Johan Fornäs
Södertörn University, Media and Communication Studies, Faculty Member
- Philosophy, Music, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Cultural Theory, Media Studies, and 29 moreCulture, Popular Culture, Cultural Sociology, European Studies, Identity (Culture), Hermeneutics, Popular Music, Critical Thinking, European integration, Culture Studies, Interdisciplinarity, Open Access, Popular Music Studies, Walter Benjamin, Media History, Pop Culture, Cosmopolitanism, Music and Media, Media Theory, Jurgen Habermas, Open Access Publishing, Authenticity, Paul Ricoeur, Subjectivities, Representations, Critical European Studies, Theory of Interpretations, Frankfurt School, and Media Philosophyedit
- Professor at the Department of Media and Communication Studies, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University in Swedenedit
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Signifying Europe provides a systematic overview of the wide range of symbols used to represent Europe and Europeanness, both by the political elite and the broader public. Through a critical interpretation of the meanings of the various... more
Signifying Europe provides a systematic overview of the wide range of symbols used to represent Europe and Europeanness, both by the political elite and the broader public. Through a critical interpretation of the meanings of the various symbols - and their often contradictory or ambiguous dimensions - Johan Fornäs investigates how Europe currently identifies itself and is identified by others outside its borders. While the focus is on the European Union's symbols, those symbols are also interpreted in relations to other symbols of Europe. Offering insight into the cultural dimensions of European unification, this volume will appeal to students, sholats, and politicans interested in European policy issues, cultural studies, and postnational cultural identity.
This is a pedagogic guide to the critical theory of capitalism developed by Karl Marx in "Capital", volumes I-III.
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This is a presentation of the concept of culture: its history and its four main meanings, from cultivation through life forms and arts to signifying processes. A series of examples show how the uses of this concept are linked to issues of... more
This is a presentation of the concept of culture: its history and its four main meanings, from cultivation through life forms and arts to signifying processes. A series of examples show how the uses of this concept are linked to issues of power and identity.
Kultur är ett av språkets allra mest mångtydiga och svårdefinierade ord. Här ges en guide till hur dess fyra huvudbetydelser har växt fram och vad kultur kan betyda idag - från odling via livsformer och konstarter till meningsskapandets processer. Genom en lång rad talande exempel framträder en bild av hur begreppet knyter samman frågor om makt och identitet.
Kultur är ett av språkets allra mest mångtydiga och svårdefinierade ord. Här ges en guide till hur dess fyra huvudbetydelser har växt fram och vad kultur kan betyda idag - från odling via livsformer och konstarter till meningsskapandets processer. Genom en lång rad talande exempel framträder en bild av hur begreppet knyter samman frågor om makt och identitet.
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Fornäs, Johan (1990): “Tid, ord och ungdom”, in: Peter Dahlén & Margareta Rönnberg (eds): Spelrum. Om lek, stil och flyt i ungdomskulturen, Uppsala: Filmförlaget, 187-206.
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Fornäs, Johan (2012): “Post-anti-hermeneutics: Reclaiming culture, meaning and interpretation”, Jan Fredrik Hovden & Karl Knapskog (eds): Hunting high and low: Skriftfest til Jostein Gripsrud på 60-årsdagen, Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, 490-518 (http://sh.academia.edu/JohanForn%C3%A4s/Paper...more
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... with Shuker's work - in aim, perspective, structure and content - that it is hard not to ... The students interviewed approximately 150 relatives, friends and acquaintances for the project, asking them 'What is ... rights;... more
... with Shuker's work - in aim, perspective, structure and content - that it is hard not to ... The students interviewed approximately 150 relatives, friends and acquaintances for the project, asking them 'What is ... rights; she describes how music can cheer her up, or help her study for a ...
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This report discusses ideas of a radical increase in the significance and scope of culture in modern society, where industrialism is said to have been superseded by a society of information, knowledge and experiences. Issues of cultural... more
This report discusses ideas of a radical increase in the significance and scope of culture in modern society, where industrialism is said to have been superseded by a society of information, knowledge and experiences. Issues of cultural identity and community are increasingly focal ...
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Popular culture is often understood as being linked to mass media and therefore also implicated in the idea of mediatization. Here this is discussed in four main steps. (1) First, key problems in the concept of mediatization are... more
Popular culture is often understood as being linked to mass media and therefore also implicated in the idea of mediatization. Here this is discussed in four main steps. (1) First, key problems in the concept of mediatization are illuminated, with popular culture as a testing ground: if there is always such a mediatization process going on; when (in which periods) this process is particularly intense and how it develops over time (gradually or in leaps); where (in which world regions) it can be located; how it has any effects (if it follows a relatively fixed logic or is more diffuse); and what it affects in terms of societal spheres and levels of practice. (2) Second, four main dimensions of the concept of culture are distinguished – cultivation, life forms, aesthetics, and signifying practice – all of which are found relevant to mediatization. As media are cultural technologies of communication, there is a close link between mediatization and culturalization. (3) Third, popular culture is similarly divided into four main meanings, defining it as mass culture, people’s culture, low culture, or illegitimized culture. (4) On this basis, examples illustrate how mediatization processes affect popular culture through four main phases, each linked to a new demarcation of popular culture itself: graphic mediatization of common culture, print mediatization of low culture, audiovisual mediatization of media culture, and digital mediatization of what again is becoming a more or less indistinguishable common culture.
Popular culture frequently appears to be one of the most media-saturated spheres or fields of modern societies. It is sometimes even identified with media culture, for instance when contrasted with fine arts and folk handicrafts, and defined through its reliance on mass mediated texts disseminated by cultural industries to dispersed polymorphous audiences all over the globe. This closeness between popular culture and media processes poses a challenge for any effort to more precisely scrutinize whether there is any escalating increase in this kind of media presence, which would deserve to be labeled mediatization.
In order to bring some clarity to this slightly paradoxical situation, it is helpful to first make some conceptual groundwork. This chapter will first analyze how the concepts of media and mediatization relate to culture and culturalization. Then, a similar discussion follows of popular culture, leading up to an effort to draft a provisional sketch of key steps in the mediatization history of popular culture. This will finally also make it possible to return to the initial definition of mediatization and reconsider its very basis.
Popular culture frequently appears to be one of the most media-saturated spheres or fields of modern societies. It is sometimes even identified with media culture, for instance when contrasted with fine arts and folk handicrafts, and defined through its reliance on mass mediated texts disseminated by cultural industries to dispersed polymorphous audiences all over the globe. This closeness between popular culture and media processes poses a challenge for any effort to more precisely scrutinize whether there is any escalating increase in this kind of media presence, which would deserve to be labeled mediatization.
In order to bring some clarity to this slightly paradoxical situation, it is helpful to first make some conceptual groundwork. This chapter will first analyze how the concepts of media and mediatization relate to culture and culturalization. Then, a similar discussion follows of popular culture, leading up to an effort to draft a provisional sketch of key steps in the mediatization history of popular culture. This will finally also make it possible to return to the initial definition of mediatization and reconsider its very basis.
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Här utforskas genusaspekter på hur europeisk identitet förhandlas i symboler. Myten om Europa och tjuren bär på motsägelsefulla tolkningsmöjligheter. Prinsessan Europa kan ses som personifikation av kontinenten, som med våld förs bort av... more
Här utforskas genusaspekter på hur europeisk identitet förhandlas i symboler. Myten om Europa och tjuren bär på motsägelsefulla tolkningsmöjligheter. Prinsessan Europa kan ses som personifikation av kontinenten, som med våld förs bort av Zeus i tjurhamn. Alternativt kan hon uppfattas som djärvt förförisk grundare av en dynasti, vilket erbjuder en helt annan europeisk självbild. Några tycks rentav hellre identifiera sig med den potent djuriskt-gudomliga tjuren som dramats centrala aktör. Här föreslås en ambivalent strategi som fasthåller dubbelheter i såväl ärvda symboler som dagens Europaprojekt. Varje levande myt är mångtydig och utsatt för en ohejdbar verkningshistoria vars tolkningskonflikter öppnar motsägelsefulla korsvägar för identifikation. Det är viktigt att bibehålla en agens också för Europa – såväl i mytisk symbolik som i dagens vardag – och se den genusifierade herre-slav-dialektiken i det begärsspel som format nutidens Europa: Europa är flerkönat, förenat endast i sin egen mångfald
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Mediatisation has now been revived as a key concept in media studies, mainly from social sciences perspectives. This paper argues for the value of revitalising more culturally oriented approaches to this concept. (1) First, definitional... more
