Download or read book Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context written by Grace Lees-Maffei and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context explains key ways of understanding and interpreting the graphic designs we see all around us, in advertising, branding, packaging and fashion. It situates these designs in their cultural and social contexts. Drawing examples from a range of design genres, leading design historians Grace Lees-Maffei and Nicolas P. Maffei explain theories of semiotics, postmodernism and globalisation, and consider issues and debates within visual communication theory such as legibility, the relationship of word and image, gender and identity, and the impact of digital forms on design. Their discussion takes in well-known brands like Alessi, Nike, Unilever and Tate, and everyday designed things including slogan t-shirts, car advertising, ebooks, corporate logos, posters and music packaging.

Download or read book Balut written by Margaret Magat and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Margaret Magat explores both the traditional and popular culture contexts of eating balut. Balut-fertilized duck or chicken eggs that have developed into fully formed embryos with feathers and beaks-is a delicacy which elicits passionate responses. Hailed as an aphrodisiac in Filipino culture, balut is often seen and used as an object of revulsion in Western popular culture. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, reality television programs, travel shows, food blogs, and balut-eating contests, Magat examines balut production and consumption, its role in drinking rituals, sex, and also the vampire-like legends behind it. Balut reveals how traditional foods are used in the performance of identity and ethnicity, inspiring a virtual online cottage industry via social media. It also looks at the impact globalization and migration are having on cultural practices and food consumption across the world. The first academic book on balut, this is essential reading for anyone in food studies, folklore studies, anthropology, and Asian American studies.

Download or read book What is Narrative Research written by Corinne Squire and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book brings together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, it examines how narrative research is conducted and applied. It operates as a practical introductory guide, basic enough for first-time researchers, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. The authors guide readers through current debates about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts.

Download or read book Cultural Science written by John Hartley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or 'demes' (organised and productive subpopulation; 'demos'). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams's 'culture is ordinary' approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: -Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist ('linked brains') perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; -Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; -The clash of systems - including demes - is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; -Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; -The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled 'demic concentration' of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary 'consilience', linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation.

Download or read book Television on Demand written by MJ Robinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the beginning of broadcasting, radio and television producers have pushed their shows to audiences in controlled environments that end in a discrete and quantifiable site to be transformed into advertising rates. Today's viewers program their DVR's to create their own viewing schedules, wait to watch entire seasons in marathon DVD viewing sessions and stream shows to their mobile devices. The rise of a curatorial culture where viewers create their own entertainment packages and select from a buffet of viewing options and venues has caused a seismic shift for the traditional television industry. While audiences clamor for more story-driven and scripted entertainment, their new viewing habits undermine the dominant economic structures that fund quality episodic series.Television on Demand examines how we have reached this present moment; and considers the viable future(s) of this crucial culture industry. This leads to an understanding of an empowered audience that realizes its means of control of how it consumes media, as well as a new way of looking at the industry we have traditionally and currently call 'television.'

Download or read book Bad News written by Rob Brotherton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Suspicious Minds There was a time when the news came once a day, in the morning newspaper. A time when the only way to see what was happening around the world was to catch the latest newsreel at the movies. Times have changed. Now we're inundated. The news is no longer confined to a radio in the living room, or to a nightly half-hour timeslot on the television. Pundits pontificate on news networks 24 hours a day. We carry the news with us, getting instant alerts about events around the globe. Yet despite this unprecedented abundance of information, it seems increasingly difficult to know what's true and what's not. In Bad News, Rob Brotherton delves into the psychology of news, reviewing how the latest research can help navigate this supposedly post-truth world. Which buzzwords describe psychological reality, and which are empty sound bites? How much of this news is unprecedented, and how much is business as usual? Are we doomed to fall for fake news, or is fake news ... fake news? There has been considerable psychological research into the fundamental questions underlying this phenomenon. How do we form our beliefs, and why do we end up believing things that are wrong? How much information can we possibly process, and what is the internet doing to our attention spans? Ultimately this book answers one of the greatest questions of the age: how can we all be smarter consumers of news?

