Showing papers on "Cultural history published in 2012"

What is Cultural Studies: A Reader

Abstract: The evolution of cultural studies cultural studies two paradigms the centre for contemporary cultural studies overcoming resistance to cultural studies what is cultural studies anyway? British cultural studies and television banality in cultural studies the future of cultural studies the circulation of cultural studies the problem of American cultural studies feminism and cultural studies discipline and vanish - feminism, the resistance to theory, and the politics of cultural studies pessimism, optimism, pleasure - the future of cultural studies culture and communication - towards an ethnographic critique of media consumption in the transnational media system feminism and cultural studies always already cultural studies - academic conferences and a manifesto the Americanization of cultural studies black studies, cultural studies - performative acts putting policy into cultural studies "It works for me" - British cultural studies, Australian cultural studies, Australian film race, culture and communications - looking backward and foreward at cultural studies Australian cultural studies

A Cultural History of Heredity

Abstract: It was only around 1800 that heredity began to enter debates among physicians, breeders, and naturalists. Soon thereafter it evolved into one of the most fundamental concepts of biology. Here Staffan Muller-Wille and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger offer a succinct cultural history of the scientific concept of heredity. They outline the dramatic changes the idea has undergone since the early modern period and describe the political and technological developments that brought about these changes. Muller-Wille and Rheinberger begin with an account of premodern theories of generation, showing that these were concerned with the procreation of individuals rather than with hereditary transmission. The authors reveal that when hereditarian thinking first emerged, it did so in a variety of cultural domains, such as politics and law, medicine, natural history, breeding, and anthropology. Muller-Wille and Rheinberger then track theories of heredity from the late nineteenth century - when leading biologists considered it in light of growing societal concerns with race and eugenics - through the rise of classical and molecular genetics in the twentieth century to today, as researchers apply sophisticated information technologies to understand heredity. What readers come to see from this exquisite history is why it took such a long time for heredity to become a prominent concept in the life sciences and why it gained such overwhelming importance in those sciences and the broader culture over the last two centuries.

The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch

Abstract: From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical exploration. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch fleshes out our understanding of the past with explorations of lived experiences of embodiment from the middle ages to modernity. This intimate and sensuous approach to history makes it possible to foreground the tactile foundations of Western culture--the ways in which feelings shaped society. Constance Classen explores a variety of tactile realms including the feel of the medieval city; the tactile appeal of relics; the social histories of pain, pleasure, and affection; the bonds of touch between humans and animals; the strenuous excitement of sports such as wrestling and jousting; and the sensuous attractions of consumer culture. She delves into a range of vital issues, from the uses--and prohibitions--of touch in social interaction to the disciplining of the body by the modern state, from the changing feel of the urban landscape to the technologization of touch in modernity. Through poignant descriptions of the healing power of a medieval king's hand or the grueling conditions of a nineteenth-century prison, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject, touches us to the quick.

Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain

Abstract: Modernity in interwar Europe frequently took the form of a preoccupation with mechanizing the natural; fears and fantasies revolved around the notion that the boundaries between people and machines were collapsing. Reproduction in particular became a battleground for those debating the merits of the modern world. That debate continues today, and to understand the history of our anxieties about modernity, we can have no better guide than Angus McLaren. In "Reproduction by Design", McLaren draws on novels, plays, science fiction, and films of the 1920s and '30s, as well as the work of biologists, psychiatrists, and sexologists, to reveal surprisingly early debates on many of the same questions that shape the conversation today: homosexuality, recreational sex, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, sex change operations, and in vitro fertilization. Here, McLaren brings together the experience and perception of modernity with sexuality, technology, and ecological concerns into a cogent discussion of science's place in reproduction in British and American cultural history.

Business History: A Cultural and Narrative Approach

Abstract: This article argues that a cultural and narrative perspective can enrich the business history field, encourage new and different questions and answers, and provide new ways of thinking about methods and empirical material. It discusses what culture is and how it relates to narratives. Taking a cultural and narrative approach may affect questions, sources, and methodologies, as well as the status of our results. Finally, a narrative approach may contribute to our historical understanding of entrepreneurship and globalization.

