Showing papers in "European Journal of Cultural Studies in 2013"
TL;DR: The authors argue that with the rise of this new female subject that reflects the workings of the neoliberal process of subjectification as immanent within and responsive to normative power, a more detailed examination is necessary of the changed meanings of choice and freedom.
Abstract: ‘Choice’, ‘freedom’ and ‘agency’ are terms liberally appropriated in recent years by popular women’s cultural genres to advance an image of the new, empowered woman confidently embracing patriarchal heterosexuality and commodity culture. Critics such as Rosalind Gill have linked this image to the influence of contemporary neoliberalism. This article extends these claims in order to argue that with the rise of this new female subject that reflects the workings of the neoliberal process of subjectification as immanent within and responsive to normative power, a more detailed examination is necessary of the changed meanings of choice and freedom. In the light of this changed form of governance and subjectification, feminist critique of popular women’s culture needs to readjust its terms of engagement.
76 citations
TL;DR: In the 20th century, urban studies has aligned cities closely with modernity, with strong implications for their conceptualisation as mentioned in this paper, and the founding analyses of urban studies drew on a specific (we...
Abstract: Urban studies has aligned cities closely with modernity, with strong implications for their conceptualisation. Through the 20th century the founding analyses of urban studies drew on a specific (we...
74 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the role of the media in the rise of nationalist populism in Finland and concludes that the traditional journalistic framework of agenda setting is not morally adequate for the new fragmented media environment.
Abstract: This article examines the role of the media in the rise of nationalist populism in Finland. The interplay between social media and mainstream media has facilitated the emergence of anti-immigrant agendas into the public debate, which has strengthened nationalist populist politics, despite mainstream journalism following professional ethics of balanced reporting. The article concludes that the traditional journalistic framework of agenda setting is not morally adequate for the new fragmented media environment. It proposes the ethics of hospitality (Derrida, Silverstone) with an emphasis on transnationalism as a moral goal for a multi-ethnic public sphere where everyone has the right to voice concerns and to be heard. Therefore, journalism ethics should address how public debate can be organized in such a way that the principle of hospitality can be achieved. The framework of agenda setting can allow inhospitable discourses to flourish, as the Finnish example shows. Theorisation of hospitality is connected with the need for transnational and cosmopolitan agendas.
67 citations
TL;DR: In the last few years, the so-called 360 deal has become increasingly common in the recording industry as discussed by the authors, in which record labels receive a portion of income from revenue streams such as merchandising and publishing.
Abstract: In the last few years the so-called ‘360 deal’, in which record labels receive a portion of income from revenue streams such as merchandising and publishing, have become increasingly common in the recording industry. However, the most publicised 360 deals have been made not by labels but by Live Nation, the world’s largest live music promoter, and some have argued that the emergence of the 360 deal reflects a shift in the balance of power within the music industry. This article provides an overview of 360 deals, discussing their emergence and overall structure as well as arguments for and against the 360 approach. It examines the broader implications of the 360 deal, concluding that the current situation of the major labels may not be quite as bad as is commonly perceived, and that the 360 approach may help them manage the challenges that they have faced in the last decade.
56 citations
TL;DR: The concept of the mnemonic imagination was introduced by as discussed by the authors to enable us to understand how communities of memory emerge and to understand the mechanism by which experience derived from others becomes integrated into our own life stories.
Abstract: In this article we explore the issue of memory transmission by considering it along the two temporal planes on which it occurs: vertically, through time; and horizontally, in time. It is because we regard memory transmission as involving the mutual interaction of these two planes that we introduce the concept of the mnemonic imagination. The value of the concept is that it enables us to see, inter alia, how communities of memory emerge. Our route into this is the sociology of generations and most particularly the evidence of mnemonic transmission provided by second-generation Holocaust narratives. The purpose of the article is to bring together a range of work relevant to the sharing and inheritance of memory across and within time, to explore the application of collective mnemonic frames in processes of personal remembering, and so move us closer to understanding the mechanism by which experience derived from others becomes integrated into our own life-stories.
56 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify what they call "DIY institutions", places of popular music preservation, archiving and display that exist outside the bounds of "official" or "national" projects of collection and heritage management.
