How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us. While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of: -More adultlike children and more childlike adults; -More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and -Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs. The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming "hunters and gatherers of an information age." In other ways, we are rushing forward into a new social world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation. The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

No sense of place : the impact of electronic media on socialbehavior

Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Constructing the Political Spectacle

Simulacra and Simulation

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: How Cognitive Science Changes Ethics 1: Reason as Force: The Moral Law Folk Theory 2: Metaphoric Morality 3: The Metaphoric Basis of Moral Theory 4: Beyond Rules 5: The Impoverishment of Reason: Our Enlightenment Legacy 6: What's Wrong with the Objectivist Self 7: The Narrative Context of Self and Action 8: Moral Imagination 9: Living without Absolutes: Objectivity and the Conditions for Criticism 10: Preserving Our Best Enlightenment Moral Ideals Notes Index

Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science.Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics

Understanding Celebrity is a thorough introduction to the process of creating and sustaining celebrity as a market commodity. Turner successfully separates his work from previous evaluations of celebrity by clarifying the differences between types of celebrity and thoroughly identifying distinct areas of production. In a split from the central paradigms surrounding the study of celebrity, that is, the “celebrity culture,” Turner instead offers a clear evaluation of the agents of production, with the intent to highlight their contribution to the construction and consumption of celebrity. The chapters are divided into three sections. In Part One “Introduction,” Turner looks at the field of celebrity study, describes the rise of celebrity, and provides a clear account of the function of celebrity in current society. Providing a substantial review of the work on the construction of celebrity and fame, he focuses on the social functions of celebrity and on the culture of the media industry itself. Critical of the so-called globalization of celebrity production, Turner argues that the power of a few dozen transnational corporations contribute greatly to the construction and subsequent consumption of the range of celebrity figures. And, although not overtly critical of the nature of such corporations, Turner segues into a careful and concise set of assertions concerning the control of the media image and the production of celebrity in Part Two. Part Two “Production” contains a summary of the celebrity as commodity and logically follows in Turner’s theory of the phenomenon. In this section, Turner provides a concise description of those involved in the celebrity industry, from agent to publicist. The description of the impact of public relations and news media is detailed and understandable, not an easy task given the multiple issues involved in creating and maintaining celebrity in today’s market. This text is strongest in Part Three “Consumption,” which identifies the ways celebrity is consumed and provides a clear exploration of how and why we are so fascinated with celebrities, particularly those with whom we identify with on a personal level, that is, those we feel we know through information about their personal lives. Turner argues that it is even more powerful when the consumer identifies with similar traits or circumstances in the celebrity’s life or person. In the example of Diana, Princess of Wales, Turner offers a view of the celebrity as authentically loved and mourned. Turner argues that Princess Diana was valued for her position, but also for her ability to be seen as real, vulnerable, and “one of us.” Turner successfully places the celebrity in the world of social meaning and influence in today’s often fragmented society. He explains that celebrity is, in part, about making parasocial, or imagined, connections with celebrity, but it is also about making personal connections based on perceived similarities. The connection to celebrity is not only between the consumer and the image, but across consumers as well; the celebrity forges a common bond across members of a social group who share common consumption. Finally, Understanding Celebrity offers a succinct evaluation of the historical changes within the media industry as they apply to celebrity, and Turner’s discussion of fame for fame’s sake is appropriate, given the popularity of current reality television, where “real people” are famous merely because they are on a television program. The downside of Understanding Celebrity is its less than enthusiastic discussion of celebrity in the first two sections, with rather dry examples of celebrity used to illuminate points about consumerism, the process of production, and the general market. The third section is the most valuable and stimu-

Understanding CelebrityUnderstanding Celebrity, by TurnerGraeme. London, UK; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004. 148 pp. $115.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-7619-4167-3. $36.95 paper. ISBN: 0-7619-4168-1.