Through the Looking Glass Darkly: Episodes from the History of Deviance

Abstract: This dissertation is a cultural history of deviance in the United States. I use a series of case studies to examine the way deviant figures have been represented and experienced within American culture. The dissertation covers four historical eras and examines a representative deviant figure in each of them. The first chapter deals with the figure of the witch in Puritan New England, the second examines the libertine in the early American republic, the third deals with freaks in Victorian America and the fourth studies the flapper in the roaring twenties. Each of these chapters is focused on a particular historical crisis, trial or scandal that produced a rich body of historical evidence for study and analysis: the Salem Witch Trial of 1692, the Apthorp-Morton Scandal of 1788, the sensational Beecher-Tilton Affair of 1875 and the Ruth Snyder Trial of 1927. My overarching thesis is that representations of deviants reveal a deep cultural preoccupation with failure and inadequacy, which are projected onto deviant figures. This interpretation is an attempt to move beyond viewing representations of deviance as simply being attempts to repress those who do not conform to societal norms, or to shore up fragile social identities by creating ‘others’ against whom the normal American could be negatively defined.

The American Dream: A Cultural History

Abstract: There is no better way to understand America than by understanding the cultural history of the American Dream. Rather than just a powerful philosophy or ideology, the Dream is thoroughly woven into the fabric of everyday life, playing a vital role in who we are, what we do, and why we do it. No other idea or mythology has as much influence on our individual and collective lives. Tracing the history of the phrase in popular culture, Samuel gives readers a field guide to the evolution of our national identity over the last eighty years. Samuel tells the story chronologically, revealing that there have been six major eras of the mythology since the phrase was coined in 1931. Relying mainly on period magazines and newspapers as his primary source material, the author demonstrates that journalists serving on the front lines of the scene represent our most valuable resource to recover unfiltered stories of the Dream. The problem, Samuel reveals, is that it does not exist; the Dream is just that, a product of our imagination. That it is not real ultimately turns out to be the most significant finding and what makes the story most compelling.

A Short History of Oil Cultures: Or, the Marriage of Catastrophe and Exuberance

Abstract: In opposition to energy historian Vaclav Smil, who argues that “timeless literature … show[s] no correlation with advances in energy consumption,” this essay makes the general claim that energy history is significantly entwined with cultural history. Energy history is in fact entwined with changing cultural conceptualizations and representations of psyche, body, society, and environment; it is correlated not just with changing material cultures, but with symbolic cultures as well. To see this, the essay argues, one must conceptualize energy history in terms of a succession of energy systems – systems that are constituted by sociocultural, economic, environmental, and technological relationships. The essay's specific argument then traces the effects on symbolic culture, especially literature, of the nineteenth – and twentieth-century shift from coal capitalism to oil–electric capitalism. It starts by looking at the features of early oil extraction culture, from Drake's 1859 oil strike in Titusville, Pennsylvania to Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, and examines how oil–electric capitalism develops and defines itself culturally against the previous era of coal capitalism. Then the essay considers how the consolidation of the oil–electric capitalist system is significantly related to the emergence of modernist culture, affecting the production of both popular culture and high art. By the end of the twentieth century, a new phase in oil–electric capitalism emerges with the expansion of the postwar petrochemical industry, the dramatic expansion of environmental crisis discourse in the 1960s and 1970s, and the return of peak-oil discourse to the mainstream in the last decade. The essay examines how the material features of oil, as well as its dominant uses as luminant, motor fuel, lubricant, and eventually petrochemical feedstock, take on cultural importance. Exemplifying both the cultural innovations and reinventions of oil capitalism from the extraction era to the consolidation era and the post-World War II period, the essay focusses throughout on the two recurring motifs, exuberance and catastrophe, as they play out in a wide range of literary texts and popular enthusiasms.

Diabetes. Its Medical and Cultural History

Abstract: This study deals with knowledge of the pancreas from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The investigations of Brunner in 1689 were a landmark: he described the symptoms of diabetes mellitus in pancreatectomized dogs but did not make the actual diagnosis. Another culminating point was the tissue system described by Bichat in 1800. However, knowledge of the histology of the pancreas during this period was very minor.