Mediatisation has now been revived as a key concept in media studies, mainly from social sciences perspectives. This paper argues for the value of revitalising more culturally oriented approaches to this concept. (1) First, definitional problems are analysed, hinting at how a cultural perspective focusing on signifying practices of meaning-making may help identifying key ‘if’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ issues of interpreting mediatisation as an historical process. The idea of ‘a media age’ is scrutinised, based on a tension between conceiving mediatisation as a long-term process or as a dateable historic event. This leads to proposing a model of different levels and kinds of mediatisation, making use of cultural theory. (2) Second, mediatisation is related to process concepts such as modernisation, lifeworld colonisation and reflexivity. Mediatisation discourse is compared to parallel discourses on culturalisation, since these two process concepts are particularly interdependent, if culture is defined as signifying practice and media are technologies of culture. Cultural perspectives should therefore also be highly useful to mediatisation theory. The meaning of culture in relation to society is discussed, arguing for a fruitful way to interrelate the two, based on a combination of cultural studies and Paul Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics. (3) Third, the contested genealogy of the concept of mediatisation is discussed, emphasising unfortunately repressed routes through cultural research and pointing at a need to reconnect to some anthropologically and hermeneutically inspired theorisations in the early 1990s. This shows how mediatisation discourse always developed in the interface between media studies and other branches of the humanities and social sciences, with a particular affinity to cultural theory. Strategic considerations end in a pledge for continued transdisciplinary dialogue as the best means for understanding mediatisation today, and a promising opportunity to productively combine social and cultural perspectives.
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In cultural studies and cultural research, the importance of being critical is often stressed, but it is more rare to scrutinise how such critique is and can be performed. This text discusses different modes of critique, in three main... more
In cultural studies and cultural research, the importance of being critical is often stressed, but it is more rare to scrutinise how such critique is and can be performed. This text discusses different modes of critique, in three main steps. First, a brief review of the history and signifying layers of the concept of critique itself leads up to a late modern communicative concept of critique, linked to the contested relation between critique and tradition, and based on how Paul Ricoeur has interpreted ideology critique and the hermeneutics of suspicion. This communicative mode is contrasted to critical approaches that strive to radically dissociate themselves from others. Second, it is argued that the most powerful sources of critique are to be sought in the inner contradictions of the targeted spheres of social reality rather than applied from the outside. Such immanent – as opposed to transcendent – critique, has been formulated and exercised by Karl Marx, Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, among others. The third section sums up the spiral moves of cultural studies as informed by critical hermeneutics: dialectical critique based on communicative and immanent critique must be on the move, never frozen, and may temporarily and locally explore radical and transcendent modes of critique, in ways that have been discussed by Donna Haraway.
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Late modern cultural theory has since the 1960s tended to define culture in terms of signifying practice, making meaning and interpretation central concepts. However, a series of structuralist and poststructuralist waves have at the same... more
Late modern cultural theory has since the 1960s tended to define culture in terms of signifying practice, making meaning and interpretation central concepts. However, a series of structuralist and poststructuralist waves have at the same time marginalised hermeneutics in cultural studies. The influential anti-hermeneutic challenges of Foucault, Kittler and Latour underline the necessity to abandon the romantic conceptions in much of classical hermeneutics. However, these critics tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and cannot ground late modern cultural theory. If taken fully seriously, the demand to abandon interpretation and replace meanings with some kind of materiality would evacuate cultural research or reduce it to plain physics. Instead, Paul Ricoeur’s critical textual hermeneutics offers a more useful polydimensional understanding of culture. This is a presentation of anti-hermeneutic challenges, discussing how they may be overcome by recharging key cultural concepts with energies deriving from taking these challenges seriously and letting them inspire a reconstitution of cultural theory from a post-anti-hermeneutic perspective.
Keywords: hermeneutics, interpretation, culture, poststructuralism, Ricoeur
Keywords: hermeneutics, interpretation, culture, poststructuralism, Ricoeur
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This paper focuses on the redefinition of European symbols and in particular the euro currency under the current condition of crisis, in which the identity of Europe is challenged and attributed new connotations. The current financial... more
This paper focuses on the redefinition of European symbols and in particular the euro currency under the current condition of crisis, in which the identity of Europe is challenged and attributed new connotations. The current financial crisis has material effects for institutions and citizens, but also an important cultural aspect. Money is a means of payment but also a symbolic artefact or ‘micro medium’. Every European symbol demands a level of trust among its users, while also aiming to secure basic trust in the legitimacy of European values. When the euro runs into crisis, this therefore has crucial symbolic repercussions. If for instance Greece is forced to leave the Eurozone, this not only creates monetary difficulties but also questions the signifying force of the € symbol, whose name and design intend to express the foundation of European civilisation in the classical culture of Athens.
