"I found this book to be useful as an example of how semiotics, as an analytical tool, can be applied to national and international images of iconic status and show how the individual perception of meaning is built from exposure to their use in mass media and reinterpreted from local experience...the book is of use in introducing critical evaluation to students, in this case, in the process of understanding how cultural history is an important element of any understanding of a cultural symbol...it would be of great value as part of a curriculum that concentrates on publishing anthropological research for (traditionally) non-anthropological audiences. View the complete review at: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=3455"
- Troy Belford, Anthropology Review Database
" This is a readable and useful volume that covers a range of topics. . . . the book makes a contribution to an interesting field that will no doubt become even more important as the visuality of culture continues to take central stage. . . . The editors of
Cultural Icons have collated a number of essays that deal with a variety of international icons that have accrued distinct cultural meanings. Although the origins of the icons discussed can be located in diverse places such as South Africa, Denmark, France, Norway, Austria and Britain, it is clear that the iconicity that the various authors examine transcends borders. Indeed, one of the strong points of this volume is the way in which the authors demonstrate how localised cultural icons are taken up, mediated, appropriated and even recontextualized. Not only have the cultural icons discussed here become potent intertexts, but they have also become part of the network of significations that characterise contemporary westernised society. Another laudable aspect of this book is that the authors have provided thorough historical contexts for their semiotic unpacking of the cultural icons, thereby adding to the academic rigour and value of the project.
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- Jeanne van Eeden, Visual Anthropology