Download or read book Comfort in Contemporary Culture written by Dorothee Birke and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2020-10-31 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comfort is a prominent and highly loaded concept, as popular discourses on cosy environments, safe spaces, but also the importance of ›getting out of your comfort zone‹ attest. This volume is the first to investigate ›comfort‹ as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone in contemporary culture. Taken together, the contributions to the volume offer an overview of different approaches to and conceptualisations of comfort in linguistics, in literary, media, and cultural studies, and art history. They showcase how ›comfort‹ serves as a valuable lens to analyse contemporary artworks and developments, e.g. live theatre broadcasting or political interventions in the US-American media sphere.
Download or read book Comfort and Contemporary Culture written by Andrew Hickey and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-08 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be comfortable stands as an aspiration of the times; to be comfortable defines what it means to live ‘the good life’. We talk about such things as maintaining a comfortable home, a comfortable lifestyle and a comfortable retirement. We seek out comforts in the relationships we sustain, the leisure practices we enact and the possessions we accumulate. We look for promises of comfort in the words of a close friend and our next pair of shoes. Furnished in the home, optionally outfitted in cars, scrutinised in holiday brochures and brushed up against in the clothes we wear, comfort is there, marking distinctions and framing decisions about what it means to live well. But by consuming comfort in the ways that we do, we do ourselves harm and limit our only planet of its capacity to provide for the requirements of life. This is a world that grows ever more uncomfortable because of comfort and when linked to consumption and excess, indulgence and apathy, it occurs that comfort carries effects that have existential consequence. Utilising analyses of popular culture and ethnographic accounts of everyday life, Comfort and Contemporary Culture works through case study accounts of comfort’s enactment to pose questions around what it means to live, now. Comfort and Contemporary Culture poses alternative renderings of the idea of comfort to return the concept to its earliest roots in notions of confortāre. The revisioning of what we take as comfort requires urgent attention, with the ecological, social and intrapersonal implications of comfort’s current excesses demonstrative of this need. This book will be relevant reading for students and scholars of cultural studies and sociology, cultural anthropology, social geography and studies of community.
Download or read book COMFORT AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE written by Andrew T. Hickey and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be comfortable stands as an aspiration of the times; to be comfortable defines what it means to live the good life'. We talk about such things as maintaining a comfortable home, a comfortable lifestyle and a comfortable retirement. We seek out comforts in the relationships we sustain, the leisure practices we enact and the possessions we accumulate. We look for promises of comfort in the words of a close friend and our next pair of shoes. Furnished in the home, optionally outfitted in cars, scrutinised in holiday brochures and brushed up against in the clothes we wear, comfort is there, marking distinctions and framing decisions about what it means to live well. But by consuming comfort in the ways that we do, we do ourselves harm and limit our only planet of its capacity to provide for the requirements of life. This is a world that grows ever more uncomfortable because of comfort and when linked to consumption and excess, indulgence and apathy, it occurs that comfort carries effects that have existential consequence. Utilising analyses of popular culture and ethnographic accounts of everyday life, Comfort and Contemporary Culture works through case study accounts of comfort's enactment to pose questions around what it means to live, now. Comfort and Contemporary Culture poses alternative renderings of the idea of comfort to return the concept to its earliest roots in notions of confortre. The revisioning of what we take as comfort requires urgent attention, with the ecological, social and intrapersonal implications of comfort's current excesses demonstrative of this need. This book will be relevant reading for students and scholars of cultural studies and sociology, cultural anthropology, social geography and studies of community.
Download or read book Comfort and Contemporary Culture written by ANDREW. HICKEY and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2023-11-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilising analyses of popular culture and ethnographic accounts of everyday life, Comfort and Contemporary Culture works through case study accounts of comfort's enactment to pose questions around what it means to live, now.
