Customer Reviews

New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society

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The editors, Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg and Meaghan Morris are well known academics and scholars in cultural studies. The New Keywords is a comprehensive resource for everyone furthering their studies in cultural and literary theory. In addition, students involved in anthropology, sociology and philosophy may find it very useful.

This book, which was required for an introduction to graduate studies course I recently took, is nothing more than a specialized, and random, encyclopedia. The other reviews hail this volume as a "comprehensive resource" for multiple areas of study. The problem is, the definitions of each term are too broad to be useful to specialists and too random and/or inaccessible for people merely interested in these topics. Most of the terms are all so unrelated that I just don't see the point of owning this book. If you need a definition for "globalism" and "materialism," buying this book would be useless. There are plenty of free resources online which also define such terms, and often more comprehensively than this broad overview.

I can see why such a volume was viable when it was first printed in the 70's, but why it was reprinted in 2005 is beyond me. This seems to be an intellectual artifact with very little use in the 21st century.

View the Contents of this book to see how it fits as a re-newed model:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations
Introduction

Aesthetics, Alternative, Art, Audience
Behaviour, Biology, Body, Bureaucracy,
Canon, Capitalism, Celebrity, Citizenship, City, Civilization, Class, Colonialism, Commodity, Communication, Community, Conservatism, Consumption, Copy, Country, Culture
Deconstruction, Democracy, Desire, Development, Diaspora, Difference, Disability, Discipline, Discourse,
Economy, Education, Elite, Emotion, Empirical, Environment / ecology, Equality, Ethnicity, Everyday, Evolution, Experience
Family, Fashion, Feminism, Fetish, Freedom, Fundamentalism,
Gay and Lesbian, Gender, Generation, Gene/genetic, Globalization, Government
Heritage, History, Holocaust, Home, Human, Human Rights
Ideology, Identity, Image, Indigenous, Individual, Industry, Information, Intellectual
Justice, Knowledge, Liberalism
Management, Marginal, Market, Mass, Materialism, Media, Memory
Mobility, Modern, Movements, Multiculturalism
Narrative, Nation, Nature, Network, Normal
Objectivity, Orientalism, Other
Participation, Person, Place, Policy, Political correctness Popular, Pornography, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, Poverty
Power, Pragmatism, Private, Public, Queer,
Race, Radical, Reason, Reform/revolution, Relativism Representation, Resistance, Risk,
Science, Self, Sexuality, Sign, Socialism, Society, Sovereignty,
Space, Spectacle, State,
Taste, Technology, Text, Theory, Therapy, Time, Tolerance, Tourism, Unconscious, Utopia, Value, Virtual, Welfare, West, the
Work, Writing, Youth,

About the Book:
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.