Abstract: This article presents some notes towards identifying what we have come to call ‘DIY institutions’: places of popular music preservation, archiving and display that exist outside the bounds of ‘official’ or ‘national’ projects of collection and heritage management. These projects emerge instead from within communities of music consumption, where groups of interested people have, to some degree, undertaken to do it themselves, creating places (physical and/or online) to store – and, in some cases, display publicly – the material history of music culture. In these places people, largely volunteers, who are not expert in tasks associated with archiving, records management, preservation or other elements involved in cultural heritage management, learn skills along the way as they work to collect, preserve and make public artefacts related to popular music culture. The article argues that these places are suggestive of broader desires from within communities of popular music consumption to preserve popular music heritage.
54 citations
TL;DR: This paper analyzed how popular genre cinema tackles the inequalities that follow from the financial crisis, situating Hollywood's representational strategies in the context of recessionary media culture, and compared the different ways in which female-centred chick flicks and male-centered corporate melodramas address unemployment.
Abstract: Media forms play a vital role in making cultural and political sense of the complex economic developments and profound ideological uncertainties which have accompanied the global recession. This article analyses how popular genre cinema tackles the inequalities – in particular, gender inequalities – that follow from the financial crisis, situating Hollywood’s representational strategies in the context of recessionary media culture. It posits and analyses two sub-genres which demonstrate different approaches to an altered socio-economic climate: the recessionary ‘chick flick’ and the corporate melodrama. Amid the financial crisis these sub-genres shift emphasis to respond to changing circumstances, notably in relation to the once-ubiquitous trope of choice central to post-feminist media culture; neoliberal choice rhetoric is now considerably harder to maintain. The two case studies contrast the different ways in which female-centred chick flicks and male-centred corporate melodramas address unemployment, d...
40 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that anxiety is useful in the context of food-related anxiety and argued that it can be used to understand the presence and location of anxiety in the social network, and that anxiety can be useful.
Abstract: Drawing on current research about food-related anxieties, this article argues for an expanded understanding of the presence and location of anxiety in the social. It contends that anxiety is useful...
38 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic research developed within the graffiti community of Lisbon is the starting point for a reflection regarding the social condition of the young members of this community, where graffiti writers live between two social and cultural universes, building complex strategies to manage identity and everyday life.
Abstract: In this article, ethnographic research developed within the graffiti community of Lisbon is the starting point for a reflection regarding the social condition of the young members of this community. The graffiti writers live between two social and cultural universes, building complex strategies to manage identity and everyday life. Graffiti represents for many young people a ground for struggle and transgression, a chance to reject the law and hegemonic normatives, an arena where they experiment excitement, risk, heroic conduct and sometimes painful sanctions. In a security-prone society, danger becomes a space for freedom, where young writers challenge the limits of life and normative boundaries. This is often why there is a feeling of release and autonomy and of escaping the disciplinary control of social norms and worldly habits. This is why the nature of their exploits appears to be endowed with greatness and heroism.
37 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the ways in which popular music can be linked to ethnography and argued that contemporary British hip-hop in the form of "grime" is a potent exemplar.
Abstract: This article explores the ways in which popular music can be linked to ethnography. While there is a tradition of connecting popular music with sociology, this article posits a further resonance that is not so much theoretical as methodological. The article suggests that forms of contemporary popular music parallel key facets of ethnography, not simply in terms of sociological analysis, but with regard to popular music as an ethnographic resource, as ‘data’, and as the reflexive expression of Paul Willis’ conception of the ‘ethnographic imagination’; and the article argues that contemporary British hip-hop in the form of ‘grime’ is a potent exemplar. This is due to the resolutely cultural, spatial nature of grime music: a factor that marks out grime as a distinctive musical genre and a distinctive ethnographic form, as it is an experientially rooted music about urban locations, made from within those urban locations.
36 citations
TL;DR: The authors study how gender difference and ultimately female gender positioning are created and manifested in the heavy metal culture and find that women move their gender position to a greater extent than men, as they are forced constantly to adhere to the male values of the heavy-metal culture.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to study how gender difference and ultimately female gender positioning are created and manifested in the heavy metal culture. The empirical material consists of single interviews and focus group interviews with heavy metal fans between the ages of 18 and 26. The overall finding is that while gender is a moveable position in general, women move their gender position to a greater extent than men, as they are forced constantly to adhere to the male values of the heavy metal culture. Three dualities in the positioning of heavy metal women illustrate this phenomenon: a ‘whore/goddess’ paradigm based on the knowledge of the female heavy metal fan; the balancing act of ‘acting male’ and ‘looking female’; and the gender ‘twilight zone’ of being insufficiently male for heavy metal culture while being insufficiently female for the mainstream world.
