Libros

Voice and Environmental Communication explores how people give voice to, and listen to the voices of, the environment. As anxieties around degrading environments increase, so too do the number and volume of voices vying for the opportunity to express their experiences, beliefs, anxieties, knowledge and proposals for meaningful change. Nature itself speaks through, and perhaps to, individuals who advocate on behalf of the environment. This collection includes nine original essays organized into three sections: Voice and Environmental Advocacy, Voice and Consumption, and Listening to Non-human Voices. Four notable scholars reflect on these chapters, and provide both an audience to the scholars as well as a forum for extending their own understanding of voice and the environment. This foundational book introduces the relationship between these two fundamental aspects of human existence and extends our knowledge of the role of voice in the study of environmental communication.

Volume 3 Number 2 of Culture and Dialogue focuses on the theme of “identity and dialogue.” All the essays gathered in this volume address issues of identity with concrete examples and from different perspectives, be they art, philosophy, politics, religion, gender, or ethnic studies. All essays describe and question the relational element at work in identity formation within different cultural contexts, such as Japan, America, Corsica, Mongolia, Norway, Australia, Italy, and Ireland. Hiroshi Yoshioka offers a topical critique of what lays behind the fashionable self-portrait of Japanese cultural identity as Cool Japan in all its uniqueness. Sandra Wawrytko addresses the sensitive issue of gun culture in American identity by resorting to Mahāyāna Buddhist conceptions of failed interconnectedness. Dominique Verdoni discusses cultural identity formation with particular reference to the Corsican language and literature against the background of more dominant or regulating cultures. Angelika Böck shows how art practice can disclose the processes involved in any attempts to represent otherness, including when different groups such as Mongolian herders, Sami singers, and Australian Aboriginal hunters use other cultural codes and perspectives. Francesca Pierini critically reflects upon the culturally biased ways in which Anglo-American literature has traditionally portrayed Italian culture —an orientalised imagined identity. The selection of essays closes with Hannah Hale’s study on a very specific aspect of gender identity formation: how eating and drinking habits shape the development of masculinities within a community of students. All essays, in one way or another, disclose how identity formation is conditioned by, or emerges from, relationships between self and otherness, inside and outside, or minor and dominant cultures. As paradoxical as it may seem, the more we relate to each other, the more identity becomes an issue.

Indian ecocriticism has not yet adequately demonstrated the applicability of ecological/deep ecological/tinai principles to visual texts. Culture and Media: Ecocritical Explorations closes this gap at the most opportune moment. Though this volume accommodates ecologically oriented interpretations from several cultures across the world, it reserves the centre stage for Indian ecocriticism and ecotheory quite appropriately. The volume effectively challenges the major documents on ecocriticism and theory (published by international presses), which have been reluctant to give space to tinai criticism and theory that transcend Dravidian or Tamil boundaries. The day is not far when cinema of the world, shaped by tinai theory, will employ tinai hermeneutics to gain fresh insight, which, in turn, will feed into the processes of creation and production of relevant and great movies.

This book examines the manifestations of terror in the arts. From classical tragedy to post-9/11 responses, terror – as an emotion, violent act, and state of the world – has been a preoccupation of artists in all genres. Using philosophy, art history, film studies, interdisciplinary arts, theatre studies, and musicology, the authors included here delve into this perennially contemporary theme to produce insights articulated in a variety of idioms: from traditional philosophical humanism to phenomenology to feminism. Their approaches may vary, but together they reinforce the notion that terror is a thread in the fabric of artistic expression as much as it has always been and, alas, remains a thread in the fabric of life.

This book offers new and compelling insight into the emergent shared culture of the relationship between political actors and journalists in nine European democracies. It is a truly comparative account of the attitudes of 2,510 political communication elites between Helsinki and Madrid on various aspects of the media's role in politics and on the mutual relationship of politicians, political spokespersons and journalists. The study identifies national political communication cultures acrossEurope over the importance of journalists in advocacy and commentary, pressures on the media and perceived political influence. It also highlights that professional roles determine the perception of news-making, the interpretation of daily political life and the ethos of professional conduct and interaction.