Showing papers on "Cultural analysis published in 1970"

Affekt og rum

Abstract: AFFECT AND SPACE | Emotional qualities are not only something that pertain to individual psychic lives, they are also to be found, as the saying goes, ”in the air”, i.e. as atmospheres, shared collective experiences of events and places. However evident this insight may be, languages to describe such experiences are nonetheless quite rare, and most of them tend to simply apply the concepts of individual psychology to collective states of mind. The present article will suggest two closely related approaches to the understanding of atmospheric and collective emotional experiences. The first will develop the notion of affects and affectivity, as theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. The second approach will focus specifically on the spatial nature of such atmospheric and social affects. Profiting from the recent ‘spatial turn’ in cultural studies, which has radically extended our understanding of space and enabled us to map spatial relations that go beyond the merely positional, the paper will highlight the affective component in the relational production of human space. Combining a more traditional phenomenological understanding of human space with contemporary mappings of social space, the article examines how geographic, social and existential relations are involved in the production of affects and, inversely, how the affective takes part in the production of social experiences of space. The endeavor is partly theoretical, discussing these conceptual moves, and partly draws on a number of literary and cinematic works in which important contemporary affective spaces are mapped and examined.

Devising a new approach to capitalism at home

Abstract: In this paper I argue that if anthropology is to secure its future, it has to return to one of its historic projects, that of seeking to understand our own society. As Boas (1904: 522) put it, anthropology must study human culture in all the variety of its forms, past and present-including the society in which we ourselves live. In our society today, nothing is more central to everyday life than capitalism, its workings and its products. I describe my own doctoral research in which the concept of capitalism as a cultural system, as developed by Sahlins (1976, 1996, 1998) and by Mintz (1986), is used to undertake a cultural analysis of the relationship between products, corporations and society. In doing so, I point to ways in which anthropology can provide unique insights into commerce. My work focuses on a single producer, product and cohort of consumers-the elite American corporation E. I. du Pont de Nemours (Dupont), the man-made fibre Lycra, and the so-called 'baby boomers', born in Britain and America between 1946 and 1964. By examining the history of this corporation, its invention and marketing of the fibre, and the significant role played by Lycra in the material life of this specific cohort, I was able to trace changes in social values through changes in products, gaining insights not easily obtained by direct observation or conscious explanation. By concentrating on the baby boomer cohort of consumers born between 1946 and 1964, I was able to explore changing attitudes to age in Anglo-American society, where the aging of the population is an urgent concern.

Estudos culturais: as margens de um programa de pesquisa

Abstract: This article aims to map the existence of several positionings within the discursive formation of the cultural studies. One identifies a proposal lined up with critical social theory that takes as focus the media text and its context; another one associated to an interpretative theory that has its focal point on the audiences; a third one that is configured as a polyphonic proposal and that is attentive to the problematic of the cultural identity; and a fourth that debates the relationship between science, technology, and culture, developing itself, mainly from the feminism and coming close to the thematic of cyberculture. Until this moment, these are the distinct contributions to the cultural studies that are applied to different objectproblems reverberating in cultural analysis of media.

Humanistic Studies and Mass Culture.

Abstract: I have been asked to look at two problems: at the relation of the mass media to humanistic studies, and at how the sociology of literature and art might bear on such studies. The focus of my paper is less on theory within the humanities (the general theme of this issue) than on what we might learn from the theoretical work of certain other disciplines. Learning something about proce dures in these other disciplines may lead us to become more ef fectively theoretical ourselves; or it may make us more deter minedly concrete.1 It seems best to talk not about "the humanities" in general, but about the particular field I know best: literature, literary criticism, and the study and teaching of literature, especially within uni versities. This can be justified on more than personal grounds, for in these areas we have a great many assumptions and even preju dices, but hardly any agreed theory. I am inclined to argue that we do not need an agreed theory; in this I tend to be on the side of F. R. Leavis in the famous exchange between him and Ren? Wellek. But we should not give our unconsidered assumptions the status of a firm and coherent philosophy. Nor should we sit so comfortably in Zion, sure of the wholeness and Tightness of our "subject." Sometimes I think there is no recognizable discipline of "Eng lish," no genuine whole, but only a set of contrived frontiers and selected approaches which, for complicated historical and cultural reasons, have come to be known as "a subject." Thousands are living within this frame of reference; it is part of the self-justifying, self-perpetuating, closed world of "English studies"; and it has its counterparts among the other humanities. There are, it is true, a few outriders, a few inorganic additions: 451

The Renewal of the Social and Cultural Environment.

Abstract: The word renewal connotes the wish to replace the old and outworn-to start afresh. The resulting imagery, value judgments and conceptualizations lead easily to an emphasis on structures stripped of their history and torn out of their continuing process. They also lead to a discussion of social change in the rhetoric of revolution. The pressure from various contemporary youth cultures, as well as that from other groups, makes it difficult for education to insist calmly and confidently that any significant renewal of society must conserve existing values and social institutions while resourcefully and effectively changing them. To the existential revolutionaries-those for whom revolutionary action is a form of psychodrama or ritualistic combat without serious program-a combination of conservation with effective change is an absurdity. From those with reformist objectives, determined to join Rudi Dutschke's "long march through the institutions," the most charitable response will be the accusation of co-optation by the establishment. But it should be obvious that the quality of the social environment is apt to be renewed if citizens directly and effectively participate in social, economic and politial processes. Nevertheless, existing values and institutions must be conserved as they change: indeed, they must be conserved and secured in order that they may change. These assertions are prelude to a consideration of the characteristics of the social surround as it affects individual fulfillment, competence, meaning, effectiveness and gratification. Too frequently, ecological problems are discussed not in biosocial terms but in terms of the biophysical interrelations between organisms and their environment.