TL;DR: The representation of social issues in entertainment television challenges the assumed and nominal function of such programming to simply entertain its audience as discussed by the authors, drawing on focus groups with televisual focus groups.
Abstract: The representation of social issues in entertainment television challenges the assumed and nominal function of such programming to simply entertain its audience. Drawing on focus groups with televi...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the place and significance of urban modernity as a concept in contemporary urban studies and draw on postcolonial theory to demonstrate that the relation between the city and modernity developed within the western tradition of urban thinking has produced a geographically and historically uneven conceptualisation.
Abstract: This critical introduction to the special issue examines the place and significance of urban modernity as a concept in contemporary urban studies. It draws on postcolonial theory to demonstrate that the relation between the city and modernity developed within the western tradition of urban thinking has produced a geographically and historically uneven conceptualisation of urban modernity. This conceptualisation not only involves dynamics of othering, in which cities are differentiated hierarchically, but also obscures a vast array of possible understandings of contemporary urban living. The aim of this introduction is to question this way of thinking about urban modernity in light of globalisation and 21st-century transformations of urban space. It argues that it is crucial, now more than ever, to render the concept of urban modernity attentive to the lived experience of contemporary cities worldwide.
TL;DR: The authors examines British television wildlife documentaries in order to outline the ways in which limited representations of animal behaviour recur and focus on representations of animals' sex and relationships with humans in the wild.
Abstract: This article examines British television wildlife documentaries in order to outline the ways in which limited representations of animal behaviour recur. It focuses on representations of animal sexu...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a method to solve the conanx problem by using the European Research Council (ERC) ERC-funded Conanx project, which was funded by the ERC.
Abstract: This research was funded by the European Research Council. For more information see http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/conanx
TL;DR: This paper explored the situated practices through which higher education students understand "becoming" cultural workers and connected this with critical debates on cultural workforce issues, revealing that while the studio as a work-based learning environment can equip students with industry-relevant skills and perspectives, there can be a distance and disconnect with cultural workers issues of insecurity and working conditions.
Abstract: This article explores the situated practices through which higher education students understand ‘becoming’ cultural workers. Drawing on research with a media production studio operated by a UK higher education institution, this article examines how students understand themselves as nascent industry professionals and workers ‘in-the-making’ and connects this with critical debates on cultural workforce issues. This article reveals that while the studio as a work-based learning environment can equip students with industry-relevant skills and perspectives, there can be a distance and disconnect with cultural workforce issues of insecurity and working conditions. In response, this article examines how higher education can offer potentially productive spaces and opportunities for reflecting on these issues.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the discursive dynamics of local activists and their project "Turku - European Capital of Subculture 2011" and show how the counter-discourse of the activists was produced through cultural production.
Abstract: Each year the European Union designates one or more cities with the competed-for city brand of European Capital of Culture (ECOC). In several recent ECOCs, such as in Turku, Finland, the management and organisation of the events have caused tension among the citizens regarding decision-making, financing and power over use of the urban space. The focus of the article is on analysis of the discursive dynamics of local activists and their project ‘Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011’. By emphasising the cultural analysis of activism, the article indicates how the counter-discourse of the activists was produced through cultural production. The project produced a strong movement culture with common practices, anti-neoliberal values and world views. Through cultural production and movement culture, the project participated in the creation of subculture as a fluid and flexible cultural category expressed through stylistic and lifestyle choices.
TL;DR: In recent years, numerous cult franchises have been revived and adapted in order to draw mass audiences as mentioned in this paper, and fans of these texts are left to puzzle the authors of these stories.
Abstract: In recent years, numerous cult franchises – once the purview of small communities of devotees – have been revived and adapted in order to draw mass audiences. Fans of these texts are left to puzzle...
TL;DR: The authors examines the discourses of forced prostitution that circulated in the US and European media and government publications in the context of the soccer World Cup in 2006, revealing two themes: concerns about immigration and border security, and representations of gender binaries that serve to relegate migrant women to the status of victim.
Abstract: This article examines the discourses of forced prostitution that circulated in the US and European media and government publications in the context of the soccer World Cup in 2006. This analysis of the public discourse around prostitution reveals two themes: concerns about immigration and border security, and representations of gender binaries that serve to relegate migrant women to the status of victim. The fears of increased sex trafficking and the condemnation of so-called ‘sex shacks’ and ‘mega-brothels’ for the World Cup 2006 served as foils for other perceived crises produced by globalisation. The debates struggle with a marked ‘other’ that reveals new forms of racialised ‘othering’: dangerously white, understood as both of Europe and a threat to it. The 2006 World Cup historical moment has implications for how international sports, consumer culture and feminist activism inform and conceal human agency.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined transnational identifications under mediatised conditions and found that mediated deterritorialisation is conditional due to migrants' sociocultural resources and earlier life experiences.
