Page 11 - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture an Introduction
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Preface/Acknowledgements
Preface to fifth edition
In writing the fifth edition I have revised, rewritten and edited throughout. I have also
added new material to most of the chapters (the book has grown from a first edition
of around 65,000 words to a fifth edition that is in excess of 114,000 words). The most
obvious addition is the new chapter ‘Race, racism and representation’ and the new
sections on the panoptic machine (Chapter 6) and convergence culture (Chapter 9).
I have also added more diagrams and illustrations.
The fifth edition is best read in conjunction with its companion volume, Cultural
Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, fourth edition (Pearson, 2009).
Preface to fourth edition
In writing the fourth edition I have revised, rewritten and edited throughout. I have
also added new material to most of the chapters (the book has grown from a first edi-
tion of around 65,000 words to a fourth edition that is well in excess of 100,000
words). The most obvious addition is the new chapter on psychoanalysis and the
sections on post-Marxism (Chapter 4) and the global postmodern (Chapter 8). I have
also added more diagrams and illustrations. Finally, I have changed the running order
of the chapters. The chapters are now chronological in terms of where each begins.
However, where each chapter ends may sometimes disrupt chronology. For example,
Marxism begins before post-structuralism, but where the discussion of Marxism ends is
more contemporary than where the discussion of post-structuralism ends. There seems
to be no obvious solution to this problem.
Preface to third edition
In writing the third edition I have sought to improve and to expand the material in the
first two editions of this book. To achieve this I have revised and I have rewritten much
more extensively than in the second edition. I have also added new material to most
of the chapters. This is most evident in the renamed, and reorganized, Chapter 6, where
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