Culture and Media
Short Answer Review Exercises
|
| 1. Keeping in mind the story of Rainbow Man or recent “reality” television shows, define celebrity and cultural icon. Are people celebrities because they are talented, or can anyone achieve this status? How might these questions parallel debates about high culture versus low culture? |
|
| 2. The experience of eating at an American fast-food chain in Qatar has seemingly changed over the past years. Using this example, how would you describe the relationship between “soft power” and consumerism? |
|
| 3. How does Herbert Gans’s Deciding What’s News (1979) help us understand the way that cultural production simultaneously reflects and creates our world? |
|
| 4. Goths are visible as a subculture, in part, because of their taste in music and fashion. Using these criteria, identify another subculture. In which ways might this group’s values oppose dominant culture? |
|
| 5. A student holds the widespread cultural belief in upward social mobility through education and therefore studies thoroughly before an upcoming sociology exam. How might this represent an example of hegemony? |
|
| 6. The term culture is complex, in part because it is used in numerous (sometimes contradictory) ways. Use three of the definitions of culture from this chapter to illustrate how a Shakespearean play might be considered “culture.” |
|
| 7. Let’s consider how we are part of a consumer culture. Think about a consumer good you recently acquired and care about, for example, an item of clothing. Does this item in any way help establish or demonstrate who you are, what you are about, and how you perceive yourself? |
|
| 8. Explain the link between the concept of cultural relativism and the analysis of Clifford Geertz in The Interpretation of Culture (1973). |
|
| 9. How do blogs potentially change the dynamics of media coverage in the context of a system controlled by a few large companies? Could bloggers be considered culture jammers? |
|