The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture ...(展开全部)

The German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) is recognized as a leading early twentieth-century European social theorist. This collection enables the reader to engage with the full range of Simmel's dazzling contributions to the study of culture. It opens with Simmel's basic essays on defining culture, its changes and its crisis. These are followed by more sp...(展开全部)

Video games have been a central feature of the cultural landscape for over twenty years and now rival older media like movies, television, and music in popularity and cultural influence. Yet there have been relatively few attempts to understand the video game as an independent medium. Most such efforts focus on the earliest generation of text-based adventures ("Zork, " for exam...(展开全部)

This title explores the emerging field of material culture and demonstrates that the study of artifacts can disclose important facts about past cultures. Eighteen essays describe how to "read" artifacts, how to "listen" to landscapes and locations, and how to apply methods and theories to historical inquiry to reconstruct and reinterpret the past.

Review "Scott Lash and Celia Lury reconceptualize our understanding of cultural industries in the context of globalization. By analysing and documenting the shift from representation to objects in contemporary production of meaning, they open new avenues for research on communication and culture: things materialize our imaginary, we communicate through objects. This pathbreakin...(展开全部)

In the first half of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno wrote about the ‘culture industry’. For Adorno, culture too along with the products of factory labour was increasingly becoming a commodity. Now, in what they call the ‘global culture industry’, Scott Lash and Celia Lury argue that Adorno’s worst nightmares have come true. Their new book tells the compelling story of ho...(展开全部)

Drawing on a range of examples from Western and developing cultures, this book offers a re-reading of the contemporary society as the product of both individual and collective identity and behaviour. Marxist interpretations of the expansion in the range and number of material goods have tended to view people as estranged from the objects they produce, while massive consumption ...(展开全部)

Drawing on a range of examples from Western and developing cultures, this book offers a re-reading of the contemporary society as the product of both individual and collective identity and behaviour. Marxist interpretations of the expansion in the range and number of material goods have tended to view people as estranged from the objects they produce, while massive consumption ...(展开全部)

Japan in the Asia-Pacific War years is usually remembered for economic deprivation, political repression, and cultural barrenness. Benjamin Uchiyama argues that although the war created the opportunity for the state to expand its control over society and mass culture, it also fractured Japanese people's sense of identity, spilling out through a cultural framework which is best ...(展开全部)

The spirit of adventure is at the heart of Jonathan Spence's widely acclaimed scholarship on the modern history of China. This vitality, fleshed out with deep research and attired in elegant style, has drawn countless readers to subjects otherwise approachable only by experts. Through eight books, from the story of the early eighteenth century Manchu bondservant Ts'ao Yin to hi...(展开全部)