Culture Machine

Wednesday, 19 January 2011 08:02

Social Science Open Access e-Journals

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Culture Machine

Culture Machine is a series of experiments in culture and theory.

The aim of Culture Machine is to seek out and promote the most provocative of new work, and analyses of that work, in culture and theory from a diverse range of international authors. Culture Machine is particularly concerned to promote research engaged in the constitution of new areas of inquiry and the opening of new frontiers of cultural and theoretical activity. It is also committed to the generation of possibilities for new scholarship and research. Other than these founding aims (which are themselves, along with the very concepts of 'founding' and of 'aims', possible themes to be analysed), Culture Machine has no specific agenda, no project or programme - cultural, theoretical, political, social or ethical - it intends to see worked out in its various manifestations. Culture Machine is instead endeavouring to be to cultural studies and cultural theory what 'fundamental research' is to the natural sciences: open ended, non-goal orientated, exploratory and experimental in approach.

Culture Machine's experiments in culture and theory are currently taking the form of:

• an open access journal: Culture Machine
• an open access archive: CSeARCH (which stands for Cultural Studies e-Archive), available at: scm-rime.tees.ac.uk/CSeARCH
• a Culture Machine book series, published by Berg (Oxford and New York)

• Culture Machine Reviews
• Culture Machine InterZone

The Culture Machine Open Access Journal

One way in which Culture Machine is endeavouring to promote original and challenging work is by publishing an international, electronic, open access journal. Publishing online of course provides Culture Machine with an opportunity to explore the effects, consequences, limits and possibilities posed for research into cultural and theoretical questions by contemporary technology - computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web, cell phones, laptops, e-mails, phones, text and picture messages, blogs, podcasts, MP3 files, free software, open source, p2p file-sharing, wikis, 'social networking' and so on. But if one motivation behind the creation of the Culture Machine journal is the familiar intellectual idea of hosting a forum for the production, development, communication and testing of new ideas, another is the desire to provide contributors with a space in which to publish research that is open-ended and experimental: research, in other words, that encourages speculation and intellectual risk taking, and which does not simply succumb to the pressure to produce 'results'. Which is not to say the activities of Culture Machine can be simply opposed to 'end-orientated' research. Nor that these activities will themselves have no 'useful' or practical outcomes. The extent to which this is desirable, or even possible, is again something to be investigated.

Culture Machine Reviews
Another way Culture Machine is endevouring to promote original and challenging work is by publishing a section of reviews on a rolling, all year round basis (rather than annually, as in the case of the journal).

Culture Machine InterZone
The InterZone section is a slightly later addition to the Culture Machine journal. Again, in contrast to the journal, the InterZone publishes research in culture and theory all year round. It is also unthemed, thus enabling Culture Machine to promote and support a far greater diversity of work than would be possible on the basis of either the journal or reviews section alone. Other than that, all the main features of the Culture Machine journal and Culture Machine Reviews remain: the InterZone is open to both established figures and newer writers; it welcomes contributions that take advantage of and explore the uses and limitations of new technology; and accepts commissioned and unsolicited material from academics, post-graduates and non-academics.

CSeARCH Open Access Archive
Culture Machine welcomes contributions to its open access archive for research and publications in cultural studies and related fields: literary, critical and cultural theory, new media, visual culture, communication and media studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, science and technology studies, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory and so on.

The Cultural Studies e-Archive (CSeARCH) is not-for-profit and free to download from and upload to.

You can find CSeARCH at:
scm-rime.tees.ac.uk/CSeARCH

Here you can browse the archive and read and download its contents.

To upload work into the archive go to the 'Submit' page. Fill in the brief details and you will then be sent a login name and password via e-mail together with a direct link. Click on the link and you will be there - no need to login at that point the first time. (The password merely ensures that no one but you can edit your entries.)

Anything that is already in digital form, be it Word, pdf, and so on, can be uploaded into the CSeARCH archive quite easily and very quickly (in minutes, in fact). So early and/or hard to come by texts, including out-of-print books, book chapters, journal editions or articles that can be scanned or otherwise digitized can all be made available this way. However, the idea of the archive is not just to preserve documents from the past, but also to make recent and even current work widely available open access: both that which has already been published and that which is awaiting publication.

Culture Machine
ISSN: 14654121
Subject: Sociology
Publisher: Culture Machine
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Keywords: cultural studies, cultural theory
Start year: 1999