Digital Commons Network^™

5 Minutes To Hell. Time To Tell The Truth. The Disintermediated Doctoral Student, Tara Brabazon

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Algorithmic Capitalism In The Epoch Of Digital Reason, Michael A. Peters

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Would Adorno Download Music? Piracy, The Recording Industry And Reproduction Reconsidered, David Arditi

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

(Auto)Biography And Social Theory: A Perspective On The Life And Work Of Ben Agger (1953-2015), Lukas Szrot

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

To Family, Friends, And Colleagues Of The Late Dr. Ben Agger, Jason E. Shelton

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Fast Capitalism 14.1, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

About The Authors, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

The Antinomies Of Brexit, Paul Smith

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Paul Smith, George Mason University

Paul Smith was educated at Cambridge and at the University of Kent in the UK and has a PhD in American Studies. Most of his working life has been spent in the US, including posts at Miami University OH, and Carnegie Mellon before his appointment to George Mason University in 1996. Between 1999 and 2002 he was chaired Professor and department head of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. At Mason he has been director of the Center for the Study of the Americas and currently teaches …

Neoliberalism, Nafta, And Dehumanization: The Case Of Femicides In Ciudad Juárez, Denisa Krasna, Sagar Deva

Fast Capitalism

The overarching focus of this paper is on the way in which the neoliberalism inherent in the international institutional order produces dehumanisation in the third world and the way in which this dehumanisation manifests itself in direct loss of human life through exploitation and even murder. This paper is split into two main parts, the first of which gives a theoretical and general overview of how neoliberalism has both dominated and dehumanised the international institutional order and the second part of the paper gives a more in-depth case study of this phenomena, focusing on how NAFTA has engendered femicides in …

Introduction: The Contradictions Of Opposition To Free Trade, David M. Arditi

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

David M. Arditi, University of Texas Arlington

David Arditi is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. His research addresses the impact of digital technology on society and culture with a specific focus on music. Arditi is author of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the digital era. Arditi serves as Editor of Fast Capitalism. In 2016, he developed MusicDetour, a local music archive available for everyone to stream free music.

Neoliberal Fascism As The Endpoint Of Casino Capitalism, Henry Giroux

Fast Capitalism

This article explores neoliberal fascism as a distinctive political formation within the current historical moment. In doing so, it first analyzes neoliberalism as a project that has since the 1970s destroyed all the commanding institutions of democracy while consolidating power in the hands of a financial elite. In addition, it analyzes neoliberalism as a movement, that produces and legitimates massive economic inequality and suffering, privatizes public goods, dismantles essential government agencies, and individualizes all social problems. Under such circumstances, neoliberalism creates the conditions for right wing extremists to mobilize the anger of white disenfranchised working class populations by both appealing …

About The Authors, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Bound To Capitalism: The Pursuit Of Profit And Pleasure In Digital Pornography, Jennifer Miller

Fast Capitalism

This paper explores digital pornography dialectically through a case study of Kink.com, an online BDSM subscription service. It considers the tension between discourses of authenticity that seek to obscure profit motive and shifts in content prompted by market considerations.

Author Biography

Jennifer Miller, University of Texas at Arlington

Jennifer Miller is an interdisciplinary scholar and cultural theorist who researches children's picture books. She has published in the Journal of Homosexuality, the edited collection Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between, and is currently working on a book length project under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.

The East As A Theatre House Of Suffering: ‘Suffering’ Scholarship And The Orientalist Bind, Yasmin Ibrahim

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Applying Total Quality Management And Auditor Size Theories To Audit Quality: Evidence From Tanzanian Auditing Firms, Freddy Chaula, Henry Zeno Chalu, Paul Ambege

