Understanding Contemporary Culture
3 total works
- Professor John Frow, University of Melbourne
"This is a clear and understandable book, starting with a very helpful glossary of theoretical terms... an accessible introduction to Foucault's major work exploring power and control, governmentality and ethics which are crucial for students to understand."
- Tracy Ramsey, Liverpool Hope University
"A very good accompaniment to any student thinking seriously about following the work of Foucault... Easy to follow, very well structured."
- Mark Timoney, Sligo Institute of Technology
Michel Foucault is now regarded as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. He is known for his sensibility of critique and his commitment to movements for social change. His analysis of the ways our notions of truth, meaning, knowledge and reason are shaped by historical forces continues to influence thinkers around the world.
Understanding Foucault offers a comprehensive introduction to Foucault's work. The authors examine Foucault's thinking in the context of the philosophies he engaged with during his career, and the events he participated in, including the student protests of 1968. A unique feature of the book is its consideration of recently published lectures and minor works, and the authors show how these illuminate and extend our understanding of Foucault's major books.
Understanding Foucault provides an accessible entree to the world of this extraordinary and challenging philosopher.
"In only 138 pages of text he manages a broad sweep across sports history and culture... Schirato brings the eye of a critical fan to his analysis of sport - he treats it seriously as a social practice and as a social institution... [He] achieves his aims by providing a useful, provocative and non-dogmatic text that should be useful to undergraduate and graduate sport studies programmes."
- Malcolm MacLean, Sport in History
- John Hughson, European Journal of Cultural Studies
?Understanding Sport Culture traces and analyzes the development of the modern field of sport from its ancient and medieval precursors (the festivals of Greece and Rome, and games such as folk football), through to its inception in the mid-nineteenth century as a set of activities designed to instill character and discipline in students in exclusive British public schools, up to its transformation into a global institution and popular spectacle.
The narrative also focuses on and provides a detailed account of the gradual coming together of sport and the media. It explains how this relationship has accentuated sport's status as one of the most important sites in contemporary culture, while simultaneously threatening its existence.
As part of the Understanding Contemporary Culture series this book is aimed at a broad range of students from undergraduate to graduate level, who want to know more and be fully informed on sport, its relationship to the media, and its cultural dynamics.
- Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths
Acknowledged as one of the most influential thinkers of modern times, an understanding of Judith Butler's work is ever more essential to an understanding of not just the landscape of cultural and critical theory, but of the world around us. Understanding Judith Butler, however, can be perceived as a complex and difficult undertaking.
It needn't be. Using contemporary and topical examples from the media, popular culture and everyday life, this lively and accessible introduction shows you how the issues, concepts and theories in Butler's work function as socio-cultural practices.
Giving due consideration to Butler's earlier and most recent work, and showing how her ideas on subjectivity, gender, sexuality and language overlap and interrelate, this book will give you a better understanding not only of Butler's work, but of its applications to modern-day social and cultural practices and contexts.