Download or read book Contemporary Cinema of Latin America written by Deborah Shaw and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-03-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on a selection of internationally known Latin American films. The chapters are organized around national categories, grounding the readings not only in the context of social and political conditions, but also in those of each national film industry. It is a very useful text for students of the region's cultural output, as well as for students of film studies who wish to learn more about the innovative and often controversial films discussed.

Download or read book Micah An International Theological Commentary written by Mark S. Gignilliat and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this International Theological Commentary on the book of Micah, Mark S. Gignilliat begins by reflecting upon the nature of such commentary in relation to biblical interpretation, before situating Micah within current critical engagement with the book of the Twelve and focusing specifically on Micah's relation with Jonah and Nahum. The main body of the commentary is devoted to the interpretation and exegesis of Micah, engaging widely with theologians and biblical scholars. Gignilliat addresses literary issues involving the structure, grammar, and textual variants of given passages and - in keeping with the goals of the International Theological Commentary - provides analysis of Scripture's literal sense in relation to its theological subject matter. This volume offers scholars, clergy and lay readers alike a unique combination of critical exegesis and rigorous theological interpretation.

Download or read book Modern Architecture and the Sacred written by Ross Anderson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume, Modern Architecture and the Sacred, presents a timely reappraisal of the manifold engagements that modern architecture has had with 'the sacred'. It comprises fourteen individual chapters arranged in three thematic sections – Beginnings and Transformations of the Modern Sacred; Buildings for Modern Worship; and Semi-Sacred Settings in the Cultural Topography of Modernity. The first interprets the intellectual and artistic roots of modern ideas of the sacred in the post-Enlightenment period and tracks the transformation of these in architecture over time. The second studies the ways in which organized religion responded to the challenges of the new modern self-understanding, and then the third investigates the ways that abstract modern notions of the sacred have been embodied in the ersatz sacred contexts of theatres, galleries, memorials and museums. While centring on Western architecture during the decisive period of the first half of the 20th century – a time that takes in the early musings on spirituality by some of the avant-garde in defiance of Sachlichkeit and the machine aesthetic – the volume also considers the many-varied appropriations of sacrality that architects have made up to the present day, and also in social and cultural contexts beyond the West.

Download or read book The History and Ethics of Authenticity written by Kyle Michael James Shuttleworth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the post-enlightenment problems of meaning and freedom, Kyle Michael James Shuttleworth traces the historical development of the ethics of authenticity in a lucid and vigorous study. The emergence of authenticity as an ethical ideal is probed in relation to the rise of social freedom and individualism which opens up conversations and disagreements with the German Idealists, and later, Habermas, Foucault, and MacIntyre. Taking heed of these intellectual predecessors and proponents of ethical authenticity leads to an original conception of a socio-existential account of ethical authenticity, made possible by the work of both Taylor and Sartre. Moving beyond virtue ethics, discourse ethics and Foucauldian notions of self-care, The History and Ethics of Authenticity constructs a practical ethics of authenticity that is both embedded in and able to transcend the current moment. Making use of contemporary reference points, including the rise of social media, capitalist branding, and competing appeals to identity, authenticity becomes an achievable ethical ideal.

Download or read book Perspectives on New Religious Movements written by John A. Saliba and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a dispassionate analysis of new religious movements, charting their growth and examining them from a variety of perspectives – sociological, psychological, legal and theological. Saliba then questions whether or not membership harms those who join these new movements and assesses the charge that they 'brainwash' their adherents.

