Rasheed Araeen, Sean Cubitt, Ziauddin Sardar (eds.): Third Text Reader on Art, Culture and Theory (2002)

11 September 2009, dusan

Third Text has been the world’s leading journal on art in the global context. Known for challenging received notions of art practice, art history, popular media and cultural theory, it has never accepted unquestioningly the claims of anti-racism, multiculturalism or postcolonialism. Similarly, Third Text has not only championed new artists from six continents, it has raised the critical temperature and the political stakes for art and cultural practice in the age of globalization. This Reader brings together classic essays by some of the best-known critics in global art and cultural studies, together with some of the most exciting new voices to emerge over the last decades. Divided into sections that cover history, representation, identity, film, “post” theory, globalization, the Reader will be invaluable to students and teachers of art, cultural studies, media studies, postcolonialism and globalization.”

Selected contributors: Zygmunt Bauman, Rustom Bharucha, Zeynap Çelik, James Clifford, Sean Cubitt, Jimmie Durham, Clifford Geertz, Stuart Hall, Kobener Mercer, Benita Parry, George Ritzer, Edward Said, Ziauddin Sardar, Julian Stallabrass, Slavoj Zizek.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002
ISBN 0826458513, 9780826458513
392 pages

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John Tomlinson: The Culture of Speed. The Coming of Immediacy (2007)

9 September 2009, dusan

Is the pace of life accelerating? If so, what are the cultural, social, personal and economic consequences?

This stimulating and accessible book examines how speed emerged as a cultural issue during industrial modernity. The rise of capitalist society and the shift to urban settings was rapid and tumultuous and was defined by the belief in ‘progress’. The first obstacle faced by societies that were starting to ‘speed up’ was how to regulate and control the process. The attempt to regulate the acceleration of life created a new set of problems, namely the way in which speed escapes regulation and rebels against controls. This pattern of acceleration and control subsequently defined debates about the cultural effects of acceleration. However, in the 21st century ‘immediacy’, the combination of fast capitalism and the saturation of the everyday by media technologies, has emerged as the core feature of control. This coming of immediacy will inexorably change how we think about and experience media culture, consumption practices, and the core of our cultural and moral values.

Incisive and richly illustrated, this eye-opening account of speed and culture provides an original, essential guide to one of the central features of contemporary culture and personal life.

Publisher SAGE, 2007
ISBN 1412912024, 9781412912020
Length 180 pages

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Keith Hart: Memory Bank. Money in an Unequal World (2001)

19 August 2009, dusan

Hart believes that humanity stands on the threshold of a new era in which there will be a pressing need to develop, conceptually and in practice, an awareness of the common problems facing world society as a whole. We have scarcely begun to contemplate how to establish and maintain the social, technological and cultural infrastructures we will need to survive in the 21st century. In a polarized world characterized by staggering economic inequalities, recent advances in technology offer radical possibilities for the development of human freedom and equality. Hart’s particular focus in this book is the Internet, which he argues holds the potential for a re-personalization of economic relations. In this world, new means of exchange could be harnessed to the ends of a truer economic democracy. Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. Hart, an anthropologist by training, offers a new view on the interaction between money, capitalism, and culture – now, in the future, and throughout history. The many important strands of thought and experience in this book will challenge established views from all quarters of economic, political, and social thought.

Publisher Texere, 2001
ISBN 1587990970, 9781587990977
Length 320 pages

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