Mainstream(s) and Margins: Cultural Politics in the 90s(Contributions in Political Science)

This book draws together 13 distinctive and original explorations of how dominant cultural mainstreams and margins are formed and resisted, how they stabilize and shift, and how they permeate and define each other. The chapters speak to central problems of cultural politics that represent critical challenges for theory, research, and action in the social world. The authors develop and advance new approaches for interdisciplinary inquiry into contemporary cultural issues. Drawing on and extending scholarship in communication, political science, sociology, women's studies, critical cultural studies, anthropology, and American studies, they analyze what happens when marginal groups meet mainstream forces. The chapters will enliven academic debates over what constitutes a cultural mainstream or margin. This volume explores theories, problems, and contemporary struggles over identity and representation, ideology and hegemony, and discourse and action. The essays focus on critical questions covering postcolonial theory, primitivism, feminism, sexuality, the body, art, multiculturalism, the environmental crisis, the mass media, and social movements. The authors examine diverse issues, ranging from the writing of women prisoners to how media policy is embedded in cultural history, to the political implications of cultural representations in cross-cultural contexts. Altogether, the diversity and depth of the text will help us develop new and complementary ways of thinking about critical questions in the politics of culture.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Mainstream(s) and Margins: An Opening by Michael Morgan and Susan Leggett Political Strategies, Identities, and Movements Notes on Centers and Margins by Poonam Pillai Mainstreams and Leakage: Interrogating the Margins of "Art" and "Porn" by Rebecca Schneider Identity and Representation as Challenges to Social Movement Theory: A Case Study of Queer Nation by Michael Fraser The Ideological Limits of New Social Movements: The Rise and Fall of Clamshell Alliance by Stephen Adair The United Colors of Multiculturalism: Rereading Composition Textbooks in the 90s by Sandra Jamieson The Writings of Women Prisoners: Voices from the Margins by Susan Ross Audiences, Ideology, and Cultural Representation Liberal Television: Property and the Politics of Commercial Broadcasting by Thomas Streeter Critical Ethnographies and the Concept of Resistance by Kevin Caragee Unarmed and Dangerous: The Gibralter Killings meet the Press by Andy Ruddock Television, Gender, and Sports Hegemony: Prime Time's Portrayal of Female Athletes by Gina Daddario Green but Unseen: Marginalizing the Environment on Television by James Shanahan Initial Lessons in Popular Orientalism from National Geographic Magazine by Linda Steet Refugees and Representation: Politics, Critical Discourse and Ethnography along the New Guinea Border by Stuart Kirsch Index

About the Author :
MICHAEL MORGAN is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is coeditor of Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effects Research (1990) and coauthor of Democracy Tango: Television, Adolescents, and Authoritarian Tensions in Argentina (1995). SUSAN LEGGETT is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.