Cultural Studies
Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.
Encountering the Plague
This edited collection features fourteen newly commissioned articles each of which responds to the theme of plague from different disciplinary perspectives. Contributors focus on the impact of COVID-19 on everyday life but also draw on insights from different historical experiences of plague as a way of exploring human responses to epidemics past and present.
Each chapter opens with a different illustration that serves as a source for subsequent discussion enabling readers to make connections between everyday objects experiences and broader critical debates about plague and its impact on humanity. Thought-provoking commentaries stem from a variety of humanities disciplines including archaeology electronic literature history linguistics media and cultural studies and musicology and the book is divided into four sections: Rituals and RitesRites and Behaviours; Plague in History; Covid-19 - texts and discourse; Creative Responses to Plague.
As a collection Encountering the Plague explores ways in which humanities research can play a meaningful role in key social and political debatesand provides compelling examples of how the past can inform our understanding of the present.
Outback
Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social political and cultural contexts of their production including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.
The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian cinema of the 21st century; the other piece was the review of a book entitled Film and the Historian for the online journal Inside Story . Between the two he saw the interesting prospect of a book-length study of the role of the western genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural history over the last century – and the ways in which film can without didacticism provide evidence of such change. Key matters include the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.
When one considers that the longest narrative film then seen in Australia and quite possibly the world was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) it is clear that Australia has some serious history in the genre and Kelly has ridden again in Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.
Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic Film, 1968-2021
Dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies from 1968 to 2021 usually conclude with optimism with a window into what is possible in the face of social dysfunction - and worse. The infrastructure that peeks through at the edges of the frame surfaces some of the concrete ways in which dystopian and post-apocalyptic survivors have made do with their damaged and destroyed worlds.
If the happy endings so common to mass-audience films do not provide an all-encompassing vision of a better world the presence of infrastructure whether old or retrofitted or new offers a starting point for the continued work of building toward the future.
Film imaginings energy transportation water waste and their combination in the food system reveal what might be essential infrastructure on which to build the new post-dystopian and post-apocalyptic communities. We can look to dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies for a sense of where we might begin.
Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa
This collection explores the dynamic place of Muslim visual and expressive culture in processes of decolonization across the African continent. Presenting new methodologies for accentuating African agency and expression in the stories we tell about Islamic art it likewise contributes to recent widespread efforts to “decolonize” the art historical canon.
The contributors to this volume explore the dynamic place of Islamic art architecture and creative expression in processes of decolonization across the African continent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing together new work by leading specialists in the fields of African Islamic and modern arts and visual cultures the book directs unprecedented attention to the agency and contributions of African and Muslim artists in articulating modernities in local and international arenas. Interdisciplinary and transregional in scope it enriches the under-told story of Muslim experiences and expression on the African continent home to nearly half a million Muslims or a third of the global Muslim population.
Furthermore it elucidates the role of Islam and its expressive cultures in post-colonial articulations of modern identities and heritage as expressed by a diverse range of actors and communities based in Africa and its diaspora; as such the book counters notions of Islam as a retrograde or static societal phenomenon in Africa or elsewhere. Contributors propose new methodologies for accentuating human agency and experience over superficial disciplinary boundaries in the stories we tell about art-making and visual expression thus contributing to widespread efforts to decolonize scholarship on histories of modern expression.
Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa
Presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa region from queer artists as well as scholars who work on queer themes. With contributions from both scholars and artists this volume demonstrates that queer visual culture in the SWANA region is not only extant but is also entering an era of exciting growth in terms of its versatility and consciousness. The volume focuses on artworks produced in the contemporary era while recognizing historical and contextual connections to Islamic art and culture within
localities and regions from the pre-modern and modern eras.
By framing this volume as unambiguously located within queer studies the editors challenge existing literature that merely includes some examples of queer studies or queer representation but does not necessarily use queer studies as a lens through which to engage with visual culture and/or with the SWANA region. Through four interrelated sections - Gender and Normativity Trans* Articulations Intersectional Sexuality and Queer SWANA - this volume probes several previously unexplored academic areas namely the intersections of queer studies with other fields.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series.
Gender, Race and Religion in Video Game Music
This book provides semiotically-focused analyses and interpretations of video game music focusing specifically on musical representation of three demographic diversity traits. Adopting a narratologist orientation to supplement existing ludological scholarship these analyses apply music semiotics to crucial modern-day issues such as representation of gender race and religion in video games.
An original and welcome contribution to the field it considers musical meaning in relation to the aspects of gender race and religion. This book will help readers to develop language and context in which to consider video game music in terms of society and representation and will encourage future research in these critical areas.
