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Book Cultural Software

    Book Details:
  • Author : J. M. Balkin
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 1998-01-01
  • ISBN : 9780300084504
  • Pages : 354 pages

Download or read book Cultural Software written by J. M. Balkin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book J. M. Balkin offers a strikingly original theory of cultural evolution, a theory that explains shared understandings, disagreement, and diversity within cultures. Drawing on many fields of study--including anthropology, evolutionary theory, cognitive science, linguistics, sociology, political theory, philosophy, social psychology, and law--the author explores how cultures grow and spread, how shared understandings arise, and how people of different cultures can understand and evaluate each other's views. Cultural evolution occurs through the transmission of cultural information and know-how--cultural software--in human minds, Balkin says. Individuals embody cultural software and spread it to others through communication and social learning. Ideology, the author contends, is neither a special nor a pathological form of thought but an ordinary product of the evolution of cultural software. Because cultural understanding is a patchwork of older imperfect tools that are continually adapted to solve new problems, human understanding is partly adequate and partly inadequate to the pursuit of justice. Balkin presents numerous examples that illuminate the sources of ideological effects and their contributions to injustice. He also enters the current debate over multiculturalism, applying his theory to problems of mutual understanding between people who hold different worldviews. He argues that cultural understanding presupposes transcendent ideals and shows how both ideological analysis of others and ideological self-criticism are possible.

Book Brain and Culture

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bruce E. Wexler
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2008-08-29
  • ISBN : 0262265141
  • Pages : 313 pages

Download or read book Brain and Culture written by Bruce E. Wexler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research shows that between birth and early adulthood the brain requires sensory stimulation to develop physically. The nature of the stimulation shapes the connections among neurons that create the neuronal networks necessary for thought and behavior. By changing the cultural environment, each generation shapes the brains of the next. By early adulthood, the neuroplasticity of the brain is greatly reduced, and this leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the environment: during the first part of life, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment; by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind. In Brain and Culture, Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. These difficulties are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of interethnic violence. Integrating recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and developmental psychology—with illuminating references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history, and politics—Wexler presents a wealth of detail to support his arguments. The groundbreaking connections he makes allow for reconceptualization of the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence.

Book Ideology and Modern Culture

Download or read book Ideology and Modern Culture written by John B. Thompson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major new work, Thompson develops an original account of ideology and relates it to the analysis of culture and mass communication in modern Societies. Thompson offers a concise and critical appraisal of major contributions to the theory of ideology, from Marx and Mannheim, to Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas. He argues that these thinkers - and social and political theorists more generally - have failed to deal adequately with the nature of mass communication and its role in the modern world. In order to overcome this deficiency, Thompson undertakes a wide-ranging analysis of the development of mass communication, outlining a distinctive social theory of the mass media and their impact.

Book Culture and Ideology under the Seleukids

Download or read book Culture and Ideology under the Seleukids written by Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume offers a timely (re-)appraisal of Seleukid cultural dynamics. While the engagement of Seleukid kings with local populations and the issue of “Hellenization” are still debated, a movement away from the Greco-centric approach to the study of the sources has gained pace. Increasingly textual sources are read alongside archaeological and numismatic evidence, and relevant near-eastern records are consulted. Our study of Seleukid kingship adheres to two game-changing principles: 1. We are not interested in judging the Seleukids as “strong” or “weak” whether in their interactions with other Hellenistic kingdoms or with the populations they ruled. 2. While appreciating the value of the social imaginaries approach (Stavrianopoulou, 2013), we argue that the use of ethnic identity in antiquity remains problematic. Through a pluralistic approach, in line with the complex cultural considerations that informed Seleukid royal agendas, we examine the concept of kingship and its gender aspects; tensions between centre and periphery; the level of “acculturation” intended and achieved under the Seleukids; the Seleukid-Ptolemaic interrelations. As rulers of a multi-cultural empire, the Seleukids were deeply aware of cultural politics.

Book Culture  Ideology and Social Process

Download or read book Culture Ideology and Social Process written by Tony Bennett and published by B.T. Batsford. This book was released on 1981 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of readings aims to bring together in one volume representative statements of the different theoretical traditions which have been influential in shaping the subject of cultural studies, now an established part of the teaching of sociology, literature and related areas. Conceived to meet the needs of students on the Open University course Popular Culture, the volume aims to provide an introduction to the main concepts and contemporary debates in the field. Amongst the major themes are the contrast between culturalist and structuralist approaches, the relevance of Gramsci's work to cultural theory, and the contribution of perspectives standing outside Marxist debate.

Book Culture  Ideology  And World Order

Download or read book Culture Ideology And World Order written by R.b.j. Walker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary discourse about human affairs is largely grounded in the specific historical experience and interests of a few dominant societies. This poses an important challenge to all those who urge that we need to adopt a global perspective on modern political life, whether in terms of international relations, comparative and developmental politi

Book The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form

Download or read book The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form written by Francesca Orsini and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2022-02-23 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely volume focuses on the period of decolonization and the Cold War as the backdrop to the emergence of new and diverse literary aesthetics that accompanied anti-imperialist commitments and Afro-Asian solidarity. Competing internationalist frameworks produced a flurry of writings that made Asian, African and other world literatures visible to each other for the first time. The book’s essays examine a host of print culture formats (magazines, newspapers, manifestos, conference proceedings, ephemera, etc.) and modes of cultural mediation and transnational exchange that enabled the construction of a variously inflected Third-World culture which played a determining role throughout the Cold War. The essays in this collection focus on locations as diverse as Morocco, Tunisia, South Asia, China, Spain, and Italy, and on texts in Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Italian, and Spanish. In doing so, they highlight the combination of local debates and struggles, and internationalist networks and aspirations that found expression in essays, novels, travelogues, translations, reviews, reportages and other literary forms. With its comparative study of print cultures with a focus on decolonization and the Cold War, the volume makes a major contribution both to studies of postcolonial literary and print cultures, and to cultural Cold War studies in multilingual and non-Western contexts, and will be of interest to historians and literary scholars alike.

Book Ideology and Cultural Identity

Download or read book Ideology and Cultural Identity written by Jorge Larrain and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Jorge Larrain discusses three of the most important concepts in the social sciences: ideology, reason and cultural identity.

Book Power and Culture

Download or read book Power and Culture written by Jonathan Osmond and published by Edizioni Plus. This book was released on 2007 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book New World Soundings

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard M. Morse
  • Publisher : JHU Press
  • Release : 2020-02-03
  • ISBN : 1421435101
  • Pages : 378 pages

Download or read book New World Soundings written by Richard M. Morse and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1989. In New World Soundings, cultural historian Richard Morse takes a series of sharply focused looks at the Americas. He inquires into the ways in which speech and poetry evoke the common historical experience of North and South America and examines the transatlantic "sea changes" of European languages. He uses political ideology to contrast the traditions of Anglo and Latin America, while surveying contemporary pressures for ideological change. In the book's final sections, he addresses the North-South transaction from yet three more angles, ruminating on the problems involved in conveying the Latin American experience to U.S. students, considering the impediments to U.S.-Puerto Rican understanding, and recounting the mythic adventures of McLuhanaima, "the world's first Brazilianist," as he travels through the exotic land he has chosen for definitive research.

Book Culture  Ideology and Politics  Routledge Revivals

Download or read book Culture Ideology and Politics Routledge Revivals written by Raphael Samuel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1982, this book is inspired the ideas generated by Eric Hobsbawm, and has taken shape around a unifying preoccupation with the symbolic order and its relationship to political and religious belief. It explores some of the oldest question in Marxist historiography, for example the relationship of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, art and social life, and also some of the newest and most problematic questions, such as the relationship of dreams and fantasy to political action, or of past and present — historical consciousness — to the making of ideology. The essays, which range widely over period and place, are intended to break new ground and take on difficult questions.

Book Ideology  Culture   the Process of Schooling

Download or read book Ideology Culture the Process of Schooling written by Henry A. Giroux and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1984-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book lays bare the ideological and political character of the positivist rationality that has been the primary theoretical underpinning of educational research in the United States. These assumptions have expressed themselves in the form and content of curriculum, classroom social relations, classroom cultural artifacts, and the experiences and beliefs of teachers and students. Have existing radical critiques provided the theoretical building blocks for a new theory of pedagogy? The author attempts to move beyond the abstract, negative characteristics of many radical critiques, which are often based on false dualisms that fail to link structure and intentionally, content and process, ideology and hegemony, etc. He also is critical of the over-determined models of socialization and the abstract celebration of subjectivity that underlies much of the false utopianism of many radical perspectives. Professor Giroux begins to lay the theoretical groundwork for developing a radical pedagogy that connects critical theory with the need for social action in the interest of individual freedom and social reconstruction. Author note: Henry A. Giroux is Assistant Professor of Education at Boston University. He is the co-editor of Curriculum and Instruction: Alternatives in Education and The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education.

Book Exits from the Labyrinth

    Book Details:
  • Author : Claudio Lomnitz-Adler
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 1992
  • ISBN : 0520077881
  • Pages : 400 pages

Download or read book Exits from the Labyrinth written by Claudio Lomnitz-Adler and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Review: "Scholarly contribution to the understanding of national culture. First part studies cultural production and ideology in Morelos and in the Huasteca Potosina. Second part focuses on history of legitimacy and charisma in Mexican politics, and relationship between the national community and racial ideology. Based on extensive field work and participant observation"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57. http://www.loc.gov/hlas/

Book Culture  History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba thist Iraq 1968 89

Download or read book Culture History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba thist Iraq 1968 89 written by Amatzia Baram and published by Springer. This book was released on 1991-03-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, an innovative approach to the study of ideology in the Arab world explores how, through culture and the re-interpretation of history, a powerful totalitarian regime has endeavoured to cement internal unity among Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious communities. The book analyzes the ways in which, to imbue its citizens with a common destiny of Arab leadership, this regime has set out to convince the Iraqi people to see themselves as the heirs of all the great civilizations of Mesopotamia.

Book Sport  Culture and Ideology  RLE Sports Studies

Download or read book Sport Culture and Ideology RLE Sports Studies written by Jennifer Hargreaves and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sport celebrates basic human values of freedom, justice and courage. This collection of essays probes beneath those assumptions in order to illuminate how sport is intimately related to power and domination. Topics include the media treatment of sport, drug-taking in sport and the controversial and problematic relationship between sport and politics in Russia and South Africa.

Book Ideology and Cultural Production

Download or read book Ideology and Cultural Production written by Michèle Barrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1979, Ideology and Cultural Production examines the contribution to the debate surrounding 'culture', 'ideology' and 'representation' in this collection of essays. Originally presented as papers at the 1978 British Sociological Conference on the theme of culture, the collection is tied together under the argument for a definition which emphasises the material and ideological conditions of cultural production. The volume discusses key issues, such as the break with 'super-structural theory', the question of economism and the argument between culturalism and structuralism, as well as the central debates of determinism and autonomy.

Book Race and Ideology

    Book Details:
  • Author : Arthur Kean Spears
  • Publisher : Wayne State University Press
  • Release : 1999
  • ISBN : 9780814324547
  • Pages : 252 pages

Download or read book Race and Ideology written by Arthur Kean Spears and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and Ideology reveals how various strands of racial thinking and behavior are crucial for maintaining the unequal distribution of wealth that is more pronounced in the U.S. than in any other advanced industrial country. Though primarily concerned with the U.S., this collection contains chapters on other societies in order to highlight commonalties and the global nature of the race/color problem. This book proposes a new understanding of racism by examining a variety of issues that show how racism and colorism, along with other forms of oppression, are interconnected and maintained by language, symbolism, and popular culture. It includes such topics as how blackness is the symbolic bottom of the U.S. social structure; how the teaching of language and culture can be a tool for understanding inequality; and how the media contribute to the dissemination of stereotypes of people of color. Race and Ideology offers provocative ideas that must be confronted if we are to construct an understanding of racism that can be useful for social change.