{"title":"Art rocks: Atmospheres of connection and everyday creativity in hybrid public space","authors":"Caroline Wilson-Barnao, N. Collie","doi":"10.1177/13678779231219016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231219016","url":null,"abstract":"Using the analysis of online activity, autoethnographic reflection, and a participant survey, this article examines Australian rock-decorating groups on Facebook and the role of social media in everyday practices of decorating, hiding, and finding rocks. These groups use the platform to celebrate and share their creativity, generate digital connections between strangers, and in so doing bring about a distinctive hybrid of online and offline space. We draw on a cultural studies approach to issues of placemaking and social media to ask: what kinds of public space – online and offline – are created through these digital and material practices? Our analysis is framed by notions of placemaking, affordances, and public atmosphere to understand these forms of everyday creativity, community, and place.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"1 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139441430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Global visions for a metaverse","authors":"Katerina Girginova","doi":"10.1177/13678779231224799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231224799","url":null,"abstract":"There is a growing effort to locate metaverse developments within the purview of platform research. However, the majority of English-language studies take Horizon Worlds, Meta's US-centric prototype of a metaverse, as the starting point. This critical reflection argues that since the fate of the metaverse is far from settled, and its building blocks exist in a colorful array of global visions, we need to divorce discourses of the metaverse from Meta's hype cycle and multiply our frames of reference by engaging with international developments. In turn, this article proceeds by scoping out metaverse visions emanating from different parts of the world and drawing out common themes as entry points for future research. This article contributes to a re-orientation of metaverse studies toward critical and embodied global perspectives of socio-cultural production, while simultaneously reconsidering the very notion of the metaverse as a platform.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"17 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139443982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ambivalence of informality: Covid-19 and unmasked precarity in Nollywood","authors":"G. Simon","doi":"10.1177/13678779231222029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231222029","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood) and the local responses of filmmakers to the precariousness engendered by the pandemic. This research adopts the critical media industry studies framework and relies on interviews with 30 Nollywood filmmakers who provided insights on the impact of the pandemic on labour in Nollywood. Theorizing the Covid-19 dynamics as reflective of the ambivalence of informality, this article submits that although informality was central to Nollywood's industrial structure and sustainability, the pandemic triggered unprecedented tensions associated with those informal practices and highlighted existing precarity which had been largely masked by constant availability of jobs. Accordingly, a significant legacy of the pandemic for the industry is the unprecedented gravitation of industry players towards more formalized industrial structures and practices.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"88 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139388162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Death to Chad and Stacy: Incels and anti-fandom as group identity","authors":"Matthew L. Meier, Kellen Sharp","doi":"10.1177/13678779231220056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231220056","url":null,"abstract":"Anti-fan research has traditionally focused on audiences' engaged dislike as media consumers more than as media producers, often ignoring their capacity to inflict harm. Building from this while drawing empirical support from incels, the manosphere's most violent faction, this article reconceptualizes the anti-fandom as a networked community organized around textual productions of hate or dislike. We explicate this first at the level of the text, comparing centrifugal anti-fandoms, which grow outward from an originating text, to centripetal anti-fandoms, which engage a variety of texts pulled into an organized, self-perpetuating structure. We then consider anti-fandom as performing both as and for an audience: although situated within the manosphere and the online anti-public sphere, incels rely on articulations of hate, apathy, and misanthropy as a means of distinguishing themselves as a stable, impermeable social identity, a process that we suggest potentially contributes to their radicalization.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"9 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139389662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Platform capitalisms and platform cultures","authors":"Marc Steinberg, Lin Zhang, Rahul Mukherjee","doi":"10.1177/13678779231223544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231223544","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues for a pluralization of the “platform capitalism” framework, suggesting we should think instead in terms of “platform capitalisms.” This pluralization opens the way to a better account of how platforms work in different geocultural contexts, with our focus being on China, India and Japan. The article first outlines several roles the state has taken on in mediating platform capitalisms. We then signal three main axes around which to consider the implications of platform capitalisms for cultural production: state–platform symbiosis; platform precarity; and the informal–formal relation in cultural production. This short provocation, we hope, will help foreground the crucial role of the state in platform capitalisms, such that the state–culture–capitalism nexus might be better acknowledged in research on platforms and cultural production now and into the future. This is particularly important as states themselves increasingly become platform operators.