A2 Communication & Culture Glossary
updated December 6
Mixed Economy – An economy where there is a mixture of public and private enterprise.
Consumerism – The movement seeking to protect and inform consumers while acquiring practices like honest packaging and guarantees etc.
Commodity Fetishism – Essentially that of value being inherent in the commodity for it’s own sake, so a commodity has value because of what it is and not how it was put together. I think an example of the opposite of this would be appreciation of a well made bookcase where it can be seen that many hours of work have gone into the fine detail of it. This makes me think of art and how it’s appreciation can be anti-commodity fetishist in that art is often to be enjoyed because of the process by which it came into existence and not to be enjoyed because of the way it appears, this also leads me to think about art and the value of knowledge, how then the knowledge becomes valuable and therefore a tradable commodity which stinks of bourgeoisie but that’s not a definition but perhaps the contradiction in modern art? Searching online for this it seems that it is also a Marxism theory.
Culture industry (Adorno and Hor(k)heimer) – Argued that the culture industry is devised to lead the masses into a passivity through standardised cultural products to make people docile and content. They also argue that it endangers the more difficult high-arts.
Culture industries – Industry that is concerned with the creation, production, and distribution of goods and services that are cultural in nature.
Economic determinism – Usually associated with the theories of Karl Marx economic determinism is that economics take preference over politics in the development of human history.
False Consciousness – This is another theory of Marx that we all live a a kind of dream world where everyone is made passive in order to conform to the consumer society. On a more realistic level it suggests that the media and those in power reassure the masses that things are ok, they aren’t so bad and that everything could be a lot worse, that way we all feel that what we have is great and become content with what we have so we don’t bother with any sort of social uprising.
Hegemony – To do with power, hegemony is the dominance of power by a minority over the majority, although I make it sound simple here it seems far from it… read more dictionary.com
‘Male Gaze‘ – I jumped to this one since there seems to be many areas of misogyny in arriving at modern culture and found this interesting article. I will keep looking into whether there is a study into the effects this may be having on masculinity.
Unlike the Devil in this Dinosaur comic these no gender ascribed dinosaurs, which are not non-gendered, talk about the male gaze as a film theory by Laura Mulvey where the camera is situated for men by men thereby disenfranchising women by reducing them to the passive object of the gaze and elevating men to the status of active gazer.
Post Feminism – Positioning seems important in post-feminism, for example a person may consider themselves a post-feminism if on the one hand there is a self proclamation of being a feminism and then on the other hand expressing the need to transform the movement towards another definition. Post-feminism embraces consumerism and celebrates the idea of a powerful woman. Other definitions have been put forward.
Post structuralism – Structuralism is a theory that looks at language (Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Barthes). So post-structuralism, like post-feminism is a move away from the conventional definition. Post-structuralism is an argument that language is changing and that words and symbols have several meanings (Derrida). For Derrida to have input here I’m reminded of deconstructionism.
Dialogism – This to me seems like a metaphysical argument all about the discussion of a subject in a particular way. According to thefreedictionary.com dialogism is “Logic a deduction with one premise and a disjunctive conclusion”.
Cultural appropriation – To take or adopt specific cultural traits. For one culture to take cultural traits from another is to culturally appropriate. It is usually significant in cross cultural communication, cultural assimilation and is a feature of cultural blending.
Cultural implosion –
Globalisation –
Hyperreality –
Modernity –
Parody –
Pastiche –
Simulacrum –
Biological determinism –
Diaspora –
Ethnocentrism -
Imagined communities –
Marginalisation –
Multiculturalism –
Subaltern classes –
See Also
John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) "Two Letters on the Measure of Value", 1822, The Traveller "Questions...
A form of government that has control over all aspects of society, both public and private. The term...
Social Psychology of Objects from Goffman People use objects to communicate People use objects to...
The case study for the communication and culture coursework was due in today, hope all has gone well...
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