Time and Commodity Culture: Essays on Cultural Theory and Postmodernity

Time and Commodity Culture is a detailed and theoretically sophisticated account of the cultural systems of postmodernity. Through a series of four linked essays on postmodern theory, tourism, gift exchange and commodity exchange, and the social organization of memory, it explores some of the implications of the commodification of culture for the contemporary and postmodern world.

Literature & Fiction

Frow, John

History & Criticism

Clarendon Press

Time and Commodity Culture is a detailed and theoretically sophisticated account of the cultural systems of postmodernity. Through a series of four linked essays on postmodern theory, tourism, gift exchange and commodity exchange, and the social organization of memory, it explores some of the implications of the commodification of culture for the contemporary and postmodern world.

Children's Books

Fictional character is an ontologically ambivalent category--at once a formal construct and a quasi-person--which lies at the heart of the life of textual fictions of all kinds. Character and Person explores that ambivalence by investigating not only the kinds of thing that character is but how it works to engage readers and the range of typologies through which it has been constructed in very different periods, media, and genres. John Frow seeks to explore the ways in which character is person-like, and through that the question of what it means to be a social person. His focus is thus on the interaction between its two major categories and its method involves a constant play back and forth between them: from philosophical theories of face to an account of the mask in the New Comedy, from an exploration of medieval beliefs about the body's existence in the afterlife to a reading of Dante's Purgatorio, from the history of humoral medicine to the figure of the melancholic in Jacobean drama, and from Proust and Pessoa to cognitive science. What develops from this methodological commitment to fusing the categories of character and person is an extended analysis of the schemata that underpin each of them in their distinct but mutually constitutive spheres of operation.

Character and Person

Oxford University Press

This is a major critique of the important new discipline of cultural studies. Cultural studies have generally been organized around the opposition of high to low culture, but through careful readings of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau, John Frow undermines this assumption. He argues for a new orientation for cultural studies starting from a recognition of the complexity of the category of culture.

Cultural Studies and Cultural Value

Cultural studies has generally organized itself around the opposition of high to low culture, reversing the traditional hierarchy of value, but leaving intact the polarity and the direct correlation of culture and class. Through detailed readings of the work of Pierre Bourieu, Michel de Certeau, Stuart Hall, and Ernesto Laclau, John Frow challenges this key assumption. He argues that the field of culture now has multiple centers and multiple domains of value and that these are irreducible to a single scale. Intellectuals play the crucial role in the mediation of the cultural field; their possession of cultural capital endows intellectuals with specific class interests which are distinct from those of the classes of groups for whom they claim to speak. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value seeks a revitalized and "poststructuralist" account of social class, a basis from which cultural studies can effect a much-needed reorientation.

Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Cornell East Asia Series; 70)

Fictional character is an ontologically ambivalent category--at once a formal construct and a quasi-person--which lies at the heart of the life of textual fictions of all kinds. Character and Person explores that ambivalence by investigating not only the kinds of thing that character is but how it works to engage readers and the range of typologies through which it has been constructed in very different periods, media, and genres. John Frow seeks to explore the ways in which character is person-like, and through that the question of what it means to be a social person. His focus is thus on the interaction between its two major categories and its method involves a constant play back and forth between them: from philosophical theories of face to an account of the mask in the New Comedy, from an exploration of medieval beliefs about the body's existence in the afterlife to a reading of Dante's Purgatorio, from the history of humoral medicine to the figure of the melancholic in Jacobean drama, and from Proust and Pessoa to cognitive science. What develops from this methodological commitment to fusing the categories of character and person is an extended analysis of the schemata that underpin each of them in their distinct but mutually constitutive spheres of operation.

On Interpretive Conflict

“Interpretation” is a term that encompasses both the most esoteric and the most fundamental activities of our lives, from analyzing medical images to the million ways we perceive other people’s actions. Today, we also leave interpretation to the likes of web cookies, social media algorithms, and automated markets. But as John Frow shows in this thoughtfully argued book, there is much yet to do in clarifying how we understand the social organization of interpretation. On Interpretive Conflict delves into four case studies where sharply different sets of values come into play—gun control, anti-Semitism, the religious force of images, and climate change. In each case, Frow lays out the way these controversies unfold within interpretive regimes that establish what counts as an interpretable object and the protocols of evidence and proof that should govern it. Whether applied to a Shakespeare play or a Supreme Court case, interpretation, he argues, is at once rule-governed and inherently conflictual. Ambitious and provocative, On Interpretive Conflict will attract readers from across the humanities and beyond.

University of Chicago Press

“Interpretation” is a term that encompasses both the most esoteric and the most fundamental activities of our lives, from analyzing medical images to the million ways we perceive other people’s actions. Today, we also leave interpretation to the likes of web cookies, social media algorithms, and automated markets. But as John Frow shows in this thoughtfully argued book, there is much yet to do in clarifying how we understand the social organization of interpretation. On Interpretive Conflict delves into four case studies where sharply different sets of values come into play—gun control, anti-Semitism, the religious force of images, and climate change. In each case, Frow lays out the way these controversies unfold within interpretive regimes that establish what counts as an interpretable object and the protocols of evidence and proof that should govern it. Whether applied to a Shakespeare play or a Supreme Court case, interpretation, he argues, is at once rule-governed and inherently conflictual. Ambitious and provocative, On Interpretive Conflict will attract readers from across the humanities and beyond.

Genre (The New Critical Idiom)

Genre is a key means by which we categorize the many forms of literature and culture. But it is also much more than that: in talk and writing, in music and images, in film and television, genres actively generate and shape our knowledge of the world. Understanding genre as a dynamic process rather than a set of stable rules, this book explores:  the relation of simple to complex genres the history of literary genre in theory the generic organisation of implied meanings the structuring of interpretation by genre the uses of genre in teaching.  John Frow’s lucid exploration of this fascinating concept will be essential reading for students of literary and cultural studies.

Routledge

Genre is a key means by which we categorize the many forms of literature and culture. But it is also much more than that: in talk and writing, in music and images, in film and television, genres actively generate and shape our knowledge of the world. Understanding genre as a dynamic process rather than a set of stable rules, this book explores: <ul>
<li>the relation of simple to complex genres</li> <li>the history of literary genre in theory</li> <li>the generic organisation of implied meanings</li> <li>the structuring of interpretation by genre</li> <li>the uses of genre in teaching. </li>
</ul>
John Frow’s lucid exploration of this fascinating concept will be essential reading for students of literary and cultural studies.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frow, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Frow, John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frow, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Time and Commodity Culture: Essays on Cultural Theory and Postmodernity

Time and Commodity Culture: Essays on Cultural Theory and Postmodernity

Character and Person

Cultural Studies and Cultural Value

Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Cornell East Asia Series; 70)

Character and Person

On Interpretive Conflict

On Interpretive Conflict

Genre (The New Critical Idiom)

Genre (The New Critical Idiom)