Culture and Politics provides a comprehensive introduction to the enduring phenomenon of culture and its impact on contemporary society and politics. Combining a substantial theoretical overview with intricate comparative empirical research, it assesses the complex interplay of ethnicity, religion, history and values on macro- and micro-level outcomes. Striking a judicious balance between the use of global data on the topic and their selection of six key in-depth country studies, the book draws extensively on statistical material and 'hard data' rather than the literary evidence usual in studies of this kind. This second edition of a well-established text has been expanded and fully updated in line with new events. More student-friendly, this volume now contains useful references for further reading and new material on ethnicity and religion. Readers will find that the values section is now more lucid. This clearly structured book's stringent approach to the topic and its readable, accessible style make this book one that no serious scholar or student of political culture should be without.

First published in 1989, Cultural Politics in Contemporary America is a radical attempt to lay out the complex ways in which the American media and American culture is powerfully interlocked. At the end of the 20th century, the media exerted an overwhelming influence on the formation of social identity through the production and consumption of images. The Hollywood Presidency of Ronald Reagan was founded on the skills of the ‘Great Communicator’; Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ was used by Chrysler Corporation to assure that ‘the pride is back’; feminists and right-wing militants converged to oppose pornography. The media, American culture, and political power were bound together in a gamble, the stakes of which increased daily. ‘Cultural Politics’ incorporates the struggles of race, gender and class; the economy of the commercial media system; the myths of hegemony and imperialism; the crises of privacy and of the intellectual; and such diverse issues as postmodernism, the American automobile, advertising as communication, and television. While political actors have changed and media technology has advanced rapidly, the outcome of this research still holds true for the 21st century and is of importance to students of media studies, cultural studies, postmodernism, postcolonial studies and political science.

This title was first published in 2002: Examining problems that have caused much debate within political science, this book seeks to identify a proper place for the analysis of culture and values within political science. It goes on to explore the impact of globalization upon society.

With "race" being discredited as a rallying cry for populist movements because of the atrocities committed in its name during World War II, "culture" has been adopted by right-wing groups instead, but used in the same exclusionary manner as racism was. This volume examines the essentialism, which is implicit in racial theories and re-emerges in the ideological use of cultural identity in new rightist movements, and presents case studies from different parts of the world where researchers were confronted with racism and worked out ways of coping with it.

Brand new collection of the essential essays from one of the founders of cultural studies, Raymond Williams Raymond Williams was a pioneering scholar of cultural and society, and one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. In this, a collection of difficult to find essays, some of which are published for the first time, Williams emerges as not only one of the great writers of materialist criticism, but also a thoroughly engaged political writer. Published to coincide with the centenary of his birth and showing the full range of his work, from his early writings on the novel and society, to later work on ecosocialism and the politics of modernism, Politics and Culture shows Williams at both his most accessible and his most penetrating.An essential book for all those interested in the politics of culture in the twentieth century, and the development of Williams's work.

This book argues the relationship between culture and politics can be productively explored by delving into the nature of the cultural politics enacted by Latin American social movements and by examining the potential of this cultural politics for fostering social change.

Until recently, mainstream American environmentalism has been a predominantly white, middle-class movement, essentially ignoring the class, race, and gender dimensions of environmental politics. In this provocative collection of original essays, the environmental dimensions of the Chicana/o experience are explicitly expressed and debated. Employing a variety of genres ranging from poetry to autobiography to theoretical and empirical essays, the voices in this collection speak to the most significant issues of environmentalism and social justice, recognizing throughout the need for a pluralism of Chicana/o philosophies. The contributors provide an excellent basis for understanding how multiple Chicana/o views on the environment play out in the context of dominant social, political and economic views. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics examines a number of Chicana/o ecological perspectives. How can the ethics of reciprocity present in Chicana/o agropastoral life be protected and applied on a broader scale? How can the dominant society, whose economic structure is invested in "placeless mobility," take note of the harm caused to land-based cultures, take responsibility for it, and take heed before it is too late? Will the larger society be "ecologically housebroken" before it destroys its home? Grounded in actual political struggles waged by Chicana/o communities over issues of environmental destruction, cultural genocide, and socioeconomic domination, this volume provides an important series of snapshots of Chicana/o history. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics illuminates the bridges that existÑand must be understoodÑbetween race, ethnicity, class, gender, politics, and ecology. CONTENTS Part 1: IndoHispano Land Ethics Los Animalitos: Culture, Ecology, and the Politics of Place in the Upper RÁo Grande, Devon G. Pe–a Social Action Research, Bioregionalism, and the Upper R’o Grande, RubŽn O. Mart’nez Notes on (Home)Land Ethics: Ideas, Values, and the Land, Reyes Garc’a Part 2: Environmental History and Ecological Politics Ecological Legitimacy and Cultural Essentialism: Hispano Grazing in Northern New Mexico, Laura Pulido The Capitalist Tool, the Lawless, and the Violent: A Critique of Recent Southwestern Environmental History, Devon G. Pe–a and RubŽn O. Mart’nez Ecofeminism and Chicano Environmental Struggles: Bridges across Gender and Race, Gwyn Kirk Philosophy Meets Practice: A Critique of Ecofeminism through the Voices of Three Chicana Activists, Malia Davis Part 3: Alternatives to Destruction The Pasture Poacher (a poem), Joseph C. Gallegos Acequia Tales: Stories from a Chicano Centennial Farm, Joseph C. Gallegos A Gold Mine, an Orchard, and an Eleventh Commandment, Devon G. Pe–a