How media artefacts affect our conception of reality Essay

How media artefacts affect our conception of reality - Essay Example We are placed in a consumer society and media, which brings in the importance of learning how to interpret, understand, and criticizing its messages and meanings. They participate in contributing to educate us on what we feel, fear, think, desire, and how to behave. They also show us how to consume, look, dress, avoid failure, and be successful/ popular (Verbeek & Slob, 2006). Cultural is one on itself that is focusing on the mass and media marketing. Due to extensive advertising and publicity, all the cultural products, which include human beings, are treated as commodities who share little to no meaning. This industry provides a reason to believe individual is an illusion manipulated by the authority of those in dominant class. Horkheimer and Adorno define cultural industry through its focus on the mass and media marketing. Technology, Monopoly, and Mass Production are three specific ideas of characterising cultural media. Horkheimer and Adorno addressed how big corporations contro l culture industry due to their large vertical and horizontal integration. Our society is representing a society which is heavily induced by cultural media and mass marketing. Cultural industry theory explains the concept of consumers selling out to the dominant cultures. In some aspects this is true but Adorno and Horkheimer gave much power to the class ruling and their abilities of producing ideal consumers. Media give us directions on ways to avoid failure, and conforming to various dominant systems of values, institutions, norms, and practices (Bishop, 2005). It is important to gain critical media literacy as a resource for citizens and individuals when learning to cope up with cultural environment. It is important to learn how to criticize, and read, socio-cultural manipulation to help in empowering in relation to the dominant culture and forms of media. It enhances sovereignty of individual as well as media culture by giving people power in cultural environment. The essay will feature most on contributions of cultural perspective to media literacy and critique. Recently, cultural studies have emerged as the best approach to study of society and culture. A project study was conducted in the University of Birmingham, which is the centre for cultural studies. This led to the development of various critical methods for the interpretation, criticism, and analysis of cultural methods. In 1960s and 1970s, there were internal debates and respondents to social movements and struggles. The group focused on interplay of ideologies and representations of gender, ethnicity, class, nationality, and race in cultural texts, which include media culture (Hillis, 1999). This group was among those who studied the effects of television, radio, film, newspaper and other cultural forms on audiences. The group also focused on the use of media culture and interpretation differently by various audiences. They analyzed on the factors, which made audiences respond to various media texts in contrasting ways. It is demonstrated by British cultural studies on how culture constituted distinct forms of the group and identity membership through the study of youth subcultures. Materials, which are used to construct views of identities, world, and behaviour, are provided by media culture for cultural studies. Those who follow the dictates of cultural media uncritically will mainstream themselves and thereby conforming to the dominant behaviour,

Women Roles in Near and Middle Eastern, African and European Societies Research Paper

Women Roles in Near and Middle Eastern, African and European Societies - Research Paper Example Prior to the advent of Islam, the role and status of women was dependent on the tribe and area they belonged to or e.g. the Bedouin, the tribes of the south of the Arabian Peninsula, the tribes of Mecca etc. But the overall condition was still very bad because of the prevalence of customs like infanticide and unlimited polygamy. Women had virtually no legal status and no right to either inheritance or to divorce. V. M. Moghadam studied their situation and argues that the position of women was mostly influenced by the extent of urbanization, industrialization, and the political ploys of the management (Moghadam 4-9). Women had no role in the politics and had no suffrage rights. They were good only for producing male babies; female babies were even buried alive out of shame. Women were sold into marriages by their guardians and the suitor could end the marriage whenever he liked. Hatoon al Fassi, a Saudi historian, studied much earlier historical origins of Arab women's rights by using evidence from the ancient Arabian kingdom of Nabataea. Her findings indicate that Arab women in Nabataea had independent legal personalities but they lost many of their rights through ancient Greek and Roman law prior to the arrival of Islam. Many of these constraints became the part of the culture and were retained even after the advent of Islam (al-Fassi 12-18).The advent of Islam brought a lot of betterment for the condition of the women. They were given the right of inheritance and their consent was made necessary in marriage according to the edicts of Islam. Female infanticide was strictly prohibited. Quran, the Holy Book of Islam, carried the instructions that made elevated the status of women in the society. Where women were previously not allowed to get a formal education, its acquirement was made mandatory for both men and women in Islam. Women were seen in many roles after the arrival of Islam, as educators, teachers, and scholars and even as businesswomen. Women were fou nd working in a wide range of commercial activities and diverse occupations, for e.g. as farmers construction workers, lenders, dyers, spinners, investors, doctors and nurses, presidents of guilds, peddlers, brokers, scholars, etc. Muslim women also had domination over certain branches of the textile industry which was the largest and most specialized and market-oriented industry at the time, involving them in occupations such as dyeing, spinning and embroidery. In comparison and stark contrast, the property rights and wage labor for females were relatively uncommon in Europe until the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. Similarly, women started playing an important role in the foundations of Islamic educational institutions, such as Fatima al-Fihri's founding of the University of Al Karaouine in 859. This positive trend continued through to the 12th and 13th centuries, when one hundred and sixty mosques and madrasahs were established in Damascus out of which twent y six were funded by women through the Waqf (charitable trust or trust law) system (Lindsay 191-196). Women of the contemporary Arab world