Understanding Culture
Cultural Studies, Order, Ordering
- Gavin Kendall - Queensland University of Technology, Australia
- Gary Wickham - Murdoch University, Australia
Understanding Culture offers an accessible and comprehensive overview of the field of cultural studies whilst also proposing a different way of `doing' cultural studies. It focuses on the ways in which cultural objects and practices serve as both a means of ordering people's lives and as markers of that ordering.
Understanding Culture:
· Reviews the state of the discipline of cultural studies and suggests a new theoretical and methodological orientation drawing on the work of: Foucault; scepticism, Wittgenstein; Harvey Sacks and John Law.
· Uses insights from a variety of sources to examine the complex ways in which meanings are manufactured as lives are ordered in particular social settings: personal life; education; health; the city and law.
· Presents case studies that illustrate what the new cultural studies looks like, covering: colonialism; everyday life and identity; and technology.
Understanding Culture will be invaluable reading for students and scholars of cultural studies and sociology.
`Cultural Studies has made a name for itself by pricking the pretensions of several disciplines, from sociology to literature. Now, along come Kendall and Wickham to do the same to cultural studies - a "must read" for anyone in the field' - Toby Miller, New York University
Sage College Publishing
