Digital Commons Network^™

Workplace Surveillance, Inc., Bilge Yesil

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In recent years the use of surveillance technologies in the workplace has become widespread. According to an annual survey by the American Management Association (AMA) on workplace monitoring and surveillance (2001), more and more U.S. companies are keeping tabs on employees by checking their e-mail, Internet, or telephone connections or by videotaping them at work.

On Jean Baudrillard's Impossible Exchange, Liam Mcnamara

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In many ways, Jean Baudrillard has never really attracted the critical attention that he deserves; his early brilliant books, such as For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1981) and The Mirror of Production (1975) remain resolutely out of print, perhaps because they do not accord with his recent high profile in the media. The hermetic obscurantism of these older texts repels a more casual reader, steeped as they are in poststructuralist theory and remote Marxist anthropology. They are also more rigorously scholarly than books such as Impossible Exchange, and therefore a less pleasurable …

Hegemony: Methods And Hypotheses, Rares Piloiu

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Recent political thought from the left has re-awoken the interest in Gramscian theory. Even if, pace Louis Althusser or, in America, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci's syntax of ideology as an integral form of relation between individual and society has been quite popular in cultural studies, the notion of hegemony has not enjoyed the same repute. It is therefore Ernesto Laclau's merit to have reintroduced the term in contemporary debates concerning problems of political power, authority, cultural policy and ideology. Hailing from a reinvented Marxist perspective (one that had to account, among others, for the failures of actual existing …

Leadership: The Missing Variable In The Economic Development Of Sub-Saharan Africa, Osei K. Bonsu

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Contemporary economic theories, modernization and dependency, have overlooked the fact that the development process depends on the interaction of social factors. Specifically, the theories have ignored the role of leadership in analyzing economic development. This dissertation seeks to incorporate the importance of leadership into the analysis of development. It argues that sub-Saharan African countries have not developed economically because leaders in the region have been less than successful in establishing a culture conducive to industrialization. African leaders have failed to establish the high moral and scientific cultures necessary to promote economic progress. In place of those cultural attributes, the leaders …

Environmental Factors Contributing To The Disaggregation Of A Colonial Cyanoprokaryote And Its Influence On Picoplankton Abundance Within Lake Joyce, Virginia, Lewis F. Affronti Jr., B. Thomas Duquette

Virginia Journal of Science

A colonial cyanoprokaryote, Aphanocapsa holsatica and autotrophic picoplankton abundance were monitored weekly over a two year period in Lake Joyce, Virginia. Significant differences were observed in both the cyanoprokaryote and picoplankton abundance over the study period and an inverse relationship was observed between these two plankton groups. Disaggregation of colonies was shown to contribute to picoplankton populations where water temperature and precipitation input apparently trigger colony dispersion. This relationship is suggested to occur in other aquatic habitats. Results of this work and its implications for ecosystem dynamics are discussed.

Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscapes, & Selves, Deirdre Heddon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For some time now I have been interested in autobiographical performance -- some form of the theatrical, in which performers explicitly use personal material in their work. Within this general field of autobiography and performance, one area of research concerns performances that are dependent on being located in personalised space -- what could be called, then, site-specific autobiographical performance. A recent example of this would be the performance Bubbling Tom (2000), by the UK based performer Mike Pearson, which saw Pearson return to the village of his childhood, to reflect upon and re-enact certain memories, events and persons …

The Mind Museum: Rudolf Schwarzkogler And The Vienna Actionists, Philip Barnes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Sixth paragraph]

In the following essay I discuss the Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. I have enjoyed the process of ferreting out articles and references to him, although these are seemingly as scarce as his own artistic output. Schwarzkogler spent just 2 years staging performance-actions in his apartment in the 1960s. These methodically photographed scenes involved sliced fish, bandages, light bulbs, razor blades, foodstuffs and surgical apparatus, all manipulated by anonymous figures. The photographs, works of art in their own right, have since toured internationally. Schwarzkogler was the least outgoing of a group called the Viennese Actionists, whose orgiastic, bloody Happenings …

Being-There And Being-From-Elsewhere: An Existential-Analytic Of Exile, Farhang Erfani

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragrap]

I find myself in an unsettling position, as I do not know where to begin to talk about a philosophically neglected topic: exile. I cannot hide behind the famous names of the tradition; I cannot speak through them about exile in order to make my inquiry sound more legitimate since most of them did not address the topic. Isn't it interesting though that my inability to know where to start and the lack of legitimacy that I feel are in themselves two typical symptoms of the exiled? In all fairness, exile has become a buzzword and is fashionable …

Remembering Dehlie: A Chrono-Topo-Graphy Of Imagination, Subhash Jaireth

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In a few weeks I shall be going to India to see my daughter. This will be our first meeting after she went back to India with her mother five years ago. She is fifteen now, and, in a way, a complete stranger to me. You don't know me, she tells me often on the phone, Neither do I know you. The little girl whom you carried on your shoulders and played hopscotch with, is nothing but a shadow. Come and see what has become of me. I have made up my mind to go but I know …

