The Basic - Jeff Lewis (book review)

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Cultural Studies, The Basic, Second Edition by Jeff Lewis.

First Published 2008

SAGE Publications Ltd, London

438 pages

Price for Hbk £70.00, ISBN 978-1-4129-2229-6

Price for Pbk £23.99, ISBN 978-4129-2

The Study of Culture and the Twenty-first Century.

The book we decided to study is “Cultural Studies, The Basics, Second Edition,” by Jeff Lewis. The book examines assorted ways in which culture is “formed, theorised and studied.” Lewis achieved this by breaking up subjects that are culturally related into numerous categories, making it simpler to understand. The book ranges from what affected change in culture years ago when Marx was a “towering figure” in society to now in the twenty-first century. “British culture eventually moves away from a Marxist based analysis of working class life towards a broader field of culture.”

A brief summary of what the book includes...popular figures such as Durkheim and Weber both who studied how cultural theory was developed by social action. And other scholars like Heidegger and Adorno, who both believed the moving image and consuming popular culture “transformed humans’ social experience.” They were correct about the transformation but never lived to witness it fully. On the issues of feminism Lewis writes about The Suffragettes, Marxist group of middle class women who argued that women’s labour is exploited by capitalism. Kate Millet, a feminist during the 1960’s-70’s who said the media “exploited and oppressed women by sexualised images of women’s bodies’.” This then became “central motif to television culture.”  One form of the media that Lewis writes about is the “introduction of writing,” to the ancient cultures of Sumer, Egypt and Greece. Writing changed the economy and lifestyle of these places. In comparison to this is how “televisual and globally networked media,” has shaped cultural over the years. Therefore media has been around a lot longer than many people think.

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The title of the book “Cultural Studies, The Basics,” is an obvious answer of it being considered as a cultural studies book; however the book includes many aspects that class it as one. Everything included in Lewis’s book is connected and related in some way to the study of culture. Nothing in the book is irrelevant and pointless. Features in Lewis’s book that relate it as a cultural studies book include...media. It is audiences’ interactions and lifestyle that creates “new meanings of culture.” This is provoked by the media i.e. radio, television, internet, iPods. The Payne Fund Studies was ...

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