Communities Of Imagination

Author : Catherine Diamond
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082486767X
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Communities of Imagination written by Catherine Diamond and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asian theatre is usually studied from the perspective of the major traditions of China, Japan, India, and Indonesia. Now, in this wide-ranging look at the contemporary theatre scene in Southeast Asia, Catherine Diamond shows that performance in some of the lesser known theatre traditions offers a vivid and fascinating picture of the rapidly changing societies in the region. Diamond examines how traditional, modern, and contemporary dramatic works, with their interconnected styles, stories, and ideas, are being presented for local audiences. She not only places performances in their historical and cultural contexts but also connects them to the social, political, linguistic, and religious movements of the last two decades. Each chapter addresses theatre in a different country and highlights performances exhibiting the unique conditions and concerns of a particular place and time. Most performances revolve in some manner around “contemporary modernity,” questioning what it means—for good or ill—to be a part of the globalized world. Chapters are grouped by three general and overlapping themes. The first, which includes Thailand, Vietnam, and Bali, is characterized by the increased participation of women in the performing arts—not only as performers but also as playwrights and directors. Cambodia, Singapore, and Myanmar are linked by a shared concern with the effects of censorship on theatre production. A third group, the Philippines, Laos, and Malaysia, is distinguished by a focus on nationalism: theatres are either contributing to official versions of historical and political events or creating alternative narratives that challenge those interpretations. Communities of Imagination shows the many influences of the past and how the past continues to affect cultural perceptions. It addresses major trends, suggesting why they have developed and why they are popular with the public. It also underscores how theatre continues to attract new practitioners and reflect the changing aspirations and anxieties of societies in immediate and provocative ways even as it is being marginalized by television, film, and the internet. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance, Asian literature, Southeast Asian studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. Travelers wishing to attend local performances as part of their experience abroad will find it an essential reference to theatres of the region.

Author : Benedict Anderson
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 178168359X
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Imagined Communities written by Benedict Anderson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2006-11-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

Author : Keally D. McBride
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271032405
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Collective Dreams written by Keally D. McBride and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-26 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we go about imagining different and better worlds for ourselves? Collective Dreams looks at ideals of community, frequently embraced as the basis for reform across the political spectrum, as the predominant form of political imagination in America today. Examining how these ideals circulate without having much real impact on social change provides an opportunity to explore the difficulties of practicing critical theory in a capitalist society. Different chapters investigate how ideals of community intersect with conceptions of self and identity, family, the public sphere and civil society, and the state, situating community at the core of the most contested political and social arenas of our time. Ideals of community also influence how we evaluate, choose, and build the spaces in which we live, as the author’s investigations of Celebration, Florida, and of West Philadelphia show.Following in the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Keally McBride reveals how consumer culture affects our collective experience of community as well as our ability to imagine alternative political and social orders. Taking ideals of community as a case study, Collective Dreams also explores the structure and function of political imagination to answer the following questions: What do these oppositional ideals reveal about our current political and social experiences? How is the way we imagine alternative communities nonetheless influenced by capitalism, liberalism, and individualism? How can these ideals of community be used more effectively to create social change?

Author : Joseph R. Wiebe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781481303866
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Place of Imagination written by Joseph R. Wiebe and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wendell Berry teaches us to love our places--to pay careful attention to where we are, to look beyond and within, and to live in ways that are not captive to the mastery of cultural, social, or economic assumptions about our life in these places. Creation has its own integrity and demands that we confront it. In The Place of Imagination, Joseph R. Wiebe argues that this confrontation is precisely what shapes our moral capacity to respond to people and to places. Wiebe contends that Berry manifests this moral imagination most acutely in his fiction. Berry's fiction, however, does not portray an average community or even an ideal one. Instead, he depicts broken communities in broken places--sites and relations scarred by the routines of racial wounds and ecological harm. Yet, in the tracing of Berry's characters with place-based identities, Wiebe demonstrates the way in which Berry's fiction comes to embody Berry's own moral imagination. By joining these ambassadors of Berry's moral imagination in their fictive journeys, readers, too, can allow imagination to transform their affection, thereby restoring place as a facilitator of identity as well as hope for healed and whole communities. Loving place translates into loving people, which in turn transforms broken human narratives into restored lives rooted and ordered by their places.

Author : Phillip Wegner
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520926769
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Imaginary Communities written by Phillip Wegner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-06-04 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from literary history, social theory, and political critique, this far-reaching study explores the utopian narrative as a medium for understanding the social space of the modern nation-state. Considering the narrative utopia from its earliest manifestation in Thomas More's sixteenth-century work Utopia to some of the most influential utopias of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book is an astute study of a literary genre as well as a nuanced dialectical meditation on the history of utopian thinking as a quintessential history of modernity. As he unravels the dialectics at work in the utopian narrative, Wegner gives an ambitious synthetic discussion of theories of modernity, considering and evaluating the ideas of writers such as Ernst Bloch, Louis Marin, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Henri Lefebvre, Paul de Man, Karl Mannheim, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, and Homi Bhabha.

Author : Laura Hein
Publisher : U of M Center For Japanese Studies
ISBN 13 : 1929280637
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Imagination without Borders written by Laura Hein and published by U of M Center For Japanese Studies. This book was released on 2010-01-08 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tomiyama Taeko, a Japanese visual artist born in 1921, is changing the way World War II is remembered in Japan, Asia, and the world. Her work deals with complicated moral and emotional issues of empire and war responsibility that cannot be summed up in simple slogans, which makes it compelling for more than just its considerable beauty. Japanese today are still grappling with the effects of World War II, and, largely because of the inconsistent and ambivalent actions of the government, they are widely seen as resistant to accepting responsibility for their nation’s violent actions against others during the decades of colonialism and war. Yet some individuals, such as Tomiyama, have produced nuanced and reflective commentaries on those experiences, and on the difficulty of disentangling herself from the priorities of the nation despite her lifelong political dissent. Tomiyama’s sophisticated visual commentary on Japan’s history—and on the global history in which Asia is embedded—provides a compelling guide through the difficult terrain of modern historical remembrance, in a distinctively Japanese voice.

Author : Henry Jenkins
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479891258
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination written by Henry Jenkins and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

Author : Robert Govers
Publisher : Reputo Press
ISBN 13 : 9082826518
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Imaginative Communities written by Robert Govers and published by Reputo Press. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are loud. Amsterdam equals sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Mexicans are lazy and Germans are boring, but punctual. Paris is romantic, Wuhan infectious, Ukrainians heroic, and New Zealand untouched. This is the way people around the world think about cities, regions and countries and the communities that live there; through cliches and stereotypes. It can be frustrating and hindering trade, diplomacy, investment, tourism, or talent attraction. Many believe that such image problems can be resolved with advertising campaigns, but the classic tourism promotion model is broken and insufficient. This book explains what works and what doesn’t when it comes to improving the reputation of cities, regions, and countries. It does so without the use of jargon and with reference to numerous case-studies. The book primarily aims to inspire readers and offer them a broad overview of an issue in modern society that is of interest and relevance to all of us: the reputation of our communities.

Author : Doctor Alex Khasnabish
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1780329032
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Radical Imagination written by Doctor Alex Khasnabish and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination, then, is that spark of difference, desire and discontent that can be fanned into the flames of social change. Yet what precisely is the imagination and what might make it 'radical'? How can it be fostered and cultivated? How can it be studied and what are the possibilities and risks of doing so? This book seeks to answer these questions at a crucial time. As we enter into a new cycle of struggles marked by a worldwide crisis of social reproduction, scholar-activists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish explore the processes and possibilities for cultivating the radical imagination in dark times. A lively and crucial intervention in radical politics, social research and social change, and the collective visions and cultures that inspire them.

Author : Rob Hopkins
Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1603589066
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book From What Is to What If written by Rob Hopkins and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Big ideas that just might save the world”—The Guardian The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it. In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, especially among young people. There’s a rise in extremist movements and governments. Catastrophic climate change. Biodiversity loss. Food insecurity. The fracturing of ecosystems and communities beyond, it seems, repair. The future—to say nothing of the present—looks grim. But as Transition movement cofounder Rob Hopkins tells us, there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly—for the better. He has seen it happen around the world and in his own town of Totnes, England, where the community is becoming its own housing developer, energy company, enterprise incubator, and local food network—with cascading benefits to the community that extend far beyond the projects themselves. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. As defined by social reformer John Dewey, imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise. The ability, that is, to ask What if? And if there was ever a time when we needed that ability, it is now. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In this passionate exploration, Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Once we do, there is no end to what we might accomplish. From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.