Culture–on–Demand: Communication in a Crisis World

Film, video, music, TV, the internet these are now the global channels for experiencing cultural activity on–demand. At the same time, intense cultural conflicts have thrown the world into chaos. Religious fundamentalism, nationalism, militarism, and globalization continue to provoke widespread violence and unrest.

This highly original, thought–provoking book written by a pioneer of communication studies is the first to analyze the post 9/11 world in terms of global media and popular culture. From an evolutionary perspective, Lull argues that we need to harness the influence of information and personal communications technologies, mass media, and the culture industries to understand where our precarious world is headed and how we will get there.

List of figures.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

1. All Eyes on the Global Stage.

Media Globalization.

Modern Media Development.

The Global Divides.

China and the Middle East: Responses to Modernity and.

Globalization.

The Communications Revolution.

2. Human Expression.

The Cultural Politics of Expression.

The Need for Expression.

Symbolic Creativity and the Expressive Self.

Emotional Communication.

The fear factor and the pleasure principle.

The Active Pleasures of Expression and Communication.

Mobile expression.

Cultural Open Sourcing.

Symbolic Power to the People.

3. Programming Our Personal Supercultures.

Cultural Experience.

Culture, culture, Superculture.

The supers .

Culture in common.

Cultural Technology in the Communication Age.

Cultural Programming.

The Cultural Self and Self Culture.

Encountering Culture.

The Cultural Spheres.

Universal values and concepts.

Transnational cultural media.

Civilizations.

Nations.

Regions and everyday life.

The Cultural Mix in Action.

Superculture Revisited.

4. The Push and Pull of Culture.

The Push of Culture.

Diaspora.

Nation as contested push.

The Pull of Culture.

Individualism.

A life of one s own .

New Cultural Horizons.

5. Globalized Islam.

The Islamic Cultural Body.

The visible visual body.

Gender equality, political democracy, and economic prosperity.

Islam in the West.

The Opinion, and the Other Opinion.

The global TV war.

The New Imagined World of Islam.

Instrumental modernity.

The communications problem.

6. Cultural Transparency.

Reflexive Cultural Globalization.

The globalization of good and bad ideas.

Loving to hate America.

Open Society: The Guiding Principle for Cultural Development.

The Power of Transparency.

Transparency or surveillance?.

7. The Open Spaces of Global Communication.

Stage 1: Cultural Technology, Industry, Abundance.

Stage 2: Global Visibility and Transparency.

Stage 3: Platforms for Participation.

Stage 4: Global Consciousness and Public Opinion.

Stage 5: Global Wisdom.

Stage 6: Institutional Channels.

Stage 7: Utopian Potential.

8. Fundamentalism and Cosmopolitanism.

The Passion of the Religious Culture.

Fundamentalist America.

The active passivity of Islam.

Other Fundamentalisms.

Nationalism.

Market fundamentalism.

The Democratic Secular Imperative.

One Moral Universe?.

A modest cosmopolitan alternative.

9. Communicating the Future.

The Paradox of Tolerance.

The Great Chain of Communication.

References.

Index

James Lull is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. He holds the first Honorary Doctorate in Communication at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also the recipient of two Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowships and a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship. His many books include Culture in the Communication Age (2001) and Media, Communication, Culture (2000). Visit author online at JamesLull.com.

James Lull shows that religion and media ravenously feed off each other––often for the worse. But he also points the way to a future of ′global wisdom,′ which leverages the best ideals of communication and faith. This is one gospel worth preaching.
Irshad Manji, author, The Trouble with Islam Today<!––end––>

With uncommon brilliance, extreme intellectual agility, and profound cultural wisdom, James Lull s latest book faces courageously and optimistically the most daunting challenges of our troubled times.
Eduardo Neiva, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Taking global cultural analysis in refreshing new directions, James Lull offers the reader powerful insights into the social and symbolic realities of the 21st Century.
Gabriela Pedroza, Monterrey Institute of Technology

"In this impressively wide–ranging study, Lull makes an impassioned plea for the new media technologies to be brought to the forefront of the struggle against cultural prejudice. Calling for cooperation rather than conflict, open–minded communication rather than fundamentalist pronouncements, Lull persuasively argues the case for greater diversity and tolerance across global society."
Stuart Sim, University of Sunderland

An intriguing essay on culture and modern cultural practices. Lull is intellectually honest in assessing the counterarguments to his positions. Communication Research Trends