Download or read book English Renaissance Tragedy written by Peter Holbrook and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book's underlying claim is that English Renaissance tragedy addresses live issues in the experience of readers and spectators today: it is not a genre to be studied only for aesthetic or “heritage” reasons. The book considers the way in which tragedy in general, and English Renaissance tragedy in particular, addresses ideas of freedom, understood both from an individual and a sociopolitical perspective. Tragedy since the Greeks has addressed the constraints and necessities to which human life is subject (Fate, the gods, chance, the conflict between state and individual) as well as the human desire for autonomy and self-direction. In short, English Renaissance Tragedy: Ideas of Freedom shows how the tragic drama of Shakespeare's age addresses problems of freedom, slavery, and tyranny in ways that speak to us now.

Download or read book Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism Christianity and Islam written by Birgit Meyer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-24 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Oslo and Utrecht University. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are known to privilege words over images. This book shows, however, that the reality is more complex. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen explores the complex procedures used to render the invisible as visible and the elusive as tangible in these three traditions. Working from different disciplinary angles, contributors reflect on figuration and sensation in biblical culture, medieval Jewish culture, the imagination of the unseen in Islamic settings, Christian assaults on 'idolatry' in Africa, baroque and modern Church art, contemporary Eastern Orthodox tradition, photography on the East African coast, European opera and literature, and more. The book shows that the three religious traditions have formed sensorial regimes: embodied habits, traditions and standards for seeing, sensing, displaying, and figuring that which could not, or should not, be seen. So, the desire for seeing the invisible and experiencing the beyond are paradoxically confirmed, contested and controlled, by the sensorial regimes in vogue. This carries over even into secularized use of religious figurations in arts and literature. Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen is important reading for scholars of anthropology, religious studies, Jewish studies, Christian studies, Islamic studies, art history, cultural studies, biblical studies and archaeology.

Download or read book Political Theory and Architecture written by Duncan Bell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can political theory teach us about architecture, and what can it learn from paying closer attention to architecture? The essays assembled in this volume begin from a common postulate: that architecture is not merely a backdrop to political life but a political force in its own right. Each in their own way, they aim to give countenance to that claim, and to show how our thinking about politics can be enriched by reflecting on the built environment. The collection advances four lines of inquiry, probing the connection between architecture and political regimes; examining how architecture can be constitutive of the ethical and political realm; uncovering how architecture is enmeshed in logics of governmentality and in the political economy of the city; and asking to what extent we can think of architecture-tributary as it is to the flows of capital-as a partially autonomous social force. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the salience of a range of political theoretical approaches for the analysis of architecture, and show that architecture deserves a place as an object of study in political theory, alongside institutions, laws, norms, practices, imaginaries, and discourses.

Download or read book From Women to the World written by Elizabeth Filippouli and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Independent Book of the Month Featured in Vogue Arabia Featured by Vanity Fair Acclaimed writer Elif Shafak writes a letter to Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand after the Christchurch attack. Actress Yasmine AlMassri pens a poem about war for her mother. Activist and TV presenter June Sarpong addresses designer Diane Von Furstenberg. These are a few of the moving and insightful letters that make up From Women to the World, a book by journalist, author and executive Elizabeth Filippouli, which brings together letters from a global group of accomplished women - politicians, royalty, actors, writers, activists and more – every one addressed to a woman who means something to each of them. The results are extraordinary, heartfelt letters to historical figures, mentors, family members or inspiring ordinary people. Each is based on these women's personal histories and experiences, drawing attention to social issues such as homelessness, war, LGBT activism, mental health care or the plight of international refugees. From Women to the World is more than a simple collection of letters - it is a book that shows a new model of leadership based on emotional intelligence and demonstrates how we have the wisdom to inspire, motivate and reinvent our world.

Download or read book Sport for Development and Peace written by Simon Darnell and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sport and International Development offers a critical sociological analysis of the emerging Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) movement. The book addresses a gap in the literature by focusing on the social and political implications of sport on development. It is a timely and important addition to the series.

Download or read book Bodies of Water written by Astrida Neimanis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them – from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it. Building on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis's book is a landmark study that brings a new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment.