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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Sociocultural Viability: An Introduction -- Our Point of Departure: The Grid-Group Typology -- The Patterns Behind the Dimensions -- How Free to Choose What? -- Notes -- PART ONE THE THEORY -- Introduction to Part One: Against Dualism -- Notes -- 1 The Social Construction of Nature -- Five Myths of Nature -- The Hermit's Myth -- The Social Construction of Human Nature -- Notes -- 2 Making Ends Meet -- Reconciling Needs and Resources -- Limits to Reconciling Needs and Resources -- Five Strategies Mapped onto Five Ways of Life -- Only Five Management Strategies? -- Notes -- 3 Preferences -- Accounting for Tastes -- Deriving Preferences from Ways of Life -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4 Ringing the Changes -- Thinking About Surprise -- A Typology of Surprises -- Twelve Kinds of Change -- Loosening the Constraints -- Change Is Essential to Stability -- Notes -- 5 Instability of the Parts, Coherence of the Whole -- Traveling Hopefully, Never Arriving -- The Making and Breaking of Alliances -- Fatalism's Functions -- Why Pluralism Is Essential -- Cultural Theory Restated -- Notes -- PART TWO THE MASTERS -- Introduction to Part Two: The Indispensability of Functional Explanation -- Comparing Typologies of Viable Ways of Life -- Cultural-Functional Explanation -- Notes -- 6 Montesquieu, Comte, and Spencer -- Montesquieu -- Auguste Comte -- Herbert Spencer -- The Biological Parallel -- Cycling In and Out in Highland Burma -- Notes -- 7 Durkheim -- Young Emile and Master Durkheim -- The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life -- The Division of Labor in Society -- Suicide -- The Master, Not the Whippersnapper -- Notes -- 8 Marx -- Marx's Historical Materialism -- Mystification in Marxian and Cultural Theory

"Doing Cultural Theory is a textbook and a toolkit that teaches the basics of cultural theory, unpacks its complexities with real-life examples, and shows readers how to link theory and practice. Offers accessible introductions to how cultural studies has engaged with key theories in structuralism, poststructuralism and postmodernism. Teaches straightforward ways of practicing these theories so students learn to think for themselves. Uses 'Practice' boxes to show students how to apply cultural theory in the real world. Guides students through the literature with carefully selected further reading recommendations Other textbooks only show how others have analyzed and interpreted the world. Doing Cultural Theory takes it a step further and teaches students step-by-step how to do cultural theory for themselves." -- Publisher's website

Philosophy in Cultural Theory boldly crosses disciplinary boundaries to offer a philosophical critique of cultural theory today. Drawing on the legacy of Walter Benjamin, Peter Osborne looks critically at central philosophical debates in cultural theory, such as:* the relationship between sign and image* the technological basis of cultural form* the conceptuality of art* the place of fantasy in human affairs.It will appeal to those in philosophy, cultural studies and art theory

Addressing both the humanities and the social sciences, this volume aims to explore the enduring significance of the work of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) in the field of cultural theory. It assembles a variety of articles by internationally renowned schola

Contemporary cultural studies have marginalized "agency," namely the power of people to shape social life. Here, Stephen Tumino offers a new materialist challenge to these tendencies and articulates an internationalist cultural theory that puts global agency at the forefront of cultural analysis.