Becoming Europeans: cultural identity and cultural policies

Abstract: What does it mean to be “European” today? Does it imply any coherent description or simply a vague geographical identification? In Greek mythology, Europa, daughter of the Phoenician King of Tyre, was kidnapped by Zeus disguised as a white bull and taken to Crete. Her brother Cadmus was promptly sent to find and bring back his sister. In Travelling Heroes (Fox, 2008), Robin Lane Fox suggests that the Phoenician word root for Cadmus’ name (qdm) signifies “east” while that of Europa’s (ereb) means “west”. But the mythical founder of the Greek city of Thebes stayed west and was credited by the ancients with having introduced the written alphabet to them. So Mr East, despatched to recover his lost sister Ms West, brought literacy to “Europe” as a by-product. However, it is not until the middle of the fifteenth century that the terms “Europe” and “European” acquire something like their current usage. This was the era when Christendom was losing its Near Eastern territories to Arabs and Turks, thus contracting to something like the geographical Europe, while the early Humanists were beginning to distinguish between the two concepts of Christianitas and Europa. Monica Sassatelli’s book is a tour de force of painstaking research and will provide a valuable source-book for students of the contemporary European “diverse” culture and identity theme. She has even succeeded in pinning down the true origin of the notorious Jean Monnet non-quotation “si c’était à refaire, je recommençerais par la culture.” There’s a generous bibliography and an adequate index. I spotted only a few minor errors of fact. The blurb declares that the text “addresses European identity as an object of both theoretical and empirical investigation”, placing the debate in a broad context of Europeanisation (particularly concerning the postWW2 pan-European “institutions”), globalisation and the collapse of monolithic collective identities. That’s a fair description even if the book’s subtitle promises rather more on cultural policies than we actually get. Its main interest is in what it means to be “European” individually and collectively, which throws up complex issues around shared symbols and content (or their absence). Granted that cultural policy encompasses a much broader spectrum than that generally addressed by “arts” or “heritage” policy, the book’s predominant focus is on identity. Debate on what holds Europe together has now shifted, we are told, to the cultural dimension — which does make it central. The structure consists of a broad theoretical discussion about the debate on “European cultural identity” in the post-war era, followed by two case studies (on the EU’s European Capital of Culture (ECOC) programme for 2000 and on the Council of Europe’s (CoE) European Landscape Convention) with a short concluding section. Because of the concentration on identity issues, a historical framework is eschewed in favour of analysing theories of evolving society within an institutional context. The case studies are presented in their chronological order, which in a way ironically distorts their meaningful context of development. The ECOC programme started in 1985 while the Landscape Convention only came

"We Had Been Fooled into Thinking that the UN Watches over the Entire World": Human Rights, UN Trust Territories, and Africa's Decolonization

Abstract: This article uses empirical evidence to engage recent scholarship on the historical place of human rights in decolonization. The case of the British and French Cameroons demonstrates that African nationalists and the Western anti-imperial human rights advocates who supported them viewed UN Trust Territories as the most politically and legally viable channel through which to address the human rights abuses particular to colonial rule. Yet, because of the political deformations arising out of decolonization, the transition to independence was accompanied by a widespread disappointment in the United Nations, the disintegration of collaborative, transregional activists’ networks, and a withering away of human rights ideas. * Meredith Terretta is an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Ottawa, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She specializes in the political and cultural history of African nationalism and decolonization. In the last year (2011–2012) her research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Centre of Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University for her current project on the relationship between postwar notions of universal human rights and the politics of Africa’s decolonization. Conversations and exchanges with Frederick Cooper, Keith David Watenpaugh, Andrew Ivaska, John S. Saul, and Abdoulaye Gueye aided in the conceptualization of this article, as did comments, suggestions, and queries posed by participants in a conference held at Emory University on Politics and Citizenship in the Postcolony (14–16 April 2011). Responsibility for the text remains the author’s. The author would like to thank the reviewers and editors at the Human Rights Quarterly for their helpful suggestions, ameliorations, and edits. Vol. 34 330 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

The Little Republic: Masculinity and Domestic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The Language of Oeconomy 3. Words into Practice 4. Keeping House 5. Identity and Authority 6. Conclusion: Oeconomy and the Reproduction of Patriarchy Bibliography

Ruins, reconstruction and representation : photography and the city in Postwar Western Europe (1945-58)

