In Culture on the Margins, Jon Cruz recounts the "discovery" of black music by white elites in the nineteenth century, boldly revealing how the episode shaped modern approaches to studying racial and ethnic cultures. Slave owners had long heard black song making as meaningless "noise." Abolitionists began to attribute social and political meaning to the music, inspired, as many were, by Frederick Douglass's invitation to hear slaves' songs as testimonies to their inner, subjective worlds. This interpretive shift--which Cruz calls "ethnosympathy"--marks the beginning of a mainstream American interest in the country's cultural margins. In tracing the emergence of a new interpretive framework for black music, Cruz shows how the concept of "cultural authenticity" is constantly redefined by critics for a variety of purposes--from easing anxieties arising from contested social relations to furthering debates about modern ethics and egalitarianism. In focusing on the spiritual aspect of black music, abolitionists, for example, pivoted toward an idealized religious singing subject at the expense of absorbing the more socially and politically elaborate issues presented in the slave narratives and other black writings. By the end of the century, Cruz maintains, modern social science also annexed much of this cultural turn. The result was a fully modern tension-ridden interest in culture on the racial margins of American society that has long had the effect of divorcing black culture from politics.

In this classic book on the meaning of multiculturalism in larger American society, Gary Okihiro explores the significance of Asian American experiences from the perspectives of historical consciousness, race, gender, class, and culture. While exploring anew the meanings of Asian American social history, Okihiro argues that the core values and ideals of the nation emanate today not from the so-called mainstream but from the margins, from among Asian and African Americans, Latinos and American Indians, women, and the gay and lesbian community. Those groups in their struggles for equality, have helped to preserve and advance the founders’ ideals and have made America a more democratic place for all.

Each of the chapters in this volume derives from recently conducted research grounded in an attempt to examine some of the issues posed in what can be described as postmodernist theorising on the nature of the contemporary city. Implicit in the very conception of the book, and running through each of the contributions, is the view that contemporary popular culture is crucial to the understanding of the transformations to which we refer, and that the investigation of this popular culture needs to move beyond the parameters of cultural studies to include sociological, political and economic analyses. In addition to students of popular cultural studies, the book will be of interest to all those studying sociology, urban studies and cultural studies, as well as those with a desire to have contemporary social theorising more firmly located in empirical investigation.

This collection of thirteen essays examines sociolinguistic phenomena in a wide variety of marginal environments, providing both an overview of globalizaiton on the margins and a foundation for an expanded understanding of the processes of linguistic and cultural changes at work in these settings. Taking an expansive conceptual view of margins, the volume is organized in three parts, looking at examples of marginal spaces in the nation-state, in online environments, and in the peripheries of urban locations, globally to call attention to new and changing discursive genres, patterns, practices, and identities emerging in these spaces as a result of contemporary mobilities, the evolving global economy, and socio-political changes. With previous research previously confined to the study of globalization in urban areas, this volume opens the door for further research on the complex sociolinguistic processes resulting from globalization on the margins, making this an ideal resource for students and scholars in sociolinguistics, globalization and heritage studies, new media, anthropology, and cultural studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)

Rukmini Pande’s examination of race in fan studies is sure to make an immediate contribution to the growing field. Until now, virtually no sustained examination of race and racism in transnational fan cultures has taken place, a lack that is especially concerning given that current fan spaces have never been more vocal about debating issues of privilege and discrimination. Pande’s study challenges dominant ideas of who fans are and how these complex transnational and cultural spaces function, expanding the scope of the field significantly. Along with interviewing thirty-nine fans from nine different countries about their fan practices, she also positions media fandom as a postcolonial cyberspace, enabling scholars to take a more inclusive view of fan identity. With analysis that spans from historical to contemporary, Pande builds a case for the ways in which non-white fans have always been present in such spaces, though consistently ignored.

Focusing on the Ming and Qing eras, this book analyses crucial moments in the formation of cultural, regional and religious identities. It demonstrates how the imperial discourse is many-faceted, rather than a monolithic agent of cultural assimilation.

Produced by an independent group of policy makers, researchers & cultural managers, this book is a contribution to the debate initiated by the World Commission on Culture & Development (UN/Unesco) on the role of culture within society. It addresses various questions such as bridging the global cultural gap, mobilising human resources through culture & living & working in the communications society. Includes case studies, statistics & indicators.