Yee analyses music's contributions to video games' narrative and thematic meanings specifically concerning three master categories of identity – gender race and religion. Containing twenty-five detailed analytical case studies of musical representation in video game music it sets out theoretical and conceptual frameworks beneficial for interpreting musical meaning from video game soundtracks. Though players and commentators may be tempted to view a game's soundtrack as mere 'background music' this research demonstrates video game music's social relevance as a major factor impacting players' cultural attitudes values and beliefs.
Part I explores immersion interactivity and interpretation in video game music proposing a theory of 'interpretative interactivity' to account for players' semiotic agency in dialogue with their ludic agency. Part II explores gender representation in a trajectory from conventional gender construction alternative femininities/masculinities and potential for non-binary representational possibilities. Part III explores musical representation of nationality culture and race proposing the concept of 'racialised fantasy' and applying frameworks from race scholarship to connect media representations of race to real world racial justice movements. Part IV examines religion introducing the concept of 'sonic iconography' to connect theological
meanings to the use of sacred music in video game music.
The Physical and the Digital City
The Physical and the Digital City is a unique collection of projects where researchers and designers show how the theories of technology underpinning the digital urban environment are applied in practical and spatial terms. The authors are experts in their respective fields who pursue cutting edge solutions for city-making and consider the theoretical premise critically. It is designed to be a self-contained and interdisciplinary reference text to introduce students designers and scholars to the idea of physical/digital and its urban application.
The book will help students and designers to develop a clear understanding of the physical and digital principles underpinning urban assemblages and a solid set of references to start working within this topic with confidence. Of interest to all students and scholars interested in urban studies (geography planning urban design social sciences and humanities) and human-computer interaction (media studies computer science social sciences cognitive sciences anthropology and psychology). The book will clarify the role of digital technologies within the city along with its possible implications for people and communities.
It is oriented to the academic and professional communities interested in architectural urban and digital design from different angles. This includes those interested in computational architecture for example eCAADe Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe ACADIA Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture CAADRIA Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia SIGraDi Sociedad Iberoamericana de Grafica Digital CAAD Futures Foundation as well as those interested in the human-computer interaction.
Ulrike Ottinger
The first English language scholarly collection of articles on the leading Berlin based German artist and film-maker Ulrike Ottinger. The articles engage with the full range of the works from the early Berlin feature films of the 1970s and .'80s to the ethnographic documentaries also including the art exhibitions photography shows installations and artist books. The book brings together feminist film theorists with art historians and cultural theorists each with a distinctive and detailed perspective on the queer fabulist genres of Ottinger now in her 80s.
Contemporary Absurdities, Existential Crises, and Visual Art
Some have called this an age of absurdity and as such Contemporary Absurdities Existential Crises and Visual Art presents the contributions of artists theorists and scholars whose words and works investigate the absurd as a condition of a tactic for and a subject in the contemporary.
The absurd is a lens on the disturbances of our moment and a challenge to the propositions about and solutions for the world. The absurd shakes off the paralysis that what we know must be the only thing we (re)produce. Those willing to recognize that and confront it rather than flee from it are thereby introduced to the political writ large.
This edited collection adopts ideas and practices associated with the absurd to explain how the contemporary moment is absurd and how absurdity is a useful potentially radical tool within the contemporary.
Critical art allows the absurd a space within which audiences can observe their own tendencies and assumptions. The absurd in art reveals our inculcation into hegemonic belief structures and the necessity to question the systems to which we subscribe. Today we see the absurd in memes performative politics and art expressing the
confusion and disorientation wrought by the endless emerging crises of our 24/7 relations.
Performing with the Dead
Proposes a methodology for incorporating concepts drawn from ancestor trance in Afrolatinx ritual for actors trained in Western methods. Danowski created four new works of theatrical performance writing the play texts and incorporating acting exercises from Afrolatinx rituals adapted for non–practitioners. Working toward a phenomenological understanding of what is happening when a performer incorporates a character drawing on the ritual knowledge of trance possession in Lukumí and Palo Monte to examine how ontologies might speak to each other.
Constructing a methodology called kanga (from the Bantu for tying and untying) using three methods based on aspects of Afrolatinx ritual and modified for performance contexts: spell charm and trance. This methodology enacts and complicates distinctions between performance and ritual serving as a contribution to respectful and responsible intercultural performance practices.
The methodology is bricoleur drawing from ethnography psychoanalytic theory and phenomenology. Kanga in practice leads to a state of consciousness that Danowski calls hauntological. This borrows from Derrida but is redefined to refer to the study of haunted states of consciousness where reality is co–constituted by the living and the dead where ancestral spirits are invoked to do the work once reserved for characters.
