihan Report and journalistic reports about Asian Americans as “model minority,” black and Asian men were racialized together, as if “racially magnetized.” Through the concept of racial magnetism, the book examines both dominant and emergent representations of Asian and African American masculinities as mediating figures for the contradictions of race, class, and gender in post-civil rights U.S.A. The post-civil rights era names this specific race for U.S. citizenship and class advantage, when massive Asian technocratic immigration and decline of African American industrial labor helped usher in a new period of laissez faire class struggle and racial realignment. While the state abandoned social programs at home and expanded imperial projects overseas, state discourses posited that the post-civil rights moment was a period of imminent racial danger because Black Power and the Asian American Movement challenged the understanding that social equality through civil rights had been achieved. The book studies both the dominant discourses that “pair” African American and Asian American racialized masculinities together, and it examines the African American and Asian American counter-discourses—in literature, film, popular sport, hip-hop music, performance arts, and internet subcultures—that link social movements and cultural production as active critical responses to this dominant formation.Less
This book provides an understanding of the inspiring, contradictory, hostile, resonant, and unarticulated ways in which Asian American and African American cultural formation occurs. Through the interpretation of labor department documents, popular journalism, and state discourses, the book historicizes the formation of both the construction of black “pathology” and the Asian “model minority.” Beginning with the Moynihan Report and journalistic reports about Asian Americans as “model minority,” black and Asian men were racialized together, as if “racially magnetized.” Through the concept of racial magnetism, the book examines both dominant and emergent representations of Asian and African American masculinities as mediating figures for the contradictions of race, class, and gender in post-civil rights U.S.A. The post-civil rights era names this specific race for U.S. citizenship and class advantage, when massive Asian technocratic immigration and decline of African American industrial labor helped usher in a new period of laissez faire class struggle and racial realignment. While the state abandoned social programs at home and expanded imperial projects overseas, state discourses posited that the post-civil rights moment was a period of imminent racial danger because Black Power and the Asian American Movement challenged the understanding that social equality through civil rights had been achieved. The book studies both the dominant discourses that “pair” African American and Asian American racialized masculinities together, and it examines the African American and Asian American counter-discourses—in literature, film, popular sport, hip-hop music, performance arts, and internet subcultures—that link social movements and cultural production as active critical responses to this dominant formation.
Andrea Louie
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479890521
- eISBN:
- 9781479859887
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479890521.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores the productions of Chineseness as a form of cultural and racial identity within the context of everyday lives of adoptive parents and their children. More specifically, it ...
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This chapter explores the productions of Chineseness as a form of cultural and racial identity within the context of everyday lives of adoptive parents and their children. More specifically, it considers how these forms of Chineseness operate in relation to race, culture, and adoption that define adoptive families. It focuses on what adoptive parents do with their new, though often admittedly limited, knowledge about Chinese culture and how processes of Chinese American cultural production work. It also examines the construction of adoption narratives by Chinese adoptees and what combination of family tradition and cultural innovation characterizes the production of Chinese culture by adoptive parents. Finally, it asks whether there is any “work” that productions of Chineseness may perform within the context of shifting patterns of U.S. multiculturalism.Less
This chapter explores the productions of Chineseness as a form of cultural and racial identity within the context of everyday lives of adoptive parents and their children. More specifically, it considers how these forms of Chineseness operate in relation to race, culture, and adoption that define adoptive families. It focuses on what adoptive parents do with their new, though often admittedly limited, knowledge about Chinese culture and how processes of Chinese American cultural production work. It also examines the construction of adoption narratives by Chinese adoptees and what combination of family tradition and cultural innovation characterizes the production of Chinese culture by adoptive parents. Finally, it asks whether there is any “work” that productions of Chineseness may perform within the context of shifting patterns of U.S. multiculturalism.
Shweta Kishore
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474433068
- eISBN:
- 9781474453578
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474433068.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In India, ‘independent documentary film’ is a term that signifies a body of films that first appeared in 1975 during the Constitutional Emergency, a period when the repressive exercise of state ...
