The Compass Dances is a collection of poems written from 1955 to 2015; the work of almost a lifetime. Influenced by the author’s long absence from England, this strikingly original collection provides unique reflection on simultaneously writing in two languages, far away from the familiarity of home. The compass waltzes that holds me in check. Its polarity cannot reverse if I live. With a nod to postmodernism, the process of authorial construction is left deliberately exposed. Asides and footnotes are used to signpost the reader and provide insight into the inspiration behind Pickering’s writing. There are also many poems whose compelling inner force needs no explanation, appearing to have sprung fully formed from the mind of their creator. Included in the collection is “Cosmos”, a long poem for dramatic performance, which has been described by a producer as "a remarkable juxtaposition of the mythologies of various traditional cultures with the scientific story of the Cosmos, which is powerfully emotive”. Michael’s familiarity with more complex languages than English (notably Finnish) and, paradoxically, simpler (notably Italian) makes The Compass Dances a unique collection that will appeal to all poetry lovers.
This elegantly written and illuminating book explores the attenuated relationship between history and cultural studies, reappraising some of the issues and positions which have led to the impasse between them and highlighting the contribution to be made by a new engagement between cultural and historical theory. Focusing on the contested concept of 'experience' as a central part of his argument, Pickering advances new ways of attending to the myriad voices of everyday cultures, past and present.
Stereotyping stands in need of serious re-appraisal. This book provides a critical assessment of the concept and its use in the social sciences, considering its theoretical basis and historical development and linking these closely to the concept of the "Other." As the first sustained book-length treatment of stereotyping in either sociology or media and cultural studies, the text embraces such key topics as nationalism and national identity, gender, racism and imperialism, normality and social order, and the figure of the stranger in the modern city. It is interdisciplinary, moving between sociology, social psychology, cultural history, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial theory, and offers an indispensable examination of the roots of prejudice and bigotry in modern societies.
Blackface minstrelsy is associated particularly with popular culture in the United States and Britain, yet despite the continual two-way flow of performers, troupes and companies across the Atlantic, there is little in Britain to match the scholarship of blackface studies in the States. This book concentrates on the distinctively British trajectory of minstrelsy. The historical study and cultural analysis of minstrelsy is important because of the significant role it played in Britain as a form of song, music and theatrical entertainment. Minstrelsy had a marked impact on popular music, dance and other aspects of popular culture, both in Britain and the United States. Its impact in the United States fed into significant song and music genres that were assimilated in Britain, from ragtime and jazz onwards, but prior to these influences, minstrelsy in Britain developed many distinct features and was adapted to operate within various conventions, themes and traditions in British popular culture. Pickering provides a convincing counter-argument to the assumption among writers in the United States that blackface was exclusively American and its British counterpart purely imitative. Minstrelsy was not confined to its value as song, music and dance. Jokes at the expense of black people along with demeaning racial stereotypes were integral to minstrel shows. As a form of popular entertainment, British minstrelsy created a cultural low-Other that offered confirmation of white racial ascendancy and imperial dominion around the world. The book attends closely to how this influence on colonialism and imperialism operated and proved ideologically so effective. At the same time British minstrelsy cannot be reduced to its racist and imperialist connections. Enormously important as those connections are, Pickering demonstrates the complexity of the subject by insisting that the minstrel show and minstrel performers are understood also in terms of their own theatrical dynamics, t
Whether for weavers at the handloom, laborers at the plough, or factory workers on the assembly line, music has often been a key texture in people's working lives. This book is the first to explore the rich history of music at work in Britain and charts the journey from the singing cultures of pre-industrial occupations, to the impact and uses of the factory radio, via the silencing effect of industrialization. The first part of the book discusses how widespread cultures of singing at work were in pre-industrial manual occupations. The second and third parts of the book show how musical silence reigned with industrialization, until the carefully controlled introduction of Music While You Work in the 1940s. Continuing the analysis to the present day, Rhythms of Labor explains how workers have clung to and reclaimed popular music on the radio in desperate and creative ways.
An exploration of some of the key theoretical challenges and conceptual issues facing the emergent field of memory studies, from the relationship between experience and memory to the commercial exploitation of nostalgia, using the key concept of the mnemonic imagination.