Current feminist rhetorical scholarship celebrates the presence of the “feminine style” in contemporary political discourse. We argue that such a style potentially masks the reliance of political image construction on a hegemonic masculinity that serves to preserve politics as a patriarchal system. An analysis of five presidential campaign films reveals the utilization of the ‘feminine” style in these films and suggests that social constructions of masculinity work hegemonically in two ways. First, presidential image is constructed by the association of candidates with traditionally patriarchal institutions that affix to candidates “masculine” characteristics necessary for successful presidential leadership. Second, these films offer a portrayal of women that marginalizes their status in the political process. The implications of this analysis for politics, culture, and the criticism of political communication are addressed.

Gendered politics and presidential image construction: A reassessment of the “feminine style”

This essay offers a reading of President Bill Clinton's address on August 28, 1998 in which he commemorates the 35th anniversary of the March on Washington. Specifically, Clinton's August 28th address reveals how the presidency has become a hermeneutic site for the formation of collective memory and political nostalgia. This analysis discusses the uses of political nostalgia for the purposes of political image (re)construction as evidenced by Clinton's exploitation of the civil rights movement to explain and excuse his personal failings and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We also present a divergent version of Clinton's rhetoric, giving specific attention to how his particular use of nostalgia in this address works to articulate and confront many of the powerful dichotomies (masculine/feminine; war/peace; black/white; private/public) that define his presidency, his public persona, and the larger political culture in postmodern America.

Collective memory, political nostalgia, and the rhetorical presidency: Bill Clinton's commemoration of the March on Washington, August 28, 1998

This essay reads the NBC drama The West Wing against the cultural anxieties and ambivalences about the contemporary presidency, arguing that the program presents a powerful and meaningful “presidentiality,” a discursive construction of the presidency with ideological and rhetorical relevance. Specifically, The West Wing mimetically captures a view of the presidency, offering, in the process, a romantic vision of the institution that reflects the postmodernity of U.S. politics and the uncertainty that pervades questions of heroism and hierarchy at the turn of the twenty‐first century. In part, the political drama disrupts images of traditional power politics, presenting a more chaotic, inclusive, and communal portrayal of the presidency. Against this narrative backdrop, however, we contend that the program situates its postmodern rendition of presidentiality within a cathartic portrayal of the presidency, relying on conservative demarcations of presidential leadership ordered by commitments to intellectual...

The west wing's prime‐time presidentiality: Mimesis and catharsis in a postmodern romance

Contrasting strong women and multiculturalism with portrayals of a heroic white male leading the nation into battle, The Prime-Time Presidency explores the NBC drama The West Wing, paying particular attention to its role in promoting cultural meaning about the presidency and U.S. nationalism. Based in a careful, detailed analysis of the "first term" of The West Wing's President Josiah Bartlett, this criticism highlights the ways the text negotiates powerful tensions and complex ambiguities at the base of U.S. national identity - particularly the role of gender, race, and militarism in the construction of U.S. nationalism. Unlike scattered and disparate collections of essays, Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles offer a sustained, ideologically driven criticism of The West Wing. The Prime-time Presidency presents a detailed critique of the program rooted in presidential history, an appreciation of television's power as a source of political meaning, and television's contribution to the articulation of U.S. national identity.

The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism

This essay explores a new form of political communication, the meta-image, or the communicative act whereby political campaigns and their chroniclers publicly display and foreground the art and practice of political image construction. The authors examine a compelling example of meta-imaging-the 1993 film, The War Room. They identify how the film functions as a reflection of the hyperreality of U.S. politics. they then argue that The War Room, through the use of naturalized military metaphors, works toward the edification of image making as a normative campaign process and a reaffirmation of U.S. national identity.

Trevor Parry-Giles

Papers

Gendered politics and presidential image construction: A reassessment of the “feminine style”

Collective memory, political nostalgia, and the rhetorical presidency: Bill Clinton's commemoration of the March on Washington, August 28, 1998

The west wing's prime‐time presidentiality: Mimesis and catharsis in a postmodern romance

The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism

Meta-Imaging, The War Room, and the Hyperreality of U.S. Politics