[csaa-forum] New Book Publication: OCities of Signs: Learning the Logic of Urban Spaces¹

[Andrew Hickey]

Dear CSAA subscribers- just a little blurb about my latest book:

'Cities of Signs: Learning the Logic of Urban Spaces'.

Publishers: Peter Lang, New York

Series: Minding the Media- Volume 5

Year of Publication: 2012

ISBN 978-1-4331-1119-8 pb.


Signs exist as fundamental markers of the urban landscape. Whether in the form of street signs offering directions, the air-brushed promises of advertising media or the vandalized détournements of street art, signs pervade urban spaces and provide a tangible 'text' upon which the logics of both cities and ourselves are written. Cities of Signs charts the way that signs exist as key elements of contemporary urban space and explores what it means to live within these spaces, amongst cities of signs. This refreshing take on the way that urban space is lived and experienced provides a timely contribution to the literature in urban studies, sociology and education alike. In decoding the cultural production at play in urban environments, Hickey presents a dynamic approach for understanding how culture is produced and consumed within the cityscape.

Praise for Cities of Signs:

"Cities of Signs firmly establishes Hickey as part of a promising new generation of scholars who push past disciplinary boundaries in their work. With a keen eye for the minutiae of settings and a flair for conceptual analysis, Hickey's ethnographic case study brings interdisciplinary perspectives to bear upon both the public pedagogy and cultural politics of signs and signage. What can we learn from such generally taken-for-granted signposts of everyday urban life? Instead of setting out to prove a point, Cities of Signs immerses the reader in the life-world of the researcher and the seemingly ordinary and even mundane world of a community located within a master-planned edge-city. Hickey constructs lively, inventive and intellectually rigorous narrative that is sure to ignite the sociological imagination."

Gregory Martin, University of Technology Sydney

"Through this timely and engaging book, Hickey answers recent calls for public pedagogical research to explicate how sites work pedagogically. Going beyond surface level readings of cultural texts to also explore how audiences engage with those texts, Cities of Signs troubles simplistic notions of cultural transmission by explicating the various mechanisms through which signs "work" to mediate culture. Hence, Cities of Signs presents an account of the ways that public pedagogies actually function."

Jennifer Sandlin, co-editor Handbook of Public Pedagogy


Andrew T. Hickey is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Social Theory at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. He is also the author of (Re)Presenting Education: Students, Teachers, Schools and the Public Imagination (with Jon Austin), a sociology of schooling and popular cultural representations of education.

For further details on Cities of Signs: http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=58324&concordeid=311119

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