Popular Culture books

Photography represents a medium in which the moment of death can be captured and preserved, the image becoming a mechanism through which audiences are beguiled by the certainty of their own mortality. Examining a spectrum of post-mortem images, Photography and Death considers various ways in which the death image has been framed and what these styles communicate about changing social attitudes related to dying, mourning and the afterlife.Presenting a fresh perspective on how we might view death photography in the context of our contemporary cultural milieu, this book brings together a range of historical examples to create a richer narrative of how we see, understand and discuss death in both the private and public forum. Building upon existing publications which relate explicitly to the study of death, dying and cultures of mourning, the book discusses topics such as post-mortem portraiture, the Civil War, Spiritualism and lynching. These are positioned alongside contemporary representations of death, as seen in celebrity death images and forensic photography. Uncovering an important historical contrast, in which modern notions of death are a comment on ownership or an emotionless, clinical state, Harris highlights the various ways that the deceased body is a site of contestation and fascination.  An engaging read for students and researchers with an interest in death studies, this book represents a unique account of the various ways that attitudes about death have been shaped through the photographic image.

This volume contains contributions on the theme of popular culture, crime, and social control. The chapters in this volume tease out various criminologically relevant issues, pertaining to crime/deviance and/or the control thereof, on the basis of an analysis of various aspects and manifestations of popular culture, including music, movies, television, paintings, sculptures, photographs, cartoons, and the internet-based audio-visual materials that are presently available. Thematically diverse within the province of criminology, the chapters in this book are not restricted in terms of theoretical approach and methodological orientation. Using a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives, the volume is diverse in addressing dimensions of popular culture in relation to important criminological questions.

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume is the second of a two-part series that celebrates the section’s 30th anniversary. Casey Brienza leads the second of the two volumes - The M in CITAMS@30: Media Sociology - with former CITAMS chairs Laura Robinson, Barry Wellman, Shelia R. Cotten, and Wenhong Chen. Volume 18 continues the discussion begun in Volume 17: Networks, Hacking, and Media--CITAMS@30: Now and Then and Tomorrow. Both volumes highlight some of the best of the vibrant, interdisciplinary scholarship in communication, information technologies and media sociology. Volume 18 develops the field of media sociology vis-à-vis the roles and impacts of the digital and traditional media via rich international case studies that include a broad swath of contexts and cultures. The volume’s authors probe the relationships between inequalities and media, as well as offering a scintillating array of scholarship on cultural production and consumption. Assembled together, the work in this volume showcases the value of interdisciplinary scholarship in the sociological study of media, communication, and information technologies. In keeping with the celebration of the thirty-year anniversary, both volumes open with a foreword by past chair Wenhong Chen and close with an afterword by past chair Shelia Cotten.

The culture we consume is increasingly delivered to us via various digital on-demand platforms. The last decade has seen platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Google and the like become massive players in shaping cultural consumption. But how can we understand culture once it moves on to big tech platforms? How can we make sense of the changes this brings to our lives? These platforms have the power to shape our cultural landscape and to use data, algorithms and other technological means to shape our experiences, from what we remember through to what we know and even the speed and accessibility of culture.  This book asks how can we understand the chaos and messiness of on-demand culture? Beer suggests that we focus on the quirks and use these as openings to see inside patterns and dynamics of these new cultural formations. By exploring the strange quirks that typify our new on-demand culture, this book seeks to answer these questions. The Quirks of Digital Culture is a guide to understanding the complex and unsettling cultural present, whilst also casting an eye on how our consumption and cultural experiences may unfold in what seems like an unpredictable future.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online. In recent decades the video games industry has grown astronomically, quickly becoming a substantial part of our everyday lives. Alongside the rise of this technology, the media, academia and, in some cases, governments, have drawn correlations between video games and serious instances of violence, focusing most notably on mass shootings. This narrow debate has distracted from our understanding of many of the harms which video games can, in some cases, cause, perpetuate or hide.Drawing upon the emerging deviant leisure perspective, this book seeks to re-orientate the debate on video games and their associated potential harms. Through the examination of culturally embedded harms such as gambling, sexual violence and addiction, together with the rise in swatting and other activities, the authors explore the notion that video games are inexplicably intertwined with aspects of deviancy.