This book explores how photography and recorded music act as vehicles or catalysts in processes of remembering, and how they are regarded, treated, valued and drawn upon as resources connecting past and present in everyday life. It does so via two key concepts: vernacular memory and the mnemonic imagination.
This book shows how the mnemonic imagination creatively uses the resources of photography and music in the registering and management of change. Looking in particular at major transitions and turning points, it covers key issues of identity for the remembering subject and key scales of remembering in vernacular milieus. The book explores the connections of memory and remembering with transformations in intimate relationships, migration and spatial mobilities, loss and bereavement involving loved ones or those with whom close affinities are felt, resulting in a volume that helps fill the gap in memory studies caused by lack of sustained ethnographic work. Drawing on extensive fieldwork on the processes and practices of remembering in everyday life, it demonstrates how the mnemonic imagination is central to the management of change and transition, and how its cross-temporal interanimations of past, present and future are fostered and facilitated by the visual and sonic resources of photography and recorded music.
There’s not much you can really say about self-expression or what the purpose is. I for one feel that this collection of poems is my best ability at verbalizing my emotions towards the world, its culture and people. And even more so my confusion of what I’m supposed to think about it. The words I choose are much like the color a painter would use to give the viewer or reader in this case the picture I want to emit in their head. Life is a crazy thing, and not matter if its work, frustration with society, or the trials and tribulations of love and friendship, there is always something to learn and pass on to others. I suppose that is the purpose but then again what the hell do I know, I’m just an idiot scribbling words on broken down trees.
Opioids have been used as analgesics for many years, and their use in the management of acute pain related to trauma and surgery is well established. However, patients with persisting pain need a pain management plan that brings relief of symptoms without adverse effects in both the short and longer terms. The prescribing of opioids for chronic non-cancer pain has increased substantially since the first edition of this pocketbook was published, prompting considerable debate regarding the appropriateness of prescribing for this indication and the potential harms to individuals and to society that may result from this trend. This second edition of Opioids in Non-Cancer Pain brings clinicians up to date on the current use of opioid drugs in patients with non-cancer pain, and highlights the potential benefits of therapy as well as the problems that can occur. The edition includes new chapters on the history of opioids to help contextualize the following discussions, and a new chapter covering the emerging field of pharmacogenomics which provides explanations for differing responsiveness to opioids and propensity to adverse effects. An international perspective on opioid prescribing trends is also a valuable new addition.
Originally published in 1982. The songs on which this study is based were once vibrant in the throats and ears and minds of living people. This book examines the songs and their meanings in relation to the lives of those people, and relates them to the cultural tradition and practice of which they were an integral part. The art of village song represents a sense of cohesiveness and mutual identity around local patterns of kinship, social groupings, territorial orientations and cultural relationships. The actual ways in which songs were part of village life is of course highly problematic, but this book endeavours, most of all, to present an understanding of the place of song in the social life of villagers.
′There have been few critical engagements with the concept of creativity in recent years, so the authors provide an important contribution in drawing attention to what is arguably at the heart of much of what we most value in culture′ - Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles ′In this important book, Keith Negus and Michael Pickering challenge commonplace assumptions about creativity and casual invocations of genius. They give comfort neither to popular wisdom nor to academic convention. Drawing on the work of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists and economists, as well as artists, musicians and novelists, they raise profound questions about the very ideas which sustain our understanding of art and culture′ - Professor John Street, University of East Anglia ′It′s all too rare to read a cultural studies book that offers any real originality. This one achieves this, not only by addressing debates and sources neglected in the field, but also by traversing high and low culture, and all points between′ - Dave Hesmondhalgh, The Open University Creativity has become a buzzword and key issue in debates about cultural policy, human growth and the media and cultural industries. It has also become a very misused term used to describe anything from musical and artistic genius, to shady financial accounting, to the teaching of children and the management of employees. But what does it mean? Negus and Pickering provide a clear and logical way of understanding what we describe as creative, and how this term has become central to attaching cultural value. Their book: · Develops an approach which enables us to think of creativity as both ordinary and exceptional · Focuses on creativity as a way of rethinking key concepts in the study of culture such as: Convention; innovation; tradition and experience. This book is useful to those studying Media and Cultural Studies who need to understand Cultural Production, Communication, Popular Culture and Cultural Theory.
