Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination

Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination PDF Author: Henry Jenkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

The Invention of Creativity

The Invention of Creativity PDF Author: Andreas Reckwitz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745697070
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Contemporary society has seen an unprecedented rise in both the demand and the desire to be creative, to bring something new into the world. Once the reserve of artistic subcultures, creativity has now become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society. In this new book, cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz investigates how the ideal of creativity has grown into a major social force, from the art of the avant-garde and postmodernism to the ‘creative industries’ and the innovation economy, the psychology of creativity and self-growth, the media representation of creative stars, and the urban design of ‘creative cities’. Where creativity is often assumed to be a force for good, Reckwitz looks critically at how this imperative has developed from the 1970s to the present day. Though we may well perceive creativity as the realization of some natural and innate potential within us, it has rather to be understood within the structures of a very specific culture of the new in late modern society. The Invention of Creativity is a bold and refreshing counter to conventional wisdom that shows how our age is defined by radical and restrictive processes of social aestheticization. It will be of great interest to those working in a variety of disciplines, from cultural and social theory to art history and aesthetics.

Culture Crash

Culture Crash PDF Author: Scott Timberg
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300210655
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Change is no stranger to us in the twenty-first century. We must constantly adjust to an evolving world, to transformation and innovation. But for many thousands of creative artists, a torrent of recent changes has made it all but impossible to earn a living. A persistent economic recession, social shifts, and technological change have combined to put our artists—from graphic designers to indie-rock musicians, from architects to booksellers—out of work. This important book looks deeply and broadly into the roots of the crisis of the creative class in America and tells us why it matters. Scott Timberg considers the human cost as well as the unintended consequences of shuttered record stores, decimated newspapers, music piracy, and a general attitude of indifference. He identifies social tensions and contradictions—most concerning the artist’s place in society—that have plunged the creative class into a fight for survival. Timberg shows how America’s now-collapsing middlebrow culture—a culture once derided by intellectuals like Dwight Macdonald—appears, from today’s vantage point, to have been at least a Silver Age. Timberg’s reporting is essential reading for anyone who works in the world of culture, knows someone who does, or cares about the work creative artists produce.

Design, Creativity & Culture

Design, Creativity & Culture PDF Author: Maurice Barnwell
Publisher: Black Dog Pub Limited
ISBN: 9781907317408
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"This book makes reference to the full spectrum of design disciplines, providing examples from architecture, interior, product, graphic and fashion design, from a variety of cultures. It provides examples and illustrations from a wide range of topics from the Big Bang to The Matrix, cave wall drawings to Twitter and Modernism to mass culture."--Publisher.

Thinking Through Creativity and Culture

Thinking Through Creativity and Culture PDF Author: Vlad Petre Glaveanu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135147202X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Creativity and culture are inherently linked. Society and culture are part and parcel of creativity's process, outcome, and subjective experience. Equally, creativity does not reside in the individual independent of culture and society.Vlad Petre Glveanu's basic framework includes creators and community, from which new artifacts emerge and existing artifacts are developed. He points to a relationship between self and other, new and old, specific for every creative act. Using this multifaceted system requires that researchers employ ecological research in order to capture the heterogeneity and social dimensions of creativity.Glveanu uses an approach based on cultural psychology to present creativity in lay terms and within everyday settings. He concludes with a unitary cultural framework of creativity interrelating actors, audiences, actions, artifacts, and affordances.

Culture, Creativity and Economy

Culture, Creativity and Economy PDF Author: Brian J. Hracs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000457591
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
This book nuances our understanding of the contemporary creative economy by engaging with a set of three key tensions which emerged over the course of eight European Colloquiums on Culture, Creativity and Economy (CCE): 1) the tension between individual and collaborative creative practices, 2) the tension between tradition and innovation, and 3) the tension between isolated and interconnected spaces of creativity. Rather than focusing on specific processes, such as production, industries or locations, the tensions acknowledge and engage with the messy and restless nature of the creative economy. Individual chapters offer insights into poorly understood practices, locations and contexts such as co-working spaces in Berlin and rural Spain, creative businesses in Leicester and the role and importance of cultural intermediaries in creative economies within Africa. Others examine the nature of trans-local cultural flows, the evolving "field" of fashion, and the implications of social media and crowdfunding platforms. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals researching the creative economy, as well as specific cultural and creative industries, across the humanities and social sciences.

Creative License

Creative License PDF Author: Kembrew McLeod
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348756
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Draws on interviews with more than 100 musicians, managers, lawyers, journalists, and scholars to critique the music industrys approach to digital sampling.

Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition)

Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition) PDF Author: Ed Catmull
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644504
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

The Creative Industries

The Creative Industries PDF Author: Terry Flew
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446273083
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
"Moving from age-old warnings about the influence of the cultural industry to a tentative embrace of a global creative society, Terry Flew′s new book provides an excellent overview of this exciting field. Warmly recommended for students and policymakers alike." - Mark Deuze, Indiana University "A comprehensive text on the state of the art of the creative industries... a running commentary on the ebb and flow of both the academic debates (from cultural studies, cultural economics, organisational studies, economic geography and urban sociology) and the policy initiatives that seek to frame the field for outsiders. An ideal primer." - Andy C Pratt, King′s College London The rise of creative industries requires new thinking in communication, media and cultural studies, media and cultural policy, and the arts and information sectors. The Creative Industries sets the agenda for these debates, providing a richer understanding of the dynamics of cultural markets, creative labour, finance and risk, and how culture is distributed, marketed and creatively re-used through new media technologies. This book: Develops a global perspective on the creative industries and creative economy Draws insights from media and cultural studies, innovation economics, cultural policy studies, and economic and cultural geography Explores what it means for policy-makers when culture and creativity move from the margins to the centre of economic dynamics Makes extensive use of case studies in ways that are relevant not only to researchers and policy-makers, but also to the generation of students who will increasingly be establishing a ′portfolio career′ in the creative industries. International in coverage, The Creative Industries traces the historical and contemporary ideas that make the cultural economy more relevant that it has ever been. It is essential reading for students and academics in media, communication and cultural studies.

Pop Culture Matters

Pop Culture Matters PDF Author: Martin F. Norden
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152753068X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
We immerse ourselves daily in expressions of popular culture—YouTube videos, hip hop music, movies, adverts, greeting cards, videogames, and comics, to name just a few possibilities—and far too often we pay only scant critical attention to them. The essays in this collection redress this situation by probing a wide range of topics within the field of popular culture studies. Written in engaging and jargon-free prose, contributions critically examine various offerings in film, television, social media, music, literature, sports, and related areas. Moreover, they often pay special attention to the ways in which these pop culture artefacts intersect with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ability. Providing a rich mixture of broad perspectives and intriguing case studies, the essays form a compelling mosaic of findings and viewpoints on popular culture. Exploring everything from toxic masculinity in twenty-first century television programmes to gendered greeting cards and adult colouring books, this provocative volume is essential reading for anyone interested in that fabricated and all-pervasive environment we call popular culture.