The Culture Cult

The Culture Cult PDF Author: Roger Sandall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429976348
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The Culture Cultis an acerbic critique of that longing widespread in society today to ?retreat from civilization.? From Rousseau and the Noble Savage to modern defenders of ethnicity such as Isaiah Berlin and Karl Polanyi, a prominent intellectual tradition has over-romanticized the virtues of tribal life. In contrast, another tradition, represented by Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Ernest Gellner, defends modern values and civil society. The Culture Cult discusses both sides of this divide between "culture" and "civilization," and between "closed" and "open" societies. The romantic insistence on the superiority of the primitive is increasingly grounded in a fictionalized picture of the past-a picture often created with the aid of well-meaning but misguided anthropologists. Such idealizations work to the detriment of the very people they are meant to help, for they isolate minorities from such undeniable benefits of modern society as literacy and health care, and discourage them from participating in modern life. Few will find comfort in The Culture Cult, but many will recognize a valuable criticism of currently popular social politics.

The Culture Cult

The Culture Cult PDF Author: Roger Sandall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429976348
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Culture Cultis an acerbic critique of that longing widespread in society today to ?retreat from civilization.? From Rousseau and the Noble Savage to modern defenders of ethnicity such as Isaiah Berlin and Karl Polanyi, a prominent intellectual tradition has over-romanticized the virtues of tribal life. In contrast, another tradition, represented by Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Ernest Gellner, defends modern values and civil society. The Culture Cult discusses both sides of this divide between "culture" and "civilization," and between "closed" and "open" societies. The romantic insistence on the superiority of the primitive is increasingly grounded in a fictionalized picture of the past-a picture often created with the aid of well-meaning but misguided anthropologists. Such idealizations work to the detriment of the very people they are meant to help, for they isolate minorities from such undeniable benefits of modern society as literacy and health care, and discourage them from participating in modern life. Few will find comfort in The Culture Cult, but many will recognize a valuable criticism of currently popular social politics.

The Victim Cult

The Victim Cult PDF Author: Mark Mike
Publisher: Thomas & Black
ISBN: 9780968791592
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The Victim Cult tackles the worldwide grievance culture and from ancient Rome to the White House today and on to campuses where some think themselves victims of "micro-aggressions." The book also looks at how corrosive victim thinking fuels movements as diverse as violent Antifa anarchists, Black Lives Matter protesters, and Donald Trump's "Capitol Hill" demonstrators.

The Cult of the Amateur

The Cult of the Amateur PDF Author: Andrew Keen
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0385520816
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors. In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented. The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions. Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique

Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique PDF Author: Holger Jebens
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828516
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Cargo cults have long exerted a remarkable attraction on Westerners, and the last decade has seen the publication of much new work on the subject. This collection of original essays is based on fieldwork in Melanesia, Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia by scholars who are influential in the contemporary debate on cargo. Conceived as a reader for undergraduate and graduate courses, the volume offers an up-to-date view of the subject and the debates it arouses among contemporary anthropologists. Some contributors plead for the abolition of "cargo" because of its troublesome implications, but also because, in the authors’ view, cargo cults do not exist as identifiable objects of study. Others argue that it is precisely this troublesome nature that makes the term a useful analytical tool that should be welcomed rather than rejected. By delineating and substantiating key issues and positions in this lively and ongoing debate, this volume underscores and refines the contemporary reevaluation of cargo cults. Scholars of the Pacific region and others interested in new religious movements should find this volume both enlightening and compelling. Contributors: Nils Bubandt, Vincent Crapanzano, Douglas M. Dalton, Elfriede Hermann, Holger Jebens, Martha Kaplan, Karl-Heinz Kohl, Stephen C. Leavitt, Lamont Lindstrom, Ton Otto, Joel Robbins, Jaap Timmer, Robert Tonkinson.

Cult, Culture, and Authority

Cult, Culture, and Authority PDF Author: Olga Dror
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824862074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Princess Liễu Hạnh, often called the Mother of the Vietnamese people by her followers, is one of the most prominent goddesses in Vietnamese popular religion. First emerging some four centuries ago as a local sect appealing to women, the princess’ cult has since transcended its geographical and gender boundaries and remains vibrant today. Who was this revered deity? Was she a virtuous woman or a prostitute? Why did people begin worshiping her and why have they continued? Cult, Culture, and Authority traces Liễu Hạnh’s cult from its ostensible appearance in the sixteenth century to its present-day prominence in North Vietnam and considers it from a broad range of perspectives, as religion and literature and in the context of politics and society. Over time, Liễu Hạnh’s personality and cult became the subject of numerous literary accounts, and these historical texts are a major source for this book. Author Olga Dror explores the authorship and historical context of each text considered, treating her subject in an interdisciplinary way. Her interest lies in how these accounts reflect the various political agendas of successive generations of intellectuals and officials. The same cult was called into service for a variety of ideological ends: feminism, nationalism, Buddhism, or Daoism.

Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures

Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures PDF Author: Claudia L. Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226402053
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Jane Austen completed only six novels, but enduring passion for the author and her works has driven fans to read these books repeatedly, in book clubs or solo, while also inspiring countless film adaptations, sequels, and even spoofs involving zombies and sea monsters. Austen’s lasting appeal to both popular and elite audiences has lifted her to legendary status. In Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures, Claudia L. Johnson shows how Jane Austen became “Jane Austen,” a figure intensely—sometimes even wildly—venerated, and often for markedly different reasons. Johnson begins by exploring the most important monuments and portraits of Austen, considering how these artifacts point to an author who is invisible and yet whose image is inseparable from the characters and fictional worlds she created. She then passes through the four critical phases of Austen’s reception—the Victorian era, the First and Second World Wars, and the establishment of the Austen House and Museum in 1949—and ponders what the adoration of Austen has meant to readers over the past two centuries. For her fans, the very concept of “Jane Austen” encapsulates powerful ideas and feelings about history, class, manners, intimacy, language, and the everyday. By respecting the intelligence of past commentary about Austen, Johnson shows, we are able to revisit her work and unearth fresh insights and new critical possibilities. An insightful look at how and why readers have cherished one of our most beloved authors, Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures will be a valuable addition to the library of any fan of the divine Jane.

Cargo Cult

Cargo Cult PDF Author: Lamont Lindstrom
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824878957
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Who is not captivated by tales of Islanders earnestly scanning their watery horizons for great fleets of cargo ships bringing rice, radios and refrigerators - ships that will never arrive? Of all the stories spun about the island peoples of Melanesia, tales of cargo cult are among the most fascinating. The term cargo cult, Lamont Lindstrom contends, is one of anthropology's most successful conceptual offspring. Like culture, worldview and ethnicity, its usage has steadily proliferated, migrating into popular culture where today it is used to describe an astonishing roll-call of people. It's history makes for lively and compelling reading. The cargo cult story, Lindstrom shows, is more significant than it at first appears, for it recapitulates in summary form three generations of anthropological theory and Pacific studies. Although anthropologists' enthusiasm for the notion of cargo cult has waned, it now colors outsiders' understanding of Melanesian culture, and even Melanesians' perceptions of themselves. The repercussions for contemporary Islanders are significant: leaders of more than one political movement have felt the need to deny that they are any kind of cargo cultist. Of particular interest to this history is Lindstom's argument that accounts of cargo cult are at heart tragedies of thwarted desire, melancholy anticipation and crazy unrequited love. He makes a convincing case that these stories expose powerful Western scenarios of desire itself—giving cargo cult its combined titillation of the fascinating exotic and the comfortably familiar.

Slogan T-Shirts

Slogan T-Shirts PDF Author: Stephanie Talbot
Publisher: A&C Black Visual Arts
ISBN: 9781408157541
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Informative, illuminating, insightful and erudite, Slogan T-Shirts: Cult and Culture is completely unique. Featuring interviews with a wealth of credible fashion insiders, cultural commentators and creative luminaries, from Holly Johnson (of Frankie Goes to Hollywood) to Katharine Hamnett, it offers a multi-faceted approach to the question of what makes the slogan T-shirt so rich, layered and culturally relevant... because slogans are never simply just words; they are emotive and evocative, suggestive and provocative. Slogan T-Shirts: Cult and Culture explores the vast spectrum of slogan use on T-shirts; its function as a message delivery system; its expression as an artefact of language; and its role as an emblem of political, social, recreational and sartorial trends. The book unfurls as a cultural library of perspectives, nuanced positions and eclectic sources and each interview offers a cultural snapshot within the versatile framework of slogan T-shirt culture. The book also glances into the inner worlds, inside stories and mechanisms of those involved in fashion, design and the production of media. Beautifully designed, visually seductive and packed with influential innovators from the last three decades, every page of this book is a source of inspiration.

The Culture of the Internet and the Internet as Cult

The Culture of the Internet and the Internet as Cult PDF Author: Philippe Breton
Publisher: Litwin Books Llc
ISBN: 9781936117413
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
In this book, French author Philippe Breton looks at the Internet and the culture surrounding it through the lens of its cultural background. Central in his insightful analysis of "the Internet as cult" are Teilhard de Chardin and the New Age, but he looks also at the fears, passions and pathologies of Alan Turing and Norbert Wiener, the imagined worlds of Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, J.G. Ballard and Timothy Leary, the prognostications and confessions of Bill Gates, Nicolas Negroponte and Bill Joy, and the philosophies of Saint-Simon, McLuhan and Pierre Levy. Dreams of a transparent and unmediated world, a world in which neither time nor space are relevant, a world without violence, without law, without a distinction between the public and the private, Breton contrasts with the reality of propaganda, computer viruses and surveillance, the world in which "sociality in the sense of mutuality disappears in favor of interactivity," where "experience with another and with the world in general is replaced by brief reactionary relations that hardly engage us at all." This English language translation is by David Bade."

Cult Collectors

Cult Collectors PDF Author: Lincoln Geraghty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136474307
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Cult Collectors examines cultures of consumption and the fans who collect cult film and TV merchandise. Author Lincoln Geraghty argues that there has been a change in the fan convention space, where collectible merchandise and toys, rather than just the fictional text, have become objects for trade, nostalgia, and a focal point for fans’ personal narratives. New technologies also add to this changing identity of cult fandom whereby popular websites such as eBay and ThinkGeek become cyber sites of memory and profit for cult fan communities. The book opens with an analysis of the problematic representations of fans and fandom in film and television. Stereotypes of the fan and collector as portrayed in series such as The Big Bang Theory and films like The 40 Year Old Virgin are discussed alongside changes in consumption practices and the mainstreaming of cult media. Following this, theoretical chapters consider issues of gender, representation, nostalgia and the influence of social media. Finally, extended case study chapters examine in detail the connections between the fan community and the commodities bought and sold. Topics discussed include: The San Diego Comic-Con and the cult geographies of the fan convention Hollywood memorabilia and collecting cinema history The Star Wars franchise, merchandising and the adult collector Online stores and the commercialisation of cult fandom Mattel, Hasbro and nostalgia for animated eighties children’s television