Culture And Consensus Routledge Revivals

Culture and Consensus, first published in 1995 and a revised edition in 1997, explores the history of the relationship between politics and the arts in Britain since 1940, and shows how the search for a secure sense of English identity has been reflected in official and unofficial attitudes to the arts, architecture, landscape and other emblems of national significance. Illustrating his argument with a series of detailed case histories, Robert Hewison analyses how Britain’s cultural life has reached its present enfeebled condition and suggests a way forward. This book will be of interest to students of art and cultural studies.

Culture and Consensus, first published in 1995 and a revised edition in 1997, explores the history of the relationship between politics and the arts in Britain since 1940, and shows how the search for a secure sense of English identity has been reflected in official and unofficial attitudes to the arts, architecture, landscape and other emblems of national significance. Illustrating his argument with a series of detailed case histories, Robert Hewison analyses how Britain’s cultural life has reached its present enfeebled condition and suggests a way forward. This book will be of interest to students of art and cultural studies.

By the late nineteenth century, the city had become the dominant social environment of Britain, with the majority of the population living in large cities, often with over 100, 000 inhabitants. The central concern of this book, first published in 1976, is to assess how successful the late Victorians were in creating a stimulating social environment whilst these developing cities were being transformed into modern industrial and commercial centres. Using Bristol as a case study, Helen Meller analyses the new relationships brought about by mass urbanisation, between city and citizen, environment and society. The book considers a variety of important features of the Victorian city, in particular the development of the main cultural institutions, the provision of leisure facilities by voluntary societies and the expansion of activities such as music, sport and commercial entertainment. Comparative examples are drawn from other cities, which illustrate the common social and cultural values of an urbanised nation. This is a very interesting title, of great relevance to students and academics of town planning, Victorian society, and the history and development of the modern city.

First published in 1990, this investigative overview of the politics of arts’ and cultural funding examines the question of public support for the arts. Looking at both popular commercial forms of culture, including radio, pop music and cinema, and the more traditional highbrow arts such as drama and opera, Art, Culture and Enterprise was the first book of its kind to deal systematically with the politics of contemporary culture. Drawing examples from specific British venues, Justin Lewis shows how innovative projects work in practice, and considers arts marketing and the promotion of culture as an economic strategy. A particularly relevant title in the context of the debate surrounding Arts Council funding, this reissue will prove valuable for artists, administrators and students of media and cultural studies, alongside those with a general interest in the future of public art and culture.

Imagining Culture, first published in 1996, discusses literature as a whole rather than a partisan interest in those who are in or out of favour, and how that literature relates to other arts as well as to philosophical, historical, and cultural contexts. This title will be of interest to students of literature and cultural studies.

With the growth of popular literary forms, particularly the periodical, during the eighteenth century, women began to assume an unprecedented place in print culture as readers and writers. Yet at the same time the very textual practices of that culture inscribed women within an increasingly restrictive and oppressive set of representations. First published in 1989, this title examines the emergence and dramatic growth of periodical literature, showing how the journals solicited women as subscribers and contributors, whilst also attempting to regulate their conduct through the promotion of exemplary feminine types. By enclosing its female readership within a discourse that defined women in terms of love, matrimony, the family, and the home, the English periodical became one of the main linguistic sites for the construction of the eighteenth-century ideology of domestic womanhood. Based on the close scrutiny of the popular periodical press between 1690 and 1760, including journals such as the Athenian Mercury, the Tatler, and the Spectator, this study will be of particular value to any student of the relationship between women and print culture, the development of women’s magazines, and the study of literary audiences.

First published in 1980, this book argues that subcultures are formed in defence of collectively experienced problems that arise from defects and contradictions in social structures. Mike Brake looks at the development of post-war youth culture in a sociological context and considers the class base of youth subcultures, showing that they generate a form of collective identity from which an individual identity can be achieved, outside that ascribed by class, education or occupation. Black youth and young females are two groups given special attention here since Brake notes they are prone to particular problems resulting from the racism and sexism inherent in much youth culture.