Abstract: This comparative cultural history of urban photography addresses France, Britain and West Germany during the period of reconstruction after the Second World War. It considers images circulating in the public sphere (including books, professional journals, popular magazines and official publications) and examines how the mediation through photography of architecture, urban space and everyday life shaped ways of seeing and thinking about cities in postwar Western Europe. Analysis focuses on four key fields: ruin photography in commemorative books (1945-49); representations of mass housing projects through architectural photography in the architectural press and official publications (1947-54); urban scenes in photographic magazines (1949-55); and urban photography in UNESCO’s early campaigns regarding human rights and intercultural understanding, as well as images of the institution’s purpose-built headquarters in Paris (1949-58). Whether of burned-out facades or sunlit concrete tower blocks, the wealth of publicly circulating images cohered in a set of specific discursive formations which, in dynamic and productive relation with one another, offered determinate perspectives on key topics of the reconstruction period. Moreover, in the transition from enmity to unity between the comparator nations which characterised the aftermath of total war and the escalation of the Cold War, the image of the city became a vital component of postwar Western European cultural identity facilitating the expression of important imagined communities, spaces and futures. Informed by the interdisciplinary field of photography studies, this research offers an interpretive analysis of dominant discursive formations, identifying the perspectives offered by postwar urban photography and excavating its relation to questions of cultural memory and forgetting, to national histories and imagined transnational communities, and to international relations and utopian thinking. It develops an innovative methodology for the interpretation of photography in the writing of cultural history and delivers a comparative historical analysis of a vital aspect of transnational postwar visual culture.

Space and Place in Jewish Studies

Abstract: Scholars in the humanities have become increasingly interested in questions of how space is produced and perceived-and they have found that this consideration of human geography greatly enriches our understanding of cultural history. This "spatial turn" equally has the potential to revolutionize Jewish studies, complicating familiar notions of Jews as "people of the Book," displaced persons with only a common religious tradition and history to unite them. Space and Place in Jewish Studies embraces these exciting critical developments by investigating what "space" has meant within Jewish culture and tradition-and how notions of "Jewish space," diaspora, and home continue to resonate within contemporary discourse, bringing space to the foreground as a practical and analytical category. Barbara Mann takes us on a journey from medieval Levantine trade routes to the Eastern European shtetl to the streets of contemporary New York, introducing readers to the variety of ways in which Jews have historically formed communities and created a sense of place for themselves. Combining cutting-edge theory with rabbinics, anthropology, and literary analysis, Mann offers a fresh take on the Jewish experience.

Smyrna's Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East - eScholarship

Abstract: “Set against one of the most horrible atrocities of the early twentieth century, the ethnic cleansing of Western Anatolia and the burning of the city of Izmir, Smyrna’s Ashes is an important contribution to our understanding of how humanitarian thinking shaped British foreign and military policy in the Late Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. Based on rigorous archival research and scholarship, well written, and compelling, it is a welcome addition to the growing literature on humanitarianism and the history of human rights.” Keith David Watenpaugh, University of California, Davis “Tusan shows vividly and compassionately how Britain’s attempt to build a ‘Near East’ in its own image upon the ruins of the Ottoman Empire served as prelude to today’s Middle East of nation-states.” Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge “Traces an important but neglected strand in the history of British humanitarianism, showing how its efforts to aid Ottoman Christians were inextricably enmeshed in imperial and cultural agendas and helped to contribute to the creation of the modern Middle East.” Dane Kennedy, The George Washington University “An original and meticulously researched contribution to our understandings of British imperial, gender, and cultural history. Smyrna’s Ashes demonstrates the long-standing influence of Middle Eastern issues on British self-identification. Tusan’s conclusions will engage scholars in a variety of fields for years to come.” Nancy L. Stockdale, University of North Texas Today the West tends to understand the Middle East primarily in terms of geopolitics: Islam, oil, and nuclear weapons. But in the nineteenth century it was imagined differently. The interplay of geography and politics found definition in a broader set of concerns that understood the region in terms of the moral, humanitarian, and religious commitments of the British empire. Smyrna’s Ashes reevaluates how this story of the “Eastern Question” shaped the cultural politics of geography, war, and genocide in the mapping of a larger Middle East after World War I. Michelle Tusan is a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Berkeley Series in British Studies, 5

After Freud left : a century of psychoanalysis in America

Abstract: From August 29 to September 21, 1909, Sigmund Freud visited the United States, where he gave five lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. This volume brings together a stunning gallery of leading historians of psychoanalysis and of American culture to consider the broad history of psychoanalysis in America and to reflect on what has happened to Freud's legacy in the United States in the century since his visit. There has been a flood of scholarship on Freud's life and on the European or world history of psychoanalysis, but historians have produced relatively little on the proliferation of psychoanalytic thinking in the United States, where Freud's work had monumental intellectual and social impact. The essays in "After Freud Left" provide readers with insights and perspectives to help them understand the uniqueness of Americans' psychoanalytic thinking, as well as how active the legacy of Freud remains - both implicitly and explicitly - in the United States in the twenty-first century. "After Freud Left" will be essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century American history, general intellectual and cultural history, and psychology and psychiatry.

