Culture Machine journal 1-11 (1999-2010)

Culture Machine is an international open-access journal of culture and theory, founded in 1999. Its aim is to be to cultural studies and cultural theory what ‘fundamental research’ is to the natural sciences: open-ended, non-goal orientated, exploratory and experimental. All contributions to the journal are peer-reviewed.

Vol 11 (2010): Creative Media
Vol 10 (2009): Pirate Philosophy
Vol 9 (2007): Recordings
Vol 8 (2006): Community
Vol 7 (2005): Biopolitics
Vol 6 (2004): Deconstruction is/in Cultural Studies
Vol 5 (2003): The E-Issue
Vol 4 (2002): The Ethico-Political Issue
Vol 3 (2001): Virologies: Culture and Contamination
Vol 2 (2000): The University Culture Machine
Vol 1 (1999): Taking Risks With The Future

Editors: Dave Boothroyd, Gary Hall, Joanna Zylinska
Part of Open Humanities Press
ISSN 1465-4121

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Henry A. Giroux: Impure Acts. The Practical Politics of Cultural Studies (2000)

This book begins with the premise that the culture of politics–culture’s capacity to create those discursive resources and material relations of power that shape democratic public life–appears to be in crisis, subject to derision by a wide range of ideological perspectives. In opposition to such attacks, this book argues that struggles over culture are not a weak substitute for “real” politics, but are central to any struggle willing to forge relations of power, theory, and practice, as well as pedagogy and social change. Henry A. Giroux challenges the contemporary politics of cynicism by addressing a number of issues including the various attacks on cultural politics, the multicultural discourses of academia, the corporate attack on higher education, and the cultural politics of the Disney empire.Impure Actspoints to a new kind of cultural politics and a new kind of political culture that put knowledge and practice in the service of a more realized democracy.

Publisher Routledge, 2000
ISBN 0415926564, 9780415926560
Length 166 pages

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David Bell: Science, Technology and Culture (2006)

This book introduces students to cultural studies of science and technology. It equips students with an understanding of science and technology as aspects of culture, and an appreciation of the importance of thinking about science and technology from a cultural studies perspective. Individual chapters focus on topics including popular representations of science and scientists, the place of science and technology in everyday life, and the contests over amateur, fringe and pseudo-science. Each chapter includes case studies ranging from the MMR vaccine to UFOs, and from nuclear war to microwave ovens.

Series Issues in cultural and media studies
Publisher McGraw-Hill International, 2006
ISBN 033521326X, 9780335213269
Length 159 pages

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Angharad N. Valdivia (ed.): A Companion to Media Studies (2005)

A Companion to Media Studies is a comprehensive collection that brings together new writings by some of the most respected canonical and contemporary media studies scholars to provide an overview of the theories and methodologies that have produced this most interdisciplinary of fields.

* Brings together new writings by some of the most respected canonical and contemporary media studies scholars in the most comprehensive collection on media studies to date.
* Tackles a variety of central concepts and controversies, organized into six areas of study: foundations, production, media content, media audiences, effects, and futures.
* Provides an accessible point of entry into this expansive and interdisciplinary field.
* Includes the writings of renowned media scholars, including McQuail, Schiller, Gallagher, Wartella, and Bryant.

Publisher Wiley-Blackwell, 2005
ISBN 1405141743, 9781405141741
Length 590 pages

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Gary Hall: Digitize This Book! The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now (2008)

In the sciences, the merits and ramifications of open access—the electronic publishing model that gives readers free, irrevocable, worldwide, and perpetual access to research—have been vigorously debated. Open access is now increasingly proposed as a valid means of both disseminating knowledge and career advancement. In Digitize This Book! Gary Hall presents a timely and ambitious polemic on the potential that open access publishing has to transform both “papercentric” humanities scholarship and the institution of the university itself.

Hall, a pioneer in open access publishing in the humanities, explores the new possibilities that digital media have for creatively and productively blurring the boundaries that separate not just disciplinary fields but also authors from readers. Hall focuses specifically on how open access publishing and archiving can revitalize the field of cultural studies by making it easier to rethink academia and its institutions. At the same time, by unsettling the processes and categories of scholarship, open access raises broader questions about the role of the university as a whole, forcefully challenging both its established identity as an elite ivory tower and its more recent reinvention under the tenets of neoliberalism as knowledge factory and profit center.

Rigorously interrogating the intellectual, political, and ethical implications of open access, Digitize This Book! is a radical call for democratizing access to knowledge and transforming the structures of academic and institutional authority and legitimacy.

Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816648719, 9780816648719
Length 301 pages

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Aihwa Ong, Donald Nonini (eds.): Ungrounded Empires. The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (1996)

In the last two decades, Chinese transnationalism has become a distinctive domain within the new “flexible” capitalism emerging in the Asia-Pacific region. Ungrounded Empires maps this domain as the intersection of cultural politics and global capitalism, drawing on recent ethnographic research to critique the impact of late capitalism’s institutions–flexibility, travel, subcontracting, multiculturalism, and mass media–upon transnational Chinese subjectives. Interweaving anthropology and cultural studies with interpretive political economy, these essays offer a wide range of perspectives on “overseas Chinese” and their unique location in the global arena.

