Theory, culture & society

What influence does the cinema have on visual culture and social understanding? In what ways are we products of the cinematic gaze? This timely book, written by one of the leading commentators in the sociology of culture, highlights the extent to which the cinema has contributed to the rise of voyeurism throughout society. The cinema not only turns its audience into voyeurs, eagerly following the lives of its screen characters, but repeatedly casts its key players as onlookers, spying on other people's lives. The nature of the cinematic voyeur - the obsessive outsider, the ethnic or sexual Other - is examined in depth, as are its implications for contemporary society. Denzin analyses Hollywood's manipulations of gender, race and class, and, drawing on the work of Foucault, argues that the cinematic gaze must be understood as part of the machinery of surveillance and power which regulates social behaviour in the late twentieth century.

The way in which the ruling ideas of a social system are related to structures of class, production and power, and how these are legitimated and perpetuated, is fundamental to the sociological project. In Reproduction Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron develop an analysis of education in its broadest sense, encompassing more than the process of formal education. They show how education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme which is actually, though not in appearance, based on power. More widely, the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the whole social system. The analysis is carried through not only in theoretical terms but through the development of empirically testable propositions within the wider framework of the historical transformation of the educational system.

193 p. ; 22 cm

"In this book, Graeme Turner explores the 'whys' and 'hows' of the 'everyday' individual's willingness to turn themselves into media content through celebrity culture, Reality TV, DIY websites, talk radio, and user-generated materials online. Further analyzing the pervasiveness of celebrity culture, the book develops the idea of the demotic turn as a tool for examining common elements in a range of media and cultural studies 'hot spots'." "Rejecting the idea that the demotic turn necessarily carries with it a democratizing politics, this book examines its political and cultural function in media production and consumption across many fields - including print and electronic news, current affairs journalism, and citizen and online journalism. Graeme Turner outlines a structural shift in the western media, and suggests that these media activities represent something much more fundamental than contemporary media fashion."--Jacket.

"The idea of postmodernism poses a fundamental challenge to established modes of understanding society. Postmodern theory represents individuals in the contemporary world as voyeurs adrift in a sea of symbols, knowing and seeing themselves through mediated images from cinema and television." "In this book Norman Denzin uses a series of studies of contemporary mainstream Hollywood movies to explore the tension between ideas of the postmodern, and traditional ways of analysing society. The discussion moves between two forms of text: social theory, and cinematic representations of contemporary life. Denzin analyses the ideas of society embedded in post-structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, cultural studies and marxism through the ideas of key theorists (Mills, Baudrillard, Barthes, Habermas, Jameson, Bourdieu, Derrida and others). He relates these ideas to the problematic of the postmodern self as exposed in cinema -- Blue Velvet; Wall Street; Crimes and Misdemeanors; When Harry Met Sally; sex, lies and videotape; Do the Right Thing -- centering on the decisive performances of race, gender and class." "Images of Postmodern Society moves beyond a simply theoretical analysis of postmodernism to show how it relates to a series of key texts in contemporary life. In doing so, it demonstrates the challenge of postmodernism to classical sociological ways of representing and writing about the dramaturgical, cinematic society. The insights of this approach will appeal to students and researchers not only in sociology and cultural studies but also in philosophy, film theory and across the social sciences and humanities. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.

"Underpinning the analysis is the notion of the 'risk society'. The changing nature of society's relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict." -- Publisher's description.