With examples drawn from media coverage of the War on Terror, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the London underground bombings, Cultural Chaos explores the changing relationship between journalism and power in an increasingly globalised news culture. In this new text, Brian McNair examines the processes of cultural, geographic and political dissolution in the post-Cold War era and the rapid evolution of information and communication technologies. He investigates the impact of these trends on domestic and international journalism and on political processes in democratic and authoritarian societies across the world. Written in a lively and accessible style, Cultural Chaos provides students with an overview of the evolution of the sociology of journalism, a critical review of current thinking within media studies and an argument for a revision and renewal of the paradigms that have dominated the field since the early twentieth century. Separate chapters are devoted to new developments such as the rise of the blogosphere and satellite television news and their impact on journalism more generally. Cultural Chaos will be essential reading for all those interested in the emerging globalised news culture of the twenty-first century.

With examples from media coverage of the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the London underground bombings, McNair studies the changing relationship between journalism and power in an increasingly globalized news culture.

Fought in the wake of a decade of armed struggle against colonialism, the Mozambican civil war lasted from 1977 to 1992, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives while displacing millions more. As conflicts across the globe span decades and generations, Stephen C. Lubkemann suggests that we need a fresh perspective on war when it becomes the context for normal life rather than an exceptional event that disrupts it. Culture in Chaos calls for a new point of departure in the ethnography of war that investigates how the inhabitants of war zones live under trying new conditions and how culture and social relations are transformed as a result. Lubkemann focuses on how Ndau social networks were fragmented by wartime displacement and the profound effect this had on gender relations. Demonstrating how wartime migration and post-conflict return were shaped by social struggles and interests that had little to do with the larger political reasons for the war, Lubkemann contests the assumption that wartime migration is always involuntary. His critical reexamination of displacement and his engagement with broader theories of agency and social change will be of interest to anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and demographers, and to anyone who works in a war zone or with refugees and migrants.

The contemporary media landscape might be described in simple terms as a digital terrain where real and virtual worlds collide. Stephen Kennedy investigates the concept of our digital space leading up to the digital turn of the 1990s to fully understand how our perceptions of orientation in space in time was altered. Chaos Media: A Sonic Economy of Digital Space re-thinks the five fundamental paths to our contemporary understanding of the digital age: cultural, political, economic, scientific, and aesthetic, and ties them together to form a coherent whole in order to demonstrate how critical thinking can be reconfigured using a methodological approach that uses 'chaos' and 'complexity' as systematic tools for studying contemporary mediated space. Kennedy introduces the concept of Sonic Economy, a methodology that allows for a critical engagement with the heterogeneous elements of an information society wherein the dispersion of discrete elements is manifest but not always clearly visible.

The author first introduces the basic framework for cultural algorithms and he then explains the social structure of a cultural system as a mechanism for the distribution of problem-solving information throughout a population. Three different models for social organizations are presented: the homogeneous (nuclear family), heterogeneous (expanded family), and subculture (descent groups) social models. The chapters that follow compare the learning capabilities of these social organizations relative to problems of varying complexity. The book concludes with a discussion of how the results can impact our understanding of social evolution.

Cultural encounters are often being stylized not only as experiences of uncontrollability and unpredictability par excellence, but also as challenges to planning and predicting. The history, the different forms and the consequences of this phenomenon are the main issues discussed in this volume. The contributions show that chaos and control are not mutually exclusive in the "contact zone" (Mary Louise Pratt); on the contrary, they stand in relation to each other - be it as a competence or as an interpretive scheme.

Formation is a rite of passage or initiation ritual. This book draws on the findings of social anthropological studies of initiation rituals and contemporary biblical studies of rites of passage. Since initiation rituals are of critical importance in the life journeys of individuals and groups, the book's central theme is relevant to educationalists and ritual leaders in the Church and secular society. Most religious congregations founded since the thirteenth century were formed for prophetic ministry to a world in change, yet for centuries before Vatican II, their candidates were rarely trained explicitly for this task. Through years of quasi-indoctrination and voluntary incarceration they were taught, in a monastic atmosphere of unchanging order, that the world was evil and to be avoided. Conformity to a theological, ecclesiastical and pastoral status quo was the most esteemed value in a candidate. This emphasis was contrary to the very nature of active religious life. Religious must be prophetic challengers of the status quo within the Church and society. Training for membership in active religious congregations, therefore, must now be radically reformed, but there are no road maps available to direct educationalists in developing programmes that would stimulate candidates to be radically creative in ministry. From Chaos to Mission creates a framework for radical thinking and practical action about the critical issue of formation of religious for mission today.

The tumult of the Cultural Revolution after 1966 is often blamed on a few leaders in Beijing, or on long-term egalitarian ideals, or on communist or Chinese political cultures. Lynn White shows, however, that the chaos resulted mainly from reactions by masses of individuals and small groups to three specific policies of administrative manipulation: labeling groups, designating bosses, and legitimating violence in political campaigns. These habits of local organization were common after 1949 and gave the state success in short-term revolutionary aims, despite scarce resources and staff--but they also drove millions to attack each other later. First, measures accumulated before 1966 to give people bad or good names (such as "rightist" or "worker"); these set a family's access to employment, education, residence, and rations--so they gave interests to potential conflict groups. Second, policies for bossism went far beyond Confucian patronage patterns, making work units tightly dependent on Party monitors--so rational individuals either pandered to local bosses or (when they could) deposed them. Third, the institutionalized violence of political campaigns both mobilized activists and scared others into compliance. These organizational measures were often effective in the short run before 1966 but accumulated social costs that China paid later. The book ends with comparisons to past cases of mass urban ostracism in other countries, and it suggests how such tragedies may be forecast or prevented in the future. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Organizational crisis and chaos create drama that is complicated, layered and difficult to unravel without a roadmap. New leaders, especially those who find themselves in an organization in crisis need to hear how others have experienced that challenge and managed to emerge trusted, supported and having moved the entire organization to a new and better place without losing themselves in the process. This book provides a crisis identification checklist, ten strategies for managing chaos and reflection questions to support the leader’s health and wellness. Utilizing the familiar story of the Wizard of Oz and specifically Dorothy’s experience as a young, female, new leader, anchors the work and provides a familiar and comforting backdrop for managing this extraordinarily difficult and specific leadership challenge.