Cultural Studies And Cultural Value

This major critique on the important new discipline of cultural studies offers readings of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau. The author argues for a new orientation for cultural studies starting from a recognition of the c

"The essays collected here ... are centrally concerned with conflicts of value: the aesthetic value that is ascribed to texts; the economic value that accrues to intellectual property; the processes of social valuation that turn waste into worth and back again; the structures of valued knowledge that shape both the disciplines of knowledge and everyday life; and the political struggles over social and cultural difference that give rise, at their most intense, to the desolation of communities and the destruction of cultures."--Publishers website

This study analyzes American, Vietnamese and Japanese personal values, attempting to understand how it can be ethnographers find large differences in values between cultures, yet empirical surveys find relatively small, almost trivial differences in personal values between cultures.

How is culture 'lived'? What are the best ways of investigating cultural life? This book offers practical guidance for researching cultural studies.

Exploring Cultural Value presents ground breaking new research on the use of the cultural value lens to explain and investigate those areas of society where art and culture can have an impact or add value, beyond economic measures. The book develops and advances existing concepts around cultural value, and thus provides a deeper understanding of the impacts and value of the arts and cultural sectors. Contributions bridge academic disciplines and the current discourse of policy-makers, with sections exploring ways of thinking about cultural value, current developments in the field, and challenges for the future. Key themes illustrated throughout include alternative conceptual frameworks of cultural value, national/regional/urban perspectives, evidence from practice, and discussion of how the challenges facing the sectors can be addressed. Exploring Cultural Value combines academic research, case studies, and practitioner perspectives, making a robust and accessible contribution grounded in real world practice. It is a crucial resource for academics, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in the arts, and provides valuable insights into a facet of human endeavour all of us believe to be vital to society.

In the wake of the debates over high/low culture distinction spilling into the effective dismantling of the boundary that once separated them, the past decade has seen the explosion of ‘bad taste’ production on screen. Starting with paracinema or ‘badfilm’ – a movement that has grown up around sleazy, excessive, or poorly executed B-movies and has come to encompass disreputable and unworthy films – this trend has been evident in various formats: on television and in video-art, low-budget and straight to TV films, amateur and home movies. The proliferation of trash on screen can be seen as delivering the final blow to the vexed issue of taste. More importantly, it prompts a reconsideration of some critical issues surrounding production, circulation, understanding and teaching of ‘bad objects’ in the media. This collection of essays, written by international film and television scholars, provides detailed critical analysis of the issues surrounding judgements of cultural value and taste, feeling and affect, cultural morals and politics, research methodologies and teaching strategies in the new landscape of ‘after taste’ media. Addressing global and local developments – from global Hollywood to Australian indigenous film and television, through auteurs Sergei Eisenstein to Jerry Bruckheimer, on to examples such as Twilight to Sukiyaki Western Django – the essays in this book offer a range of critical tools for understanding the recent shifts affecting cultural, aesthetic and political value of the moving image. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Exploring Cultural Value presents ground breaking new research on the use of the cultural value lens to explain and investigate those areas of society where art and culture can have an impact or add value, beyond economic measures.

This book explores three central concepts, namely justice and human rights, ethics and values, and intercultural learning. These are important to everyone in a multicultural society and of special interest to students and scholars of philosophy, cultural studies, religious studies, and other related disciplines. In this volume, a pluralistic approach is adopted to examine ethical and value questions. Accordingly, readers will learn much from the interaction between Western and Eastern methods of ethical inquiry. The impetus for this collection of essays is the notion that cultural diversity represents a source of exchange, innovation and creativity. Consequently, cultural diversity is as critical for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. Furthermore, cultural diversity is a property of the entire community, just as biodiversity is a property of the entire ecosystem. Therefore, understanding and learning from cultural pluralism is as central to social and cultural stewardship as protection and restoration are to biological diversity. Within the pages of Perspectives on Culture, Values, and Justice readers will experience a growth in perspective and a greater understanding of issues of culture, value, and justice. A major starting point for these contemplations is that culture and values are integral to our identity and the essence of who we are and what we do.