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ISBN: 9780195562453

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Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice

Nicole Anderson, Katrina Schlunke


Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice takes some of the most prominent theoretical approaches used in Cultural Studies and demonstrates the ways in which they are used to evaluate, analyse and interpret recent events, debates, topics and texts in contemporary society. The book is organized around seven theories that dominate the teaching and researching of cultural studies. Each section consists of an introduction, then three essays by different contirbutors that bring together theory and practice. This allows the book to look more at the types of theory, rather than at the theorist in isolation. Each section uses the introduction of the theory, its history, where appropriate, its concerns and its limitations, as well as connection with other sections of the book, drawing all the relevant concepts alongside for comparison and discussion. By offering more than one example in each part, the text reveals that there are not only many theories and many practices in which theory can be applied, but also many styles of writing, many styles of thinking about and articulating cultural practices and everyday life.
  • Extensive glossary designed to make this book accessible to students of all levels

  • Examples in text show students how to connect theory to practice

  • Each section contains three essays from various viewpoints, preceded by an introduction that links the theory in that section to others to help develop a well-rounded understanding of how various cultural theories interact with each other.

Part 1: Bodies of Emodiment
1. Alternative Therapies as Disciplinary Practices: The Uses and Limitations of a Foucauldian Approach
2. Body, Gender, Gurlesque, Intersex
3. Touching skin: Embodiment and the Senses in the Work of Ron Mueck

Part 2: Poststucturalism
4. No Peace Without War, No War Without Peace: Deconstructing War
5. Eating the Other: Deconstructing the ‘Ethics’ of Cannibalism
6. Tattooing: The Bio-political Inscription of Bodies and Selves

Part 3: Postmodernism
7. Living with Things: Consumption, Material Culture and Everyday Life
8. Flesh Machines: Self-making and the Postmodern Body
9. Rrapping Irigaray: Flesh, Passion, World

Part 4: Sex & Sexuality
10. Kung Fu Fighting: Doing Action and Negotiating Masculinity
11. Can’t Get You Out of My Head: Consuming Celebrity, Producing Sexual Identity
12. Comics as Everyday Theory: The Counterpublic World of Taiwanese Women Fans of Japanese Homoerotic Manga

Part 5: Empire and Globalisation
13. What’s So Funny about Indian Casions? Comparative Notes on Gambling, White Possession and Popular Culture in Australia and the USA
14. Beauty and the Bollywood Star: Stories of Skin Colour and Transnational Circulations of Whiteness
15. Visual Cultures of Orientalism and Empire: The Abu Ghraib Images

Part 6: Ethnography
16. From Other to Self and Back: The Curious History of Ethnography
17. Talk Table: Doing-Ethnography in the Kitchen
18. Ethnografts

Part 7: Text, Sensation and Writing
19. Metaphors of Voice Quality
20. ‘Botanizing on the Asphalt’: Benjamin and Practices of Flanerie
21. Momentum

Nicole Anderson , Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, Australia

Katrina Schlunke , University of technology, Sydney, Australia