The Cyborgian Self: Toward A Critical Social Theory Of Cyberspace, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Contemporary social theory currently remains at a virtual standstill, quivering over the decision to radically leave the past behind or to continue within the historical narrative of the Enlightenment. Postmodern social theorists, advocating the position that we have, in fact, entered a new historical epoch, pose serious challenges to our perception of modernity and cultural identity. As an influential strategy that has infiltrated both the humanities and the social sciences for more than thirty years, postmodernism can no longer be dismissed as merely a fad or trend. In a world where the use of complex, and often mobile, …

Solaris, America, Disneyworld And Cyberspace: Salman Rushdie's Fairy-Tale Utopianism In Fury, Justyna Deszcz

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In this paper, I discuss the figure of professor Malik Solanka, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's latest novel, Fury (2001), and his attempts at constructing a fairy tale utopia as a means of establishing his identity. I try to elucidate this problem referring to the concepts of the fairy tale utopian as formulated by J. R. R. Tolkien, Ernst Bloch, and Jack Zipes, as their propositions can be regarded as the most effective exponents of the utopian imagination and seem very applicable to Rushdie's utopian attempts. On the basis of such a reading, I also reflect on the …

Rich Earth Below The Sand' And The Origins Of The Thames Embankments, Stuart Oliver

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This essay explores the designing of the Thames embankments that were built between 1866 and 1874 for the Metropolitan Board of Works. In particular it concentrates on the origins of what might be called the production of the conditions of production of the embankments. By looking at the motivation of those advocating embanking as a means of exerting literal and figurative control over the river, and the ways in which society influenced such advocacy and determined its effectiveness, the essay explores modernity's construction of a regulated natural in the context of an analysis that is sensitive to the …

Supposing A Space: The Detecting Subject In Paul Auster’S City Of Glass, Richard Swope

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Rorty's Complicit American Neo-Pragmatism, Haidar Eid

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Despite the obvious French origin of poststructuralism, its paradigmatic resonance can be found in the American philosophical scene, an essential part of which is Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism -- the theoretical basis of American (post)modernism. However, different from poststructuralism's apparent antagonism to the authoritarian establishments, Rorty adopts the Derridean poststructuralist motifs of the decentering of the subject, and the disappearance of meaning and truth in order to defend the establishment -- or rather, the status quo.

On Guillermo Gomez-Peña's El Mexterminator And Cyber Vato, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While attending Bowling Green State University in 1997 I had an experience that changed my worldview. I was a teaching assistant in the Popular Culture department and part of my responsibilities included teaching Introduction to Popular Culture (POPC 100) and Introduction to Mass Media (POPC 165). I had been struggling to engage my students in examining the way in which social reality is represented to them through popular entertainments [2]. The majority of my students were white, middle class students from the surrounding Northern regions of Ohio. My students were well-versed in the ongoing controversy over whether or …

Review Of Up, By Peter Gabriel, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Passaic Boys Are Hell: Robert Smithson's Tag As Temporal And Spatial Marker Of The Geographical Self, Felicity Colman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Robert Smithson seductively created stories about his activities as an artist with attention to his duration; his time of existence. Born in 1938 in the New Jersey suburb of Passaic, Smithson lived in the New Jersey suburbs of Rutherford and Clifton with his family until 1957 when he moved to live in downtown Manhattan, New York (Hobbs 1981, 231-232; Tsai 1991, 6). Smithson's adult life was undeniably shaped by his Pascalian/Sopranos awareness of engaging the circumference by which to navigate the centre of everyday life. In 1972 Smithson described New Jersey as: a kind of destroyed California, …

The Ruse Of The Social: Human Waste And The Gated Community, Liam Mcnamara

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

One of the central problems of contemporary society is that of “the social”: how it is defined, constituted, conjured into existence, and supported. Jean Baudrillard has employed the term “the social” in his work, but it is never explicitly defined; it is best understood as a form of simulation that has sprung into existence in the absence of symbolic social relations. The social is constituted of all the phenomena that are generally studied by sociology, so is therefore ideologically conceived of as an organic structure that is waiting for analysis. The “social” is society, both as it stands …

On Steven Duncombe's Cultural Resistance Reader (2002), Adam Reed

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While the debates over the dis/connections between theory and practice have become essentially metaphysical, it is still useful to distinguish between micro, grassroots struggles and macro, ideological political agendas. In a world in which one of the Left's (old, new and contemporary) main achievements has been to merge the micro and macro in the popular imaginary, this distinction helps one appreciate the myriad of forces affecting social change that are condensed in primarily ideological narratives. A similar perspective is called for when one turns to cultural forms of resistance, which are usually erased by political narratives or mystified …