Business Management Review

Amid mixed global findings on the determinants of audit quality, particularly in emerging markets, the role of engagement team competence and audit firm size remains underexplored. This study investigates the relationship between engagement team competence, audit firm size, and audit quality in Tanzanian auditing firms. The hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM based on data obtained from a cross-sectional survey of 147 Tanzanian audit partners. Audit firm size (β = 0.309, p < 0.01) and engagement team competence (β = 0.567, p < 0.01) were found to have significant positive effects on audit quality. These results suggest that audit quality is significantly enhanced by audit firm size and engagement team competence, thus supporting total quality management and auditor size theories. These findings highlight the need for regulators to strengthen auditor competence and to support the growth of small auditing firms, thereby enhancing their capacity, resources, and the overall audit quality. For auditing firms, the findings underscore the need to develop engagement team competence through initiatives such as professional training, mentoring, and knowledge-sharing programs. Additionally, firms should expand their capacity to strengthen audit quality. While focused on the Tanzanian context, the findings offer broader insights for improving audit quality in developing economies.

Combating International Terrorism, Waseem Ahmad Qureshi

Florida Journal of International Law

The first part of this Article will scrutinize the characteristics and explanations of “international terrorism” given by different organizations and renowned scholars, and it will discuss the scopes of those definitions. The second part will further elaborate on the subject with the political deliberation of terrorist events, the criminalization of terrorism and the derogation from fundamental human rights in the absence of an actual state of emergency. The third part will analyze the acts of international organizations and the international community, and their scope in combating terrorism. The fourth part will consist of concluding observations.

The Power Of Historical And Creative Tourism For Sustainable Development Goals: Baan Khamkerm – Nong Seaeng Catholic Church, Nakhon Phanom Province, Thailand, Preedaree Sirirat, Arnunnit Manorom, Supatcharee Boonprachoom

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study aims to develop a historical tourism route tracing seventeenth century French missionaries of Baan Khamkerm-Nong Seaeng in Nakhon Phanom Province while developing local storytelling and creating digital media from information of historical value transferred through locals’ identities. Saint Joseph’s Church in Baan Khamkerm is the oldest church in upper-northeastern Thailand. To protect this historical site, emerging disciplines have offered potential communication tools for stronger heritage management. The research design is based on Participatory Action Research (PAR) which collects data from five groups of key representatives from the community of tourism stakeholders: 1) local community; 2) tourism policymakers; 3) …

Segmenting Religious Tourists Based On Google Maps Reviews Using Latent Semantic Analysis And Hierarchical Clustering, Senthilkumaran Piramanayagam, Jyothi Mallya, Kartikeya Bolar

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Researchers in the tourism industry and academics are interested in analysing and extracting conclusions from user-generated data because they offer valuable insights into visitors’ motives, experiences, and consumption behaviour. However, religious tourists’ data have rarely been explored specifically in segmentation studies. Therefore, this study aims to segment religious tourists based on their Google Map reviews using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and hierarchical clustering. These analyses have resulted in three distinct segments: heritage explorers, aesthetes, and self-transcendence seekers. While heritage explorers are interested in learning about the cultural and historical significance of a site, aesthetes appreciate its beauty and art, while …

A Universal Of Human Social Cognition: Children From 17 Communities Process Gaze In Similar Ways, Manuel Bohn, Julia Christin Prein, Agnes Ayikoru, Florian M. Bednarski, Ardain Dzabatou, Michael C. Frank, Annette M.E. Henderson, Joan Isabella, Josefine Kalbitz, Patricia Kanngiesser, Dilara Keşşafoğlu, Bahar Köymen, Maira V. Manrique-Hernandez, Shirley Magazi, Lizbeth Mújica-Manrique, Julia Ohlendorf, Damilola Olaoba, Wesley R. Pieters, Sarah Pope-Caldwell, Katie Slocombe, Robert Z. Sparks, Jahnavi Sunderarajan, Wilson Vieira, Zhen Zhang, Yufei Zong, Roman Stengelin, Daniel B.M. Haun

School of Psychology

Theoretical accounts typically assume that key features of human socio-cognitive development are universal. This paper reports a large-scale cross-cultural study (17 communities, diverse ethnicities, N = 1,377, 709 female, mean = 5.50 years, -collected March 2022 to January 2024) on gaze following in early childhood. To test for universality, cognitive processing signatures were derived from a computational model treating gaze following as social vector estimation. Results showed substantial variation between communities and individuals. Yet, the processing signature was found in all communities. Individual differences in performance were related to children's familiarity with the data-collection device but not opportunities for social …

2020u_Uc02_Approved_Pm_Bs-Interdisciplinary-Studies-Curriculum-Changes-Revision1, Undergraduate Curriculum Council

All Approved Curriculum

No abstract provided.

