Culture and Society: An Introduction to Cultural Studies

David Oswell has written a comprehensive introduction to cultural studies that guides the reader through the field's central foundations and its freshest ideas. This book: - grounds the reader in the foundations of cultural studies and cultural theory: language and semiology, ideology and power, mass and popular culture;- analyzes the central problems: identity, body, economy, globalization and empire;- introduces the latest developments on materiality, agency, technology and nature.Culture and Society is an invaluable guide for students navigating the dynamic debates and intellectual challenges of cultural studies. Its breadth and unparallelled coverage of cutting-edge theory will also ensure that it is read by anyone interested in questions of materiality and culture.`Too often cultural studies discourse seems cut off from wider developments in social theory. As a sociologist with a strong cultural studies sensibility, David Oswell is ideally placed to put this right. Through a series of well-judged and historically nuanced readings of cultural, social theory and critical philosophy, this book provides just the bridge between cultural studies and wider debates that we need' - Nick Couldry, Redaer in Media, Communications and Culture, London School of Economics and Political Science