Bøker av Arthur Asa Berger

This book is about the never-ending need we have to make choices. If you think about it, we have to decide what time to wake up every morning, what to wear (unless we need to wear a uniform), what to have for breakfast (if we eat breakfast), lunch and dinner (and if we eat in restaurants, what to order), and our need to make all kinds of other choices all day long. Some of our choices are mundane, like what to have for breakfast (if we eat breakfast): to have coffee or tea (and if so, plain or with milk), cereal, toast or a bagel (and if so, what kind: plain, with poppy seeds, with everything) or a sweet roll, eggs (if so, fried, soft boiled, scrambled), and so on. Most of the choices we make are not important, and we often develop habits to relieve us of having to think about our choices.For example, I have the same thing for breakfast every day: a bowl of oatmeal with chia seeds and flax seeds, hot milk, a cup of espresso coffee with hot milk, and half a bagel with butter. Occasionally, I have a soft-boiled egg, as well.But other choices we have to make are life-changing, such as how to live (single, living with a partner, or getting married), what kind of education to get, what kind of job or profession to choose, where to live and what kind of house to buy (if you can afford a house), whom to vote for, and so on. After reading this book, you will better understand the role that the choices we make play in society and culture and in our everyday lives.

The average person in America watches four hours of television per day and spends the equivalent of nine years of his or her life in front of the television set. This is a study of how the mass media broadcast or spread various popular arts; further how the media and popular arts play a major role in shaping our everyday lives.

This book builds on Le Bon's classic, The Crowd, to evaluate the role of crowds in American culture, society and politics.

How do people turn out the way they do? How do they "arrive" at themselves and attain an identity? How are our identities affected by our birth order, our hair color, how tall or short we are, our intelligence, our occupation, our race, our religion, our nationality, the socio-economic level of our parents (or our being raised in a single-parent family), where we are born and where we grow up, the language we learn, the way we use language, our fashion tastes, our gender, our education, our psychological makeup, chance experiences we have, the people we marry (if we marry), and countless other factors? There are numerous matters to consider when dealing with identity, which, as Nigel Denis, the author of 'Cards of Identity', reminds us, "is the answer to everything." 'Searching for a Self' takes a deep dive into the question of identity formation from various perspectives; it is written in a reader-friendly accessible style and makes use of insightful quotations from seminal thinkers who have dealt with the topic. Split into two parts, the first "Theories of Identity," offers evaluations of identity from semioticians, psychologists, sociologists and Marxists while the second, "Applications," offers case studies on topics such as Russian identity, Donald Trump's identity, fashion and identity, LGBTQIA+ identity, Orthodox Jewish identity, elite university education and identity, tattoos and identity, travel and identity, and politics and identity. Covering a wide array of subject areas, this book will be a valuable resource for undergraduate students taking courses in identity, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, and other related fields.

Arthur Asa Berger''s Shakespeare''s Comedy of Errorsuses semiotics along with a psychoanalytic approach to offer a granular analysis of one of Shakespeare''s funniest and most interesting comedies. It is distinctive in that it offers a discussion of the basic techniques found in comic literature of all kinds and applies these techniques to events in the play. It also offers a discussion of the basic theories of humor and a syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis of the play. It provides an overview of the theories of humor, what the author calls why theories, to provide a general understanding of how humor works. This is contrasted with his 45 techniques which deal with what makes people laugh.

Arthur Asa Berger is back with the second edition of his popular, user-friendly guide for students who want to understand the social meanings of objects.

This book uses semiotic theory, psychoanalytic theory and sociological theory to analyze Trump's followers and to understand what motivates them and explain why they behave the way they do when at his rallies.

This book uses Marxist theory, Semiotic theory and Psychoanalytic theory in an attempt to understand what we might call the Trump phenomenon and the Trump style. Each chapter features a primer on its methodology: Marxist theory, Semiotic theory and Psychoanalytic theory and it applies concepts from these theories to Trump's candidacy and presidency.

Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture-now in its sixth edition-draws on both academic and applied perspectives to offer a lively critique of contemporary advertising and its effects on American society.

Brands has chapters on topics such as what brands are, their role in society, brands and the psyche, brands and history, language and brands, the marketing of brands, brands and logos, the branded self, San Francisco and Japan as brands, brand sacrality, multi-modal discourse analysis and brands, and competition among brands.

Perspectives on Everyday Life: A Cross Disciplinary Cultural Analysis makes the argument for studying everyday life through a combination of introductory theoretical approaches and a grouping of applications to specific aspects of American culture.

Uses case histories to show how scholars from different disciplines and scholarly domains have tried to describe and understand humor. The author reveals not only the many approaches that are available to study humor, but also the many perspectives toward humor that characterize each discipline.

Offers a semiotically informed ethnographic study of contemporary culture in Rajasthan and India. This book adapts the methodology of analyzing cultures found in Roland Barthes' semiotic portrait of Japanese culture, "Empire of Signs". It considers tourism from both an anthropological and sociological level.

Offers discussions of the main concepts found in semiotic, historical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and sociological analysis. This title provides practical descriptions of the working methods of each discipline and demarcates their special areas of investigation.

Presenting an account of political culture, this work shows how the variety of cultural preferences creates the foundations of communication theory. Using the work of Aaron Wildavsky, it shows how individualism, egalitarianism, collectivism, and fatalism form the basis of culture in complex societies.

Focuses on what is distinctive about Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. This book makes a "radical" suggestion about the origin of Jewish humor - such as, that Sarah and Abraham's relation to God, and the name of their son Isaac (which, in Hebrew, means laughter), recognizes a special affinity in Jews for humor.

This volume describes how military security policies and practices have adapted to post-Cold War period uncertainties and challenges. The contributors differ in their assessments about the current prospects for peace and stability worldwide.

People experience humour daily through television, newspapers, literature, and contact with others. The author of this work attempts to analyze humour and determine what makes it such a dominating force in our lives.

The Victorian era is rightly associated with the industrial revolution in Britain and the ascendancy of a materialist, commercially-oriented middle class

The Academy in Crisis is a provocative contribution to an important debate

From their inception, video games quickly became a major new arena of popular entertainment

In 1946, William Bullitt, the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, U.S

This book focuses on what is distinctive and unusual about Jewish jokes and Jewish humor. The book makes a "radical" suggestion about the origin of Jewish humor, namely, that Sarah and Abraham's relation to God, and the name of their son Isaac (which, in Hebrew, means laughter), recognizes a special affinity in Jews for humor.

Just as a distinctive literary voice or style is marked by the ease with which it can be parodied, so too can specific aspects of humor be unique