This essential reference is a handy guide to the often confusing world of cultural theory. Its entries provide accessible introductions to the key cultural theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries, their central concepts and main arguments, and their major works and formative influences. An extensive introduction sets these figures in their appropriate intellectual and historical contexts, and the explanation for each thinker offers links to other seminal minds in the study of culture, as well as a guide to further reading.

Jean Baudrillard is a central figure in the area of sociology and cultural studies today, but his writings infuriate as many people as they intoxicate. This collection aims to provide a wide-ranging, measured assessment of Baudrillard's work.

Without doubt, Jean Baudrillard is one of the most important figures currently working in the area of sociology an dcultural studies, but his writings infuriate as many people as they intoxcicate. This collection provides a wide-ranging, measured assessment of Baudrillard's work. The contributors examine Baudrillard's relation to consumption, modernity, postmodernity, social theory, feminism, politics and culture. They attempt to steer a clear course between the hype which Baudrillard himself has done much to generate, and the solid value of his startling thoughts. Baudrillard's ideas and...

It is becoming ever clearer that while people tour cultures, cultures and objects themselves are in a constant state of migration. This collection examines the complex connections between tourism and cultural change and the relevance of tourist experience to current theoretical debates on space, time and identity.

This edited collection of essays brings together the leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies to tackle many of the questions still being asked about Jean Francois Lyotard. Contributors include Barry Smart, John O'Neill and Victor J. Seidler with subjects ranging from Lyotard's writings on justice and politics of difference, on feminism, youth, judaism as well as a chapter devoted to his early writings.

Stuart Hall is the leading figure in cultural studies today - no one else has had the same influence in the shaping of the field. This book is the first full-length study of Hall's work. It examines every aspect of his work and constitutes a major critical introduction and appraisal of Hall's contribution.
The book guides the reader through Hall's formative experience in Jamaica and Oxford. It examines the increasing politicization of his thought and his identification with emancipatory, socialist politics. In Birmingham, during his Directorship of the seminal Centre for Contemporary...

Stuart Hall is the leading figure in cultural studies today - no one else has had the same influence in the shaping of the field. This book is the first full-length study of Hall's work. It examines every aspect of his work and constitutes a major critical introduction and appraisal of Hall's contribution.
The book guides the reader through Hall's formative experience in Jamaica and Oxford. It examines the increasing politicization of his thought and his identification with emancipatory, socialist politics. In Birmingham, during his Directorship of the seminal Centre for Contemporary...

Frank Sinatra was only one of a handful of popular entertainers who dominated Western popular culture for six decades. From his early fame as 'the Voice' in the early 1940s, through to the high rolling, fast living 'Rat Pack' era, to the protracted Lear-like farewell tours of his twilight years, Sinatra was the epitome of cool. This compelling, consistently insightful book portrays Sinatra in his many contradictory hues of ambition, generosity, menace and vituperation. The book asks why Sinatra's public character which mixed insufferable hauteur with soapy populism and nobility with the...

Frank Sinatra was only one of a handful of popular entertainers who dominated Western popular culture for six decades. From his early fame as 'the Voice' in the early 1940s, through to the high rolling, fast living 'Rat Pack' era, to the protracted Lear-like farewell tours of his twilight years, Sinatra was the epitome of cool. This compelling, consistently insightful book portrays Sinatra in his many contradictory hues of ambition, generosity, menace and vituperation. The book asks why Sinatra's public character which mixed insufferable hauteur with soapy populism and nobility with the...

What has the death of Corporal Patrick D. Tillman of the US Army Rangers in an incident of friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004 got to do with culture? How has the study of ideology, coding, theming and representation by Cultural Studies helped us to understand Reality TV, the Internet, mobile phones, the iPod and leading brands in neat capitalism like Virgin, The Body Shop and Apple?

This lively and assured book provides a concise and authoritative critical guide to Cultural Studies. It demonstrates that the field has moved through four moments': the National/Popular, the...