Stuart Hall Lives Cultural Studies In An Age Of Digital Media

The work of cultural and political theorist Stuart Hall, a pioneer of Cultural Studies who passed away in 2014, remains more relevant than ever. In Stuart Hall Lives, scholars engage with Hall’s most enduring essays, including "Encoding/Decoding" and "Notes on Deconstructing the Popular," bringing them into the context of the 21st century. Different chapters consider resistant media consumers, online journalism, debates around the American Confederate flag and rainbow flags, the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, and contemporary moral panics. The book also includes Hall’s important essay on French theorist Louis Althusser, which is introduced here by Lawrence Grossberg and Jennifer Slack. Finally, two reminiscences by one of Hall’s former colleagues and one of his former students offer wide-ranging reflections on his years as director of Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, and as head of the Department of Sociology at The Open University. Together, the contributions paint a picture of a brilliant theorist whose work and legacy is as vital as ever. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

"Graeme Turner is one of the most remarkable figures in the world of cultural studies. He has helped to make and remake the field over the last twenty-five years. So when he sets his alarm clock - and it goes off loudly - we all know it′s time to pay attention. This extraordinary testament to what is right and wrong with cultural studies today will reverberate across the globe." Toby Miller, University of California This original, sharp and engaging book draws the reader into a compelling exploration of cultural studies in the twenty-first century. It offers a level-headed account of where cultural studies has come from, the methodological and theoretical dilemmas that it faces today and an agenda for its future development. In an age in which the relevance of cultural studies has been called into question, this book seeks to generate debate. Focusing upon the actual practice of cultural studies within the university today, it asks whether or not cultural studies has really managed to maintain a connection with its original political and ethical mission and comments on the strategies needed to regain the initiative. Written by a world class figure in cultural studies, each chapter supports and guides the reader by introducing the key issues, reviewing the relevant commentary and offering a critical conclusion of how each theme fits into a bigger picture. This timely and provocative consideration of cultural studies as a global discipline will be essential reading for academics and students working in the field for years to come.

Revisiting Richard Hoggart’s classic work The Uses of Literacy (1957), this book applies Hoggart’s framework to media literacy today, examining media literacy’s various uses, the tensions between them and what this means for people, communities and the contemporary configurations of social class. In The Uses of Literacy (1957), Richard Hoggart wrote about how his working class community, in the North of England, were at once using the new ‘mass literacy’ for self-improvement, education, social mobility and civic engagement and, at the same time, the powerful were seizing the opportunity also to use this expansion in literacy, through the new popular culture, for commercial and political ends. Working in the intersection between education, cultural studies and literacies, the authors write about media literacy as a contested, under-theorised field through Hoggart’s ‘line of sight’ to provide a perspective on media literacy and working class culture today. This reimagining of a classic work, piercingly relevant to studies of class in Britain in 2019, will be of key interest to scholars in Media Studies, as well as interested readers in Communication Studies, Literacy Studies, Cultural Studies, Politics and Sociology.

Queer media studies has mostly focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) visibility, stereotypes, and positive images, but media technologies aren’t just vehicles for representations, they also shape them. How can queer theory and queer methodologies complicate our understanding of communication technologies, their structures and uses, and the cultural and political implications of these? How can queer technologies inform debates about affect, temporality, and publics? This book presents new scholarship that addresses queer media production and practices across a wide range of media, including television, music, zines, video games, mobile applications, and online spaces. The authors consider how LGBTQ representations and reception are shaped by technological affordances and constraints. Chapters deal with critical contemporary concepts such as counterpublics, affect, temporality, nonbinary practices, queer technique, and transmediation to explore intersections among communication and media studies and cutting-edge queer and transgender theory. This collection moves beyond considering LGBTQ representations as they appear in media to consider the central role of technologies in understanding intersections among gender, sexuality, and media. Even the most heteromasculine technologies can be queered, yet we can’t assume queerness works in the same way across different media. Emergent media technologies afford queer worldmaking, but these worlds are forged between normalization and niche marketing. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

This anthology is designed to assist teachers and students in learning how to better understand and interpret our common culture and everyday life. With a focus on contemporary media, consumer, and digital culture, this book combines classic and original writings by both leading and rising scholars in the field. The chapters present key theories, concepts, and methodologies of critical cultural and media studies, as well as cutting-edge research into new media. Sections on teaching media/cultural studies and concrete case studies provide practical examples that illuminate contemporary culture, ranging from new forms of digital media and consumer culture to artifacts from TV and film, including Barbie and Big Macs, soap operas, Talk TV, Facebook, and YouTube. The lively articles show that media/cultural studies is an exciting and relevant arena, and this text should enable students and citizens to become informed readers and critics of their culture and society.

An anthology of essays across the broad spectrum of cultural studies with an international lineup of scholars and semioticians from the United States and Italy. Fully illustrated in color with over 100 color plates.

This is an open access book.According to Castells, power now rests in networks: “the logic of the network is more powerful than the powers of the network” (quoted in Weber, 2002, p. 104) – it is whether nation states or local communities are deeply affected, especially by inclusion in and exclusion from the global networks that structure a various sectors in society at any level. Thus it is also crucial look closely at exclusion from and inclusion in different kinds of social structures where connectivity and access to networks are essential, being aware that people at the bottom are those who, with nothing to offer the network, are excluded. Castells’ arguments shows us how the new forms of network society offer challenges in a way that despite the disappearance of conventional ties, exploitation, marginalization, exclusion and differentiation remain. In what follows, scholarships are invited to build an academic discussion on characterizing the structure and dynamics of societies in the world of the twenty-first century. Thus, scholar may come to look at the meaning of being in a network society by examining the role of network society within the complexity of socio-cultural, political and economic circumstances in strengthening the role of science in overcoming local, national, regional and global problems. But scientific research is also required to identify a wide variety of solutions to societal problems enhanced by the network society, which no longer relate solely to a particular discipline, but are multi- and trans-disciplinary. In addition, recent research has changed the traditional role of academia, demanding more collaboration in the production of science, not only among universities, but also among researchers, social practitioners and policymakers. Considering these issues, the fourth Asia-Pacific Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (APRiSH) will be hosted by the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Indonesia (FISIP UI) in 2019 under the theme The Network Society: Continuity and Change. Scientific inputs from all parts of the world are welcome, academically and practically. Various perspectives, based on mono-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary research are expected to examine the problems and contribute to solutions.