Corporate social responsibility bridges in the context of tourism service providers
This research focuses on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of tourism service providers (TSPs – tour operators travel agencies tourism transportation agencies among others). We analyse TSP’s collaborative efforts through CSR practices and their social economic and environmental dimensions. Building on a qualitative framework we conducted structured personal interviews with fifteen representatives of Jordanian TSPs. Several contributions are worth mentioning: the analysis allows for a broader understanding of CSR practices adopted by TSPs to serve as mutual support bridges between TSPs and stakeholders in the hospitality and tourism industry; CSR practices benefits and barriers faced by TSPs; gender gap emerging from TSPs employment policies and intersectionality; TSPs and job and tourist opportunities for people with special needs; CSR practices sustainability and community welfare among others. This empirical article offers insights from Jordan’s small tourism businesses a case previously not analysed. Limitations and implications for decision-makers are also discussed.
How Brexit changed migration: French citizens in London from ‘EU movers’ to ‘migrants’
For the French in London as for other citizens of the European Union the Brexit process resulted in the end of free movement for EU citizens relocating to the United Kingdom and affected the rights of those already living there. This article traces how Brexit shaped the spatial choices of middle-class French citizens whose status in London changed as they became international migrants with diminished rights in the United Kingdom. This case study based on longitudinal ethnographic research between 2014 and 2022 sheds light on how relative privilege operates in migration processes and draws attention to the diversity of experience among middle-class migrants when new bordering arrangements are enacted.
The end of migration (studies): Contemplating labour deployment in Indonesia’s development planning, and getting on with migration research
In this article I combine my observation of Indonesia’s desire to end labour outmigration with scholarly reflections on the end of migration studies. Challenging the orthodoxy that takes for granted sending countries’ support of migration as presumed in current optimism of the migration-development paradigm I trace Indonesia’s successive development plans to demonstrate the treatment of migration as a less-preferred option for job creation exploring how postcolonial trajectories entail the desire to keep development in situ and lead to persisting view of migration as deeply undesirable. The recent shift to governance works as a way to both discipline workers through required documentation and to allow the government to eschew accountability by advancing a discourse on protection. As the state sets out a future anticipation where those defined as unskilled no longer migrate a question arises as to how we build a meaningful scholarship around migration as a non-priority and the process towards making a certain migrant category disappear? My critique of development planning turns the analytical lens back to the state which I see as a way to go on with the study of migration in a more ethical pro-migrant manner. Rejecting the trap of methodological nationalism I offer an approach that seizes of the ‘postcolonial moment’ of migration.
‘Fettered mobility’ and translocality: Irregular farm workers and the informal labour market in rural Taiwan
Investigating the multi-layered mobility of Southeast Asian irregular farm workers in rural Taiwan this article examines the formation of their mobility in a physical geographical occupational and socio-economic sense. Focusing on frequent movement in these four aspects this article coins the term ‘fettered mobility’ for workers’ constant relocation in the villages’ informal farm labour market. In tandem with the focus of this Special Issue on the ongoing transformations of migration at the crossroad between the legal social and economic obstacles dictated by nation states and the market and new patterns of movement this article shows how ‘fettered mobility’ is an unintentional result of the Taiwanese state’s mobility regime which regulates foreign nationals’ mobility by categorizing a hierarchical legal status. Fettered mobility is facilitated by the translocal migrant community constituted by the co-ethnic link between migrant workers and migrant spouse farmers and also by the inter-ethnic link between the migrant community on the one hand and Taiwanese farmers and unlicensed brokers on the other. When migration is reconfiguring at a global regional and local scale fettered mobility is an assemblage in which the state market and individual amalgamate into a networked mobile irregular and precarious labour force in which unprotected migrant workers are vulnerable to the state’s power to repatriate. Repatriation is an omnipresent threat and anyone who knows of a migrant worker’s fettered mobility can put an end to their migration. Presenting fettered mobility as an assemblage this article enriches the ongoing debate on the relationship between mobility and immobility and underlines its conditionality and instability.
‘In the middle … waiting for a future’: Time and waiting in partner visa migration and family violence in Australia
This article reports on findings regarding the experience of prolonged temporariness of migrant women on partner visas that separated after experiencing domestic or family violence (sponsored women). Four participants’ narratives were selected from a longitudinal study to understand how women rebuild their lives after violence while in an uncertain visa status. The analysis reported in this article reveals two strong experiences: Investigation and waiting times and productive waiting. The conclusion is that like with protection visa applicants and students waiting and prolonged temporariness is experienced as harmful and delaying progression and healing even when the sponsored women engaged in productive waiting. Further time and waiting also shape women’s experiences of migration and in the case of this cohort their relationship with the host country and their experience of safety and well-being.
