Details

Media, Culture and Human Violence

From Savage Lovers to Violent Complexity

von: Jeff Lewis
57,99 €
Verlag:	Rowman & Littlefield International
Format:	EPUB
Veröffentl.:	18.11.2015
ISBN/EAN:	9781783485161
Sprache:	englisch
Anzahl Seiten:	298

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

Humans of the advanced world are the most violent beings of all times. This violence is evident in the conditions of perpetual warfare and the accumulation of the most powerful and destructive arsenal ever known to humankind. It is also evident in the devastating impact of advanced world economy and cultural practices which have led to ecological devastation and the current era of mass species extinction. —one of only six mass extinction events in planetary history and the only one caused by the actions of a single species, humans. This violence is manifest in our interpersonal relationships, and the ways in which we organize ourselves through hierarchical systems that ensure the wealth and privilege of some, against the penury and misery of others. In this new and highly original book, Jeff Lewis argues that violence is deeply inscribed in human culture, thinking and expressive systems (media). Lewis contends that violence is not an inescapable feature of an aggressive human nature. Rather, violence is laced through our desires and dispositions to communalism and expressive interaction. From the near extinction of all Homo sapiens, around 74,000 years ago, the invention of culture and media enabled humans to imagine and articulate particular choices and pleasures. Organized intergroup violence or warfare emerged through the exercise of these choices and their expression through larger and increasingly complex human societies. This agitation of amplified desire, hierarchical social organization and mediated knowledge systems has created a cultural volition of violent complexity which continues into the present.
 
 
Media, Culture and Human Violence examines the current conditions of conflict and harm as an expression of our violent complexity.

Titelkurzbeschreibung

This book examines the role of media and culture in shaping contemporary conditions of violence. It argues that the collective pursuit and expression of our economic, sexual, social and political desires has catalyzed significant social transformations in human history.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Dedication / Acknowledgements / Introduction / 1. The Cultural Animal / 2. Savage Lovers: Language, Communalism and Violent Simplicity / 3. Symbolic Revolutions: Agriculture, Climate Change and the Beginnings of War / 4. Violent Complexity: Writing, God and the Ancient Enlightenment / 5. What is Enlightenment? Liberalism, Rom antic Science and the First Mass Media / 6. In the Age of Agitation: Modern Media, Violent Consumers and Imaginings of State / 7. Web of Worlds: Nature, Love and the Internet / Conclusion / Bibliography / Index

Autorenportrait

Jeff Lewis is Professor and Co-director of the Human Security and Disasters Research Program at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is author of Language Wars, Bali’s Silent Crisis, Cultural Studies, Crisis in the Global Mediasphere and Global Media Apocalypse.

Sonderbeitrag

An original approach to the problem of contemporary violence, combining a new theoretical framework, historical analyses, and significant case studies.
 

 
Presents a history of human violence and its expression in the vast weave of stories, myths, religious parables, philosophy, science and the proliferating narratives of the modern mediasphere.
 

 
Explains these contemporary conditions of violence in terms of a cultural volition driven by the continued amplification of humans’ sexual, economic and social desires.