This thesis studies the development of the British recording studio from the mid-1960s to the early-1990s. Although there are now a growing number of academic studies of popular music they have, so far, largely failed to study the evolving process by which artists were able to reproduce their music for mass distribution. Consequently, this dissertation investigates the image portrayed of the studio and its utilisation and representation by a combination of human, technological and locational factors. The first part of the thesis constructs an overview of the recording studio industry, as based on contemporary trade journals, in order to produce a traditional historical narrative, so far absent from music’s historiography, which provides the framework in which to place more detailed research. The prominence given by the industry to the ‘progress of technology’ is then compared to the public perception of the recording studio, as shown by the extent and content of its inclusion in the popular culture media of the period, both print and film based. How far the process of producing recorded music managed to permeate through the presentation of a music industry that was becoming increasingly reliant on the image and personality of the artists themselves is then analysed. The second part of the thesis is based on Latour’s concept of actor-networks and deconstructs the recording studio into three main components; technology, architecture and the human element within it. Using one particular studio (Strawberry Recording Studios in Stockport) as being representative of the increasing proportion of small independents in the industry, the further deconstruction of these three components into their constitutional networks, provides the key theme of the dissertation. Consequently, studio technology can be viewed not simply in terms of functional machinery in the studio setting (of Latourian ‘black boxes’) but more as a confusing and intrusive element that was developed, shaped and created by the requirements of those in the studio. And, whilst contemporary society has always elevated the status of the performer in the music industry, the human element in the studio can also be shown to comprise the industrial and social interaction between a wide range of support staff, whose roles and importance altered over time, and the artists themselves. Finally, studio buildings were not just backdrops to the work taking place in them but were seen to extend their boundaries and influence beyond their immediate location through their architecture, interior design and geography. In other words, the recording studio might be seen as the combination of a number of fluctuating networks rather than just as a passive element in the production of recorded music. As a result of the content of the subject being studied, this thesis utilises a number of sources that, in Samuel’s terminology, moves the study away from a ‘fetishization’ of the traditional historical archive towards those of ‘unofficial learning’. Given the immediacy of the period being studied, the personal accounts of those involved in the studio, mainly through the use of oral history, form a major part of the research material.

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This dissertation examines the relationship between the growth and popularization of psychology in American life in the postwar period and Americans’ belief that theirs is a “classless,” or overwhelmingly middle-class, society. I argue that psychology has, until recently, inadvertently naturalized middle-class norms of self-perception, communication, aspirations, and subjectivity. From the 1950s on, the United States has been what observers call a “therapeutic culture.” Psychological ideas have infused the major arenas of American life, including the educational, judicial, commercial, political, personal, and interpersonal realms. This project examines the origins and development of psychological professionals’ views of class, highlighting the professional, economic, disciplinary, and cultural factors that combined to form those views. I analyze a small but persistent thread of dialogue in the professional literature of the period that questioned mainstream psychological assumptions about class, and I explore how that impulse developed into major mental health policy initiatives in the 1960s, then was undermined by political and social conflicts. I also develop a case history of one mental health project that attempted to transcend psychology’s class biases, only to be contained by structural and disciplinary factors. After examining psychological professionals’ views of various publics, this project investigates a series of publics’ views of psychological practitioners. I draw on popular portrayals of postwar psychological practitioners across various media, including one particular working-class medium, postwar men’s adventure magazines, and employ classic cultural studies readings to analyze the significant differences in the portrayals. / text

While Black women are more visible in media and popular culture today, the range of their visibility remains narrow and in continuation within the dominant ideology concerning Black women within the U.S. The images that are presented discourage a full understanding of the conditions of the Black female experience and the ways these women are socially constituted within it (Newton & Rosenfelt 1985). This paper examines how the images of Black women are contradictory to the depressed socioeconomic status of Black women, how the show Girlfriends works to move beyond these images by expressing moments of the lived experience of Black women, and how Black women recognize their position within the oppressive institutional forces of the U.S. by negotiating their representations. / text