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Christopher Prendergast (ed.): Cultural Materialism. On Raymond Williams (1995)

The work of Raymond Williams is of seminal importance in rethinking the idea of culture. He is widely regarded as one of the founding figures of international cultural studies. In tribute to his legacy, this edited volume is devoted to his theories of cultural materialism and is the most substantial and wide-ranging collection of essays on his work to be offered since his death in 1988. For all readers grappling with Williams’s complex legacy, this volume is not to be missed.

Contributors: Stanley Aronowitz, John Brenkman, Peter de Bolla, Catherine Gallagher, Stephen Heath, John Higgins, Peter Hitchcock, Cora Kaplan, David Lloyd, Robert Miklitsch, Michael Moriarty, Morag Shiach, David Simpson, Gillian Skirrow, Kenneth Surin, Paul Thomas, Gauri Viswanathan, and Cornel West.

Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 1995
ISBN 0816622809, 9780816622801
Length 387 pages

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Simon Cooper: Technoculture and Critical Theory. In the Service of the Machine? (2002)

The author explores the work of major thinkers and cultural movements that have grappled with the complex relationship between technology, politics and culture. Subjects such as the Internet, cloning, warfare, fascism and Virtual Reality are placed within a broad theoretical context which explores how humanity might, through technology, establish a more ethical relationship with the world.
Examining the philosophy of writers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, Lyotard, Virilio, and Zizek, and cultural movements such as Italian Futurism, this book marks a timely intervention in critical theory debates. The broad scope of the book will be of vital interest to those in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, politics and communications.

Publisher Routledge, 2002
ISBN 0415261600, 9780415261609
Length 182 pages

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Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Douglas Kellner (eds.): Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (2006)

Bringing together a range of core texts into one volume, this acclaimed anthology offers the definitive resource in culture, media, and communication.

* A fully revised new edition of the bestselling anthology in this dynamic and multidisciplinary field.
* New contributions include essays from Althusser through to Henry Jenkins, and a completely new section on Globalization and Social Movements.
* Retains important emphasis on the giant thinkers and “makers” of the field: Gramsci on hegemony; Althusser on ideology; Horkheimer and Adorno on the culture industry; Raymond Williams on Marxist cultural theory; Habermas on the public sphere; McLuhan on media; Chomsky on propaganda; hooks and Mulvey on the subjects of visual pleasure and oppositional gazes.
* Features a substantial critical introduction, short section introductions and full bibliographic citations.

Keywords and phrases
postmodern, mass media, cultural studies, Star Wars, culture industry, feminism, Marxist, Frankfurt school, third world, hyperreal, Stuart Hall, hegemony, cultural imperialism, deterritorialization, labour power, Ideological State Apparatuses, simulacrum, television, media imperialism

Publisher Wiley-Blackwell, 2006
ISBN 1405132582, 9781405132589
Length 755 pages

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Andrew Feenberg: Transforming Technology. A Critical Theory Revisited (2002)

Thoroughly revised, this new edition of Critical Theory of Technology rethinks the relationships between technology, rationality, and democracy, arguing that the degradation of labor–as well as of many environmental, educational, and political systems–is rooted in the social values that preside over technological development. It contains materials on political theory, but the emphasis has shifted to reflect a growing interest in the fields of technology and cultural studies.

Publisher Oxford University Press US, 2002
ISBN 0195146158, 9780195146158
Length 218 pages

Keywords and phrases
Marxism, critical theory, theory of technology, critique of technology, capitalist, deskilling, Frankfurt School, technological rationality, technoscience, Marx, Minitel, double aspect theory, socialist, Soviet Union, artificial intelligence, public ownership, posthumanist, online education, hegemony, division of labor

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Andrew Edgar, Peter Sedgwick (eds.): Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers (2002)

A perfect companion to the recently published Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the key terms, arguments, and theories relating to issues in cultural theory. The essays focus on those thinkers who have been essential in the development of this field of study. Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers will equip students with the necessary background knowledge to further enhance their understanding of the complex issues in the study of culture.

Each entry is concerned with the work of each thinker and reflects the wide range of disciplines that feed into cultural theory, from literary theory, media studies, and phenomenology to philosophy, semiology, and sociology. The book features contemporary greats like Durkheim, Kant, Marcuse, and Lyotard; and significant figures in Western tradition, such as Aristotle, Hume, Plato, and Rousseau.