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In India, ‘independent documentary film’ is a term that signifies a body of films that first appeared in 1975 during the Constitutional Emergency, a period when the repressive exercise of state authority threatened the democratic political foundations of the nation. The initial usage of the term ‘independent’ to denote a production category located outside of state structures is now a misnomer. In the post-economic reform landscape, independent filmmakers operate with greater flexibility and various interdependent and mutually cooperative forms of organisation between filmmakers, the state, international and domestic NGOs, private institutions and individuals are commonplace. My attempt here is to construct an ongoing critical dialogue between broader concepts of documentary studies and the situated perspectives that emerge from individual accounts and the analysis of films produced and circulated using diverse modes and architectures. Emphasising the historical significance of documentary as a space of oppositional representation, the accounts produce a grounded theory of independence structured in relation to institutions, industry practices, individual subjectivities and technology in post-reform India. Combining the study of independent film practice and textual analysis, the mixed methods study investigates how independent Indian documentary is a practice that not only produces political representation but opens up new material relations between culture, society and the individual.Less
In India, ‘independent documentary film’ is a term that signifies a body of films that first appeared in 1975 during the Constitutional Emergency, a period when the repressive exercise of state authority threatened the democratic political foundations of the nation. The initial usage of the term ‘independent’ to denote a production category located outside of state structures is now a misnomer. In the post-economic reform landscape, independent filmmakers operate with greater flexibility and various interdependent and mutually cooperative forms of organisation between filmmakers, the state, international and domestic NGOs, private institutions and individuals are commonplace. My attempt here is to construct an ongoing critical dialogue between broader concepts of documentary studies and the situated perspectives that emerge from individual accounts and the analysis of films produced and circulated using diverse modes and architectures. Emphasising the historical significance of documentary as a space of oppositional representation, the accounts produce a grounded theory of independence structured in relation to institutions, industry practices, individual subjectivities and technology in post-reform India. Combining the study of independent film practice and textual analysis, the mixed methods study investigates how independent Indian documentary is a practice that not only produces political representation but opens up new material relations between culture, society and the individual.
Linnell Secomb
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623679
- eISBN:
- 9780748671854
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623679.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book introduces historical and contemporary philosophical reflections on love. It brings together philosophy with cultural analysis to provide an account of conventional theories of love as well ...
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This book introduces historical and contemporary philosophical reflections on love. It brings together philosophy with cultural analysis to provide an account of conventional theories of love as well as the controversial reformulations evident in same-sex desire, cross-cultural love and internet romance. Starting with Plato, but focusing especially on contemporary European philosophy, the book introduces figures such as Nietzsche, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida and Fanon. Explaining these philosophical approaches, it also engages with cultural productions — ranging from Sappho to Frankenstein, and from Hiroshima Mon Amour to Desperate Housewives — enabling an exchange between philosophical and cultural theories. Love stories are also central to this interdisciplinary book, revealing the ethical and the political as well as the personal implications of lover's discourses. Embracing both the sentimental and the political, this deconstructive reading discloses the paradoxes, conflicts and intensities of the love relation.Less
This book introduces historical and contemporary philosophical reflections on love. It brings together philosophy with cultural analysis to provide an account of conventional theories of love as well as the controversial reformulations evident in same-sex desire, cross-cultural love and internet romance. Starting with Plato, but focusing especially on contemporary European philosophy, the book introduces figures such as Nietzsche, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida and Fanon. Explaining these philosophical approaches, it also engages with cultural productions — ranging from Sappho to Frankenstein, and from Hiroshima Mon Amour to Desperate Housewives — enabling an exchange between philosophical and cultural theories. Love stories are also central to this interdisciplinary book, revealing the ethical and the political as well as the personal implications of lover's discourses. Embracing both the sentimental and the political, this deconstructive reading discloses the paradoxes, conflicts and intensities of the love relation.
Yasmine Ramadan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474427647
- eISBN:
- 9781474476775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474427647.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
The first part of the chapter presents the members of the sixties generation, telling the story of their emergence onto the cultural scene in Egypt. It outlines the socio-economic and political ...
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The first part of the chapter presents the members of the sixties generation, telling the story of their emergence onto the cultural scene in Egypt. It outlines the socio-economic and political context of which they were both a part and an expression. Who are these writers? When and how did they emerge? What is significant about their work? Why did they appear at such a critical moment in Egyptian history? What are the sources of literary and aesthetic inspiration? This chapter draws on an array of primary material from the journals of the time whose pages were filled with discussions about this emerging generation. This presentation of the sixties generation is undertaken with an attention to the broader context of the literary sphere in Egypt, what Bourdieu calls “the field of cultural production.” The second part of the chapter focuses on the theoretical arguments for the examination of space in literature, examining the broader “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, engaging this approach within the context of modern and contemporary Egyptian literature. A focus upon spatial representations expands our analysis of the work of the sixties writers, bringing together the thematic, the aesthetic, and the political.Less
The first part of the chapter presents the members of the sixties generation, telling the story of their emergence onto the cultural scene in Egypt. It outlines the socio-economic and political context of which they were both a part and an expression. Who are these writers? When and how did they emerge? What is significant about their work? Why did they appear at such a critical moment in Egyptian history? What are the sources of literary and aesthetic inspiration? This chapter draws on an array of primary material from the journals of the time whose pages were filled with discussions about this emerging generation. This presentation of the sixties generation is undertaken with an attention to the broader context of the literary sphere in Egypt, what Bourdieu calls “the field of cultural production.” The second part of the chapter focuses on the theoretical arguments for the examination of space in literature, examining the broader “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, engaging this approach within the context of modern and contemporary Egyptian literature. A focus upon spatial representations expands our analysis of the work of the sixties writers, bringing together the thematic, the aesthetic, and the political.
