Power Plays Power Works
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- $41.99
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- $41.99
Publisher Description
Now, more than 20 years since its initial release, John Fiske’s classic text Power Plays Power Works remains both timely and insightful as a theoretically driven examination of the terrain where the politics of culture and the culture of politics collide.
Drawing on a diverse set of cultural sites - from alternative talk radio forums, museums, celebrity fandom, to social problems such as homelessness - Fiske traverses the topography of the American cultural landscape to highlight the ways that ordinary people creatively construct their social identities and relationships through the use of the resources available to them, while constrained by social conditions not of their own choosing. This important analysis provides a set of critical methodological and analytical tools to grapple with the complexities and struggles of contemporary social life.
A new introductory essay by former Fiske student Black Hawk Hancock entitled ‘Learning How to Fiske: Theorizing Power, Knowledge, and Bodies in the 21st Century’ elucidates Fiske’s methods for today’s students, providing them with the ultimate guide to thinking and analyzing like John Fiske; the art of ‘Learning How to Fiske’.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fiske ( Understanding Popular Culture ) mixes case studies and theory in a jargon-laden but provoking assessment of ways in which ordinary people fight power-blocs in a society lacking a ``broadly shared consensus of values and priorities.'' Fiske suggests, for example, that sports offers its fans a limited opportunity to know and master a field without being subject to the control of experts. Similarly, he suggests that Elvis fans find community in rejecting the official account of his death. Fiske examines the Smithsonian Institutions's 1991 look at the exploitative side of the frontier West, observing that while advocates of ``high'' culture hotly debate multiculturalism, popular culture has been invaded by revisionist movies like Dances with Wolves . His most interesting chapters delve into race relations, observing, for instance, the ``counter-knowledge'' purveyed by black-oriented radio stations, corresponding to a black experience of reality that differs from whites'. Fiske concludes that the current power-bloc still isn't ready to negotiate a new multicultural consensus, though he's hardly ready to define one himself.
