{"title":"Cultural studies in South Africa, or not","authors":"Nicky Falkof","doi":"10.1177/13678779221131346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221131346","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution to the International Journal of Cultural Studies' ongoing series ponders cultural studies’ relative failure to retain a presence in South African academia today, suggesting that local and historical mis/uses of the notion of culture may have some impact on how it has been received in this particular context.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"16 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49291754","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":"‘No room for hate in our country’: Constructing the LGBTI-friendly nation in news discourses after the murder of a gay man in Belgium","authors":"Emma Verhoeven, A. Dhoest, Steve Paulussen","doi":"10.1177/13678779221131080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221131080","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses othering discourses in the news media coverage of an alleged homophobic murder in Belgium. The case study is based on a critical discourse analysis of news articles published in Dutch-speaking Belgian news media. Using the framework of homonationalism, this analysis finds that Belgium's LGBTI-friendly status is deeply anchored in the national identity. Discourses in mainstream news media following the murder appeal to a unified imagined community of Belgians based on the assumed shared value of tolerance. This LGBTI-friendly status spills over in the exclusionary discourse in right-wing alternative media towards groups that are represented as a homophobic threat outside the nation (Central and Eastern Europe) and within it (Muslims and migrants).","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"69 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42493716","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":"Filipino migrants in Germany and their diasporic (irony) chronotopes in Facebook","authors":"Audris Umel","doi":"10.1177/13678779221126538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221126538","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores Facebook's role in how Filipino migrants negotiate their diasporic chronotopes, that is, spatio-temporal constructions of their past/homeland and present/hostland. Specifically, focus group and digital ethnographic data with Filipino migrants in Germany are analysed using ethnography and discursive psychology approaches. Findings illustrate how Facebook enables Filipinos to re-enact and challenge past/homeland practices, which in turn help create a more meaningful present/hostland life. Facebook further facilitates the capture of conflicting yet socially consequential chronotopes – or irony chronotopes – that traverse and impact both offline and online dimensions of diaspora relations. Capturing such spatio-temporal interplays in migrant realities through social media provides a nuanced and dialogical view into migrants’ lifeworlds, looks beyond the communication role that social media play therein, and contributes to the digital media and temporal turns in diaspora studies.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"768 - 784"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44005919","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":"Culture is transnational","authors":"Łukasz Szulc","doi":"10.1177/13678779221131349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221131349","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I ask that culture be properly recognized as transnational, with all the implications of transnationalism, including cultural mobility as well as cultural imperialism and colonial legacies. I first establish that we all have culture and that the culture we all have is always already transnational. In particular, I call for the contextual specificity of the dominant culture to be acknowledged and scrutinized, as well as for all cultures to be thought of as provisional assemblages of multiple and entangled scales that co-create each other. I then offer some methodological, ethical, and political propositions to advance a truly transnational cultural studies, including radically contextualizing culture, employing comparative research, and de-westernizing academia. In conclusion, I ask for a radical mainstreaming of transnationalism in cultural studies; a universal recognition of culture as transnational and a universal engagement with a transnational sense of place in the studies of culture.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"3 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47780539","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":"Reading oil (back) into media history: The case of postwar television","authors":"Kyle Conway","doi":"10.1177/13678779221129295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221129295","url":null,"abstract":"This article extends recent research about the material impact of energy-consuming media technologies by describing the role of oil and its derivatives in the production and consumption of television in the United States after the Second World War. It starts by exploring reasons why the material dimensions of oil have received limited scholarly attention in media history. Then it examines television by describing how the component parts of a TV receiver—the cathode ray tube, the chassis into which it was set, and the cabinet housing the chassis—incorporated elements made with oil. Finally, interpreting prior historiography through the lens of oil, it describes the role these different components played in conflicting discourses about the space of the home, especially the living room, in postwar America.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"410 - 426"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47740683","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":"Non-digital fan networking: How Japanese animation and comics disseminated in China despite authoritarian deterrence","authors":"M. Chew","doi":"10.1177/13678779221125241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221125241","url":null,"abstract":"This study has three research objectives. Its major theoretical objective is to theorize the political impact of fan networks in authoritarian contexts. It finds that these fan networks perform the counterhegemonic work of blocking the authoritarian state's preferred solution to ‘the dictator's popular cultural dilemma’. Its major empirical objective is to understand how anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) disseminated so successfully in China despite authoritarian deterrence. It offers an explanation based on fan networking and fan network resilience. Its secondary theoretical objective is to enrich the research on non-digital kinds of fan networks. Its dataset mainly consists of anime and manga publications and other primary sources such as fans’ memoirs and reports.