{"title":"Healthcare (im)mobilities and the Covid-19 pandemic: Notes on returning to the field","authors":"Luca Follis, Karolina S. Follis, Nicola Burns","doi":"10.1177/13678779231173707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231173707","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes a mobilities-informed approach to social science research on healthcare and migration. It engages with evidence gathered during the Covid-19 pandemic that suggests that when confronted with a public health emergency, health systems can be responsive to the needs of mobile populations. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, health resources shifted routine services online, spurring an acceleration of telemedicine. The roll-out of these practices intersected with the phenomenon of digital exclusion, making healthcare partly or completely out of reach for those who could not connect. We argue that these efforts could have been more successful if they grew out of a recognition of healthcare's ‘sedentary bias’. National health systems are configured to serve settled populations. They are not designed for people on the move, with uncertain residential and immigration status. Yet this bias can be alleviated when health interventions are rethought from the point of view of the mobile patient.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42647023","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":"Bollywood celebrities as bioconsumers of reproductive technologies in neoliberal fertility markets: A study of popular public discourse","authors":"Isha Malhotra, Eva Sharma, R. Thakur","doi":"10.1177/13678779231174243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231174243","url":null,"abstract":"The article makes a biopolitical study of commercial surrogacy in India through the case studies of Bollywood celebrities prioritizing bioengineered babies through surrogacy. Drawing upon the theories of the culture industry and neoliberal subjectivity, the entanglement between the cultural economy of celebrity and the medico-industrial complex is decoded. The study attempts to focus on the existing popular public discourse using newspaper articles, tabloid press, interviews, and journal articles to investigate how Bollywood celebrities, as bioconsumers in the neoliberal surrogacy market, further genetic essentialism and neoliberal eugenics. Celebrities, as agents of new reproductive subjectivities, invite critical forays into bioeconomies of intensity, intimate life and belongings through the affective bonds of familial ties and kinship. Examining the moral economy of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in India, the study highlights the exploitative use of the reproductive labour of surrogates, who are treated as effaced entities and as collateral ‘prosthetics’ in the ART industry.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"588 - 605"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44208747","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":"Why do women write? Exploring women's empowerment through online literature creation in China","authors":"Huang Yunyi","doi":"10.1177/13678779231172214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231172214","url":null,"abstract":"As a crucial part of the booming Chinese cultural creative industries, online literature has stood out for its great economic benefit and broad social influence in recent decades. The prospering of online literature in China owes a great deal to the rise of Chinese women as writers in this huge industrial chain. This study explores the initiatives and implications of women's online literature creation in China under the framework of women's empowerment. Drawing on data collected through digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews, it mainly addresses whether online literature creation empowers Chinese women in the digital era. Overall, I conclude that online literature creation might dynamically empower women as writers at both individual and collective levels in both material and non-material forms, yet such creation is still faced with serious challenges stemming from the precarity of the platform economy, the prevalence of patriarchal values, and the rigor of nation-state censorship in contemporary China.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"550 - 566"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42773209","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":"On mediations and the environment: Material, spatial and epistemic considerations","authors":"Miyase Christensen","doi":"10.1177/13678779231170241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231170241","url":null,"abstract":"The thinking behind this special issue was to move beyond the representation of the environment in news media and large-scale popular culture, and consider other informational outlets and spaces where environmental change is mediated and communicated. While mediatization has been an influential paradigm in media and communication studies, it has not addressed issues of, for example, materiality in relation to the excavation, use, construction and discarding of communication technologies. Thus, this special issue addresses the mediation of the environment on a broadened level, taking it beyond the ways in which media content alone represents environmental issues.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"365 - 371"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47246643","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":"Performing pregnancy: Comic content, critique and ambivalence in pregnant stand-up comedy","authors":"Sharon Lockyer, Sara De Benedictis","doi":"10.1177/13678779231166444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231166444","url":null,"abstract":"Stand-up comedy has recently become a primary site where representations of pregnancy are increasingly prevalent. Yet little academic work focuses on pregnant stand-up comedians and their performances. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this article examines the cultural work of pregnant stand-up comedy. Thematic analysis of pregnant stand-up comedy by Amy Schumer, Ellie Taylor and Ali Wong identifies three significant features characterising the performances: (1) Comedic Corporeality, Vulgarity and Ambiguity; (2) Breaking Silences through the ‘Unruly Expectant Mother’; and (3) Critiquing Maternity Inequality through Pregnant Stand-Up? We examine how pregnant stand-up comedy interacts with and disrupts dominant cultural pregnancy representations, illustrating how pregnancy functions simultaneously as comic content and critique in the performances. Such comic content and critique are characterised by complexity as ambivalence is central to pregnant stand-up comedy. We argue it is precisely such ambivalence that provides productive means to understand the cultural and theoretical significances of pregnant stand-up comedy.