Suchergebnisse

This detailed study of Williams unlocks his late sociology of culture. It covers previously overlooked aspects, such as his critique of Birmingham cultural studies, his use of an Adorno-like approach to 'cultural production', his 'social formalist' alternative to structuralism and post-structuralism and his approach to 'the media'

In this book, the author examines East Asian pop culture as an integrated regional cultural economy that combines Japanese and Korean pop culture with the distribution and reception networks of Chinese language pop culture. The book provides detailed analysis of the fragmented reception process of transcultural audiences and the processes of audiences' formation and exercise of consumer power and engagement with national politics. It will appeal to scholars and students as well as general readers who are interested in media and cultural studies.

Taking as its starting point the radical transformation of the Polish cultural and historical landscape that has resulted from Poland's post-1989 Jewish revival, this article presents a proposal for a substantial reconfiguration of nationally and philologically based university departments and programs in Central and East European Studies—one that reimagines Polish Studies, Russian Studies, and other Slavic Studies programs as inherently multilingual, culturally pluralistic spaces of encounter, and that effects changes to degree requirements and language requirements that reflect this post-national shift in perspective. Making reference to the concept of doikeyt or "hereness," a cultural and political attitude promoted within the pre–World War II Jewish world, particularly within Bundist and Yiddishist discourse, that saw Jewish culture and languages as native to Eastern Europe—as belonging in Poland and in Russia—the author asks specifically whether Jewish languages (Yiddish and Hebrew) and courses in Yiddish culture, and by extension other "minority" languages and cultures, should have a place within the curriculum and course requirements that contribute today to a degree or a major in Polish Studies, Russian Studies, or other European literature and language programs traditionally structured around the study of one dominant language and culture.

Explores role of high culture in conflict between communism and the West; US and Soviet cultural diplomacy, and Soviet anti-Westernism, anti-Semitism, and "anti-cosmopolitan" campaigns of the Stalin era; 5 articles. Contents: Exhibiting art at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: domestic politics and cultural diplomacy, by Marilyn S. Kushner; The ROCI road to peace: Robert Rauschenberg, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War, by Pamela Kachurin; Ilya Ehrenburg: between East and West, by Joshua Rubenstein; From anti-Westernism to anti-Semitism: Stalin and the impact of the "anti-cosmopolitan" campaigns on Soviet culture, by Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov; Keepers of the flame: an exchange on art and Western cultural influences in the USSR after World War II, by John E. Bowlt and Dmitrii Sarab'yanov.

The history of Russian economic ideas from the sixteenth century to contemporary times is a fascinating, tumultuous yet neglected topic among Western scholars. Whilst over the last 15 years increasing amounts of work has been done on the subject, co-operation between Russian and Western researchers in this field leaves much to be desired. In order to improve this situation, this volume unites Russian and non-Russian researchers together to provide an overview of the current state of the topic and to give a stimulus for further research. Bringing together scholars from the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, Finland and Russia, the collection puts forward differing, yet complimentary, perspectives on the long-term history of Russian economic ideas. Offering a broad collection of articles covering the period from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, authors have approached the subject from diverse theoretical angles. Contributions in the tradition of Blaug and Schumpeter focusing on economic analysis in a narrower sense, and contributions that - in line with authors like Pribram or Perlman/McCann - deal with economic thought in the context of history and culture, are all represented. In terms of content, the editors have encouraged approaches that represent different economic traditions in order to encourage a diversity of opinions on the national development of Russian economics. As such the volume offers a broad and very relevant assessment of the subject for both historians and economists alike.

This dissertation looks at Islamic alms, or zakat, and how imams negotiate its rules as well as advise on a range of charitable practices. Zakat is generally understood as an instrument of poverty alleviation, and yet its conceptualization and practice across transnational contexts intersects with social, economic, and political forces. By taking a look at three major groups—Ikhwan, Sufi, and Southern Californian imams—the thesis unpacks the complexities and multiple trajectories that zakat takes in the post-9/11 and post-Arab Uprising period. This thesis pays special attention to the understanding, teaching, and practice of zakat at both the transnational and personal levels.The principal argument of this dissertation is that zakat is being transformed by cultural and politico-economic forces, most significantly neoliberalism and the ethics of international humanitarianism. For example, though imams are often trained abroad in a seminary like al-Azhar in Egypt, the ubiquity of the NGO complex in Egypt and post-9/11 legal requirements in the US privilege managed practices, which the imams consequently naturalize in their own thinking of zakat. Contemporary zakat practices also bring into relief the tensions and malleability of Islamic legal interpretation as well as provide an analytical framework to explore issues of race, class, and gender. By narrowing the scope of shari'a to zakat and looking at its discourse and transnational circuits, I argue that we can gain an understanding as to how shari'a is practiced by our imams and is articulated within the structures of the nation-state and global economy.I follow American imams who have trained at the shari'a college at al-Azhar University in Cairo, but work in their home communities in Southern California. This multi-sited ethnography takes place over five years in Southern California and seven months in Egypt following these students and their discourses, between schools, mosques, and sites of charitable giving. Through ethnographic description, I show how imams practice zakat by integrating the influences of their socialization with their seminary training. As such, I give three main sketches of the Azhari imam and their differing modes of zakat practice— The Sufi, The Ikhwani, and The Social Worker.

"How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing--hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations --much of it wrong. Cataloguing Culture examines how colonialism operates in museum bureaucracies. Using the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History as her reference, Hannah Turner organizes her study by the technologies framing museum work over 200 years: field records, the ledger, the card catalogue, the punch card, and eventually the database. She examines how categories were applied to ethnographic material culture and became routine throughout federal collecting institutions. As Indigenous communities encounter the documentary traces of imperialism while attempting to reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on access to and return of cultural heritage."--