In 1988 Iain McCalman's seminal work, Radical Underworld, unravelled the complex and clandestine revolutionary networks of democrats that operated in London between 1790 and the beginnings of Chartism, to reveal an urban underworld of prophets, infidels, pornographers and rogue preachers where powerful satirical and subversive subcultures were developed. This present volume reflects and builds upon the diversity of McCalman's discoveries, to present fresh insights into the culture and operation of popular politics in the 'age of reform'. It is a coherent and integrated treatment of the subject that offers a window into this 'unrespectable' underworld and questions whether it was a blackguard subculture or a more complex and rich counter-culture with powerful literary, legal and political implications. This book brings together an international team of experienced scholars to explore the concepts and subjects pioneered by McCalman. The volume presents a focused and coherent review of popular politics, from the meeting rooms of a reform society and the theatre stage, to the forum of the courtroom and the depths of prison.
The only single, comprehensive textbook on all aspects of digital television The next few years will see a major revolution in the technology used to deliver television services as the world moves from analog to digital television. Presently, all existing textbooks dealing with analog television standards (NTSC and PAL) are becoming obsolete as the prevalence of digital technology continues to become more widespread. Now, Digital Television: Technology and Standards fills the need for a single, authoritative textbook that covers all aspects of digital television technology. Divided into three main sections, Digital Television explores: * Video: MPEG-2, which is at the heart of all digital video broadcasting services * Audio: MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding and Dolby AC-3, which will be used internationally in digital video broadcasting systems * Systems: MPEG, modulation transmission, forward error correction, datacasting, conditional access, and digital storage media command and control Complete with tables, illustrations, and figures, this valuable textbook includes problems and laboratories at the end of each chapter and also offers a number of exercises that allow students to implement the various techniques discussed using MATLAB. The authors' coverage of implementation and theory makes this a practical reference for professionals, as well as an indispensable textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduate-level students in electrical engineering and computer science programs.
The new edition of the highly respected Researching Communications is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to researching media and communication. Researching Communications, Third Edition is an invaluable guide to performing and analysing research tasks, introducing the major research methods, giving detailed examples of research analysis and practical step-by-step guidance in clear language. Written by highly regarded experts in the field, the third edition includes new sections on social media analysis, digital research methods and comparative research, as well as updated case studies, international examples and details of recent developments in media and communication studies. Undergraduate and postgraduate media and communication students will find Researching Communications an invaluable resource at all stages of their course.
...Leading the Way is a clear and urgent call to the Church to lead and not follow, to rediscover its biblical mandate and its voice and create a new society of justice, health and peace. [back cover].
There have been few critical engagements with the concept of creativity in recent years, so the authors provide an important contribution in drawing attention to what is arguably at the heart of much of what we most value in culture' - Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles 'In this important book, Keith Negus and Michael Pickering challenge commonplace assumptions about creativity and casual invocations of genius. They give comfort neither to popular wisdom nor to academic convention. Drawing on the work of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists and economists, as well as artists, musicians and novelists, they raise profound questions about the very ideas which sustain our understanding of art and culture' - Professor John Street, University of East Anglia 'It's all too rare to read a cultural studies book that offers any real originality. This one achieves this, not only by addressing debates and sources neglected in the field, but also by traversing high and low culture, and all points between' - Dave Hesmondhalgh, The Open University Creativity has become a buzzword and key issue in debates about cultural policy, human growth and the media and cultural industries. It has also become a very misused term used to describe anything from musical and artistic genius, to shady financial accounting, to the teaching of children and the management of employees. But what does it mean? Negus and Pickering provide a clear and logical way of understanding what we describe as creative, and how this term has become central to attaching cultural value. Their book: · Develops an approach which enables us to think of creativity as both ordinary and exceptional · Focuses on creativity as a way of rethinking key concepts in the study of culture such as: Convention; innovation; tradition and experience. This book is useful to those studying Media and Cultural Studies who need to understand Cultural Production, Communication, Popular Culture and Cultural Theory.
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