Culture and Democracy: Media, Space, and Representation

Culture and Democracy: Media, Space, and Representation. By Clive Barnett. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2003. 288p. $79.95 cloth, $29.95 paper. Clive Barnett's examination of democracy today is one that privileges its spatially mediated, communicative, and cultural structures as shaped by new telecommunication and information technologies. Democracy is primarily represented in the mediated spaces created by broadcasting technologies whose form and content are geared toward deploying cultural policies and practices. Thus, a communications-cultural analysis of this condition is required. Furthermore, a reckoning with neoliberal conceptions of autonomy and representation is essential in making sense of the current cultural geography of democracy.