Mainstream(s) and Margins: Cultural Politics in the 90s

by Susan Leggett, Michael Morgan

Overview

This book draws together 13 distinctive and original explorations of how dominant cultural mainstreams and margins are formed and resisted, how they stabilize and shift, and how they permeate and define each other. The chapters speak to central problems of cultural politics that represent critical challenges for theory, research, and action in the social world. The authors develop and advance new approaches for interdisciplinary inquiry into contemporary cultural issues. Drawing on and extending scholarship in communication, political science, sociology, women's studies, critical cultural studies, anthropology, and American studies, they analyze what happens when marginal groups meet mainstream forces. The chapters will enliven academic debates over what constitutes a cultural mainstream or margin.

This volume explores theories, problems, and contemporary struggles over identity and representation, ideology and hegemony, and discourse and action. The essays focus on critical questions covering postcolonial theory, primitivism, feminism, sexuality, the body, art, multiculturalism, the environmental crisis, the mass media, and social movements. The authors examine diverse issues, ranging from the writing of women prisoners to how media policy is embedded in cultural history, to the political implications of cultural representations in cross-cultural contexts. Altogether, the diversity and depth of the text will help us develop new and complementary ways of thinking about critical questions in the politics of culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313297960
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/08/1996
Series:	Contributions in Political Science , #36
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d)
Lexile:	1470L (what's this?)

About the Author

MICHAEL MORGAN is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is coeditor of Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effects Research (1990) and coauthor of Democracy Tango: Television, Adolescents, and Authoritarian Tensions in Argentina (1995).

SUSAN LEGGETT is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Table of Contents

Introduction Mainstream(s) and Margins: An Opening by Michael Morgan and Susan Leggett
Political Strategies, Identities, and Movements
Notes on Centers and Margins by Poonam Pillai
Mainstreams and Leakage: Interrogating the Margins of "Art" and "Porn" by Rebecca Schneider
Identity and Representation as Challenges to Social Movement Theory: A Case Study of Queer Nation by Michael Fraser
The Ideological Limits of New Social Movements: The Rise and Fall of Clamshell Alliance by Stephen Adair
The United Colors of Multiculturalism: Rereading Composition Textbooks in the 90s by Sandra Jamieson
The Writings of Women Prisoners: Voices from the Margins by Susan Ross
Audiences, Ideology, and Cultural Representation
Liberal Television: Property and the Politics of Commercial Broadcasting by Thomas Streeter
Critical Ethnographies and the Concept of Resistance by Kevin Caragee
Unarmed and Dangerous: The Gibralter Killings meet the Press by Andy Ruddock
Television, Gender, and Sports Hegemony: Prime Time's Portrayal of Female Athletes by Gina Daddario
Green but Unseen: Marginalizing the Environment on Television by James Shanahan
Initial Lessons in Popular Orientalism from National Geographic Magazine by Linda Steet
Refugees and Representation: Politics, Critical Discourse and Ethnography along the New Guinea Border by Stuart Kirsch
Index

Editorial Reviews

Contributors from fields including anthropology, communication, and art history explore the dynamic relationships among cultural mainstream and marginal cultural expression, looking at the processes by which cultural mainstreams and margins are formed and resisted, and specific community and institutional responses to the resulting patterns. They discusses issues such as multiculturalism in composition textbooks of the 1990s; the writings of women prisoners; and television's portrayal of female athletes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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