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Usually my organised "librarian's mind" guides my writing from what it sees as the starting point (within a review it is an introduction) to the end. This time it saw the starting "end" at the... more
Usually my organised "librarian's mind" guides my writing from what it sees as the starting point (within a review it is an introduction) to the end. This time it saw the starting "end" at the "Postscript" chapter of the book written by Steve Jones, in which he ponders the issue of ...
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This article discusses examples of mediated and mediating symbols used to build trust in Europe as a shared transnational project. It starts with a general discussion of globalisation and transnational mediation, and then briefly... more
This article discusses examples of mediated and mediating symbols used to build trust in Europe as a shared transnational project. It starts with a general discussion of globalisation and transnational mediation, and then briefly exemplifies how money, flags, anthems and other symbols work to suggest identifications. The five key European symbols ratified by the Council of Europe and the European Union are introduced, presented and analysed, indicating how the EU and other pan-European actors have chosen to express a sense of shared identity and meaning. Each of these key symbols is then scrutinised as multi-layered mediating tools in creating loyalty and reinforcing faith in collective societal institutions of markets and states, and in the corresponding imagined supra-national community. These dominant European symbols are shown to reflect a balance between homogenisation and fragmentation. The analysis locates a core identifying formula of “an ambivalent desire for communication with others”. However, it also finds a major set of tensions around this thematic core, understanding European identification as a dynamic process of mediation rather than as a limited and limiting object.
Late modern cultural theory has since the 1960s tended to define culture in terms of signifying practice, making meaning and interpretation central concepts. However, a series of structuralist and poststructuralist waves have at the same... more
Late modern cultural theory has since the 1960s tended to define culture in terms of signifying practice, making meaning and interpretation central concepts. However, a series of structuralist and poststructuralist waves have at the same time marginalised hermeneutics in cultural studies. The influential anti-hermeneutic challenges of Foucault, Kittler and Latour underline the necessity to abandon the romantic conceptions in much of classical hermeneutics. However, these critics tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and cannot ground late modern cultural theory. If taken fully seriously, the demand to abandon interpretation and replace meanings with some kind of materiality would evacuate cultural research or reduce it to plain physics. Instead, Paul Ricoeur’s critical textual hermeneutics offers a more useful polydimensional understanding of culture. This is a presentation of anti-hermeneutic challenges, discussing how they may be overcome by recharging key cultural concepts with energies deriving from taking these challenges seriously and letting them inspire a reconstitution of cultural theory from a post-anti-hermeneutic perspective.
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Eds. Johan Fornäs and Tobias Harding This volume – “Culturally: Reflections in the Spirit of Erling Bjurström” – celebrates the 60th birthday of a dear friend and colleague, born 13 September 1949. Erling Bjurström is Professor and... more
Eds. Johan Fornäs and Tobias Harding
This volume – “Culturally: Reflections in the Spirit of Erling Bjurström” – celebrates the 60th birthday of a dear friend and colleague, born 13 September 1949. Erling Bjurström is Professor and Head of the Department of Culture Studies (Tema Q) at Linköping Univer-sity. He has a background in sociology at Göteborg University in the 1970s and early 80s, then Head of Research at the State Council for Youth Affairs, and in the 1990s he presen-ted his PhD thesis in media and communication studies at Stockholm University, and in the last decade, he has been an anchor of the new environment for cultural research at Linköping University in Norrköping.
This volume – “Culturally: Reflections in the Spirit of Erling Bjurström” – celebrates the 60th birthday of a dear friend and colleague, born 13 September 1949. Erling Bjurström is Professor and Head of the Department of Culture Studies (Tema Q) at Linköping Univer-sity. He has a background in sociology at Göteborg University in the 1970s and early 80s, then Head of Research at the State Council for Youth Affairs, and in the 1990s he presen-ted his PhD thesis in media and communication studies at Stockholm University, and in the last decade, he has been an anchor of the new environment for cultural research at Linköping University in Norrköping.