This book represents a distinctive approach to cultural analysis, using multi-dimensional methods for addressing issues of public interest. The approach, which deploys Jim McGuigan's original concept of the cultural public sphere, is demonstrated in several case studies, including: " celebrity death " festivals and urban regeneration " 'race' and multicultural controversy " popular television (for instance, Little Britain and The Apprentice) " social significance of the all-purpose mobile communication device in a privatised and individualised way of life " riskiness and uncertainty at both the levels of environmental politics and working life in the creative and media industries These various case studies are analysed with regard to the dialectic of production and consumption in cultural circulation and situated in relation to major issues of social change. The book stresses the impact of neoliberalism throughout the world since the 1970s and the formation of a cool-capitalist culture that has colonised everyday life around much of the globe.
In effect, this is a radical intervention in the research agendas and conceptual development of cultural policy studies, cultural sociology and, more generally, in the broad field known as 'cultural studies'. It offers challenging theoretical arguments that are substantiated with concrete evidence of cultural and social processes.
Author Biography:
Jim McGuigan is a freelance researcher, writer and artist. He is also Emeritus Professor of Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University UK. Previously, he taught at Coventry, Leeds, Leeds Trinity, Open and Wolverhampton Universities. He was a research officer at the Arts Council of GB and a script editor in the BBC TV Drama (Plays) Department. He has been a visiting scholar at, amongst others, the Universities of Bergen, Canberra, Canterbury (Christchurch NZ), Catalonia, Copenhagen, Eastern Finland, Izmir, Jyvaskyla, Rostock and at IFK Vienna. He has delivered keynote addresses at conferences and guest lectures in Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Norway as well as at various universities in Britain and elsewhere. He has, for instance, served on the Art and Humanities Research Council and the European Commission.
Jim’s main academic interests are in social theory, cultural studies and policy. He has published in many book collections and journals, including Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Keywords, New Left Review, New Statesman, Social Semiotics, Sociological Review and Sociology. His books include Cultural Populism (1992), Culture and the Public Sphere (1996), Cultural Methodologies (1997), Modernity and Postmodern Culture (1999, 2006), Rethinking Cultural Policy (2004), Cool Capitalism (2009), Cultural Analysis (2010), Raymond Williams on Culture and Society (2014), A Short Counter-Revolution – Raymond Williams’s Towards 2000 Revisited (2015) and Neoliberal Culture (2016). He is currently working on a book about Raymond Williams.
