New Keywords - by Tony Bennett & Lawrence Grossberg & Meaghan Morris (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams' Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how we understand and use the language of culture and society. Now, three luminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volume that builds on and updates Williams' classic, reflecting the transformation in culture and society since its publication. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a state-of-the-art reference for students, teachers and culture vultures everywhere.

• Assembles a stellar team of internationally renowned and interdisciplinary social thinkers and theorists

• Showcases 142 signed entries - from art, commodity, and fundamentalism to youth, utopia, the virtual, and the West - that capture the practices, institutions, and debates of contemporary society

• Builds on and updates Raymond Williams's classic Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by reflecting the transformation in culture and society over the last 25 years

• Includes a bibliographic resource to guide research and cross-referencing

• The book is supported by a website: www.blackwellpublishing.com/newkeywords.

From the Back Cover

Raymond Williams' Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society is justly renowned for its role in providing a whole generation of students and intellectuals with trusty and cogent distillations of the language of cultural studies. First published in 1976, the text played a pivotal role in both academic and public understandings of culture and society and the relations between them. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society updates Williams's classic text by reflecting the transformation in culture and society over the last quarter century.

New Keywords includes many of Williams's original entries, but with new discussions of their history and use over the last 25 years. Several other entries encapsulate the practices, institutions, and debates of contemporary society. The editors have assembled an international team of scholars to write from a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields - cultural and media studies, feminism, post-colonial and subaltern studies, the history of science, sociology, gay and lesbian studies. The result is a state-of-the art reference for students, teachers and public intellectuals everywhere.

Review Quotes

"We think in words. A careful discussion of the words we use helps us to think more clearly about modern western society. All academic libraries catering for the humanities or social sciences should consider requiring a reference copy, as should those public libraries which still feel their mission is to assist their readers in thinking clearly, rather than just to provide them with entertainment." Martin Guha, King's College London

About the Author

Lawrence Grossberg is Professor of Communication Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He co-edited the seminal volume Cultural Studies (l990) and is the author of We Gotta Get Out of this Place (1992) and Bringing it All Back Home (l997). He also co-authored Media-Making: Mass Media in Popular Culture (with Ellen Wartella and D. Charles Whitney, l998).

Tony Bennett is Professor of Sociology at the Open University. He is the author of The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (l995) and Culture: A Reformer's Science (l998), and is co-editor of Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, and Programs (with David Carter, 2001).

Meaghan Morris is Chair Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. She is the author of The Pirate's Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism (1988), Translation and Subjectivity (l997), and Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture (l998), and is co-editor (with John Frow) of Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader (l993).