Ours is the age of celebrity. An inescapable aspect of daily life in our media-saturated societies of the twenty-first century, celebrity is celebrated for its infinite plasticity and glossy seductions. But there is also a darker side. Celebrity culture is littered from end to end with addictions, pathologies, neuroses, even suicides. Why, as a society, are we held in thrall to celebrity? What is the power of celebrity in a world of increasing consumerism, individualism and globalization? Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies, edited by acclaimed social theorist Anthony Elliott, offers a remarkably clear overview of the analysis of celebrity in the social sciences and humanities, and in so doing seeks to develop a new agenda for celebrity studies. The key theories of celebrity, ranging from classical sociological accounts to critical theory, and from media studies to postmodern approaches, are drawn together and critically appraised. There are substantive chapters looking at fame, renown and celebrity in terms of the media industries, pop music, the makeover industries, soap stars, fans and fandom as well as the rise of non-Western forms of celebrity. The Handbook also explores in detail the institutional aspects of celebrity, and especially new forms of mediated action and interaction. From Web 3.0 to social media, the culture of celebrity is fast redefining the public political sphere. Throughout this volume, there is a strong emphasis on interdisciplinarity with chapters covering sociology, cultural studies, psychology, politics and history. Written in a clear and direct style, this handbook will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience. The extensive references and sources will direct students to areas of further study.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview and holistic analysis of the intersection between tourism and popular culture. It examines current debates, questions and controversies of tourism in the wake of popular culture phenomena and explores the relationships between popular culture, globalization, tourism and mobility. In addition, it offers a cross-disciplinary, cutting edge review of the character of popular cultural production and consumption trends, analyzing their consequences for tourism, spatial strategies and destination competitiveness. The scope of the volume encompasses various expressions of popular culture such as cinema, TV shows, music, literature, sports and heritage. Featuring a mix of theoretical and empirical chapters, the handbook problematizes and conceptualizes the ties and clusters of popular cultural actors, thereby positioning tourism within the wider context of creative economies, cultural planning and multimodal technologies. Written by an international team of academics with expertise in a range of disciplines, this timely book will be of interest to researchers from a variety of subjects including tourism, events, geography, cultural studies, fandom research, political economy, business, media studies and technology.

The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication and Popular Culture offers rich insights into the ways in which communication about health through popular culture can become a part of healing, wellness, and health-related decisions. This Handbook allows readers to understand and consider messages that inform and influence health-related choices through pop culture in the public sphere. Written in an accessible narrative style and including interdisciplinary, global, and diverse perspectives, a vast team of contributing authors from the field explores the intersections between health communication and popular culture. The Handbook is divided into five parts: Framing of Health-Related Issues in Popular Culture; Exploring Popular Culture Influences on Health Behaviors and Beliefs; Considering Pro-Social Public Health Interventions in Popular Culture; Understanding Health Issues in Popular Culture from Diverse Perspectives; and Pop Culture and Health Communication: Looks to the Future. The Handbook will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Communication Studies, Health Communication, Public Health Policy, Media Literacy, and Cultural Studies.

On television and in films, in magazines and books, on the Internet and in the realm of politics, celebrities of all sorts seem to dominate our attention. Celebrity Society: The Struggle for Attention brings new perspectives to our understanding of how the figure of ‘the celebrity’ is bound up with the structure and dynamics of society, economics, and politics. 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 Christian saints, the printing press, theatre, and art. Drawing on the ideas of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of ‘court society’, taking on but also transforming many of the functions of the aristocracy. As well as examining celebrity in all the familiar arenas – film, television, music, fashion, and sport – Celebrity Society also includes the analysis of celebrity in business and management, politics, humanitarianism, and philanthropy. A key feature of the book is its development of the idea that celebrity is driven by the ‘economy of attention’, since attention has become a form of capital – attention capital – in the Information and Internet age. In this second edition the author has updated and significantly revised this path-breaking book to include a more detailed discussion of attention capital, the question of gender and celebrity, populism, fans, fandom, and self-formation, micro-celebrity, and personal or self-branding, the ‘worker celebrity’, and the impact of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Celebrity is an exciting and rapidly expanding field of social science, making this engaging book a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media, and cultural theory.

