Representational theories

1. Representation Ryan, Gemma and Phil

2. Karl Marx and his ideas “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.”- Lenin Karl Marx suggests that people are only truly free when living in a communist society. He also suggests that only people who are skillful or who have power can earn money and less skillful or people of a lower status cant earn as much, SOURCE: http://groups.google.com/group/total_truth_sciences/browse_thread/thread/ad406c7c714b7ca4

3. Traditional and Neo Marxism Neo Marxism is an up to date version of the traditional Marxism. Its based on the works of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engle and it argues that the economy is the foundation of society. Class structure is discussed as the division between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat with the workers being the oppressed group. Neo Marxism addresses the criticism that society consists of more than two classes.

4. Marxism and ideology Marxism is a particular political philosophy, economic and sociological world wide view based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism and a theory of social change.

5. Stuart Hall Stuart Hall proposed that dominant ideology is typically inscribed as a preferred reading but this is not automatically adopted by readers. SOURCE: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism11.html

6. Pluralism The pluralism idea is the opposite of the hegemonic idea. A pluralist model argues that there is diversity in society and that everyone is different. This therefore means that there is also choice, we choose what we want to believe. So in media terms, because the audience is diverse the media is influenced by society. Because the media needs to please the audience they will try to reflect the values and beliefs that are predominant in society. In other words, they give us what we say we want rather than telling us what to believe and think. SOURCE: http://www.litnotes.co.uk/represent.htm

7. Hegemony This is a system where one group is dominated by another. The dominating group achieves its domination by “winning” popular consent through every day cultural life. SOURCE: http://www.litnotes.co.uk/represent.htm

8. Capitalism Capitalism is an economic system in which investment and ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or cooperation. SOURCE: www.dictionary.com

9. Louis Althusser He was a French Marxist philosopher. His arguments and theses were bet against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism, which included both the influence of empiricism of Marxist theory and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European communist party. He is commonly referred to as a structural Marxist.

10. Louis Althusser The epistemological break is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. SOURCE : www.dictionary.com

11. Repression Repression is the operation by which the subject repels and keeps at a distance from consciousness representations (thoughts, images, memories) that are disagreeable because they are incompatible with the ego. The individual is likely to repress the thoughts and pretend that the representations don’t exist. SOURCE: http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/repression

12. Laura Mulvey Laura Mulvey is a British feminist and she invented the theory of the gaze which describes the act of looking; which hence forth began as the study of the objectification of women in visual text.

14. Internalization of the gaze, changing women’s perceptions of themselves.

15. Shift to objectification as a source of the please. The person gazing and the person being gazed at.

16. Men as the dominant group have been the looker.

17. Ties back another aspect of the feminist critique of Freud.SOURCE: http://Virtual.Clemson.edu/caah/women/flc436/mulvey.html

18. Tuchmann Tuchmann relates the notion of reflection hypothesis which suggests that the mass media reflects the dominant social values in a society. These concern not the society as it really is, but its symbolic representation, how it would like to see itself. SOURCE: An introduction to theories of popular culture- Dominic Strinati

19. David Gauntlett David Gauntlett suggests that we use the media as a navigation point for developing identity. He suggests that the audience develop their identity based on characters in the media that the audience watch. SOURCE: http://collectiveidentity.posterous.com/what-are-the-social-implications-of-different