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"100 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139388072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The politics of credit in remix of Japanese popular culture: Between “an 80's Japanese disco floor” and “this remix is worthy of the actual game”","authors":"Mark Kretzschmar, Mel Stanfill","doi":"10.1177/13678779231220399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231220399","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we examine songs that reuse decades-old Japanese media, in which the Japaneseness is both important and attenuated. While there is clear desire for and pleasure in the Japaneseness of source materials in vaporwave (electronic music featuring manipulated sounds and images from the 1980s and 1990s) and future funk (which commonly samples 1980s Japanese music and speeds it up), actual sources matter primarily as a signifier of Japaneseness. Conversely, game sounds (songs that sample or mimic 1990s and 2000s video game music) and chiptunes (songs made with 1980s and 1990s video game hardware) have a direct relationship with either specific video games or material hardware that highlights a direct tie to transnationally distributed culture. Overall, these ways of engaging with Japanese media have significant implications for theorizing cross-cultural exchange.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"119 46","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139387789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creative and cultural work post-Covid-19: Interruptions as space of political re-futuring","authors":"Tam Dent, Jessica Tanghetti, Roberta Comunian","doi":"10.1177/13678779231217295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231217295","url":null,"abstract":"What sparks collective acts of resistance to workplace inequality? This article considers the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic as an interruption to established practices of creative work, one that creates the opportunity for politicised subjectivities to develop. It is based on a qualitative investigation of cultural and creative workers located in the Italian city Milan conducted in the aftermath of the first C-19 lockdown. Observations of an emerging sense of consciousness, a recognition of precarious working conditions associated with creative labour by those who operate within the sector, combined with the necessary resource of time created the conditions for collective action. Building on previous literature that considers the disruptive effects of interruptions, from either large-scale physical disaster or significant change to an individual's personal identity, the article explores the generative outcomes that can emerge from an interruption, one which creates opportunities for re-imagination and political re-futuring.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"113 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138959225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Four concepts to think from the South","authors":"Laura Guimarães Corrêa","doi":"10.1177/13678779231218395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231218395","url":null,"abstract":"This is a continuation of the first text I wrote for the ‘What Is Cultural Studies?’ series, defending the importance of theories and voices from the margins, from the oppressed. Now, I introduce four concepts created or adapted by intellectuals who – because of their displacement, double vision or contextual disadvantage – can propose theoretical tools and lenses to look at the world, useful for understanding social and cultural dynamics, both locally and globally. I argue that the intellectual production from the global South is deeply entangled with the global North, be it because we adopted (or were forced to use) Western knowledge bases, be it because the unequal and strong relation between the regions enabled the material and symbolic exploitation of some and the wealth of others. The concepts of Améfrica Ladina, double bind/knot, pact of whiteness and impedance are key to reflect upon otherness, communication, media, and cultural studies.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":" 18","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138962303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cultures of reading: Then and now","authors":"Wen Jin","doi":"10.1177/13678779231218396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231218396","url":null,"abstract":"The political implications of reading practices have been a key concern in cultural studies since its beginning. Studying the process of reading, in various media and generic contexts, is crucial to understanding how cultural forces are coded in everyday experiences and to intervening effectively in these forces. I argue that studies of reading benefit significantly from the combination of sociological and phenomenological approaches. This mixed approach was visible from the earliest stages of cultural studies, but became a conscious development in recent work. Interdisciplinary attention to reading not only contributes to the methodological syncretism inherent in cultural studies, but is also a matter of political urgency. Many people around the world, including those in contemporary China, are confronted with affective challenges that cannot be tackled without intimate knowledge of how people are affected by reading.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"25 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139175422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digital labor in the state-led/capitalist complex: State labor and playful workaholics in the Chinese digital space","authors":"Qingyue Sun","doi":"10.1177/13678779231217300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231217300","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary Chinese digital creative industries are no longer a realm of self-entrepreneurship, with multi-channel networks (MCNs) playing a significant role in shaping the digital labor market. This study focuses on the multifaceted Chinese digital labor regimes characterized by capitalism, national agendas, and state regulation. Through a qualitative analysis of 203 recruitment advertisements of major MCNs and 17 interviews of digital laborers, the findings reveal that the digital labor of MCNs operates in a state-led/capitalist complex. Beyond the risks of the capitalist industries, MCNs’ recruitment logic and management align with the state's agenda of economic development. Whether intentionally or not, the digital labor of MCNs has been swept into China's entrepreneurial solutionism, evolving into a form of state labor that integrates creative power and individual entrepreneurship into national building.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"60 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138594963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}