Candidly interrogates the very latest developments in world affairs, especially the roles of fundamentalist religious ideology, media globalization, and individualism, whose complex relationships have y
Trade Review
“James Lull shows that religion and media ravenously feed off each other--often for the worse. But he also points the way to a future of 'global wisdom,' which leverages the best ideals of communication and faith. This is one gospel worth preaching.”
Irshad Manji, author, The Trouble with Islam Today
“With uncommon brilliance, extreme intellectual agility, and profound cultural wisdom, James Lull’s latest book faces courageously and optimistically the most daunting challenges of our troubled times.”
Eduardo Neiva, University of Alabama at Birmingham
“Taking global cultural analysis in refreshing new directions, James Lull offers the reader powerful insights into the social and symbolic realities of the 21st Century.”
Gabriela Pedroza, Monterrey Institute of Technology
"In this impressively wide-ranging study, Lull makes an impassioned plea for the new media technologies to be brought to the forefront of the struggle against cultural prejudice. Calling for cooperation rather than conflict, open-minded communication rather than fundamentalist pronouncements, Lull persuasively argues the case for greater diversity and tolerance across global society."
Stuart Sim, University of Sunderland
“An intriguing essay on culture and modern cultural practices. Lull is intellectually honest in assessing the counterarguments to his positions.” Communication Research Trends
Table of Contents
List of figures. Acknowledgments.
Introduction.
1. All Eyes on the Global Stage.
Media Globalization.
Modern Media Development.
The Global Divides.
China and the Middle East: Responses to Modernity and.
Globalization.
The Communications Revolution.
2. Human Expression.
The Cultural Politics of Expression.
The Need for Expression.
Symbolic Creativity and the Expressive Self.
Emotional Communication.
The fear factor and the pleasure principle.
The Active Pleasures of Expression and Communication.
Mobile expression.
Cultural Open Sourcing.
Symbolic Power to the People.
3. Programming Our Personal Supercultures.
Cultural Experience.
Culture, culture, Superculture.
The “supers”.
Culture in common.
Cultural Technology in the Communication Age.
Cultural Programming.
The Cultural Self and Self Culture.
Encountering Culture.
The Cultural Spheres.
Universal values and concepts.
Transnational cultural media.
Civilizations.
Nations.
Regions and everyday life.
The Cultural Mix in Action.
Superculture Revisited.
4. The Push and Pull of Culture.
The Push of Culture.
Diaspora.
Nation as contested push.
The Pull of Culture.
Individualism.
“A life of one’s own”.
New Cultural Horizons.
5. Globalized Islam.
The Islamic Cultural Body.
The visible visual body.
Gender equality, political democracy, and economic prosperity.
Islam in the West.
The Opinion, and the Other Opinion.
The global TV war.
The New Imagined World of Islam.
Instrumental modernity.
The communications problem.
6. Cultural Transparency.
Reflexive Cultural Globalization.
The globalization of good and bad ideas.
Loving to hate America.
Open Society: The Guiding Principle for Cultural Development.
The Power of Transparency.
Transparency or surveillance?.
7. The Open Spaces of Global Communication.
Stage 1: Cultural Technology, Industry, Abundance.
Stage 2: Global Visibility and Transparency.
Stage 3: Platforms for Participation.
Stage 4: Global Consciousness and Public Opinion.
Stage 5: Global Wisdom.
Stage 6: Institutional Channels.
Stage 7: Utopian Potential.
8. Fundamentalism and Cosmopolitanism.
The Passion of the Religious Culture.
Fundamentalist America.
The active passivity of Islam.
Other Fundamentalisms.
Nationalism.
Market fundamentalism.
The Democratic Secular Imperative.
One Moral Universe?.
A “modest cosmopolitan” alternative.
9. Communicating the Future.
The Paradox of Tolerance.
The Great Chain of Communication.
References.
Index
