Celebrity Society

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-415-58149-3
Verlag: CRC Press

Buch, Englisch, 188 Seiten, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

On television, in magazines and books, on the internet and in films, celebrities of all sorts seem to monopolize our attention. Celebrity Society brings new dimensions to our understanding of celebrity, capturing the way in which the figure of ‘the celebrity’ is bound up with the emergence of modernity. It outlines how the ‘celebrification of society’ is not just the twentieth-century product of Hollywood and television, but a long-term historical process, beginning with the printing press, theatre and art.
By looking beyond the accounts of celebrity ‘culture’, Robert van Krieken developsan analysis of ‘celebrity society’, with its own constantly changing social practices and structures, moral grammar, construction of self and identity, legal order and political economy organized around the distribution of visibility, attention and recognition. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of court society, taking on but also democratizing many of the functions of the aristocracy. The book also develops the idea of celebrity as driven by the ‘economics of attention’, because attention has become a vital and increasingly valuable resource in the information age.
This engaging new book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media and cultural theory.

Autoren/Hrsg.

van Krieken, Robert

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction. 1. From Fame to Celebrity: The Celebritization of Society 2. Producing Celebrity and the Economics of Attention 3. Celebrity as a Social Form: Status, Charisma and Power 4. Imagined Community and Long-Distance Intimacy 5. Celebrity in Politics, Diplomacy and Development 6. Business and Management Celebrity 7. Celebrity’s Futures – 15 Minutes of Fame, or Fame in 15 Minutes. References

Über Autor(innen)

Robert van Krieken is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney, andVisitng Professorat University College Dublin. His research interests include the sociology of law, criminology, the sociology of childhood, processes of civilization and decivilization, cultural genocide, as well as contributing to the theoretical debates around the work of Elias, Foucault, Luhmann and Latour. Previous books include Norbert Elias (1998), Celebrity and the Law (2010, co-authored) and Sociologyfourth edition (2009, co-authored).