Bücher der Reihe CRESC

Media studies needs richer and livelier intellectual resources. This book considers key processes of media change, using a number of critical perspectives. It is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of cultural studies, media studies and social theory.

This book gathers some of the most influential international scholarship in an emergent social science of infrastructures. Approaching infrastructures as complex, dynamic and fragile assemblages the volume aims to introduce readers to a new field of analytical approaches that draws attention to how the study of infrastructures can offer politically and theoretically generative perspectives on key areas of contemporary concern.

A collection of essays that explore the achievements and limitations of a Bourdieusian approach to cultural analysis and the implications for future research.

Presents a socio-material analysis of the British milk industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This title is suitable for any researcher interested in the hybrid socio-material, economic and political factors underpinning the transformation of the milk industry.

Migrants bring music from the homeland to the metropolis. But music also migrates via the media: `world¿ music, hip hop, bossa nova ... . With case studies from across the world this ground-breaking collection shows how migrating music is key to the construction of a still-emerging, global cosmopolitan imagination.

Theorizing Cultural Work brings together leading theorists to reflect on the ways in which forms of cultural work are embedded historically and socially, and to assess the extent to which they are illustrative of some putatively new social relations of work. It analyzes both local and internationally inter-linked cultural/creative labour processes as they unfold across different territories and economic regimes, considering the history and the future of cultural work in light of the immediate (post-crisis) and longer term social context.

Plastic has become emblematic of economies of abundance and ecological destruction. If the post-war `plastics age¿ was cleaner and brighter than all that preceded it, this boosterism has now become intertwined with anxiety as the burdens of accumulating plastic wastes register in environments and bodies. This innovative book investigates how plastic accumulates functions, concerns, politics, properties and more.

In 2010 Shanghai hosted the largest, most spectacular and most expensive expo ever. Attracting a staggering 73 million visitors, and costing around US$45 billion dollars, Shanghai Expo broke the records in the history of world's fairs and universal expositions. The thirteen essays in Shanghai Expo, written by a team of interdisciplinary researchers, offer a uniquely detailed analysis of this globally significant event.

Methods texts in social and cultural research have not kept pace with the increasing importance of interdisciplinary work, changing conceptions of the empirical, and the need to communicate with diverse users and audiences. This volume proposes a set of approaches for the empirical investigation of the contemporary world.