Current trends of globalization have influenced the social, economic, and political framework of national media worldwide. In recent years, the field of media studies has focused on globalization as a phenomenon that has greatly impacted the production and reception of media formats. By reshaping local economies, diversifying societies, and introducing digital technologies, the globalization of media has enacted a process of re-definition of national and local broadcasting. Beyond Mono...

Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in...

Morality is often imagined to be at odds with capitalism and its focus on the bottom line, but in The Moral Neoliberal morality is shown as the opposite: an indispensible tool for capitalist transformation. Set within the shifting landscape of neoliberal welfare reform in the Lombardy region of Italy, Andrea Muehlebach tracks the phenomenal rise of voluntarism in the wake of the state’s withdrawal of social service programs. Using anthropological tools, she shows how socialist vol...

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread. Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strateg...

“Has there ever been a better reason to shop?” asks an ad for the Product RED American Express card, telling members who use the card that buying “cappuccinos or cashmere” will help to fight AIDS in Africa. Cofounded in 2006 by the rock star Bono, Product RED has been a particularly successful example of a new trend in celebrity-driven international aid and development, one explicitly linked to commerce, not philanthropy.In Brand Aid, Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte offe...

It is often remarked that politicians’ private lives are becoming a feature of political communication in many advanced industrial democracies. However, there have so far been no genuinely comparative studies examining the personalized nature of political communication. Intimate Politics provides for the first time a systematic comparative analysis of such developments in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary ...

Psychological harassment at work, or "mobbing," has become a significant public policy issue in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Mobbing has given rise to specialized counseling clinics, a new field of professional expertise, and new labor laws. For Noelle J. Molé, mobbing is a manifestation of Italy's rapid transition from a highly protectionist to a market-oriented labor regime and a neoliberal state. She analyzes the classification of mobbing as a work-related illness, the deployment of p...

Below the Line illuminates the hidden labor of people who not only produce things that the television industry needs, such as a bit of content or a policy sound bite, but also produce themselves in the service of capital expansion. Vicki Mayer considers the work of television set assemblers, soft-core cameramen, reality-program casters, and public-access and cable commissioners in relation to the globalized economy of the television industry. She shows that these workers are incre...

Beginning around 2003, the growth of interest in the genre of reality shows has dominated the field of television studies. However, concentrating on this genre has tended to sideline the even more significant emergence of the program format as a central mode of business and culture in the new television landscape. TV Formats Worldwide redresses this balance and heralds the emergence of an important, exciting, and challenging area of television studies. Topics explored include real...

Climate change is not just a scientific fact, nor merely a social and political problem. It is also a set of stories and characters that amount to a social drama. This drama, as much as hard scientific or political realities, shapes perception of the problem. Drs Smith and Howe use the perspective of cultural sociology and Aristotle's timeless theories about narrative and rhetoric to explore this meaningful and visible surface of climate change in the public sphere. Whereas most research w...

Porta Palazzo, arguably Western Europe's largest open-air market, is a central economic, social, and cultural hub for Italians and migrants in the city of Turin. Open-air markets like Porta Palazzo have existed for centuries in Europe; although their function has changed over time—traditional markets are no longer the primary place to buy food—they remain popular destinations. In an age of supermarkets and online commerce, markets offer unique social and cultural opportunities and bring to...

In 2009 Beppe Grillo, a well-known Italian comedian, established the Five Star Movement with the aim of sending a handful of citizens to municipal councils to act as the watchdog of a professional political class often perceived as corrupt and self-interested. However, in the Italian general elections of February 2013, despite still largely being considered a small protest movement, the party gained the undisputed role of leading political actor gaining just under 9 million votes and sendi...