Critical Bodies – serie

This work explores the problematic nature of ethnographic research in regard to power differentials experienced by ethnographers and researched communities. The case study location was Isla Mujeres, Mexico, a small island located off the Yucatan coast, eight miles northeast of Cancun.

This work explores the problematic nature of ethnographic research in regard to power differentials experienced by ethnographers and researched communities. The case study location was Isla Mujeres, Mexico, a small island located off the Yucatan coast, eight miles northeast of Cancun.

In this volume a double strategy of framing television as both a prop and a body implant is used. McLuhan first saw television as a body with potential for global community. The author develops McLuhan's vision with more attention to political economy, body politics and bio-technology.

The human body has recently emerged as a central concept of social theory. Social scientists, philosophers, and scholars in other disciplines now routinely argue that abstract concepts such as class and gender should be understood by examining how they are expressed in the body's everyday practices. Such an approach has humanized social theory by emphasizing the role that concretely situated human beings play in acting out or redefining social norms. How will this emphasis on human embodiment transform methods of social inquiry? The volume takes up this question by examining how the recognition of human embodiment entails reworking standard models of social research. Individual chapters focus on such topics as communication theory, ethics, policy science, globalization and cultural changes, gerontology, and pedagogical practice.

The human body has recently emerged as a central concept of social theory. Social scientists, philosophers, and scholars in other disciplines now routinely argue that abstract concepts such as class and gender should be understood by examining how they are expressed in the body's everyday practices. Such an approach has humanized social theory by emphasizing the role that concretely situated human beings play in acting out or redefining social norms. How will this emphasis on human embodiment transform methods of social inquiry? The volume takes up this question by examining how the recognition of human embodiment entails reworking standard models of social research. Individual chapters focus on such topics as communication theory, ethics, policy science, globalization and cultural changes, gerontology, and pedagogical practice.

This collection is a collaborative, international effort to reflect on a broad range of issues relating to globalization. Several encompassing themes are addressed. One central issue concerns ideals proper to the democratic nation-state and their relationship to a globalizing culture. A second theme is the tension between increasing needs for technical, ""Western"" education and the desire to maintain and enhance the cultural richness of ""local"" worlds. A third related theme is an attempt to understand the nature of modern technology and its relationship to the lifeworld and the lived worlds of indigenous peoples. Finally, discussions of globalization inevitably involve questions regarding the nature of history and human freedom. Is globalization a necessary force? Does human historical existence provide the resources for the free creation and preservation of other cultural worlds?

This collection is a collaborative, international effort to reflect on a broad range of issues relating to globalization. Several encompassing themes are addressed. One central issue concerns ideals proper to the democratic nation-state and their relationship to a globalizing culture. A second theme is the tension between increasing needs for technical, ""Western"" education and the desire to maintain and enhance the cultural richness of ""local"" worlds. A third related theme is an attempt to understand the nature of modern technology and its relationship to the lifeworld and the lived worlds of indigenous peoples. Finally, discussions of globalization inevitably involve questions regarding the nature of history and human freedom. Is globalization a necessary force? Does human historical existence provide the resources for the free creation and preservation of other cultural worlds?

Frank Herbert wrote six novels now referred to as The Dune Chronicles. The Chronicles are famous for their tightly woven narratives, colourful characters, and plans-within-plans multilayered plot-lines and intrigue. This book culls from the pages ofThe Chronicles not the action, adventure or drama (as presented in the movies), but the politics, religion and communicology of Dune- the underlying philosophy that motivates the characters to action. The purpose of this book is to unpack Herbert's ideas, and to find a place for them in our lives, learning, knowledge and wisdom. Herbert gives us the Mentat, or human computer, as an emblem of his creation; we seek here to learn from Dune's uncommon wisdom the Mentat's way of perception. We seek to interpret these Chronicles in terms of these times, and within the purview of the philosophy of communication and cultural studies. Thus, this book might be called the Mentat's Handbook -v2.0. Think of it as a Dune companion.

