Theories of Culture

Author: Arnold Groh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317211324
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
This authoritative but concise guide describes the most significant cultural theories from the 19th to the 21st century and their originators, as well as the links between them and their mutual influences. This guide explores ideas around what culture is, when and why cultures change over time and whether there are any rules or principles behind culture-related phenomena and processes. For those seeking to answer questions on culture, familiarity with these topics is essential. From refugee movements caused by wars, to the ongoing demographical changes in regions of the world like sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian subcontinent, understanding the underlying mechanisms of culture-related processes has become an immediate and essential task. Covering everything from the processes of cultural change to counterculture and destabilisation, the book explains different ideas in a clear and objective fashion and includes approaches that have been unduly neglected but which have high explanatory value regarding culture and its phenomena. Providing readers with an up-to-date idea of what culture is, and how our understanding of it has been established over the past century, this text is the perfect companion for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers.

Theories of Culture

Author: Kathryn Tanner
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451412369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Since the 1970s exciting new directions in the study of culture have erupted to critique and displace earlier, largely static notions. These more dynamic models stress the indeterminate, fragmented, even conflictual character of cultural processes and completely alter the framework for thinking theologically about them. In fact, Tanner argues, the new orientation in cultural theory and anthropology affords fresh opportunities for religious thought and opens new vistas for theology, especially on how Christians conceive of the theological task, theological diversity and inculturation, and even Christianity's own cultural identity.

Theory of Culture

Author: American Sociological Association
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520075986
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
With the increasing focus on the concept of culture by sociologists and other social scientists, there is now a need for clarifying and developing theoretical perspectives on this issue. The contributors to this volume have answered this call, each adding new insight to the debate over culture, its definition, and its relationship with other basic categories in sociological theory. Along the way they touch on other fundamental issues, such as the interrelationship of culture with society, the human personality, and the wider environment of the human condition.

Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times

Author: Marvin Harris
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780761990215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
In this book, Marvin Harris presents his current views on the nature of culture addressing such issues as the mental/behavioral debate, emics and etics, and anthropological holism.

Cultural Software

Author: J. M. Balkin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300084504
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
In this book J. M. Balkin offers a strikingly original theory of cultural evolution, a theory that explains shared understandings, disagreement, and diversity within cultures. Drawing on many fields of study--including anthropology, evolutionary theory, cognitive science, linguistics, sociology, political theory, philosophy, social psychology, and law--the author explores how cultures grow and spread, how shared understandings arise, and how people of different cultures can understand and evaluate each other's views. Cultural evolution occurs through the transmission of cultural information and know-how--cultural software--in human minds, Balkin says. Individuals embody cultural software and spread it to others through communication and social learning. Ideology, the author contends, is neither a special nor a pathological form of thought but an ordinary product of the evolution of cultural software. Because cultural understanding is a patchwork of older imperfect tools that are continually adapted to solve new problems, human understanding is partly adequate and partly inadequate to the pursuit of justice. Balkin presents numerous examples that illuminate the sources of ideological effects and their contributions to injustice. He also enters the current debate over multiculturalism, applying his theory to problems of mutual understanding between people who hold different worldviews. He argues that cultural understanding presupposes transcendent ideals and shows how both ideological analysis of others and ideological self-criticism are possible.

An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture

Author: Dominic Strinati
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134565089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
Among the theories and ideas the book introduces are mass culture, the Frankfurt School and the culture industry, semiology and structuralism, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism and cultural populism.

The Rise of Anthropological Theory

Author: Marvin Harris
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759101333
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 824

Book Description
The best known, most often cited history of anthropological theory is finally available in paperback! First published in 1968, Harris's book has been cited in over 1,000 works and is one of the key documents explaining cultural materialism, the theory associated with Harris's work. This updated edition included the complete 1968 text plus a new introduction by Maxine Margolis, which discusses the impact of the book and highlights some of the major trends in anthropological theory since its original publication. RAT, as it is affectionately known to three decades of graduate students, comprehensively traces the history of anthropology and anthropological theory, culminating in a strong argument for the use of a scientific, behaviorally-based, etic approach to the understanding of human culture known as cultural materialism. Despite its popularity and influence on anthropological thinking, RAT has never been available in paperback_until now. It is an essential volume for the library of all anthropologists, their graduate students, and other theorists in the social sciences.

Cultural Theory

Author: Philip Smith
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444358901
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
This second edition of Cultural Theory provides a concise introduction to cultural theory, placing major figures, traditional concepts, and contemporary themes within a sharp conceptual framework. Provides a student-friendly introduction to what can often be a complex field of study Updates the first edition in response to reader feedback and to the changing nature of the field Includes additional coverage of theorists from the classical period to include Nietzsche and DuBois Introduces entirely new chapters on race and gender theory, and the body Considers themes that have become more important in theoretical activity in recent years such as computers and virtual reality, cosmopolitanism, and performance theory Draws on theories and theorists from continental Europe as well as the English-speaking world

Theories of Man and Culture

Author: Elvin Hatch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231036399
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Most anthologies of Renaissance writing include only (or predominantly) male writers, whereas those that focus on women include women exclusively. This book is the first to survey both in an integrated fashion. Its texts comprise a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writing -- including some new and important discoveries. The texts are arranged so that writing by women and men is presented together, not in a "point-counterpoint" system that would "square off" female and male writers against one another, but rather in pairs, sometimes clusters, of texts in which women's writing is foregrounded even as it appears with writing by men. The anthology arranges recently recovered texts into intriguing patterns, juxtaposing, for example, Aemelia Lanyer's country house poem with an expression of a different type of nostalgia by Surrey. It includes unconventional voices, as in the homoerotic poems by Richard Barnfield or the possibly lesbian poems by Katherine Philips. It makes newly available the voices of English Marrano women (secret Jews) and the Miltonic poetry of Jean Lead. -- D. Aldrich-Watson, University of Missouri - St. Louis

Marxist Literary and Cultural Theories

Author: Moyra Haslett
Publisher: Red Globe Press
ISBN: 0333692136
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"In this study Moyra Haslett argues that marxist literary and cultural theories are more diverse than is conventionally thought, drawing upon the work of a wide range of marxist thinkers. She discusses the works of those who sought to theorize the relationships between literature and culture and between culture and ideology, including Volosinov, Lukacs, Jameson, and Fagleton. The second section of the book looks at marxist readings of three very different topics: the work of the eighteenth-century poet Mary Leapor, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the film versions of Jane Austen's novels made in the 1990s. Haslett ably demonstrates that marxist readings have continuing relevance and great creative potential."--Jacket