Download or read book Art and the Home written by Imogen Racz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our homes contain us, but they are also within us. They can represent places to be ourselves, to recollect childhood memories, or to withdraw into adult spaces of intimacy; they can be sites for developing rituals, family relationships, and acting out cultural expectations. Like the personal, social, and cultural elements out of which they are constructed, homes can be not only comforting, but threatening too. The home is a rich theme running through post-war western art, and it continues to engage contemporary artists today - yet it has been the subject of relatively little critical writing. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday is the first single-authored, up-to-date book on the subject. Imogen Racz provides a theme-led discussion about how the physical experience of the dwelling space and the psychological complexities of the domestic are manifested in art, focusing mainly on sculpture, installation and object-based practice; discussing the work and ideas of artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Gordon Matta-Clark, George Segal and Cornelia Parker within their artistic and cultural contexts.
Download or read book Culture Comfort written by Katherine C. Grier and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Comfort of Things written by Daniel Miller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-24 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we know about ordinary people in our towns and cities, about what really matters to them and how they organize their lives today? This book visits an ordinary street and looks into thirty households. It reveals the aspirations and frustrations, the tragedies and accomplishments that are played out behind the doors. It focuses on the things that matter to these people, which quite often turn out to be material things – their house, the dog, their music, the Christmas decorations. These are the means by which they express who they have become, and relationships to objects turn out to be central to their relationships with other people – children, lovers, brothers and friends. If this is a typical street in a modern city like London, then what kind of society is this? It’s not a community, nor a neighbourhood, nor is it a collection of isolated individuals. It isn’t dominated by the family. We assume that social life is corrupted by materialism, made superficial and individualistic by a surfeit of consumer goods, but this is misleading. If the street isn’t any of these things, then what is it? This brilliant and revealing portrayal of a street in modern London, written by one the most prominent anthropologists, shows how much is to be gained when we stop lamenting what we think we used to be and focus instead on what we are now becoming. It reveals the forms by which ordinary people make sense of their lives, and the ways in which objects become our companions in the daily struggle to make life meaningful.
Download or read book Contemporary Latina o Theater written by Jon D. Rossini and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Contemporary Latina/o Theater, Jon D. Rossini explores the complex relationship between theater and the creation of ethnicity in an unprecedented examination of six Latina/o playwrights and their works: Miguel Piñero, Luis Valdez, Guillermo Reyes, Octavio Solis, José Rivera, and Cherríe Moraga. Rossini exposes how these writers use the genre as a tool to reveal and transform existing preconceptions about their culture. Through “wrighting”—the triplicate process of writing plays, righting misconceptions about ethnic identity, and creating an entirely new way of understanding Latina/o culture—these playwrights directly intervene in current conversations regarding ethnic identity, providing the tools for audiences to reexplore their previously held perspectives outside the theater. Examining these writers and their works in both cultural and historical contexts, Rossini reveals how playwrights use the liminal space of the stage—an area on the thresholds of both theory and reality—to “wright” new insights into Latina/o identity. They use the limits of the theater itself to offer practical explorations of issues that could otherwise be discussed only in highly theoretical terms. Rossini traces playwrights’ methods as they address some of the most challenging issues facing contemporary Latinas/os in America: from the struggles for ethnic solidarity and the dangers of a community based in fear, to stereotypes of Latino masculinity and the problematic fusion of ethnicity and politics. Rossini discusses the looming specter of the border in theater, both as a conceptual device and as a literal reality—a crucial subject for modern Latinas/os, given recent legislation and other actions. Throughout, the author draws intriguing comparisons to the cultural limbo in which many Latinas/os find themselves today. An indispensable volume for anyone interested in drama and ethnic studies, Contemporary Latina/o Theater underscores the power of theatricality in exploring and rethinking ethnicity. Rossini provides the most in-depth analysis of these plays to date, offering a groundbreaking look at the ability of playwrights to correct misconceptions and create fresh perspectives on diversity, culture, and identity in Latina/o America.
