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Bread and Circuses : Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay
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ISBN: 1501707647 0801493382 9781501707643 9780801493386 0801415985 9780801415982 1501707639 Year: 1983 Publisher: Cornell University Press

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Abstract

Lively and well written, Bread and Circuses analyzes theories that have treated mass culture as either a symptom or a cause of social decadence. Discussing many of the most influential and representative theories of mass culture, it ranges widely from Greek and Roman origins, through Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Ortega y Gasset, T. S. Eliot, and the theorists of the Frankfurt Institute, down to Marshall McLuhan and Daniel Bell. Brantlinger considers the many versions of negative classicism and shows how the belief in the historical inevitability of social decay-a belief today perpetuated by the mass media themselves-has become the dominant view of mass culture in our time. While not defending mass culture in its present form, Brantlinger argues that the view of culture implicit in negative classicism obscures the question of how the media can best be used to help achieve freedom and enlightenment on a truly democratic basis.

African urban spaces in historical perspective
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ISBN: 1580461638 9781580463140 1580463142 9786611770709 1281770701 1580466370 Year: 2005 Publisher: Rochester : University of Rochester Press,

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African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. It presents original research and integrates historical methodologies with those of anthropology, geography, literature, art, and architecture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and cultural influences of sub-Saharan Africa. The themes include Islam and Christianity, architecture, migration, globalization, social and physical decay, identity, race relations, politics, and development. This book elaborates on not only what makes the study of African urban spaces unique within urban historiography, it also offers an encompassing and up-to-date study of the subject and inserts Africa into the growing debate on urban history and culture throughout the world.
The opportunities provided by the urban milieu are endless and each study opens new potential avenues ofresearch. This book explores some of those avenues and lays the groundwork on which new studies can build.
Contributors: Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi, Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch, Mark Dike DeLancey, Thomas Ngomba Ekali, Omar A. Eno, Doug T. Feremenga, Laurent Fourchard, James Genova, Fatima Muller-Friedman, Godwin R. Murunga, Kefa M. Otiso, Michael Ralph, Jeremy Rich, Eric Ross, Corinne Sandwith, Wessel Visser.

Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; StevenJ. Salm is Assistant Professor of History, Xavier University of Louisiana.

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