Consuming Cultural Hegemony

This book examines the circulation and viewership of Bollywood films and filmi modernity in Bangladesh. The writer poses a number of fundamental questions: what it means to be a Bangladeshi in South Asia, what it means to be a Bangladeshi fan of Hindi film, and how popular film reflects power relations in South Asia. The writer argues that partition has resulted in India holding hegemonic power over all of South Asia’s nation-states at the political, economic, and military levels–a situation that has made possible its cultural hegemony. The book draws on relevant literature from anthropology, sociology, film, media, communication, and cultural studies to explore the concepts of hegemony, circulation, viewership, cultural taste, and South Asian cultural history and politics.

The book aims to illustrate that what is distinctive about any particular society is not the fact of its modernity, but rather its own unique debates about modernity. Behind the embattled arena of culture in India, for example, lie particular social and political interests such as the growing middle class, the entrepreneurs and commercial institutions, and the state. The contributors address the roles of these various intertwined interests in the making of India's public culture, each examining different sites of consumption. The sites which are explored include cinema, radio, cricket, restaurants and tourism. The book also makes distinct the differences among public, mass and popular culture.

This book is unique in applying a consumption approach to the study of ethnicity and nationalism, thereby challenging the usual 'top down' approach to nation-formation. Contributors from a variety of disciplines examine the on-going consumption of minority and national cultures by looking at different forms of consumption, including a national lottery, theme parks, museums, cross-cultural handbooks, popular song and audio-visual media. Chapters span diverse parts of Asia '- from Korea, Japan and China to Malaysia and Sri Lanka '- imparting to the volume a rare comparative quality. It should appeal to anyone interested in Asian Studies, as well as in the sociology and anthropology of culture, nationalism and globalisation.

Consuming History examines how history works in contemporary popular culture. Analysing a wide range of cultural entities from computer games to daytime television, it investigates the ways in which society consumes history and how a reading of this consumption can help us understand popular culture and issues of representation. In this second edition, Jerome de Groot probes how museums have responded to the heritage debate and how new technologies from online game-playing to internet genealogy have brought about a shift in access to history, discussing the often conflicted relationship between ‘public’ and academic history and raising important questions about the theory and practice of history as a discipline. Fully revised throughout with up-to-date examples from sources such as Wolf Hall, Game of Thrones and 12 Years a Slave, this edition also includes new sections on the historical novel, gaming, social media and genealogy. It considers new, ground-breaking texts and media such as YouTube in addition to entities and practices, such as re-enactment, that have been underrepresented in historical discussion thus far. Engaging with a broad spectrum of source material and comparing the experiences of the UK, the USA, France and Germany as well as exploring more global trends, Consuming History offers an essential path through the debates for readers interested in history, cultural studies and the media.

Consumption forms an essential part of Hong Kong people's lives today, but until now little serious attention has been paid to it. This book fills this gap, in a fascinating way. The contributors to this volume explore such topics as: - the coming of shopping malls to Hong Kong - tenants' senses of home in cramped public housing - the experiences of movie-going - alcohol as a marker of social class - the pursuit of fashion - Chinese art and identity among Hong Kong collectors - the dream and reality of owning a flat - Lan Kwai Fong and its mystique - the McDonald's Snoopy craze of fall 1998 - cultural identity and consumption in Hong Kong today This book shows how the detailed ehtnographic study of consumption in Hong Kong can lead to a deeper understanding of Hong Kong life as a whole, as well as of consumption in the world at large.

A new angle on the globalisation debate, which celebrates successful resistance as well as exploring the dangers. As languages and local cultures are swept away by the market-driven monoculture, Jeremy Seabrook looks at the threat to cultural diversity and integrity all around the globe, including in western societies. Amongst the disappearing cultures, Seabrook finds that resistance is breaking out as people rediscover the imprtance of the local and the value of community.

Contemporary theology, argues Miller, is silent on what is unquestionably one of the most important cultural issues it faces: consumerism or "consumer culture." While there is no shortage of expressions of concern about the corrosive effects of consumerism from the standpoint of economic justice or environmental ethics, there is a surprising paucity of theoretically sophisticated works on the topic, for consumerism, argues Miller, is not just about behavioral "excesses"; rather, it is a pervasive worldview that affects our construction as persons-what motivates us, how we relate to others, to culture, and to religion. Consuming Religion surveys almost a century of scholarly literature on consumerism and the commodification of culture and charts the ways in which religious belief and practice have been transformed by the dominant consumer culture of the West. It demonstrates the significance of this seismic cultural shift for theological method, doctrine, belief, community, and theological anthropology. Like more popular texts, the book takes a critical stand against the deleterious effects of consumerism. However, its analytical complexity provides the basis for developing more sophisticated tactics for addressing these problems.

Curriculum Windows: What Curriculum Theorists of the 1990s Can Teach Us about Schools and Society Today is an effort by students of curriculum studies, along with their professor, to interpret and understand curriculum texts and theorists of the 1990s in contemporary terms. The authors explore how key books/authors from the curriculum field of the 1990s illuminate new possibilities forward for us as scholar educators today: How might the theories, practices, and ideas wrapped up in curriculum texts of the 1990s still resonate with us, allow us to see backward in time and forward in time – all at the same time? How might these figurative windows of insight, thought, ideas, fantasy, and fancy make us think differently about curriculum, teaching, learning, students, education, leadership, and schools? Further, how might they help us see more clearly, even perhaps put us on a path to correct the mistakes and missteps of intervening decades and of today? The chapter authors and editor revisit and interpret several of the most important works in the curriculum field of the 1990s. The book's Foreword is by renowned curriculum theorist William H. Schubert.