Cultural Studies

What do you think about this poster? Does it reflect a nice way to promote University’s colors and sports team? Don’t you think it is very catchy? Well, the answers to these three questions are obvious. They catch people’s attention because the goal behind it is simple: get customers. Those very nice shirts are being sold to anyone who wants to proudly (...)

Althusser begins his essay in consenting to Marx's position on the reproduction of relations of production. He reiterates this concept and defines it as obligatory relations we must produce and reproduce to complete our social life. These reproduction of relations of production are indeed the connections created through our cultural development and educational paths in the society. (...)

The concept of “Empire” is no longer what we think it is. We used to know an empire as a state, or a nation, that would rule over a large territory, which it usually would have gained through military conquest. In a capitalistic point of view, we could also see an empire as a single corporation holding a monopoly over a specific market in many different countries. However, Michael Hardt, an American literary theorist (...)

The school-to-prison pipeline is probably one of the most taboo subjects of our time. No one wants to critique the society we live in; no one wants to admit that predatory capitalism is not working. We like to believe that people who are not successful, in capitalist terms (money, houses, great schools, fancy cars, etc.), are the people that are not working hard enough, are not smart enough or do not want to succeed hard enough (...)

Necessary illusions is a concept developed by Noam Chomsky, a famous American linguist, philosopher and political commentator. He is very critical of the actions of the American government. Chomsky uses a lot of different examples to validate his theories, and his work is grounded in historical facts. He theorized the idea of “necessary illusions” which is fundamental to understand the cultural actions and reactions of democratic societies.

            In popular belief, the media are meant to give (...)

The world we live in has had the tendency to reject most changes in economic system. The people in power reject other ideas the same way politicians reject movements that wish to change the voting system. This tendency is explained by something completely logical, self-preservation. If the system in place gave them such wealth, why change it? People such as Karl Marx saw the flaws in our system (...)

Everything around us sends messages in numerous ways that we unconsciously receive. We also send codes through everything we do, wear, listen to, eat, and say that tell so much about who we are and the environment we live in. However, we often are oblivious to this process of encoding and decoding, and the rules by which it operates are quite a mystery to most of us (...)