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An introduction to a special issue on, "Cultural Production in a Digital Age," points out how digital libraries & electronic communication networks have facilitated scholarly production & changed the way scholars & academic institutions operate. The articles in this volume explore how new technologies have altered cultural production in a wide range of fields, from journalism to gambling, social movements to marketing. Some specific topics discussed by the multi-disciplinary contributors include the fate of cultural products distributed through digital channels; relationships between technological development & the political economy of media, marketing, & entertainment fields; the nature of cultural politics online; & the existence of digital clusters. The three organizing schools of thought that address, & often disagree, about the extent, pace, & character of cultural changes generated by digital technologies are identified as digital revolutionaries; cyber-skeptics; & cultural evolutionists. Key arguments of each school are explored, along with the advantages/disadvantages of the sociology of culture approach for analyzes of the role of new technologies. 61 References. J. Lindroth

This book examines the iconography of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a force for social justice and feminist emancipation within Chicana cultural productions from 1975 to 2010. In these productions the Virgin serves as a paradigm to unlock the histories of conquest and colonization, racism, gender, and sexual oppression in the U.S.-Mexico borderland and beyond, and as a means to negotiate new social relations through spiritual mestizaje

Given that the production of sexual subjects is inextricably bound to language, theorists Lee Edelman and Jasbir Puar investigate the imbrication of the sexual subject in discourses of the Child (Edelman 2004) and the nation-state (Puar 2007). Through an interdisciplinary lens, this essay builds on their conceptual frameworks in its examination of homoerotics and the figure of the Child in Cuban cultural production. Of interest is how peripheral verbal and visual language challenge discourses that fold the sexual subject and the Child into the good of the nation and the coherence of the social order. In Edelman's argument (2004: 3), the Child and queerness are held apart: the Child is bound to futurity given that the "political order […] returns to the Child as the image of the future it intends" and queerness figures "the place of the social order's death drive." The queer poetics of the peripheral language examined in this essay revise the trajectory of Child to "true man," creating new space for movement of the queer subject and the Child in the political field.

Recent years have seen increased emphasis on the autonomy of human agency in creating meaning in everyday life. The institutional bias in sociology, however, and its concomitant emphasis on social reproduction rather than change favors hierarchical approaches to cultural production. This is apparent in the theorizing even of sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu who emphasize the cultural dynamism of religion and other meaning systems. This article critiques the mechanistic underpinnings of Bourdieu's perspective on religious production and his categorical differentiation between religious producers and consumers. Using data gathered from American Catholics, the author shows that interpretive autonomy allows them to recast the official discourse of the church hierarchy in ways that advance alternative interpretations. Interpretive autonomy is grounded in the Catholic tradition or habitus and is reflexively used by Catholics both to maintain the vibrancy of the church and expand the possibilities for institutional change.

This article evaluates Bourdieu's analysis of cultural production in terms of its effectiveness for understanding contemporary media production. I begin by outlining the main features of Bourdieu's work on cultural production, with an emphasis on the potential advantages of his historical account over other, competing work. In particular, I stress the importance of his historical account of 'autonomy' and of the emphasis on the interconnectedness of the field of cultural production with other social fields. I then draw attention to two major problems in the work of Bourdieu and others who have adopted his 'field theory' for the media: first, that he offered only occasional and fragmented analyses of 'large-scale', 'heteronomous' (to use his terms) commercial media production, in spite of its enormous social and cultural importance in the contemporary world; second, that Bourdieu and his key associates provide only a very limited account of the relationships between cultural production and cultural consumption. In this latter context, I briefly discuss recent debates in cultural studies about cultural intermediaries. I refer to examples from recent media production to provide evidence for my arguments. The article argues that, as practised so far, Bourdieu's field theory is only of limited value in analysing media production. However I close by discussing the potential fruitfulness of research based on a dialogue between, on the one hand, field theory's analysis of cultural production and, on the other, Anglo-American media and cultural studies work on media production.

"Robert J. Patterson and his contributors interrogate how African American writers and cultural producers use black modes of cultural expressivity to engage, make, and change history in order to imagine the future and to provide alternate ways of thinking, existing, and being for black subjects in particular, and American citizens in general, in the midst of this historical paradox. This volume insists that black cultural production during the 1970s anchors the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates that animate contemporary debates in African American studies, and insists that, despite abject social and political conditions, black cultural production keeps imagining black thriving. Simultaneously, it demonstrates the specific ways that the cultural production itself re(imagines) ways to transform that which prevents black thriving. Thus, the volume argues that African American cultural production continues to engage in social critique and transformation and remains an important site for the (re)making of black politics"--

Coexistence: Contemporary Cultural Production in South Africa. The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. January 22‐June 29, 2003.

Iran is undergoing a period of socio-political transformation joined to a cultural space that despite binding censorship regulations, circumnavigates restrictive bans and, in the world of film, generates award winning, critically acclaimed masterpieces. In the course of this two-day conference, participants will investigate cinema in Iran as part of Iran's rich media and cultural ecology. The conference brings together international scholars on topics, which explore: The contemporary political and industrial context in which films are produced, distributed, and consumed in Iran and the ways in which formal and informal censorship structures and practices impact the industry; Film as both a formal and informal information conduit in closed or censored societies; Cinematic circulation and flows among and between the Iranian Diaspora and Iranians in Iran; The role of Iranian cinema as public diplomacy and public debate surrounding film in Iran; The political economy of film in Iran, including piracy and do-it-yourself (DIY) cinematic production such as YouTube; The role of cinema vis à vis television: subject migration, professional migration, content regulation ; Cinema in Iran: Circulation, Censorship and Cultural Production , conference, ICI Berlin, 16–17 December 2011