Frank Herbert wrote six novels now referred to as The Dune Chronicles. The Chronicles are famous for their tightly woven narratives, colourful characters, and plans-within-plans multilayered plot-lines and intrigue. This book culls from the pages ofThe Chronicles not the action, adventure or drama (as presented in the movies), but the politics, religion and communicology of Dune- the underlying philosophy that motivates the characters to action. The purpose of this book is to unpack Herbert's ideas, and to find a place for them in our lives, learning, knowledge and wisdom. Herbert gives us the Mentat, or human computer, as an emblem of his creation; we seek here to learn from Dune's uncommon wisdom the Mentat's way of perception. We seek to interpret these Chronicles in terms of these times, and within the purview of the philosophy of communication and cultural studies. Thus, this book might be called the Mentat's Handbook -v2.0. Think of it as a Dune companion.

The objective of this book is to provide a methodology and a theoretical paradigm based on Marx’s sensuous universal and Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal intentionality. It will serve the humanities and social sciences as a means for founding inquiry on concrete experience. Readers will find that the book is not a repackaging of Marx and phenomenology, but rather, it bears an internal critique of the enterprise. The authors’ contribution is to ground the sensuous universal as the science of experience that is required by the Marxian project, as well as by the new phenomenology of world theorising.

This volume proposes a cultural reading of the Spanish-language television networks Univision and Telemundo. Drawing from semiotic and poststructuralist theory; from cultural and television studies in Latin America and the United States; and from poetry, literature and the occasional film, the author provides a setting and a cultural ground from which to explore “emergent discourses” in the Spanish-language television of the United States.The author identifies issues such as the mythical place of “America” in the discourses of Latin America and the United States; the contradictory role of Spanish as a language of resistance and legitimation in the United States; the “modernization” of the Latin American melodramatic serial (telenovelas) and of narratives on sexuality and gender; and the symbolic re-imagining or “remapping” of the borders of the United States and Latin America.It is argued that Hispanic television is a site where a multiplicity of cultural vectors intersect, overlap, collide, and transform one another, creating a “Third Text,” neither Latin American or United-Statian, but both and more; a discursive hybrid in which contradictory economic, ideological and social interests much mind and dispute a common ground.The book is geared toward graduate students and scholars in the fields of communication, media studies, and Latin American and Latina/o studies, The text will be of particular relevance in courses that deal with media theory and criticism, semiotics, narrative and discourse analysis, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies.

This volume proposes a cultural reading of the Spanish-language television networks Univision and Telemundo. Drawing from semiotic and poststructuralist theory; from cultural and television studies in Latin America and the United States; and from poetry, literature and the occasional film, the author provides a setting and a cultural ground from which to explore “emergent discourses” in the Spanish-language television of the United States.The author identifies issues such as the mythical place of “America” in the discourses of Latin America and the United States; the contradictory role of Spanish as a language of resistance and legitimation in the United States; the “modernization” of the Latin American melodramatic serial (telenovelas) and of narratives on sexuality and gender; and the symbolic re-imagining or “remapping” of the borders of the United States and Latin America.It is argued that Hispanic television is a site where a multiplicity of cultural vectors intersect, overlap, collide, and transform one another, creating a “Third Text,” neither Latin American or United-Statian, but both and more; a discursive hybrid in which contradictory economic, ideological and social interests much mind and dispute a common ground.The book is geared toward graduate students and scholars in the fields of communication, media studies, and Latin American and Latina/o studies, The text will be of particular relevance in courses that deal with media theory and criticism, semiotics, narrative and discourse analysis, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies.

This book is a condensation of critical essays in contemporary culture within the context of European phenomenology, employing its own self-critiques in order to demonstrate the methodological and experiential dimensions of the logic of culture.The essays are neither a part of foundationalism or foundation-less. Rather the experience of the space-time movement—logic of permanence/flux, stasis/flux, and the permutation of enhancement/reclamation and of permanence/flux and permanent/permanence—are critical for opening cultural studies to civilization and cosmological (world) investigations. The contemporary world of globalization, with boundaries becoming rather insignificant and the intermixing of global expressions, requires broader and more-encompassing observations.This book will be of interest in the social sciences and in comparative studies in the humanities, for programs in cultural studies, and in courses emphasizing cultural systems such as physical anthropology.