Share
Understanding Culture
Cultural Studies, Order, Ordering
First Edition
- Gavin Kendall - Queensland University of Technology, Australia
- Gary Wickham - Murdoch University, Australia
March 2001 | 192 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Understanding Culture offers an accessible and comprehensive overview of the field of cultural studies whilst also proposing a different way of `doing' cultural studies. It focuses on the ways in which cultural objects and practices serve as both a means of ordering people's lives and as markers of that ordering. The book reviews the state of the discipline of cultural studies and suggests a new theoretical and methodological orientation drawing on the work of: Foucault; scepticism, Wittgenstein; Harvey Sacks and John Law; uses insights from a variety of sources to examine the complex ways in which meanings are manufactured as lives are ordered in particular social settings: personal life, education, health, the city and law; and presents case studies that illustrate what the new cultural studies looks like, covering: colonialism, everyday life and identity, and technology.
Surveying the Field of Cultural Studies
The Notion of Ordering as an Organizing Principle for Cultural Studies
Building a Method for Cultural Studies as a Study of Ordering
Ordering through the Culture of Government
Ordering through the Culture of Law and Regulation
Ordering through the Culture of Everyday Life
Ordering through Routinization
Conclusion
`Cultural Studies has made a name for itself by pricking the pretensions of several disciplines, from sociology to literature. Now, along come Kendall and Wickham to do the same to cultural studies - a "must read" for anyone in the field' - Toby Miller, New York University
