Description: Understanding Culture offers an accessible and comprehensive overview of the field of cultural studies whilst also proposing a different way of `doing′ cultural studies. It focuses on the ways in which cultural objects and practices serve as both a means of ordering people′s lives and as markers of that ordering. The book reviews the state of the discipline of cultural studies and suggests a new theoretical and methodological orientation drawing on the work of: Foucault; scepticism, Wittgenstein; Harvey Sacks and John Law; uses insights from a variety of sources to examine the complex ways in which meanings are manufactured as lives are ordered in particular social settings: personal life, education, health, the city and law; and pre
Brief description: Born in London, Gavin Kendall was educated at Cambridge, Manchester and London Universities, and before moving to QUT, lectured for six years at Lancaster University. His books include The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism; State, Democracy and Globalization; Understanding Culture; and Using Foucault′s Methods.
Review Quotes: `Cultural Studies has made a name for itself by pricking the pretensions of several disciplines, from sociology to literature. Now, along come Kendall and Wickham to do the same to cultural studies - a "must read" for anyone in the field′ - Toby Miller, New York University