Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

What does it mean to live in the Communication Age? What has happened to culture in the Communication Age? What is the nature of culture today?
Culture in the Communication Age brings together some of the world's leading thinkers from a range of academic disciplines to discuss what 'culture' means in the modern era. They describe key features of cultural life in the 'communication age', and consider the cultural implications of the rise of global communication, mass media, information technology, and popular culture. Individual chapters consider:
* Cultures of the mind * Rethinking culture in a global context * Re-thinking Culture, from 'ways of life' to 'lifestyle' * Gender and Culture * Popular Culture and Media Spectacles * Visual Culture * Star Culture * Computers, the Internet and Virtual Cultures * Superculture in the Communication Age

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Notes on contributors (p. vii)
• Introduction: Why the Communication Age? (p. 1)
• Section 1 The foundations of culture (p. 7)
• 1 Culture of the mind: on the origins of meaning and emotion (p. 9)
• 2 Rethinking the foundations of culture (p. 31)
• 3 Thinking about culture in a global ecumene (p. 54)
• Section 2 Making sense of culture (p. 73)
• 4 From ways of life to lifestyle: rethinking culture as ideology and sensibility (p. 75)
• 5 The question of cultural gender (p. 89)
• 6 Cultural fronts: towards a dialogical understanding of contemporary cultures (p. 106)
• 7 Superculture for the Communication Age (p. 132)
• Section 3 Contemporary cultural forms (p. 165)
• 8 Cultural theory in popular culture and media spectacles (p. 167)
• 9 Visual culture (p. 179)
• 10 Star culture (p. 193)
• 11 Computers, the Internet, and virtual cultures (p. 212)
• Index (p. 226)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The best approach to this book is through section 2, "Making Sense of Culture," in which Lull (in "Superculture for the Communication Age") and Chaney ("From Ways of Life to Lifestyle") set forth the essential argument and themes of the book. Lull contends that "communication age" technologies have fundamentally and irrevocably changed human relationships and therefore human culture. Chaney furthers this, examining the ways mass media and globalization of consumerism have altered social interactions, values, and lifestyles. The other two chapters in this section examine how globalization of gender has altered the cultural analysis of gender and ruminate on "cultural fronts." One can go next to either the third section--four chapters showing how popular culture has replaced traditional notions of elite culture (Real's explanation of the funeral for Lady Diana is an excellent case in point)--or to the first section, for three chapters on how contemporary cultural anthropologists view the shortcomings of traditional anthropological studies (Stewart on human communities and the experience and emotion in codifying human culture; Neiva on human communication as key to understanding culture; Hannerz arguing for studying "global ecumene" rather than differences). This much-needed update on cultural studies comes perilously close to arguing that the concept of culture is no longer viable. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. Cathcart emeritus, CUNY Queens College