Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for University

Fandoms: From Passive Consumers to Active Producers

Question 4: Fandoms (Henry Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu...)

To appropriately answer this question, one must deal with the definition of 'fan'. The term is an abbreviation of 'fanatic' and comes from the Latin word 'fanaticus', which has religious connotations and refers to devotees. It has negative connotations in society. Henry Jenkins, an American media scholar and lecturer of the second half of the 20th century, deals with different phenomena related to the fan in his book Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992). He rejects fan stereotypes such as the comic, nerdy fan, the psychotic fan, and the eroticized fan. Moreover, he expresses the fan as a defensible position... Continue reading "Fan Studies: From Consumers to Active Producers" »

Defining Participatory Culture

Participatory culture is characterized by the following elements:

• Low barriers: Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.
• Supportive environment: Strong support for creating and sharing creations with others.
• Informal mentorship: Knowledge is passed from experienced members to novices.
• Sense of agency: Members believe their contributions matter.
• Social connection: Members feel a degree of social connection and care about peer feedback.

The Origins of Fandom

The term fan is an abbreviation of fanatic, derived from the Latin fanaticus. Historically, it carried negative connotations, referring to “persons inspired by orgiastic rites and enthusiastic frenzy.”

Bourdieu and the Sociology of Taste

Following... Continue reading "Understanding Participatory Culture and Fan Dynamics" »

Richard Hoggart's Insider View

Richard Hoggart, unlike F.R. and Q.D. Leavis, was raised in a working-class family in Leeds. This background allowed him to offer an 'insider view' of communal working-class urban life, consciousness, culture, and experience.

Hoggart's Approach to Popular Culture

Just as the Leavises applied methods of close reading to mass culture, Hoggart offered close readings of popular music, newspapers, magazines, and fiction. Crucially, he did so without necessarily condemning them. In fact, he argued that working-class life could be 'a full rich life', a sentiment reflected in the title of one of his chapters.

Cultural Theory: Diverse Perspectives

The Anthropological View of Culture

When discussing T.S. Eliot, it was noted that... Continue reading "Richard Hoggart: Working-Class Culture & Media Analysis" »

Comprehensive List of English Irregular Verbs

Mastering English grammar requires a solid understanding of irregular verbs. Use this reference table to improve your conjugation skills.

Renaissance Poetry and the Revival of Learning

There was a collapse in learning and much technical capacity as a result of the chaos that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. There was a revival of material culture long before the Renaissance. Surrey was the first to use blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid. Poetry became the entertainment of the upper classes.

Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene

Spenser was a Renaissance Neoplatonist who devoted his life to writing The Faerie Queene, which served as a praise to monarchy. Chaucer was Spenser's favorite poet, and Spenser looked to his texts, among others, to write his epic poem. The Faerie Queene is concerned with patriotism and Puritanism. It has a connotative meaning, starting as a pastoral... Continue reading "Renaissance Poetry, Shakespearean Style, and English Bible History" »

Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

Short Adjectives (One Syllable)

Adjectives Ending in -y or -le

Longer Adjectives (Two or More Syllables)

Irregular Adjectives

As... As Comparisons

• My horse can run as fast as a car.
  Mi caballo puede correr tan rápido como un coche.
• He doesn't play

Marxism (19th Century)

Marxism posits that the world is divided into two primary structures: infrastructure and superstructure. The infrastructure consists of the economy and relations of production, while the superstructure encompasses ideology, culture, morality, and religion. For Marx, the infrastructure determines the superstructure. He sought to transform utopian socialism into scientific socialism.

Key tenets of Marxist theory include:

• Historical Materialism: History is economic and driven by class struggle.
• Coherence: Changes in ideas must align with the infrastructure.
• Class Antagonism: Capitalist societies are defined by the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
• Revolution: When antagonism becomes unbearable, the proletariat

Constructivism in International Relations

One of the main assumptions of Western philosophy is the difference between nature and culture. The concept of nature is an important discovery of philosophy. Pre-philosophical societies did not make this distinction. Post-modernism doubts there is a radical distinction between nature and culture: they think this difference is not all that clear. International relations are accordingly not solely based on a natural reality (state of anarchy) but also on a social reality. Constructivism claims that tradition and culture result in the development of social phenomena. They believe international relations to be social and cultural. We do not obey any natural law but rather our own construction of ideas.

Main

The Theory of International Relations

Realism

Realists believe that society and politics are governed by objective laws rooted in human nature. To improve society, we must first understand these laws. They also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects these laws. They make a distinction between objective rational truth supported by reason and subjective judgment derived from prejudice and wishful thinking. For realism, theory consists in determining facts with reason. The character of a foreign policy must therefore be discovered through the examination of political acts and their foreseeable consequences.

They develop the concept of interest in power to understand international politics. This concept provides a... Continue reading "International Relations Theory: Realism and Structural Realism" »

The Coming of International Relations

The First Great Debate

The emergence of international relations as a distinct field of study is intertwined with the rise of social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science. A group of scholars, often referred to as liberals, idealists, Wilsonians, or utopians, played a pivotal role in shaping early IR thought. They championed the establishment of international institutions, the expansion of international trade, and the practice of open diplomacy guided by experts. This belief in the power of international cooperation and institutions stemmed from their conviction that war was primarily a consequence of flawed thinking by politicians and diplomats.

These early IR thinkers argued that secrecy... Continue reading "The Rise of International Relations as a Social Science" »