Street smarts and critical theory : listening to the vernacular / / Thomas McLaughlin

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910967400303321
• Autore: McLaughlin Thomas <1948->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Madison, : University of Wisconsin Press, c1996
• ISBN: 9786612424137; 9781282424135; 1282424130; 9780299151737; 0299151735
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (192 p.)
• Collana: Wisconsin project on American writers
• Disciplina: 810.9
• Soggetti: American literature - History and criticism - Theory, etc; Popular literature - History and criticism - Theory, etc; Criticism - United States - History - 20th century; Literature - Public opinion - United States; Criticism - Public opinion - United States; Language and culture - United States; Popular culture - United States; Canon (Literature)
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-177) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction-Theory outside the Academy: Street Smarts and Critical Theory -- 2. Cultural Theory and Social Activism in the Southern Christian Antipornography Movement -- 3. Criticism in the Zines: Vernacular Theory and Popular Culture -- 4. Stories of the New Age: Narrative, Healing, and Transformation -- 5. The Cunning of the Hand, the Weakness of the Heart: Theoretical Work in the Advertising Profession -- 6. The Teachers Meet the Experts: Vernacular Theory in the Whole Language Movement -- 7. Pedagogy and Vernacular Theory -- Works Cited -- Index.
• Sommario/riassunto: Everybody's got a theory... or do they? Thomas McLaughlin argues that ; critical theory-raising serious, sustained questions about cultural practice and ideology-is practiced not only by an academic elite but also by savvy viewers of sitcoms andTV news, by Elvis fans and Trekkies, by labor organizers and school teachers, by the average person in the street. Like academic theorists, who are trained in a tradition of philosophical and political skepticism that challenges all orthodoxies, the vernacular theorists McLaughlin identifies display a lively and healthy alertness to contradiction and propaganda. They are not passive victims of ideology but active questioners of the belief systems that have power over their lives. Their theoretical work arises from the circumstances they confront on the job, in the family, in popular culture. And their questioning of established institutions, McLaughlin contends, is essential and healthy, for it energizes other theorists who clarify the purpose and strategies of institutions and justify the existence of cultural practices. Street Smarts and Critical Theory leads us through eye-opening explorations of social activism in the Southern Christian anti-pornography movement, fan critiques in the 'zine scene, New Age narratives of healing and transformation, the methodical manipulations of the advertising profession, and vernacular theory in the whole-language movement. Emphasizing that theory is itself a pervasive cultural practice, McLaughlin calls on academic institutions to recognize and develop the theoretical strategies that students bring into the classroom. "This book demystifies the idea of theory, taking it out of the hands of a priestly caste and showing it as the democratic endowment of the people."-Daniel T. O'Hara, Temple University, author of Radical Parody: American Culture and Critical Agency after Foucault and Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. "McLaughlin takes seriously the critical and theoretical activity of everyday people and does so in a way that will empower these very populations to take seriously their own activities as theorists.... A manifesto that is sure to be heard by the younger generation of thinkers in American cultural studies."-Henry Jenkins, MIT, author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture

Digital Cities III. Information Technologies for Social Capital: Cross-cultural Perspectives : Third International Digital Cities Workshop, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 18-19, 2003, Revised Selected Papers / / edited by Peter van den Besselaar, Satoshi Koizumi

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910484126203321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Berlin, Heidelberg : , : Springer Berlin Heidelberg : , : Imprint : Springer, , 2005
• ISBN: 3-540-25971-6
• Edizione: [1st ed. 2005.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (XII, 438 p.)
• Collana: Information Systems and Applications, incl. Internet/Web, and HCI, , 2946-1642 ; ; 3081
• Altri autori (Persone): BesselaarPeter van den; KoizumiSatoshi
• Disciplina: 004.67
• Soggetti: Computer networks; Computers and civilization; User interfaces (Computer systems); Human-computer interaction; Application software; Microcomputers; Social sciences - Data processing; Computer Communication Networks; Computers and Society; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Computer and Information Systems Applications; Personal Computing; Computer Application in Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Local Information and Communication Infrastructures: An Introduction -- Local Information and Communication Infrastructures: An Introduction -- I Digital Cities Around the World: Case Studies -- The Seattle Community Network: Anomaly or Replicable Model? -- The Blacksburg Electronic Village: A Study in Community Computing -- The ; Life and Death of the Great Amsterdam Digital City -- Urban Cyberspace as a Social Construction: Non-technological Factors in the Shaping of Digital Bristol -- Virtual Helsinki: Enabling the Citizen, Linking the Physical and Virtual -- Digital City Shanghai: Concepts, Foundations, and Current State -- Activities and Technologies in Digital City Kyoto -- World Digital Cities: Beyond Heterogeneity -- II Virtual Community Platforms -- Virtual Cities for Real-World Crisis Management -- Virtuose, a VIRTual CommUnity Open Source Engine for Integrating Civic Networks and Digital Cities -- Talking Digital Cities: Connecting Heterogeneous Digital Cities Via the Universal Mobile Interface -- Town Digitizing: Omnidirectional Image-Based Virtual Space -- III Knowledge and Data Modeling for Digital Cities -- Articulating the Digital Environment Via Community-Generated Ontologies -- Map-Based Range Query Processing for Geographic Web Search Systems -- Recognizing Buildings Using a Mobile System and a Reference City Model -- Querying Multiple Video Streams and Hypermedia Objects of a Video-Based Virtual Space System -- IV Participation, Design, Monitoring -- Cultural User Experience Issues in E-government: Designing for a Multi-cultural Society -- Visualizing Social Patterns in Virtual Environments on a Local and Global Scale -- Participation in Community Systems: Indications for Design -- Intention and Motive in Information-System Design: Toward a Theory and Method for Assessing Users’ Needs -- The Perfections of Sustainability and Imperfections in the Digital Community: Paradoxes of Connection and Disconnection -- V ICT and Social Capital -- The Promises and Perils of Integrated Community Learning Environments -- Effects of ICT on Social Cohesion: The Cyburg Case -- Citizenship and Digital Media Management -- Digital Cities and the Opportunities for Mobilizing the Information Society: Case Studies from Portugal.
• Sommario/riassunto: Digital cities constitutes a multidisciplinary field of research and development, where researchers, designers and developers of communityware interact and collaborate with social scientists studying the use and effects of these kinds of infrastructures and systems in their local application context. The field is rather young. After the diffusion of ICT in the world of organizations and companies, ICT entered everyday life. And this also influenced ICT research and development. The 1998 Workshop on Communityware and Social Interaction in Kyoto was an early meeting in which this emerging field was discussed. After that, two subsequent Digital Cities workshops were organized in Kyoto, and a third one in Amsterdam. This book is the result of the 3rd Workshop on Digital Cities, which took place September 18–19, 2003 in Amsterdam, in conjunction with the 1st Communities and Technologies Conference. Most of the papers were presented at this workshop, and were revised thoroughly afterwards. Also the case studies of digital cities in Asia, the US, and Europe, included in Part I, were direct offsprings of the Digital Cities Workshops. Together the papers in this volume give an interesting state-of-the-art overview of the field. In total 54 authors from the Americas, from Asia, and from Europe were contributed to this volume. The authors come from Brazil (two), the USA (eleven), China (three), Japan (fourteen), Finland (two), Germany (two), Italy (three), Portugal (two), the Netherlands (eight), and the UK (seven), indicating the international nature of the research field.