Publisher Routledge, 2002
ISBN 0415232805, 9780415232807
Length 288 pages

Keywords and phrases
Descartes, Nietzsche, semiotic, ontology, Hegel, Aristotle, psychoanalysis, Dasein, Levinas, Plato, Birth of Tragedy, hermeneutics, post-structuralist, metaphysics, Husserl, structuralist, Phenomenology, conscience collective, critical theory, life-world

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Barbie Zelizer (ed.): Explorations in Communication and History (2008)

When and how do communication and history impact each other? How do disciplinary perspectives affect what we know?

Explorations in Communication and History addresses the link between what we know and how we know it by tracking the intersection of communication and history. Asking how each discipline has enhanced and hindered our understanding of the other, the book considers what happens to what we know when disciplines engage.

Through a critical collection of essays written by top scholars in the field, the book addresses the engagement of communication and history as it applies to the study of technology, audiences and journalism. A comprehensive introduction by Barbie Zelizer contextualises these debates and makes a case for the importance of disciplinary engagement for teaching as well as research in media and cultural studies and each section has a brief introduction to contextualise the essays and highlight the issues they raise, making this an invaluable collection for students and scholars alike.

Publisher Routledge, 2008
ISBN 041577733X, 9780415777339
Length 240 pages

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Douglas Kellner: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Post-modern (1995)

Media Culture develops methods and analyses of contemporary film, television, music and other artifacts to discern their nature and effects, argueing that media culture is the dominant form of culture which socializes us and provides materials for identity, social reproduction and change. Through studies of Reagan and Rambo, horror films and youth films, rap music and African American culture, Madonna, fashion, television news and entertainment, MTV, Beavis and Butt-Head, the Gulf-War as cultural text, cyberpunk fiction and postmodern theory, Kellner provides a series of lively studies that both illuminate contemporary culture and provide methods of analysis and critique.

Many people today talk about cultural studies, but Kellner actually does it, carrying through a unique mixture of theoretical analyses and concrete discussions of some of the most popular and influential forms of contemporary media culture. Criticizing social context, political struggle, and the system of cultural production, Kellner develops a multi-dimensional approach to cultural studies that broadens the field and opens it to a variety of disiplines. He also provides approaches to the vexed question of the effects of culture and provides perspectives for cultural studies.

Publisher Routledge, 1995
ISBN 0415105706, 9780415105705
Length 357 pages

Keywords and phrases
Beavis and Butt-Head, cyberpunk, Madonna, cultural studies, Rambo, Frankfurt School, Neuromancer, Top Gun, Miami Vice, Malcolm X, rap music, Spike Lee, Marxism, horror films, Ice-T, feminism, masculist, media culture, multiperspectival, Poltergeist films

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Gary Hall, Clare Birchall (eds.): New Cultural Studies. Adventures in Theory (2006)

New Cultural Studies is both an introductory reference work and an original study which explores new directions and territories for cultural studies. A new generation has begun to emerge from the shadow of the Birmingham School. It is a generation whose whole education has been shaped by theory, and who frequently turn to it as a means to think through some of the issues and current problems in contemporary culture and cultural studies.

In a period when departments which were once hotbeds of “high theory” are returning to more sociological and social science oriented modes of research, and 9/11 and the war in Iraq especially have helped create a sense of “post-theoretical” political urgency which leaves little time for the “elitist,” “Eurocentric,” “textual” concerns of “Theory,” theoretical approaches to the study of culture have, for many of this generation, never seemed so important or so vital.

New cultural studies follows such thinkers and theorists, as Agamben, Deleuze, Derrida, Kittler, Laclau, and Zizek as they influence anti-capitalism, ethics, the post-humanities, post-Marxism, and new media technologies.

Publisher Edinburgh University Press, 2006
ISBN 0748622098, 9780748622092
Length 324 pages

Keywords and phrases
cultural studies, post-Marxism, posthumanities, Marxism, Stuart Hall, Lawrence Grossberg, biopolitical, Friedrich Kittler, tactical media, Paul Bowman, Angela McRobbie, Alain Badiou, anti-capitalism, deconstruction, Raymond Williams, Gilles Deleuze, Michael Hardt, Homo Sacer, Media Theory, neo-liberal

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Gary Hall, Clare Birchall (eds.): New Cultural Studies: The Liquid Theory Reader (2009)

Culture Machine Liquid Books is a series of experimental digital ‘books’ published under the conditions of both open editing and free content. As such, you are free to compose, rewrite, edit, annotate, tag, add to, remix, reformat, reinvent and reuse any of the books in the series, or produce parallel versions of them – and what’s more you are expressly invited and encouraged to do so. The wiki has been set up to expressely facilitate such experimention. It provides you with read/write access to all the volumes in the Liquid Books series.

The first volume in the Culture Machine Liquid Books series is New Cultural Studies: The Liquid Theory Reader. This has initially been put together by Gary Hall and Clare Birchall as a follow up to their 2006 woodware volume, New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). The first ‘frozen liquid’ version of this book – New Cultural Studies: The Liquid Theory Reader (Version 1.0) – appeared as part of the Culture Machine journal’s ‘Pirate Philosophy’ issue in 2008.

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