Abstract: Influenced by the call for ‘non-media-centric media studies’, and based on interviews with transnational professionals and forced migrants, this article scrutinizes transnational identifications under mediatised conditions. With the point of departure in space/mobility and everyday life practices – the common denominators in the perspectives of transnationalism and mediatisation – the analysis shows that mediated deterritorialisation is conditional due to migrants’ sociocultural resources and earlier life experiences. Hence, experiences of war and conflict may reduce the potential of mediated mobilities. The article demonstrates how media are an integrated part of migrants’ multiple identifications with the city they reside in and their country of origin. Besides establishing multiple identifications, the article shows how these identities are linked to particular contexts, practices and socialities in the migrants’ everyday lives. The conclusion is that mediatisation and transnationalism are complex matters yet a transdisciplinary, contextual and ‘non-media-centric’ approach seems to be a promising way to grasp these complexities.
TL;DR: This article investigated the online and offline experiences of young people living in rural communities and found that many young people in rural areas were disengaged with new media and highlighted why, for some individuals, online inclusion increased their feelings of cultural exclusion.
Abstract: This article investigates the online and offline experiences of young people living in rural communities. It draws upon data from the AHRC-funded research project, ‘Young people’s creative understanding of their mediaworlds’ (2008–10), in which young people aged 14–15 created ‘identity boxes’ to explore the place of media in their lives. The article demonstrates that many young people in rural areas were disengaged with new media and highlights why, for some individuals, online inclusion increased their feelings of cultural exclusion. The article reveals that many young people in rural areas made use of new media technologies only when they saw them as having a practical value relevant to their lives. The article further demonstrates the use of a creative visual method as a process which elicits reflective comments about a taken-for-granted world, and contributes empirically to knowledge about young people’s uses of new media within their everyday lives.
TL;DR: The authors explored the ways that social class is being made and remade on the platforms of brands and found that consumers draw on the brands and the cultural frames they afford as a means to co-construct notions of class and perform distinction.
Abstract: This article draws on a dynamic, cultural approach to class, as well as recent theoretical developments within the sociology of brands, to explore some of the ways that social class is being made and remade on the platforms of brands. It focuses on the three most prominent coffeehouse brands in Canada, and draws on substantial qualitative data from a study conducted in the city of Winnipeg. Examining the brands, it shows how they offer consumers distinctive, themed experiences such as ‘cosmopolitan connoisseurship’ that shape meanings and practices of coffee consumption. Using material from interviews with consumers and employees of the brands, it illustrates how consumers draw on the brands and the cultural frames they afford as a means to co-construct notions of class and perform distinction. This occurs in a complex brand–consumer dynamic in which class antagonisms are expressed and boundaries co-produced in the specific arena of coffee consumption.
TL;DR: The Eurovision Song Contest has provided a venue where participating nations from the former Soviet bloc, whose relation to Europeanness may be tenuous, strive to perform claims to belonging as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The annual Eurovision Song Contest has provided a venue where participating nations from the former Soviet bloc, whose relation to Europeanness may be tenuous, strive to perform claims to belonging...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the contested urban modernity of Beirut through an investigation of the new moral leisure sector that has spread across the southern suburb, and argue for a more complex understanding of urban modernness that encompasses spaces of the city where the features that produce urban modernities are multiple and contested.
Abstract: The urban scholarship on Beirut often focuses either on the reconstruction of its downtown area controlled by the private real estate company Solidere, or on its poor southern suburbs (Dahiya) dominated by the Shi‵i Islamic political party, Hizbullah. Downtown is strongly associated with an urban ‘modern’ model that generates pride for Lebanese, while Dahiya is defamed as a less modern urban space, unworthy of consideration as part of Beirut’s urban modernity. This article explores the contested urban modernity of Beirut through an investigation of the new moral leisure sector that has spread across the southern suburb. It challenges the simplistic distinction and valuation of urban spaces in Beirut, and argues for a more complex understanding of urban modernity that encompasses spaces of the city where the features that produce urban modernity are multiple and contested.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the role that culture work plays in families' quest for full and good citizenship, by drawing on fieldwork among Flemish-Ethiopian adoptive families in a range of different settings.