Download or read book Culture and Comfort written by Katherine C Grier and published by . This book was released on 1997-06-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Culture and Comfort written by Katherine Grier and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Culture and Comfort Katherine C. Grier shows how the design and furnishings of the mid-nineteenth century parlor reflected the self-image of the Victorian middle class. Parlors provided public facades for formal occasions and represented an attempt to resolve the often opposing ideals of gentility and sincerity to which American culture aspired. The book traces the fortunes of the parlor and its upholstery from its early incarnations in “palace” hotels, railroad cars, steamships, and photographers' studios; through its mid-century heyday, when even remote frontier homes could boast “suites” of red plush sofas and chairs; to its slow, uneven metamorphosis into the more versatile living room. The author argues that even as the home increasingly was seen as a haven from industralization and commercialization, its ties to industry and commerce—in the form of more affordable, machine-made furniture and drapery—became stronger. By the 1920s the parlor's decline signaled both a blurring of the Victorian distinctions between public and private manners and the transfer of middle-class identity from the home to the automobile. Describing the deportment a parlor required, the activities it sheltered, and the marketing and manufacturing breakthroughs that made it available to all, Culture and Comfort reveals the full range of cultural messages conveyed by nineteenth-century parlor materials.
Download or read book Sleep in Early Modern England written by Sasha Handley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX
Download or read book Air Conditioning written by Hsuan L. Hsu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2024-02-08 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Air conditioning aspires to be unnoticed. Yet, by manipulating the air around us, it quietly conditions the baseline conditions of our physical, mental, and emotional experience. From offices and libraries to contemporary art museums and shopping malls, climate control systems shore up the fantasy of a comfortable, self-contained body that does not have to reckon with temperature. At the same time that air conditioning makes temperature a non-issue in (some) people's daily lives, thermoception-or the sensory perception of temperature-is being carefully studied and exploited as a tool of marketing, social control, and labor management. Yet air conditioning isn't for everybody: its reliance on carbon fuels divides the world into habitable, climate-controlled bubbles and increasingly uninhabitable environments where AC is unavailable. Hsuan Hsu's Air Conditioning explores questions about culture, ethics, ecology, and social justice raised by the history and uneven distribution of climate controlling technologies. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Download or read book Approaches to Language and Culture written by Svenja Völkel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-08-22 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.
Download or read book Culture as Comfort written by Sarah J. Mahler and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-136) and index.
Download or read book The Relevance of Alan Watts in Contemporary Culture written by Peter J. Columbus and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whilst accounting for the present-day popularity and relevance of Alan Watts’ contributions to psychology, religion, arts, and humanities, this interdisciplinary collection grapples with the ongoing criticisms which surround Watts’ life and work. Offering rich examination of as yet underexplored aspects of Watts’ influence in 1960s counterculture, this volume offers unique application of Watts’ thinking to contemporary issues and critically engages with controversies surrounding the commodification of Watts’ ideas, his alleged misreading of Biblical texts, and his apparent distortion of Asian religions and spirituality. Featuring a broad range of international contributors and bringing Watts’ ideas squarely into the contemporary context, the text provides a comprehensive, yet nuanced exploration of Watts’ thinking on psychotherapy, Buddhism, language, music, and sexuality. This text will benefit researchers, doctoral students, and academics in the fields of psychotherapy, phenomenology, and the philosophy of psychology more broadly. Those interested in Jungian psychotherapy, spirituality, and the self and social identity will also enjoy this volume.
Download or read book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary written by Thomas Leddy and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the aesthetics of the objects and environments we encounter in daily life. Thomas Leddy stresses the close relationship between everyday aesthetics and the aesthetics of art, but places special emphasis on neglected aesthetic terms such as ‘neat,’ ‘messy,’ ‘pretty,’ ‘lovely,’ ‘cute,’ and ‘pleasant.’ The author advances a general theory of aesthetic experience that can account for our appreciation of art, nature, and the everyday.
Download or read book Face to Face written by Steve Wilkins and published by Canon Press & Book Service. This book was released on 2002 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, more and more of us are growing up in abnormal families and hostile environments, and, consequently, we don't understand the basics of friendship or hospitality. Many moderns, even Christians, try to deny the importance of these virtues by sinking deeper into their selfishness, only to complain of greater loneliness. In this book, Steve Wilkins seeks to call us back to the joyous obligations of friendship and hospitality. He spells out the biblical virtues that nurture both, as well as the stumbling blocks that will hinder us.
