Contains 25 chapters from leading writers in the field which each offer their own particular take on 'culture' and explore the significance and meaning of cultural issues for different people in different parts of the contemporary world.

List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsCulture and global change: an introduction, Tracey Skelton and Tim AllenPart I: Culture and development ; Classic conceptions of culture, Peter Worsley; Globalised culture: the triumph of the West?, John Tomlinson; Culture and development theory, Peter WorsleyPart II: Questioning cultural assumptions ; Modernisation versus the environment? Shifting objectives of progress, Alan Thomas: Local knowledges and changing technologies, Gordon Wilson; Understanding health, Murray LastPart III: Representations and cultural commodification ; Finding the right image: British development NGOs and the regulation of imagery, Henrietta Lidchi; Representations of conflict in the Western media: the manufacture of a barbaric periphery, Philippa Atkinson; Sex tourism: the complexities of power, Jan Jindy Pettman; The city and identity: news frames and the representation of London and Londoners in the Evening Standard, Jenny OwenPart IV: Culture as explanation; Culture as ideology: explanations for the development of the Japanese economic miracle, Roger Goodman ; Cultural disease and British industrial decline: Weber in reverse, Mike Hickox; Ethnicity, John Eade and Tim Allen Part V: Culture and resistance; Local forms of resistance: weapons of the weak, Hazel Johnson ; `The people's radio' of Vila Nossa Senhora Aparecida: alternative communication and cultures of resistance in Brazil, Vivian Schelling; The new migrants: `flexible workers' in a global economy, Chris J. MartinPart VI: Culture and human rights; The West, its Other and human rights, Rolando Gaete ; Female circumcision and cultures of sexuality, Melissa Parker; Street lives and family lives in Brazil, Tom Hewitt and Ines Smyth Part VII: Religion, culture and politics; Religion and political transformation, Jeff Haynes ; Religion and development, Parvati Raghuram; Paying the price of femininity: women and the New Hinduism, Dina Abbott Part VIII: Culture as product: culture as pleasure ; Whose game is it anyway? West Indies cricket and post-colonial cultural globalism, Hilary McD. Beckles; Bollywood versus Hollywood: battle of the dream factories, Heather Tyrrell; Mimicking mammon? What future for the post-communist Russian film industry?, Kate HudsonReferencesIndex