Abstract: Although there has been growing academic interest in the tendency among transnational adoptive parents in the West to incorporate aspects of the child’s so-called ‘birth culture’ into their lives, much less attention is paid to the role that this culture work plays in families’ quest for full and good citizenship. By drawing on fieldwork among Flemish-Ethiopian adoptive families in a range of different settings, this article frames this practice as conscious and political citizenship work. Although the parenting work can open up possibilities to provide a more dynamic view on identity and citizenship, essentialist views on culture and the tendency to downplay racism and global inequalities create considerable constraints.
TL;DR: Huang et al. as discussed by the authors proposed to read Shanghai's Pudong financial district as a shanzhai version of the global city, meaning the culture of Chinese pirated, "fake" products.
Abstract: Shanghai’s Pudong financial district is known for its spectacular skyline, which Michelle Huang has referred to as ‘a copy of a global city’ – a reading that this article pushes further. What does this ‘copy of a global city’ tell us about the intricate relationships between globalisation, capitalism and urbanity? Whereas Koolhaas proposed the notion of the ‘generic city’ to grasp the future Asian city, this article argues that his reading reifies the conservative premise that globalisation equals homogenisation. Although Abbas’ concept of the ‘fake’ comes closer to what we see emerging in Asia, it simultaneously reifies the problematic idea of an authentic original. Instead, the article proposes reading Pudong as a shanzhai version of the global city: meaning the culture of Chinese pirated, ‘fake’ products. By linking the notion of shanzhai to that of the global city, it aims to recuperate the locality, fluidity and peculiarity of the global city.
TL;DR: This article used 21 in-depth interviews with viewers of the British soap opera EastEnders to investigate the extent to which it can be described, in particular through its handling of social issue.
Abstract: This article uses 21 in-depth interviews with viewers of the British soap opera EastEnders to investigate the extent to which it can be described, in particular through its handling of social issue...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze two telenovelas produced in Spain, La Senora (The Lady) and Amar en tiempos revueltos (Loving in Troubled Times), which represent the adaptation of the genre to the cultural characteristics of its target audience.
Abstract: This study focuses on certain aspects of the socialising function exerted by the medium of television. More specifically, it examines in detail some of the televisual strategies used by Spanish public television to reinforce the idea of Spain as ‘state’ and ‘nation’. To achieve this, the study analyses two telenovelas produced in Spain, La Senora (The Lady) and Amar en tiempos revueltos (Loving in Troubled Times), which represent the adaptation of the genre to the cultural characteristics of its target audience. Although both series adhere to the principal rules of this melodramatic formula, they propose, in a similar way, an exercise of interpreting the country’s recent history. They explain and interpret the past of this society, thus justifying the collective present day. The analysis of both texts allows us to identify some of the semantic keys used today by the television media to evoke and legitimate the idea of the Spanish nation.
TL;DR: The results indicate that shame or regulation of the body’s orifices and waste do not constitute a frame for promoting hygiene products: cleaning one's body for hygienic purposes is covert, and adverts reflect a hedonistic cult of the self.
Abstract: Despite recent burgeoning interest in the body as a culturally constructed project, little research attention is paid to bodily excretions (sweat, urine, faeces, menstrual blood, saliva, mucus, ski...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on Babel, a Spanish public broadcasting production partially funded by the EU, which aims to promote intercultural dialogue through exposing viewers to different aspects of immigrants' lives in Spain, while explicitly endorsing multiculturalism and developing a pro-immigration stance, Babel's stories also promote a restricted and restricting image of desirable immigrants.
Abstract: This article reflects on the symbolic and material bases of multiculturalist ideology as it manifests itself in particular cultural practices taking place across the European Union (EU). To explore some of these dynamics, I focus my discussion on Babel, a Spanish public broadcasting production partially funded by the EU, which aims to promote intercultural dialogue through exposing viewers to different aspects of immigrants’ lives in Spain. The analysis highlights how, while explicitly endorsing multiculturalism and developing a pro-immigration stance, Babel’s stories also promote a restricted and restricting image of desirable immigrants. Thus, the show’s resignification efforts rely mostly on an implicit but systematic association between cultural similarity and economic productivity in its representations of acceptable immigrants. The article’s conclusion argues for the need to re-theorise the co-constitutive relationship between ‘cultural’ and ‘economic’ aspects of multiculturalist practices at large, as well as the specific shapes that they take in Western European societies.