<p>In this study the overarching question is in what way the Swedishauthor Alf Henrikson has acted as a popular educator and if he as such hasbeen a part of a popular educational context. The different popular educationalactivities he associated with could be considered as verification thathe did act as a popular educator. Two works of his popular historical authorshipare examined and they are characterized by the intention or ambitionto disseminate historical knowledge. By his historical authorship healso was a part of a popular historical tradition in Sweden.Henrikson appeared at several times as a popular lecturer and hereby hereproduces a tradition from the worker’s institutes and the associations forpopular lectures. He also performed on several occasions in radio programsand TV programs and disseminated knowledge and education. Radio broadcastsas well as television are regarded as popular educational activities. Inconsideration to the subject areas of his knowledge he can be affiliated withan educational ideal in the Swedish worker’s movement and Swedish populareducation. His educational ideal is the personality creating neohumanisticprinciple. Henrikson also supported the thought of taking over the middles-classes idea of cultural heritage.</p>

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This study examines the presentation of religion in the cheapest printed wares produced in London c.1550-1640: broadside ballads, woodcut pictures, text-dominated broadsides, and octavo chapbooks. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the trade in this 'cheap print' became increasingly specialized. The 'ballad partners' collected a stock of titles, increased the use of illustrations, and organized themselves for more efficient distribution. They published large folio woodcut pictures, and began to develop a new line of chapbooks. The thesis investigates, not only the spread of readership, but the interweaving of the printed word with existing cultural practices, both oral and visual. <i>Part 1</i> deals with the broadside ballad as song, disseminated by a network of travelling performers and pedlars. <i>Part 2</i> looks at the broadside picture as an image for the wall, placed against the background of domestic wall painting and painted cloth. Only in <i>Part 3</i> do I follow the development of 'cheap print' intended primarily for reading, in particular the 24-page octavo format which became the standard 'small book' after the Restoration. I have dated the beginnings of this trade to the second decade of the seventeenth century, and have traced some three dozen extant 'penny merriments', 'miscellanies' and 'godlinesses' published before 1640. Just as 'cheap print' was shaped by existing non-literate traditions, Protestant ideas and images were modified by older beliefs. Reformers wrote hundreds of ballads in the first half of Elizabeth's reign, of which some fifty showed enduring commercial success. By comparing the original output of the Protestant publicists with this seventeenth-century 'stock', I show the partial success of the reformers' goals, as the doctrine of salvation by faith, Protestant martyrs, and Old Testament episodes infiltrated the ballads. In the woodcuts and other visual art, the gap between Protestant 'iconophobia' and the continued demand for religious pictures was bridged by 'stories' for walls, chosen from the lower rungs of the 'ladder of sanctity'. Texts themselves became a common form of decoration: broadside 'tables', bearing pithy aphorisms and excerpts from Scripture, sanctified the walls of the good householder. Finally, the octavo repentance tract replaced the broadside ballad as a medium for the evangelical message, but the moralistic 'penny miscellanies' reflected the conservative religion of many ordinary parishioners. The study of these cheap forms of print shows their manifold uses, during a period of transition to widespread literacy. At the same time, it reveals some aspects of the process by which a new, post-Reformation, religious culture was created.

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The case of the “Temple of 18 Deities” (十八王公廟) is an example which shows that the process of changes in religious culture can be both gradual and sudden. From the first glance it seems that the boom of “Temple of 18 Deities” cult suddenly appeared from nowhere. But the analysis of the temple origin mythology and it symbols shows that the opportunities for such sudden changes were created gradually during the long period of religious culture development when fazes of change and conservation were taking turns endlessly in Taiwan societies. Those opportunities traces into more remote times of gradual development of numerous religious cultures which were brought in Taiwan by multitude of migration waves. The “Temple of 18 Deities” cult conserved many stable religious elements which were created in the period of Eurasian cultural unity and bring us to the Neolith and even Paleolithic epoch. One of the most stable elements in the “Temple of 18 Deities cult is the symbol of a dog. The geographical area of the former dog’s worshiping cults distribution is spread all over Eurasia with the most western point in the British Isles and the most eastern point in Taiwan. The dog symbol in mythologies of many various peoples all over Eurasia is connected to another stable religious element – an idea of the life after death and underworld. The underworld conception origin also should be dated by Paleolithic epoch, because it stability occurring everywhere spreading. Paleolithic hunting religious ideas should be common all over the world, because all the societies passed this faze of evolution in their history.