Author: Denning, Michael
Title: Culture in the Age of Three Worlds
Description: London, Verso, 2004. orig.cloth. 22x15cm, vi,280 pp. ¶ Before the mid-point of the twentieth century culture as a subject was routinely relegated to the background of any period's study, it was a distinct sphere which illustrated the "cultivated" concerns of the ruling class. However, from the 1950s on it moved very clearly to the foreground. Culture was suddenly everywhere, it was no longer the property of an elite but rather the masses had a culture and culture had a mass. The study of culture and the critique of culture became an increasingly central part of political and intellectual life - the "cultural turn" - as it became known to humanities and social sciences. This book is of, and a reflection on, that cultural turn. Michael Denning argues that culture was a fundamental aspect of the age of three worlds; that short half-century (1945-1989) when it was imagined that the world was divided into three; the capitalist first world; the communist second world and the decolonizing third world. Now, as those three worlds merge into a globalised one, The author charts the intellectual and political battles over the meaning of culture, the lineaments of global culture and the rise of a distinctive 'American Ideology' " - Publisher's description.

Keywords: Social History, Culture, Cultural Theory, , , , , ,