Irish National Identity after the Celtic Tiger

Abstract: Gerry Smyth is a Reader in Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the author of numerous books on Irish culture, including The Novel and the Nation (1997), Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination (2001), and Music in Irish Cultural History (2009). He is currently preparing his adaptation of The Brother for performance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and completing a monograph entitled Treason and Betrayal in the Modern Irish Novel.

A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820

Abstract: A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820 explores the idea that strong links exist in the histories of Africa, Europe and North and South America. John K. Thornton provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Atlantic Basin before 1830 by describing political, social and cultural interactions between the continents' inhabitants. He traces the backgrounds of the populations on these three continental landmasses brought into contact by European navigation. Thornton then examines the political and social implications of the encounters, tracing the origins of a variety of Atlantic societies and showing how new ways of eating, drinking, speaking and worshipping developed in the newly created Atlantic World. This book uses close readings of original sources to produce new interpretations of its subject.

History in the Making

Abstract: From the vantage point of nearly sixty years devoted to research and the writing of history, J. H. Elliott steps back from his work to consider the progress of historical scholarship. From his own experiences as a historian of Spain, Europe, and the Americas, he provides a deft and sharp analysis of the work that historians do and how the field has changed since the 1950s. The author begins by explaining the roots of his interest in Spain and its past, then analyzes the challenges of writing the history of a country other than one's own. In succeeding chapters he offers acute observations on such topics as the history of national and imperial decline, political history, biography, and art and cultural history. Elliott concludes with an assessment of changes in the approach to history over the past half-century, including the impact of digital technology, and argues that a comprehensive vision of the past remains essential. Professional historians, students of history, and those who read history for pleasure will find in Elliott's delightful book a new appreciation of what goes into the shaping of historical works and how those works in turn can shape the world of thought and action.

Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since the 1960s

Abstract: In the 1960s, two great social and cultural changes of the western world began. The first was the rapid decline of Christian religious practice and identity and the rise of the people of 'no religion'. The second was the transformation in women's lives that spawned a demographic revolution in sex, family and work. Both phenomena were sudden though not uniform in their impact. The argument of this book is that the two were intimately connected, triggered by an historic confluence of factors in the 1960s. Canada, Ireland, UK and USA represent different stages of secularisation for the book's study. The religious collapse in mainland Britain and most of Canada was sharp and spectacular but contrasted with the more resilient religious cultures of the United States, the Canadian Maritimes, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Using statistical evidence from government censuses, the book demonstrates how secularisation was deeply linked to demographic change. Starting with the distinctive features of the 1960s, the book quantifies secularisation's scale, timing and character in each nation. Then, the intense links of women's sexual revolution to religious decline are explored. From there, women's changing patterns of marriage, coupling and birthing are correlated with diminishing religiosity. The final exploration is into the secularising consequences of economic change, higher education and women's expanding work roles. This book transforms the way in which secularisation is imagined. Religion matters more than mere belief, practice and the churches; it shapes how populations construct their sexual practices, families and life-course. In nations where religion has been dissolving since 1960 into apathy and atheism, the process has been part of a demographic revolution built on new moral codes. Connecting religious history with the history of population, this volume unveils how the historian and sociologist need to engage with the demographic enormity of the decline of Christendom. CALLUM G. BROWN is Professor of Religious and Cultural History at the University of Dundee.

Argentine intellectuals as harbingers of modernity: the democratization projects of Marcos Aguinis.

Abstract: OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate School of Northeastern University April, 2012

Cultural Sociology: An Introduction

Abstract: Notes on Authors vii Preface ix Glossary of Terms xiii Part I: Theory and Method 1 Starting toWrite a History of the Present Day: Culture and Sociology 3 David Chaney 2 Defining Cultural Sociology 19 3 Methodological Issues in Cultural Sociology 31 Part II: New Cultural Identities 4 Class, Culture and Social Difference 47 5 Gender and Sexuality 63 6 Racism, Race and Difference 77 7 Bodies and Identities 91 Part III: Fragmented Ideology 8 Politics and Culture 107 9 Globalization 121 10 Culture and Religion 133 Part IV: Leisure and Lifestyle 11 Popular Music: Place, Identity, Community 151 12 Fashion Logics and the Cultural Economy: The Social Power of Tastes, Aesthetics and Style 163 13 Food, Eating and Culture 177 14 Media, Culture and Public Life 189 References 201 Index 219

Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics

Abstract: During the nineteenth century, European scinetists and physicians considered the tropics the natural home of pathogens. Hot and miasmic, the tropical world was the locus of diesase, for Euopeans the great enemy of civilization. In the late nineteenth century when bacterilological laboratories and institutions were introduced to British Indaia, they were therefore as much an imperial mission to cleanse and civilize a tropical colony as a medical one to eradicate disease. Bacteriology offered a panacea in colonial India, a way by which the multifarious political, social, environmntal, and medical problems and anxieties, intrinsically linkied to its diseases, could have a single reslolution. Bacteriology in British India is th first book to provide a social and cultural history of bacteriology in colonial India, situating it within the confluence of advances in germ theory, Pastuerian vaccines, colonial medicine, laboratoroy science, and British imperialism. It recounts the genesis of bacteriology and laboratory medicine in India through a complex history of conflict and alignment between Pasteurism and British imperial medicine. By investigating an array of laboratory notes, medical literature, and literary sources, the volume links colonial medical research with issues of poverty, race, natioanlism, and imperial attitudes toward tropical climate and wildlife, contributing to a wide field of scholarship like the history of science and medicine, sociology ofscience, and cultural history. Pratik Chakrabarti is senior lecturer in history at the University of Kent, UK.

The Music Libel Against the Jews

Abstract: This deeply imaginative and wide-ranging book shows how, since the first centuries of the Christian era, gentiles have associated Jews with noise. Ruth HaCohen focuses her study on a "musical libel"-a variation on the Passion story that recurs in various forms and cultures in which an innocent Christian boy is killed by a Jew in order to silence his "harmonious musicality." In paying close attention to how and where this libel surfaces, HaCohen covers a wide swath of western cultural history, showing how entrenched aesthetic-theological assumptions have persistently defined European culture and its internal moral and political orientations. Ruth HaCohen combines in her comprehensive analysis the perspectives of musicology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, tracing the tensions between Jewish "noise" and idealized Christian "harmony" and their artistic manifestations from the high Middle Ages through Nazi Germany and beyond. She concludes her book with a passionate and moving argument for humanizing contemporary soundspaces.

Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground

Abstract: How valid, though, is punk's faith in anarchistic empowerment? Exploring theories from Derrida and Marx, Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground examines the cultural history and politics of punk.

The Crusader States

Abstract: When the armies of the First Crusade wrested Jerusalem from control of the Fatimids of Egypt in 1099, they believed their victory was an evident sign of God's favor. It was, therefore, incumbent upon them to fulfill what they understood to be God's plan: to reestablish Christian control of Syria and Palestine. This book is devoted to the resulting settlements, the crusader states, that developed around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and survived until Richard the Lionheart's departure in 1192. Focusing on Jerusalem, Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa, Malcolm Barber vividly reconstructs the crusaders' arduous process of establishing and protecting their settlements, and the simultaneous struggle of vanquished inhabitants to adapt to life alongside their conquerors. Rich with colorful accounts of major military campaigns, the book goes much deeper, exploring in detail the culture of the crusader states-the complex indigenous inheritance; the architecture; the political, legal, and economic institutions; the ecclesiastical framework through which the crusaders perceived the world; the origins of the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers; and more. With the zest of a scholar pursuing a lifelong interest, Barber presents a complete narrative and cultural history of the crusader states while setting a new standard for the term "total history."

The Cultural View

Abstract: In locating creative work within a social context we can begin to see the problematic nature of considering only the individual producer’s action when investigating creative activity. The evidence, according to both the neo-Marxist views of Wolff and the symbolic interactionist perspective of Becker, amongst many others, supports the idea that creativity can no longer be credited to particular individuals only. Taking the idea that all art is a social product one step further are the poststructuralists (see Harland 1987, Moxey 1994) who have been instrumental in altering the broader focus of cultural studies (Frow & Morris 1993, Real 1996, Sardar & Van Loon 1998). At the time of the appearance of poststructuralist thought, cultural studies were a cluster of approaches to theory that investigated notions of identity, power, meaning, discourse and representation and, for our purposes, not only placed a strong emphasis on the text but also stimulated a reappraisal of cultural consumption. In playing their part within this larger project, the poststructuralists not only put in place what can be called the dissolution of certainty but also helped destabilise the idea that the individual producer is the sole locus of the act of meaning-making. In doing this they helped dismember the meta-narratives of Romanticism for those who were engaged in the cultural studies project.