Culture and Society
An Introduction to Cultural Studies
- David Oswell - Goldsmiths College, UK
- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
David Oswell has written a comprehensive introduction to cultural studies that guides the reader through the field's central foundations and its freshest ideas. This book:
- Grounds the reader in the foundations of cultural studies and cultural theory: language and semiology, ideology and power, mass and popular culture.
- Analyzes the central problems: identity, body, economy, globalization and empire.
- Introduces the latest developments on materiality, agency, technology and nature.
Culture and Society is an invaluable guide for students navigating the dynamic debates and intellectual challenges of cultural studies. Its breadth and unparalleled coverage of theory will also ensure that it is read by anyone interested in questions of materiality and culture.
Too often cultural studies discourse seems cut off from wider developments in social theory. As a sociologist with a strong cultural studies sensibility, David Oswell is ideally placed to put this right. Through a series of well-judged and historically nuanced readings of cultural, social theory and critical philosophy, this book provides just the bridge between cultural studies and wider debates that we need
Nick Couldry
Redaer in Media, Communications and Culture, London School of Economics and Political Science
This book is an addition to the burgeoning field of Cultural Studies and is a useful companion volume to what Oswell elegantly describes as ‘a book in a sea of other books and writings about culture’. Nevertheless, it is a useful guide where Oswell manages to decant sophisticated concepts and revisit the tropes in an imag-inative and engaging way, which should appeal to a wide readership
Sociology
Duplicative of the textbook Cultural Studies by Chris Barker, which was adopted, but at a less accessible level for beginning undergraduate students.