Football is unquestionably the world’s most popular and influential sport. There is no corner of the globe in which the game is not played or followed. More countries are affiliated to FIFA, football’s governing body, than to the United Nations. The sport has therefore become an important component of our social, cultural, political and economic life. The Routledge Handbook of Football Studies is a landmark work of reference, going further than any other book in considering the historical and contemporary significance of football around the world. Written by a team of leading sport scholars, the book covers a broad range of disciplines from history, sociology, politics and business, to philosophy, law and media studies. The central section of the book examines key themes and issues in football studies, such as the World Cup and international competition, governance and ownership, fandom and celebrity. The concluding section offers in-depth surveys of the culture and organisation of football in each of the regional confederations, from UEFA to CONCACAF. This book will be fascinating reading for any serious football fan and an essential resource for advanced students or scholars undertaking research in football or sport studies, and any practitioner or policy-maker working in football.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary Chinese social and cultural issues in the twenty-first century. Bringing together experts in their respective fields, this cutting-edge survey of the significant phenomena and directions in China today covers a range of issues including the following: State, privatisation and civil society Family and education Urban and rural life Gender, and sexuality and reproduction Popular culture and the media Religion and ethnicity Forming an accessible and fascinating insight into Chinese culture and society, this handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, area studies, history, politics and cultural and media studies.

The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education is a comprehensive, authoritative and state-of-the-art review of current research in the field. The opening introduction orients the reader to the field, highlights recent developments, and draws together concepts and research methods to be covered. The chapters that follow are written by respected, experienced experts on key issues in their area of specialisation. From separate beginnings in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom in the mid-twentieth century, the field of the sociology of music education has and continues to experience rapid and global development. It could be argued that this Handbook marks its coming of age. The Handbook is dedicated to the exclusive and explicit application of sociological constructs and theories to issues such as globalisation, immigration, post-colonialism, inter-generational musicking, socialisation, inclusion, exclusion, hegemony, symbolic violence, and popular culture. Contexts range from formal compulsory schooling to non-formal communal environments to informal music making and listening. The Handbook is aimed at graduate students, researchers and professionals, but will also be a useful text for undergraduate students in music, education, and cultural studies.

The collection of essays in the book moves from the largest domain of celebrity culture in India – Bollywood – through celebrity life writing and biopics and, finally, to the politics of and by celebrity culture. The book begins with an exploration of films made around celebrity victims to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of Bollywood stars’ philanthropic and humanitarian work and, finally, to celebrity charisma and its role in the current era of ‘post-truth.’ Two studies of celebrity biopics and auto/biographies – from sports stars to Bollywood stars – and their disease memoirs are included. Finally, a section of essays are devoted to celebrity cultural politics, including Indian writing as a celebrity, the Narmada River as a celebrity, the desacralization of celebrity statues, Arundhati Roy’s celebrated and celebrity activism and the self-fashioning of Indian authors in the age of digital culture.

In the age of networked publics and global viral publicity, celebrity is transnational. Its circulation illuminates global, national, and local dynamics of power and resistance. Celebrity shapes concepts of race, gender, class, and national identity on a global scale. Governments use transnational celebrity as evidence of their country’s cultural power, transmuting cultural influence into economic and political power. Meanwhile, celebrities who cross borders become potent and contested icons of national identity. At the grassroots level, citizens in diverse geographic contexts are becoming increasingly fluent in the global language of celebrity and are mobilizing it in new ways for personal and political projects. Reaching beyond the Global North, this book showcases research on transnational celebrity as a technology of soft power and counter-hegemonic organizing, and as a driver of discourses of race and migration. It also explores self-presentation and self-branding in the globalized attention economy. This book demonstrates the need for a renewed politicized treatment of the topic of celebrity in its transnational and globalizing reach. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Popular Communication.

Audience Interactions in Contemporary Celebrity Culture: Approaches from across Disciplines explores current understandings of celebrity-audience relationships in the context of digitalization and the ongoing celebritization of all aspects of culture and society. Focusing on the themes of celebrity and health, celebrity and identity, and celebrity and scandal, this volume presents chapters authored by experts from across the globe that deal with celebrity-audience relationships in different historical, cultural, and social settings, tackling the topics from social-psychological, critical/cultural, and persuasive perspectives. In doing so, this book highlights the broadening of disciplinary, paradigmatic, theoretical, and methodological approaches to celebrity studies research. By bringing these different approaches together in one book and drawing overall conclusions across chapters, the editors and contributors of this volume promote and facilitate cross-fertilization in ongoing efforts to grasp the fascinating complexity of celebrity-audiences relationships. Scholars of media, pop culture, and celebrity studies will find this collection particularly useful.