Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Aboriginal Australian And Canadian First Nations Children's Literature, Angeline O'Neill

Angeline O'Neill

In her article "Aboriginal Australian and Canadian First Nations Children's Literature" Angeline O'Neill discusses Canadian First Nations and Australian Aboriginal children's picture books and their appeal to a dual readership. Inuit traditional storyteller and writer Michael Kusugak, Nyoongar traditional storyteller and writer Lorna Little, and Wunambal elder Daisy Utemorrah are cases in point. Each appeals to Indigenous and non-Indigenous, child and adult readerships, thus challenging two assumptions in Western scholarship on literature that 1) the picture book genre is necessarily the domain of children and 2) that traditional Indigenous stories are, similarly, best suited to children. O'Neill considers the ways …

Structural Pluralism And The Community Context: How And When Does The Environment Matter?, Leo Jeffres, Edward Horowitz, Cheryl Bracken, Guowei Jian, Kimberly Neuendorf, Sukki Yoon

Guowei Jian

Several long-standing theories intersect in discussing the impact of community characteristics and of the mass media. The structural pluralism model popularized by Tichenor and his colleagues says that social structure influences how mass media operate in communities because they respond to how power is distributed in the social system, whereas the linear model says that the increasing size of a community's population leads to more social differentiation and diversity and corresponding increases in subcultures with their own beliefs, customs, and behaviors. Recently, there has been a concern about how changes in society have led to a decline in organizational activity …

Lifestyle Drugs And The Neoliberal Family, Kristin Swenson

Kristin Swenson

Since 1997, advertisements for lifestyle drugs have saturated the U.S. airwaves, print media, and the Internet. Viewers are asked to see their children’s difficulty in school as attention deficit disorder, their worry as anxiety, and their flagging sex life as dysfunction. And for each disorder, there is a corresponding pharmaceutical solution. Through the lens of these advertisements, Lifestyle Drugs and the Neoliberal Family unpacks our contemporary obsession with obtaining easy solutions for difficult problems. The ads’ discourse illuminates the experience of living within a society increasingly affected by the policies of neoliberalism, one that requires us to invest and manage …

Capital, Consumption, Communication, And Citizenship: The Social Positioning Of Taste And Civic Culture In The United States, Mark Rademacher

Mark A. Rademacher

In this paper, we analyze the field of cultural consumption in the United States, drawing on the methods of correspondence analysis employed by Bourdieu (1979/1984). Using the 2000 DDB Lifestyle Study, we analyze a cross section of Americans (N=3,122) in terms of their occupational categories, media usage, consumption practices, social behaviors, and indicators of civic and political engagement. In doing so, we find many parallels to the determinants of taste, cultural discrimination, and choice within the field structure observed by Bourdieu in 1960s French society, though there are also some notable differences, consistent with Peterson and Kern's (1996) concept of …

Downshifting Consumer = Upshifting Citizen?, Mark Rademacher

Mark A. Rademacher

Critics suggest that contemporary consumer culture creates over-worked and over-shopped consumers who no longer engage in civic life. We challenge this conventional criticism against consumption within an individualistic lifestyle and argue instead that consumers who are "downshifting" do engage in civic life. In particular, this research examines downshifting attitudes among members of freecycle.org, a grassroots "gift economy" community. Results of an online survey show that downshifting consumers are indeed less materialistic and brand-conscious. They also tend to practice political consumption (e.g., boycotts, buycotts). Most importantly, they tend to engage in a digital form, but not a traditional form, of civic …

Fashion And The College Transition: Liminality, Play, And The Structuring Power Of The Habitus, Mark Rademacher

Mark A. Rademacher

Fashion has long been a signifier of social divisions within the education system as well as society at large. This paper seeks to examine how young people’s use of fashion varies in two distinct social milieus – the high school and college peer cultures. Interviews with 19 college freshmen were conducted to ascertain how fashion contributed to, or hindered, social divisions within each milieu. While informants recognized numerous social divisions marked by fashion choices within the high school milieu, during their initial weeks on campus no social divisions were identifiable. In this new milieu it appears fashion contributed to a …

Boost Or Blight?’ Graffiti Writing And Street Art In The ‘New’ New Orleans, Doreen Piano

Doreen M Piano

Before the storm, responses to graffiti writing and street art in New Orleans were typical of other urban environments where it was viewed as being “out of place” (Keith, 1999), “a spectacle of filth” (Conquergood, 2004), involving what Ferrell (1993, p. 37) describes as a “war of the walls.” David (2005) describes the political aspects of street art in New Orleans as “visual resistance” (p. 233), a term that captures relations of power among graffiti producers, their products, and the effects of their actions (p. 233). However, attempts to eliminate graffiti and street art by enforcing stricter penalties, encouraging neighborhood …

On Being Entrepreneurial With Havel's The Memorandum: A Cross-Curricular Conversation, Sarah Feldner, Stephen Hudson-Mairet

Stephen Hudson-Mairet

No abstract provided.

Fighting Over The Founders: How We Remember The American Revolution, Andrew Schocket

Andrew M Schocket

The American Revolution is all around us. It is pictured as big as billboards and as small as postage stamps, evoked in political campaigns and car advertising campaigns, relived in museums and revised in computer games. As the nation’s founding moment, the American Revolution serves as a source of powerful founding myths, and remains the most accessible and most contested event in U.S. history: more than any other, it stands as a proxy for how Americans perceive the nation’s aspirations. Americans’ increased fascination with the Revolution over the past two decades represents more than interest in the past. It’s also …

Critical Animal And Media Studies: Communication For Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, Nuria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie Freeman

Carrie P Freeman

ABSTRACT: Suitable for a media studies graduate or upper level undergraduate course (or a critical animal studies course), this book aims to put the speciesism debate and the treatment of non-human animals on the agenda of critical media studies and to put media studies on the agenda of animal ethics researchers. Contributors examine the convergence of media and animal ethics from theoretical, philosophical, discursive, social constructionist, and political economic perspectives. The book is divided into three sections: foundations, representation, and responsibility, outlining the different disciplinary approaches’ application to media studies and covering how non-human animals, and the relationship between humans …

Consumo Comunitário Da Cultura E Territorialidade, George Yudice

George Yúdice

This article proposes new criteria for evaluating cultural consumption, particularly in community settings. It proposes a post-Bourdieuan framework, drawing in part on García Canclini's work on cultural consumtion.

From Freedom Rides To Justice Rides: Analogizing Social Movement Rhetoric In A Post-Identity America., Michelle Kearl

Michelle Kelsey Kearl

This presentation explores the rhetorical strategies, specifically the use of analogy, used in the rhetoric of the Created Equal organization. Created Equal, an anti-abortion activist organization, argues that it is a social movement in the vein of the Civil Rights Movement. The rhetoric employed by the organization is remarkable in its pedestrian attempt to veil its religious ideology, as well as its attempt to closely associate itself with the traditional Civil Rights agenda. Specifically, the tactics, images, and promotional material used and produced by the organization both explicitly and implicitly equivocate their commitments to stopping abortion to the demands of …

A Multimodal Analysis Of The Environment Beat In A Music Video, Judith (Judie) Cross, Carmen Maier

Judith (Judie) L Cross

The interrelationships between the environment and society have become cause for general concern amongst a diverse range of members in the international community of the twenty-first century. In this chapter, Michael Jackson’s music video, Earth Song, is critically analyzed in order to explore how environmental concerns are construed and communicated through a multimodal text specific to popular culture. We use a social semiotic perspective to analyze in detail how semiotic modes interrelate and impact on the conceptualization of time and space, as vital ingredients for the complex and dynamic ways by which meanings, values and practices are realized and communicated.

Framing Farming: Communication Strategies For Animal Rights, Carrie P. Freeman

Carrie P. Freeman

Privileged Migration: American Undergraduates, Study Abroad, Academic Tourism, Marcus Breen

Marcus Breen

American undergraduates are increasingly engaging in educational study abroad programmes. This article examines and explains the trends in international university education from the perspective of a former faculty member at Northeastern University, a large private university in Boston. The article explains how cultural studies can be invoked as a circuit breaker to challenge the assumptions of privileged Americans who travel to the (global) South. Drawing on his experience in leading undergraduates on summer programmes to Australia, the author explores ways in which the political work of cultural studies can be positioned within the diasporic experience of cultural studies academics, suggesting …

Journalism In A Pr World, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Mike Niman discusses the future of journalism in a PR-dominated communication environment. In particular, he examines the migration of talent from journalism to the PR industry, the collapse of mainstream journalism and the role of an emergent alternative media as American journalism goes through metamorphosis from what it was to what it could become. Journalism is a social good that should equip people to understand and resist spin. Niman argues that mainstream American journalism, rather than rising to this challenge, has transparently succumbed to serving as an arm of the corporate PR industry, thus laying the groundwork for its own …

"Having It His Way: The Construction Of Masculinity In Fast Food Tv Advertising", Carrie Freeman, Debra Merskin

Carrie P Freeman

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Culture And Friendship On Rewarding Honesty And Punishing Deception, Cynthia S. Wang, Angela K.-Y. Leung, M. See, X. Gu

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

The present research explores whether the type of relationship one holds with deceptive or honest actors influences cross-cultural differences in reward and punishment. Research suggests that Americans reward honest actors more than they punish deceptive perpetrators, whereas East Asians reward and punish equally (Wang & Leung, 2010). Our research suggests that the type of relationship with the actor matters for East Asians, but not for Americans. East Asians exhibit favoritism toward their friends by rewarding more than punishing them, but reward and punish equally when the actors are strangers (Experiment 1 and 2); Americans reward more than they punish regardless …

Translation, With An Introduction, Of Imagined Globalization, George Yudice, Néstor García Canclini

George Yúdice

No abstract provided.

[In Press] The World Is A….Network: Social Media And Cause Networks In The Girl Effect Movement, Kati Berg, Sarah Feldner

Sarah Feldner

No abstract provided.

Tax The Rich, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Our March Toward Intolerance, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Néstor García Canclini: Consumers And Citizens: Globalization And Multicultural Conflicts, A Review, George Yudice

George Yúdice

No abstract provided.

Nuevos Modelos De Producción Y Distribución, George Yudice

George Yúdice

No abstract provided.

Implementing Cultural Rights And Diversity Requires Newsworthiness, Citizen Intereest, And Political Will, George Yudice

George Yúdice

No abstract provided.

Encyclopedia Entries For: "Vegetarian," "Vegan," And "Animal Welfare", Carrie Freeman

Carrie P Freeman

No abstract provided.

Activist Intellectuals In A Wired World, George Yudice

George Yúdice

No abstract provided.

At The Intersection Of Jesuit And Feminist Moral Philosophies: Teaching For Social Justice In The Engaged Classroom, Ana Garner

Ana Garner

No abstract provided.

The Patriotic Good Mother Of World War Ii: A Study Of A Cultural Ideal, Ana Garner, Karen Slattery

Ana Garner

No abstract provided.

Body Billboards And Brand Colonization: Embodied Corporate Advertising In Postmodern Branding Culture, Brandon Hensley

Brandon O. Hensley

Body billboard advertising is a phenomenon that has emerged over the past decade. It involves tattooing corporate logos/messages on the flesh in ways that are visible to other people. These ads are "branded" on the bodies of individuals willing to rent out "spaces" to companies that pay to affix a corporate image/message on them. This paper seeks to examine this practice as it relates to a postmodern landscape where culture is mass produced, identity is unstable and subject to corporate domination, and living bodies are commodified in the reification of corporate presence in all facets of society. Body advertising is …