Neo-liberalism and contemporary culture
Friday 26 February 3pm-5.30pm
Lecture Theatre D, Engineering Building, University of Leeds
All are welcome, no charge...
Organised by the Media Industries Research Centre <http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/sub1.cfm?pbcrumb=MIRC> and the Centre for Digital Citizenship<http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/sub1.cfm?pbcrumb=CdC> at the University of Leeds
Many writers agree that neo-liberalism* has brought about massive transformations across the world. What are the repercussions of neo-liberalism in contemporary culture, communications and media? If neo-liberalism threatens to exacerbate inequality and constrain crucial liberties (even as it purports to uphold certain kinds of freedom) how might the grip of its dogmas be loosened? This short symposium brings together three speakers who have engaged with such questions in their recent work.
Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths University of London) Voice: culture and politics beyond the horizon of neo-liberalism
Alison Hearn (University of Western Ontario) Neo-liberalism, online 'selfhood', and the emergence of digital reputation
David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds) Neo-liberalism and the political economy of culture
*The geographer David Harvey has defined neo-liberalism as the theory of political-economic practices that holds that human well-being is best served by institutional frameworks characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade.
Nick Couldry is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and Director of its Centre for the study of Global Media and Democracy. He is the author or editor of eight books including most recently Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (Palgrave 2007, new edition February 2010, co-authors Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham), Media Events in a Global Age (Routledge 2009, coedited with Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz) and Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media Ethics and Agency in an Uncertain World . (Paradigm 2006). His next book is Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism (Sage June 2010).
Alison Hearn is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Her work is included in such journals as Topia, Continuum, The Journal of Consumer Culture and Bad Subjects and in edited volumes including The Celebrity Culture Reader, and The Media and Social Theory. She is co-author of Outside the Lines: Issues in Interdisciplinary Research (McGill-Queens University Press, 1997) and she is currently completing a book entitled Real Incorporated: reality television, promotional culture and the will to image.
David Hesmondhalgh is Professor of Media and Music Industries at the University of Leeds, where he is Director of the Media Industries Research Centre<http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/sub1.cfm?pbcrumb=MIRC> (MIRC<http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/sub1.cfm?pbcrumb=MIRC>). His publications include Creative Labour (with Sarah Baker, published June 2010), The Cultural Industries (2nd edition, 2007), and five edited volumes: The Media and Social Theory (with Jason Toynbee, 2008), Media Production (2006), Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity (with Jessica Evans, 2005), Popular Music Studies (with Keith Negus, 2002) and Western Music and its Others (with Georgina Born, 2000). Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries, co-written with Sarah Baker, is published by Routledge in 2010.
Please send any queries to Eleri Pound at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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