Cultural Studies, Global Politics, Kultursoziologie, Kulturwissenschaften, Political Science, Politikwissenschaft, Sociology, Sociology of Culture, Soziologie, Weltpolitik

Klappentext
This book is a highly innovative contribution to the study of popular culture. Focusing on the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves, Sarah Thornton highlights the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture. Using a rich combination of methods, Thornton paints a picture of club cultures as 'taste cultures' brought together by micro-media (like flyers and listings), transformed into self-conscious 'subcultures' by niche media (like the music and style press), and sometimes recast as 'movements' with the aid of mass media (like tabloid newspaper front pages). She also analyses the changing status of the medium of recording, from a marginal second-class entertainment in the 1950s to the much celebrated, dominant form of clubs and raves in the 1990s. Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term 'subcultural capital' to make sense of the distinctions made by 'cool' youth, paying particular attention to their disparagement of the 'mainstream' against which they measure their alternative cultural worth.

Well illustrated with case studies, very readable and theoretically innovative, Club Cultures will become established as a key text in cultural and media studies and in the sociology of culture.

Zusammenfassung
In this timely book Janet Todd offers an analysis and defence of the feminist literary history practised by Elaine Showalter and other contemporary American literary critics. She argues that this approach rightly links the political concerns of feminist criticism to the uncovering of female voices embedded in history. Todd reconstructs the development of feminist literary history from the 1960s through to the present day, highlighting the central themes as well as the strengths and weaknesses. She then examines the debate between American feminist critics, on the one hand, and feminist critics inspired by the work of French theorists such as Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous, on the other. She defends feminist literary history against its critics and casts doubt on some of the uses of psychoanalysis in feminism. Todd also considers the debate with men and assesses the relevance of academic analyses of gender, masculinity and homosexuality. Feminist Literary History is a forceful and committed work, which addresses some of the most important issues in contemporary feminist theory and literary criticism. It will be widely read as an introductory text by students in English literature, modern languages, women's studies and cultural studies.

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