Includes bibliographical references and index.

The work of representation / Stuart Hall -- Representing the social : France and Frenchness in post-war humanist photography / Peter Hamilton -- The poetics and the politics of exhibiting other cultures / Henrietta Lidchi -- The spectacle of the "other" / Stuart Hall -- Exhibiting masculinity / Sean Nixon -- Genre and gender : the case of soap opera / Christine Gledhill.

"This broad-ranging text offers a comprehensive treatment of how visual images, language and discourse work as 'systems of representation'." "Individual chapters explain a variety of approaches to representation, bringing to bear concepts from semiotic, discursive, psychoanalytic, anthropological, sociological, feminist, art-historical and Foucauldian models of representation. They explore representation as a signifying practice in a rich diversity of social contexts and institutional sites: the use of photography in the construction of national identity and culture; the poetics and politics of exhibiting other cultures in ethnographic museums; fantasies of 'the racialized Other' in popular media, film and image; the construction of masculine identities in discourses of consumer culture and advertising; the gendering of narratives in television soap operas." "The book discusses contested and critical questions of meaning, truth, knowledge and power in representation, and the relations between representation, pleasure and fantasy. Combining illustrative examples with activities and selected readings, accessible but not simplified, it offers a unique resource for teachers and students in cultural studies and related fields as an introduction to this complex and central theme."--BOOK JACKET.