Download Free The Contradictions Of Culture Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Contradictions Of Culture and write the review.

In this book, one of the most accomplished and thoughtful cultural commentators of the day, considers the contradictory nature of cultural relations. Elizabeth Wilson explores these themes through an examination of fashion, feminism, consumer culture, representation and postmodernism. Debates within feminism on the nature and effects of pornography are used to illustrate a particular kind of cultural contradiction. Wilson recognizes that postmodernism permitted the reappropriation of subjects that were not previously considered worthy of attention, or opposed to the idea of emancipation, chief among these was fashion. She shows that the association of an interest in this culturally significant subject with a revisionist project raises doubt
Working mothers today confront not only conflicting demands on their time and energy but also conflicting ideas about how they are to behave: they must be nurturing and unselfish while engaged in child rearing but competitive and ambitious at work. As more and more women enter the workplace, it would seem reasonable for society to make mothering a simpler and more efficient task. Instead, Sharon Hays points out in this original and provocative book, an ideology of "intensive mothering" has developed that only exacerbates the tensions working mothers face. Drawing on ideas about mothering since the Middle Ages, on contemporary childrearing manuals, and on in-depth interviews with mothers from a range of social classes, Hays traces the evolution of the ideology of intensive mothering--an ideology that holds the individual mother primarily responsible for child rearing and dictates that the process is to be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive. Hays argues that these ideas about appropriate mothering stem from a fundamental ambivalence about a system based solely on the competitive pursuit of individual interests. In attempting to deal with our deep uneasiness about self-interest, we have imposed unrealistic and unremunerated obligations and commitments on mothering, making it into an opposing force, a primary field on which this cultural ambivalence is played out.
This volume regards contemporary culture as incoherent, and confronts the contradictory nature of cultureal relations. It illustrates the cultural contradiction with the furious debates within 1980's feminism on the nature and effects of pornography.
Blackness is a prized commodity in American pop culture. Marketed to white consumers, it invites whites to view themselves in a mirror of racial difference, while remaining “wholly” white. From sports to literature, film, and music to investigative journalism, Eric Lott reveals the hidden dynamics of this self-and-other racial mirroring.
With a new afterword by the author, this classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism—and the culture it creates—harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratification—a need that corrodes the work ethic that led to their success in the first place. With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new world order, this provocative manifesto is more relevant than ever.
Contemporary cultural theory, feminist criticism, and ethnography converge in this provocative study of the construction of meaning in mass culture. Television Culture and Women's Lives explores the complex relationship between the gender conflicts played out in the scripts of the popular television show thirtysomething and the real-life conflicts experienced by "baby-boomer" women viewers. Women viewers often reinterpreted the program's conservative view on gender roles, seeing it instead as a protest against real dilemmas women face as they try to integrate career and family priorities. Heide's study confirms women viewers' close identifications with thirtysomething characters and positions audience responses against the backdrop of changes in the lives of women in the 1980s and 1990s. Television Culture and Women's Lives accessibly treats fascinating issues related to cultural criticism, the relationship between mass media, and audiences, and the struggles faced by women in late twentieth-century America.
In Age of Contradiction, Howard Brick provides a rich context for understanding historical events, cultural tensions, political figures, artistic works, and trends of intellectual life. His lucid and comprehensive book combines the best methods of historical analysis and assessment with fascinating subject matter to create a three-dimensional portrait of a complicated time. In one of the only books on the 1960s to put ideas at the center of the period's history, Brick carefully explores the dilemmas, the promise, and the legacy of American thought in that time.
This book confronts the barriers that face the cross-cultural application of western psychotherapy. It puts forward an argument for applying culture analysis, in which the therapist analyses the inconsistencies within the client's culture, before applying psychoanalysis, in which the analyst analyses the intra-psychic conflicts.
The multiple-cultures perspective advocated in this book suggests that culture in organizational settings is more complex, pluralistic, diverse and contradictory than previously acknowledged. Contributors address culture at various levels including national, industrial and organizational. Issues covered include: implicit managerial understandings and overt practices; the growth and decline of organizations with a focus on culture, managerial control strategies and subculture formation; change and temporary reconciliation; factors that influence homogeneity and heterogeneity and that contribute to a strong corporate culture; and issues of gender, ethnicity and social and organizational identity as concepts that may foster a better understand
Upinder Singh urges us to abandon simplistic stereotypes and instead think of ancient India in terms of the coexistence of five powerful contradictions-between social inequality and promises of universal salvation, the valorization of desire and detachment, goddess worship and misogyny, violence and non-violence, and religious debate and conflict. She does so using a vast array of sources including religious and philosophical texts, epics, poetry, plays, technical treatises, satire, biographies, and inscriptions, as well as the material and aesthetic evidence of archaeology and art from sites across the subcontinent. Singh's scholarly but highly accessible style, clear explanation, and balanced interpretations offer an understanding of the historian's craft and unravel the many threads of what we think of as ancient Indian culture. This is not a dead or forgotten past but one invoked in different contexts even today. Further, in spite of enormous historical changes over the centuries, the contradictions discussed here still remain.