The concept of 'populism' is currently used by scholars, the media and political actors to refer to multiple and disparate manifestations and phenomena from across both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. As a result, it defies neat definition, as scholarship on the topic has shown over the last 50 years. In this book, Sebastián Moreno Barreneche approaches populism from a semiotic perspective and argues that it constitutes a specific social discourse grounded on a distinctive narrative structure that is brought to life by political actors that are labelled 'populist'. Conceiving of populism as a mode of semiotic production that is based on a conception of the social space as divided into two groups, 'the People' and 'the Other', this book uses semiotic theory to make sense of this political phenomenon. Exploring how the categories of 'the People' and 'the Other' are discursively constructed by populist political actors through the use of semiotic resources, the ways in which meaning emerges through the oppositions between imagined collective actors is explained. Drawing on examples from Europe, North America and South America, The Social Semiotics of Populism presents a systematic semiotic approach to this multifaceted political concept and bridges semiotic theory and populism studies in an original manner.
This text offers a framework for understanding the key role of the mass media in the social production of meaning. It draws on classic positions on the relations between communications and society, and on recent work in both social sciences and humanities.
The studies focus on right-wing Internet populism in Germany, France and Italy. Based on a synopsis of socio-constructivist and semiotic paradigms, they stress the current changes of social reality perception and the thereby changing benchmarks, illuminating the effects viral myths, metaphors or memes have on common sense building.
CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.
After the Cold War, the 'Hot War' has made its comeback in Afghanistan and Iraq. Exhuming Kipling's Great Game, we have gone back to the clash between Islam and Christianity. The ghost of the Yellow Peril has been resurrected, the nineteenth-century anti-Darwin debate has been reopened, right-wing governments predominate. It almost seems like history, tired of the big steps forward it has taken in the past two millennia, has gone into reverse. With his customary sharpness and wit, Eco proposes, not so much that we resume a forward march, but at the very least that we cease marching backwards.
Cultural Methodologies illustrates the distinctiveness and coherence of cultural studies as a site of interaction between the humanities and the social sciences. Topics covered include: the relationship between critical theory and cultural studies; the pragmatics of cultural research and education; ethical questions and research purposes; the role of feminism in cultural studies; the uses of autobiography; the analysis of city cultures; textual analysis and ethnographic procedures; constructions of identity in relation to `race′, sexuality and nationhood; the use of qualitative and quantitative data; and some of the main issues involved in generating research findings for a thesis or other publication. The book is written for students either commencing or intending to do research in cultural studies. It stresses how necessary it is to consider and plan very carefully the rationales and principles in research while avoiding the straitjacket of `methodolatory′.
'Jim McGuigan has done it again. The complex cultural machinery hiding behind the apparently simple 'facts of life' still fresh in our collective memory, has been pulled out from its hiding, exposed, disassembled and put together again, and showed in action of shaping up its products; all that done to the benefit of us all - simultaneously producers and product of the life we share. Another great contribution to cultural studies; and to our understanding of the world notorious for defying/escaping understanding. This is exactly what we need 'cultural analysis' for' - Professor Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds 'Jim McGuigan is one of cultural studies' leading practitioners. This volume is a generous and wide-reaching exploration of how to use cultural theory to explore a wide variety of topics, brought together under the sign of the struggle for a vigorous, participatory public sphere' - Toby Miller, University of California This book represents a distinctive approach to cultural analysis, using multi-dimensional methods for addressing issues of public interest. Stressing the impact of both neoliberalism and the formation of a 'cool capitalist culture' that has colonised everyday life around much of the globe, Jim McGuigan deploys his original concept of the 'cultural public sphere' within several carefully analysed case studies, including: • celebrity death • festivals and urban regeneration • 'race' and multicultural controversy • popular television • social significance of the all purpose mobile communication device in a privatised and individualised way of life • riskiness and uncertainty in the creative and media industries This is a radical intervention in the research agendas and conceptual development of cultural policy studies, cultural sociology and, more generally, in the broad field known as 'cultural studies'. It offers challenging theoretical arguments that are substantiated with concrete evidence of cultural and social processes.
Information and communication technologies are said to be transforming urban life dramatically and bringing about rapid economic and cultural globalization. This book explores the many fascinating and urgent issues involved by relating advanced theoretical debates to practical matters of communication with cultural policy. It maps out a range of `optimistic' and `pessimistic' scenarios with special regard to various forms of inequality, particularly class, gender and geopolitical. Topics discussed include urban planning, virtual cities and actual cities, economic and political policy, and critical social analysis of current trends that are of momentous consequence. The book concludes that it is necessary to bring together a number of diffe
The largest work ever published in the social and behavioural sciences. It contains 4000 signed articles, 15 million words of text, 90,000 bibliographic references and 150 biographical entries.