The end of Mexico–US migration as we knew it – or back to the future?
Over the last decade scholars have declared the collapse of the Mexico–US system of undocumented migration. The H2 visa programme a regime of managed sojourning is replacing the system of unauthorized cross-border mobility. In fiscal year 2023 the US government issued nearly 370000 H2 temporary work visas to Mexicans. This temporary migrant labour programme is also bringing back circulation temporary legal stays and mostly male cross-border mobility – features that are akin to the old Bracero Program (1942–64). We contend that the restoration of these legal and sociodemographic dynamics undermines critical pillars of the system of undocumented labour mobility limiting and reorienting the role of social networks and potentially ending the way Mexico–United States has functioned for the past half century. We use ethnographic interview and survey data to analyse the expansion of this new regime of highly mediated cross-border mobility the ascent of the brokerage apparatus and its effect transforming the social infrastructure of migration. We ask specifically how does the H2 temporary migrant labour programme constrain and diminish kin and hometown-based social networks previously seen as ‘the engine of migration’? How does the shift from migrant networks to a brokerage apparatus impact trust reciprocity and the development of migratory social capital? How is the new regime changing the experience of migration – substituting risk and adventure for certainty and routinized movement? How does the H2 temporary migrant labour programme revert the locus of social reproduction of the labour force back to sending communities preempting integration at the destination? We frame the answers to these questions in the emerging migration industry and infrastructures paradigm which examines to the role of migrant and non-migrant actors in the facilitation control and overall mediation and structuring of cross-border mobility.
Authentic or fake fashion-branded items? Narratives exploring consumers’ perceptions towards copycat brands among Middle Eastern individuals
This study explores the motives behind preferring luxury fashion-branded items and consumers’ perceptions towards copycat brands. A qualitative approach has been adopted in this research as narratives were obtained from 22 participants. Participants share their thoughts on the reasons for preferring luxury fashion-branded items and the meanings they associate with copycat brands. The results and conclusion of the current study indicate that the key reason for purchasing luxury fashion-branded items is status elevation and the urge to conform to and be associated with specific social norms and classes. Therefore they tend to consume copycat brands because of their inability to purchase authentic brands and of the elevation of status and conformity associated with luxury fashion-branded items. This research also provides insights into understanding the different motivations resulting in the consumption of copycat brands. Precisely this research underlines the importance of country of consumption in reflecting positive perceptions towards copycat brands. As a result this research is the first to consider the relationship between the country of consumption and the acceptance of consuming copycat brands among individuals who are affected by status elevation motives and social norms.
The dress and commercial image of the American ‘Fat Lady’, 1850–1920
In this article I analyse the genre of ‘Fat Lady’ photographs popular between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. I assert that there is an archetypal appearance that developed in the 1860s and was standardized by the 1880s consisting of certain dress grooming and posing practices that emphasized their subjects’ sizes and presumed social status. Fatness was a performance that these women were employed to embody – one that straddled the lines between corporeal deviance and normality. Freak shows reveal cultural anxieties about bodies. The way Fat Lady performers were costumed reflected concerns about fatness taking up too much space and visibility as well as fatness rendering people immature and androgynous thereby challenging established sex-role differences; it also revealed the potential erotic allure of extreme body size. Over a century of popularity Fat Lady performers came to rely on costumes inspired by evening dress childrenswear and then lingerie all of which grew scantier as time progressed. Existing cartes de visite cabinet cards posters advertisements reports from journalists and side show insiders and rare interviews with the performers themselves provide material for close analysis.
Hanfu catwalk shows: A performance of Chinese femininities
This article analyses the complex relationship between the construction of gender identities among young Chinese females and the practice of dressing up in Hanfu attire. The study employs the perspectives of dress as a situated embodied practice the performativity of gender and the catwalk as a form of performance art. By drawing on an ethnography of self-defined Hanfu fans in Beijing China the authors investigate how the female participants construct femininities through performing on Hanfu catwalks. The ethnographic findings are that first the Hanfu catwalk mediates the intricate interplay of Chinese aesthetic norms and gender expression between performers and the audience. Second wearing Hanfu is an embodied practice unifying the Hanfu costume style gender construction and corporeal acts situated in China’s sociopolitical context. Third Chinese femininity is complex with both flexibility and internal conflicts reflecting China’s paradoxical modernization.