From Bad Apples To Zombies? Walking Dead Leadership In The Contemporary University, Tara Brabazon

Fast Capitalism

Leadership remains an open sewer of assumptions, ego, platitudes and potential. When contextualized within an international university sector struggling and grasping to find a purpose, leadership becomes toxic and dangerous. This article reactivates, challenges and then transforms Ulrich Beck's zombie concept and applies it to university leadership, management and administration. I probe the renegotiation of power and identity, with particular attention to recent scandals and appointments of university ‘leaders.' This article also signals a movement from cosmopolitan sociology to claustropolitan cultural studies, repositioning leadership in universities at the end of the world.

Author Biography

Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Research …

The Politics Of Curiosity, Eva-Maria Swidler

Fast Capitalism

Curiosity, a simultaneously intellectual and emotional phenomenon, is surprisingly unstudied, yet pivotal for social critics and activists to understand. While recognizing curiosity as frequently positive and necessary for creating new solidarities and political movements, it also considers the social and political roots and consequences of incuriosity, apathy, and ignorance, including such topics as willful apathy as cultural resistance and self-defense, ignorance as an ethical choice, incuriosity as arrogance, and the generalized anxiety of neoliberal society and the shrinking of curiosity.

Author Biography

Eva-Maria Swidler, Curtis Institute of Music

Eva Swidler is an environmental historian and political economist with additional interest …

Panic Learning Off (And On) The Covid Campus, Tara Brabazon, Jamie Quinton, Narelle Hunter

Fast Capitalism

Online learning has been flooded with platitudes, promises and possibilities for twenty years. Oversold and undertheorized, online learning reached its "moment' through the Covid lockdown. Underprepared staff and underfunded universities implemented online learning in a crisis. This was a zombie apocalypse of a context in which to summon innovation. This article activates Paul Virilio's University of Disaster to explore the COVID campus and classroom, entering panic learning.

Author Biographies

Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Research / Professor of Cultural Studies Flinders University

Tara Brabazon is the dean of graduate research and professor of cultural studies at Flinders University, Australia, fellow …

About The Authors, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Who Wouldn't Get The Joke?: Vile Sovereignty, Vanishing Mediators, And Trump, Simon Orpana, Evan Mauro

Fast Capitalism

This article considers Trump as an example of "vile sovereignty," a concept Michel Foucault put forward in the mid 1970s to describe "the exercise of power through the explicit disqualification of the person who wields it" (2003b: 35)—a "childish discourse" that disqualifies the speaker at the very moment that they are being appealed to as a figure of authority (36). We argue that this concept helps illuminate contemporary US politics, where Trump's carnivalesque flaunting of political decorum and morality paradoxically seem to buttress the power of his Republican Party. Building upon our theorization of the role vile sovereignty has played …

Social Crises, Political Conflicts, And Cultural Contradictions Of Nixonland: Tracing Constitutional Crisis In The Usa From Nixon To Trump, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

Many developments, like greater domestic turmoil, economic dislocation, social immobility, and political gridlock, suggest "the public" and "the private" are different domains with the US than they were decades ago in 1969 when President Nixon entered office. The constitutional state, as a theory and set of practices in the USA in the Nixon era was put under tremendous strains, and it seems clear that those pressures fractured it. After Vietnam, stagflation, Watergate, and the transitional Ford Administration, has it ever been the same? The Reagan-Bush assault on the New Deal and Great Society as well as the essentially permanent mobilization …