Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

The Human Condition.

A review of recent research across several disciplines not surprisingly finds a wide variety of descriptions surrounding meanings, processes, scales and methods concerning the notion of 'transnationalism'. Here, several clusters or themes are suggested by way of disentangling the term. These include transnationalism as a social morphology, as a type of consciousness, as a mode of cultural reproduction, as an avenue of capital, as a site of political engagement, and as a reconstruction of 'place' or locality. These and other approaches to transnationalism are being explored in a newly commissioned ESRC research programme on Transnational Communities (see http:// www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk).

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Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism

An increasingly important fraction of contemporary economic activity is devoted to the production of cultural outputs, i.e. goods and services with high levels of aesthetic or semiotic content. This kind of economic activity is especially, and increasingly, associated with a number of large cities scattered over the globe. A conceptual account of this phenomenon is provided on the basis of an exploration of the character of place-specific forms of culture generation and the agglomerative tendencies of many kinds of cultural products industries. The empirical cases of Los Angeles and Paris are briefly discussed. The dynamics of production, distribution and location of major cultural products industries are also examined. The paper ends with a brief allusion to the modalities of spatial differentiation of culture in contemporary capitalism and to a prospective cultural politics.

The Cultural Economy of Cities

From the Publisher:
This book sets out to examine and assess the variety of theories of information in society currently available. Frank Webster sceptically examines what thinkers mean by an information society, and looks closely at different approaches to informational developments. He provides critical commentaries on the major postwar theories: Daniel Bell's ideas on a post-industrial information society, Anthony Giddens' thoughts on the growth of surveillance and the expansion of the nation state, Herbert Schiller's insistence that information both expresses and consolidates the interests of corporate capitalism: Jurgen Habermas' account of the diminishment of the public sphere; Jean Baudrillard's thoughts on postmodernism and information, and Manuel Castells' depiction of the 'informational city'. Each theorisation is subjected to close scrutiny and is tested against empirical evidence to assess its worth. The author concludes that, while there has undoubtedly been an information explosion, it is premature to conceive of an information society. We should rather emphasise the 'informatisation' of established relations.

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Theories of the Information Society

Advanced liberal democracies are currently witnessing a bewildering variety of developments inregimes of control. These range from demands for execution or preventive detention of implacablydangerous or risky individuals—sexual predators, paedophiles, persistent violent offenders—to thedevelopment of dispersed, designed in-control regimes for the continual, silent and largely invisiblework of the assessment, management, communication and control of risk. Political programmes ofcrime control appear to have little stability, cycling rapidly through all the alternatives from ‘prisonworks’, ‘short, sharp shocks’ and ‘boot camps’, through ‘community corrections’ and ‘reintegrativeshaming’ via ‘therapeutic rehabilitation’ to ‘nothing works’ and ‘three strikes and you’re out’.Of course, programmes of crime control have always had less to do with control of crime than theyhave to do with more general concerns with the government of the moral order. And concerns aboutillegality and crime have been articulated as much, if not more, by institutions and practices whicharenotpartofthecriminaljusticesystemthanbythosethatareconventionallyconsideredtobepartofsuch a ‘system’. Nonetheless, even at this more general level, things seem confusing. Despite claimsthatweliveinapost-disciplinarysociety(Simon),thatdangerousnesshasgivenwaytorisk(Castel),that control in now continuous, immanent and cybernetic rather than discontinuous, localized andindividualizing (Deleuze), there appears to be little strategic coherence about these developments attheleveloftheirrationalities,andmuchdiversityandcontingencyattheleveloftheirtechnologies.This paper will attempt to explore this complexity along a number of dimensions. It will considerthewaysinwhichparticular‘regimesofillegalities’havebeenindividuatedandproblematized,andsuggest that, although these are diverse, some at least can be understood as infractions of freedom,that is to say, as problematic because they throw into question the very presuppositions of moralconsciousness, self-control and self-advancement through legitimate consumption upon whichgovernmental regimes of freedom depend. It will consider the ‘conceptions of the criminal’ thatcirculate within practices for the government of illegality, and suggest that, despite the apparentdiversity of these conceptions—where biological arguments about inherited tendencies cohabit withcommunitarian arguments about the virtues—the pervasive image of the perpetrator of crime is notone of the juridical subject of the rule of law, nor that of the bio-psychological subject of positivistcriminology, but of the responsible subject of moral community guided—or misguided—by ethicalself-steering mechanisms. And it will consider the forms of knowledge and modes of expertise that areimplicated in these new techniques and rationalities of control.Governing Conduct

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Government and Control

Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries

From the Publisher:
We are living through a time when old identities--nation, culture and ethnicity--are melting down Spaces of Identity examines the ways in which collective cultural identities are being reshaped under conditions of a postmodern geography in the communications environment
of cable and satellite broadcasting To address current problems of identity, the authors look at the contemporary politics of the relations between Europe and its most significant others--America, Islam and the Orient They show that it is against these that Europe's own identity has
been and is now being defined Spaces of Identity is a stimulating account of the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary cultural identities

This article undertakes a critique of the arguments put forward by Michael Storper and Susan Christopherson which suggest that the development of Hollywood's motion picture industry can be understood in terms of the flexible specialization perspective. It puts forward an alternative perspective that views transformations in the film and media industries in terms, rather, of increasing globalism and corporate integration. This alternative approach is rooted in the particular properties of the media industries and media product. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.

Hollywood for the 21st century: global competition for critical mass in image markets

This article is concerned with the development of transnational television from Turkey, particularly across the European space. First, it seeks to provide an overview of which channels are currently available, emphasizing the new variety – from the programming of the state broadcaster (TRT), through a vibrant array of new commercial broadcasters, to new Muslim channels. Then we move on to look at the implications of these new developments for Turkish audiences in Europe. What we argue is that Turkish television culture is now quite diverse, as also are the audiences that watch it – there are many different ways of being Turkish now. Against those, generally conservative, critics, especially in Germany, who believe that Turkish television is becoming a kind of cultural ghetto for the Turkish audiences that are its viewers, we maintain that the picture is in fact far more complex. As they select different channels and programmes to watch, these audiences use television to actively think about their own iden...

Thinking across spaces Transnational television from Turkey

This chapter is about changing geographies – particularly the new forces of globalization that are now shaping our times – and what they mean for the economic and cultural life of contemporary Britain. It helps the reader to understand the emergence, over the last decade or so, of both enterprise and heritage cultures. As Raphael Samuel argues in his account of the pathology of Tradition, the idea of nationality continues to have a powerful, if regressive, afterlife, and 'the sleeping images which spring to life in times of crisis – the fear, for instance, of being "swamped" by foreign invasion testify to its continuing force'. It is a concern with the past and future of British Tradition that has been central to Prince Charles's recent declamations on both enterprise and heritage. The historical development of capitalist economies has always had profound implications for cultures, identities, and ways of life.

Kevin Robins

Papers

Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries

Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries

Hollywood for the 21st century: global competition for critical mass in image markets

Thinking across spaces Transnational television from Turkey

Tradition and translation: national culture in its global context