Public Culture

Synopsis

In the United States today many people are as likely to identify themselves by their ethnicity or region as by their nationality. In this country with its diversity and inequalities, can there be a shared public culture? Is there an unbridgeable gap between cultural variety and civic unity, or can public forms of expression provide an opportunity for Americans to come together as a people?In Public Culture: Diversity, Democracy, and Community in the United States, an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses these questions while considering the state of American public culture over the past one hundred years. From medicine shows to the Internet, from the Los Angeles Plaza to the Las Vegas Strip, from the commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing to television programming after 9/11, public sights and scenes provide ways to negotiate new forms of belonging in a diverse, postmodern community. By analyzing these cultural phenomena, the essays in this volume reveal how mass media, consumerism, increased privatization of space, and growing political polarization have transformed public culture and the very notion of the American public.Focusing on four central themes--public action, public image, public space, and public identity--and approaching shared culture from a range of disciplines--including mass communication, history, sociology, urban studies, ethnic studies, and cultural studies--Public Culture offers refreshing perspectives on a subject of perennial significance.

Copyright:

2008

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780812206845

Related ISBNs:

9780812222029

Publisher:

University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Date of Addition:

04/16/17

Copyrighted By:

University of Pennsylvania Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Politics and Government

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.