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"34 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48583793","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":"‘Welcome to a Coronavirus production’: Beyond Bows and Arrows’ Indigenous on-air community-building during lockdown","authors":"Katie Moylan","doi":"10.1177/13678779221123079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221123079","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines intertribal community-building in Indigenous-produced radio show Beyond Bows and Arrows, broadcast since 1983 in Dallas, Texas, and explores ways in which on-air Indigenous articulations function as acts of resurgence in turn reinforcing an Indigenous internationalism. In this critical exploration, I draw on Beyond Bows and Arrows (BBAA) content broadcast between April and June 2020. I analyse components of the radio sound text such as in-studio talk; discussion topics; music selection and verbal segues; and station-produced informational Public Service Announcements (PSAs); and identify recurring preoccupations over three months of weekly programming during the pandemic's first lockdown. In particular, I consider BBAA's foregrounding of pandemic protocols, calls for Census 2020 participation and Black Lives Matter solidarity at the start of the unsettled yet generative 2020 summer and examine how these articulations coalesce into an on-air structure of feeling which in turn embodies the show's ongoing decolonizing project.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"52 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48856376","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":"Uneasy self-promotion and tactics of patience: Finnish MPs’ ambivalent feelings about personalised politics on social media","authors":"Mona Mannevuo","doi":"10.1177/13678779221120028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221120028","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Finnish politicians’ ambivalent attachments to social media – specifically Facebook and Twitter – in candidate-centred, personalised politics. The analysis draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with members of parliament (MPs) to investigate the tactics of adaptation and adjustment politicians develop in a work setting that precludes digital detox. To investigate the MPs’ contradictory feelings, the analysis builds on cultural and media theory to contextualise the porous border between the personal and the political that exists on social media. The analysis revolves around four interconnected themes: uneasiness of self-promotion, Facebook’s ordinariness, Twitter as a necessary evil, and tactics of patience MPs utilise when they encounter various forms of online harassment. The article suggests that in parliamentary research, social media should be considered an ambivalent social glue that holds things together rather than merely a platform for self-promotion.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"104 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41755364","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":"Curating new ethnicities in a digital era: Women and media work in the British South Asian diaspora","authors":"Aswin Punathambekar, J. Giese, Diwas Bisht","doi":"10.1177/13678779221120435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221120435","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the unfolding impact of social media platforms on the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender in the UK. Revisiting Stuart Hall's foundational work on ‘new ethnicities’ and building on recent critiques of anti-racist struggles premised on mainstream media visibility and recognition, we explore how British South Asian women are navigating opportunities opened up by the digitalization of media industries. First, we examine how an interlocking set of shifts involving social media, techniques of self-making, and media industry logics has sparked the curation of ethnicities that challenge dominant ideas of Britishness and cultural citizenship. We then show that their success hinges on performing two forms of labour: crafting brand-ready representations that satisfy the media industries’ diversity mandates and, at the same time, subsuming their religious and ethnic identities into a picture of entrepreneurial womanhood that resonates with the logics of popular feminism.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"616 - 634"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43463714","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 sad clown paradox: A theory of comic transcendence","authors":"Daniel R Smith","doi":"10.1177/13678779221117176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779221117176","url":null,"abstract":"One prevailing cultural sensibility of our time is a concern with the state of our mental health, another is our obligation and desire for a good ‘sense of humour’. At present the two are conflated, most often through a long-standing cultural trope: the sad clown paradox – those who make us laugh the most tend to be the most prone to mental health problems. This article views the ‘sad clown paradox’ as less about the peculiarity or exceptional status of a comedian's mind, more about how the cognitive burdens of modernity are rendered bearable and collectively recognised in thought and sentiment by humour. Accounts of comedy and mental health conflate good comedy with mental anguish. By unpacking this knotted relationship, it is argued that comedian's humour performs a way for contemporary people to deal with modernity's fragmentary character of life from within their own inner worlds and selves.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"87 - 103"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49246352","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}