Description

Taking into account the vicissitudes of political, social, and cultural issues, the book engages deeply with the evolving understanding of critical concepts such as history, community, culture, identity, politics, ethics, globalization, and technology. The book address the extent to which these concepts have been useful to scholars, policy makers, and citizens, as well as the ways they must be rethought and reconsidered if they are to continue to be viable. The text considers what is known and understood about these concepts. The book gives particular attention to how relevant ideas, themes, and terms were developed, elaborated, and deployed. The culture in which one lives determines the culture that is created within it, but influence works in the other direction as well. One could even go so far as to say that the second meaning of culture as human creativity is our way of modifying the first meaning of culture as civilized normativity. Creative culture is often accused of being uncivil because it breaks existing norms and points the way toward the creation of new ones. When the bohemian movement started in Western Europe in the late nineteenth century, it was an attempt on the part of creative people to upset the reigning norms of the culture, which were perceived as being too restrictive, too allied with conservatism, commerce, and a narrow scientific view of knowledge. To use a contemporary analogy, culture is the software of our lives. It is the program we live by, the rules that determine how we think and act. But it is also the malleable, rewritable script that we ourselves rework and recreate as we live and produce creative works and say and do creative things in our lives. Culture is a more inclusive term than art, another name for human creativity, because it allows for everyday art and common creativity, something that happens without frames or legitimizing institutions such as galleries or museums or concert halls. Culture understood as what maintains civility in communities is necessary because nature propels humans toward physical survival in ways that can lead to violence, domination, and injustice. Culture and civility are our ways of tempering those physical urges, but violence, domination, and injustice occur nevertheless, and Cultural Studies has a moral, ethical, and political dimension to the degree that it takes stock of that reality. A rapidly changing world - in part driven by huge transformations in technology and mobility-means we all encounter shifting cultures, and new cultural and social interactions daily.