On Bell Hooks' Feminism Is For Everybody, David Alan Sapp

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Taking a decidedly radical feminist position, bell hooks, the writing voice of Gloria Watkins, promotes the learning of feminist theory and history as essential parts of the process of self-actualization and the practice of freedom. In Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, hooks provides an overview targeted to readers new to interdisciplinary feminism. Importantly, hooks argues in strong opposition to the anti-feminist public voice in contemporary culture. In particular, she speaks to young female readers who know little about feminism, many of whom falsely assume that sexism is no longer a problem or is no longer relevant since …

A Review Of Dr. Holmberg's Work, Gary Hoppenstand

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor's Introduction]

Dr. Carl Holmberg, a beloved member of Bowling Green State University's department of Popular Culture and father of two daughters, Lily and Erin, passed away September 29, 2002 at his home in Bowling Green, Ohio. In addition to what you will find highlighted below, Dr. Holmberg was in the process of extensive research into Japanese popular culture and was loved by the students he taught at the graduate and undergraduate level. Below, we have decided to publish a review of Carl's work by friend and colleague Dr. Gary Hoppenstand, so that the members of our community might realize …

Breaking The Mimetic Contract: Notes On Ideology, Intersubjectivity, And Film Theory, Giorgio Bertellini, C. Paul Sellors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In this essay we would like to sketch out a few notes outlining historical and theoretical trajectories of the confusing, and often confused, relationships between ideology, history and subjectivity in Marx, Marxism and post-Marxism. Marx and Engels' approach to ideology in The German Ideology (1845-46), spawned and influenced a variety of interpretations and philosophical positions from not only the numerous schools of Marxism proper, but also structuralism, semiotics and psychoanalysis up to the very raison d'être of discourse theory and new historicism. This reaching influence occurs only at the cost of contradiction, however, between Marxist factions -- disagreements …

Terra Incognita, Leslie Hill

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

To Blend In The Place You're In, But With A Mind To Do Something: The Practice Of Merging In James Dickey's To The White Sea, Casey Clabough

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In a final sortie the day before the great fire-bombing raid on Tokyo in the last months of World War II, Muldrow (his first name is purposefully never given), an American tail gunner, parachutes from his burning B-29 into the city. Protected at first by the smoke-blackened anarchy on the ground, he journeys north, away from the chaos and ruin of Tokyo, instinctively drawn toward Japan's sparsely-populated northern island of Hokkaido, a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure his survival. With little more than a knife and a small map of Japan he makes his way …

Becoming Native, Patricia Monaghan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

With relentless beaks, a squad of crows attacked a winter field. It was a fine fair Irish field, sweeping upwards in the pale sunlight towards a dark bulwark of rhododendrons surrounding a single gnarled oak, beneath which three ruddy cattle grazed. Welcoming this peaceable scene as an excuse to slow my journey, I parked on the verge and walked to the field's iron gate.

Writing Identity Into Space: The Relationship Between Ethnography, Autobiography, And Space In Bronislaw Malinowski's A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term And Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, Lawrence Phillips

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

From a number of disciplinary perspectives autobiography has always presented a challenge to more or less discrete modes of reading and evaluating the text. To read autobiography as a literary text is to suppress its close relationship to the writer, however fictionalised and evasive the writing subject might be about a textual identity so closely related to his or her public persona. On the other hand, to read it as history or a documentary presentation of a life is to fail to acknowledge the heavy use of literary techniques and imbedded subjectivity that makes autobiography what it is. …

See Me, Touch Me, Feel Me':(Im)Proving The Bodily Sense Of Masculinity, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Ultimately, this paper stems from two cultural strands which intersect in one cultural form, self-improvement advertising aimed at men. The first of these is the figure of the new man, which appeared in the mid-1980s. The novelty lies in the positioning of masculine bodies precisely for the purpose of being seen. The available criticism was not equipped to account for these positionings. The second cultural strand, the proliferation of technologies which alter the body itself, as opposed to its coverings, makes the gap in the criticism more apparent. The two cultural trends intersect most noticeably in the advertisements …

C.L.R. James, Mid-Century Marxism, And The Popular Arts, Kenton W. Worcester

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

“Popular culture” has played a decidedly important role for many prominent Marxist thinkers: For Fredric Jameson, it is increasingly important in his work, for Terry Eagleton, a counterpoint to more high brow culture, and for Marx himself a potentially distracting area of inquiry. In the following examination of C.L.R. James’ interest in popular culture, Kenton Worcester argues that he was, contrary to the thought of some, very interested -- both in popular culture per se, and the relation of race to modes of expression which can only be considered “popular” in the finest sense.

Ideology And Public Sphere: A Preliminary Bibliography, Giorgio Bertellini, C. Paul Sellors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Bibliography accompanies Bertellini & Sellors article Breaking the Mimetic Contract: Notes on Ideology, Intersubjectivity, and Film Theory

The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies And Posthuman Medicine, Stuart Murray

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Stuart Murray reviews Catherine Waldby's The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine (2000).