july 2010
Anthropology: A Graphic Guide
Anthropology originated as the study of ‘primitive’ cultures – a now very loaded term. With the fall of Empire, anthropology became suspect and was torn by dissent from within. Did anthropology serve as a ‘handmaiden to colonialism’? Is it a ‘science’ created by racism to prove racism? Can it aid communication between cultures, or does it reinforce our differences?
Introducing Anthropology is a fascinating account of an uncertain human science seeking to transcend its unsavoury history.
Merryl Wyn Davis and Piero trace the...
Cultural Studies: A Graphic Guide
Cultural studies is a discipline that claims not to be a discipline – a radical critical approach for understanding racial, national, social and gender identities.
Introducing Cultural Studies provides an incisive tour through the minefield of this complex subject, charting its origins in Britain and its migration to the USA, Canada, France, Australia and South Asia, examining the ideas of its leading exponents and providing a flavour of its use around the world. Covering the ground from Gramsci to Raymond Williams, postcolonial discourse to the politics of diaspora, feminism to queer theory, technoculture and the media to...
Evolution: A Graphic Guide
Did life first evolve on other planets? What's the advantage of having sex? Why do your parents look after you? And what good to a bird is half a wing?
In 1859, Charles Darwin shocked the world with a radical theory – evolution by natural selection. More than one hundred and fifty years later, his theory still challenges some of our most precious beliefs.
Introducing Evolution provides a step-by-step guide to 'Darwin's dangerous idea' and takes a fresh look at the often misunderstood concepts of natural selection and the selfish gene. Drawing on the latest findings from genetics, ecology and animal behaviour...
Heidegger: A Graphic Guide
‘Jeff Collins has done an admirable job of explicating this profound thinker.’ John Banville, Irish Times
Martin Heidegger - philosophy’s ‘hidden king’, or leading exponent of a dangerously misguided secular mysticism?
Heidegger announced the end of philosophy and of humanism, and was a committed Nazi and vocal supporter of Hitler’s National Socialism. Was Heidegger offering a deeply conservative mythology or a crucial deconstruction of philosophy as we have known it?
Introducing Heidegger provides an accessible introduction to his notoriously abstruse thinking, mapping out its...
Lacan: A Graphic Guide
‘Excellent clarity’ New Scientist
‘A splendid job’ New Statesman
Jacques Lacan is now regarded as one of the major psychoanalytical theorists, although fierce arguments still rage over the complexity of his ideas.
A leading Lacanian analyst and author, Darian Leader guides the reader through Lacan's early studies of paranoia to his subsequent analytical innovations – his addition of structural linguistics to Freudianism and his new ideas on the infant "mirror phase", the construction of identity and the dynamics of the psyche.
It also makes clear that, although Lacan...
Media Studies: A Graphic Guide
The media is ubiquitous. Every day we watch hours of TV, listen to the radio, surf the web, read newspapers and magazines, go to the cinema or watch DVDs. The media in these forms and more exercise enormous influence and power over all of us.
Introducing Media Studies explores the complex relationship between the media, ideology, knowledge and power. It provides a scintillating tour of media history and presents a coherent view of the media industry, media theory and methods in media research. It explains how ‘the audience’ is constructed and how it in turn interprets the content and meaning of media representation....