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"343 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47149506","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":"More than just the regional promotion in Japan: The case of Chita Musume","authors":"Yasuhito Abe","doi":"10.1177/13678779231160568","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231160568","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates a Japanese transmedia regional promotion project known as Chita Musume Jikkō Iinkai (or the Executive Committee of Daughters of Chita); it critically discusses how the elusive concept of moe was deployed to facilitate and promote regional tourism. Drawing on the male gaze as a theoretical framework, this study uses Rose's discourse analysis I to investigate a wide variety of texts and documents related to the project. In doing so, it demonstrates that this regional promotion practice does not merely contribute to reinforcing its audience as heteronormative masculine subjects, but also redesigns its region as a gazed-upon dating spot.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"326 - 342"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46985799","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":"A history of New Year’s Eve, Sydney: From ‘the crowd’ to ‘crowded places’","authors":"B. Dibley","doi":"10.1177/13678779231164430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231164430","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a history of Sydney's New Year's Eve event. First established when a crowd gathered outside Sydney's General Post Office in 1897 to celebrate the inauguration of International Standard Time, in more recent years it has evolved into a signature event on the city's calendar, drawing in excess of 1 million people into the Central Business District in a spectacular celebration of the global city. For those authorities charged with managing the event an enduring problem concerns the question of security: how is the aggregate of human bodies that gather to be governed in ways that secure it from the risks it presents: be they risks to public order (riot), to the crowd itself (panic), or external to it (terror attack) or to the population (viral spread)? This article maps how crowds have been thought as objects of government in relation to the New Year’s Eve event.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"310 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42995545","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":"‘I cringe at the slave portions’: How fans of Gone with the Wind negotiate anti-racist criticism","authors":"Marcel van den Haak, L. Plate, Selina Bick","doi":"10.1177/13678779231163605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231163605","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years an increasing number of cultural products have come under fire for moral or political reasons, such as racist or sexist content, in the mainstream (White) public sphere. An outstanding example is the classic 1939 film Gone with the Wind (GWTW), which is loved by many but also strongly criticised for glorifying the American Antebellum South and ignoring the inhumanity of slavery. This case study explores how fans of the film (and the novel on which it was based) negotiate their appreciation of GWTW and these controversial issues. Using an open-ended survey and follow-up interviews, we explore two dominant narratives among the film's predominantly White fans: one that fiercely defends the film against criticism and one that expresses increased feelings of ambivalence and awkwardness. Thus, we add a more self-reflective and dynamic approach to scholarship on cultural taste, audience reception, and fan studies.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"257 - 273"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46908413","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":"Exploring everyday resilience in the creative industries through devised theatre: A case of performing arts students and recent graduates in Ghana","authors":"Rashida Resario, Robin Steedman, Thilde Langevang","doi":"10.1177/13678779231163606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231163606","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of resilience has become widely used to account for how people respond both to acute crisis and, increasingly, to protracted precarity. Yet, cultural studies theorists have also vigorously critiqued resilience discourse as a tool of neoliberal governmentality. In this article, we turn from the discourse of resilience to the practice of resilience. We argue, through a case of theatre students and recent graduates in Ghana, that the practice of resilience can be both individual and collective. Moreover, we show that resilience practices involve the exercise of agency at various scales through the specific practices of coping, reworking, and resisting. Finally, we show the merits of using artistic research methods, such as devised theatre, to unveil the complex ways that creatives practice resilience in the everyday.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"237 - 256"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46563882","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":"Apps, mobilities, and migration in the Covid-19 pandemic: Covid technology and the control of migrant workers in Singapore","authors":"G. Goggin, K. Zhuang","doi":"10.1177/13678779231160802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231160802","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we discuss the entanglement of apps, mobilities, and migration – and the way that apps work as migrant infrastructure in a Covid context. We develop our analysis through a case study of Singapore's response to the pandemic during 2020–22, centred on the control of migrant workers through the use of Covid apps. We argue that Covid apps enact ‘managed inequality’ in blatant as well as subtle ways for migrants and the societies in which they live and belong.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41526344","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}