Defending Culture
Conceptual Foundations and Contemporary Debate
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Beschreibung
This book concerns the implications and interrelations of key concepts of culture, defending an updated communicative notion of culture as meaning-making against a series of current challenges. The first part of the book distinguishes four main concepts of culture, presenting their histories, uses, limitations and mutual contradictions, which else often tend to be neglected. The second part scrutinizes neomaterialist and posthumanist critics’ antihermeneutic efforts to escape the spirals of interpretation and meaning. Learning from such contestations, the third part summarizes the arguments and in five theses reconstructs a contemporary and comprehensive agenda for cultural studies, based on creative imagination and communicative mediation in the dynamic interface between meaning and materiality. This thus provides a survey of fundamental concepts and theories of culture for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences, while simultaneously also serving as an introductory guide to the contemporary debate in this field.
This book concerns the implications and interrelations of key concepts of culture, defending an updated communicative notion of culture as meaning-making against a series of current challenges. The first part of the book distinguishes four main concepts of culture, presenting their histories, uses, limitations and mutual contradictions, which else often tend to be neglected. The second part scrutinizes neomaterialist and posthumanist critics’ antihermeneutic efforts to escape the spirals of interpretation and meaning. Learning from such contestations, the third part summarizes the arguments and in five theses reconstructs a contemporary and comprehensive agenda for cultural studies, based on creative imagination and communicative mediation in the dynamic interface between meaning and materiality. This thus provides a survey of fundamental concepts and theories of culture for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences, while simultaneously also serving as an introductory guide to the contemporary debate in this field.
Provides a clear introductory presentation of how the concept of culture has been defined and may be used
Combines an overview over the conceptual history of culture and cultural theory with an engaged debate of critical perspectives
Utilizes a range of methods and approaches, including materialist and posthumanist theories relevant to students and academics science and technology studies as well as in courses focusing on cultural policy, gender, ethnicity and identity
Autor*in
Johan Fornäs
Themen in »Defending Culture«
Critical hermeneutics Cultural Theory Cultural concept New materialism Post-humanism