JournalTOCs

European Journal of Cultural Studies
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.822

Citation Impact (citeScore): 2
Number of Followers: 30

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 1367-5494 - ISSN (Online) 1460-3551
Published by Sage Publications

[1176 journals]

We have never been human: Staging subjectivity from Diderot and Artaud to
the aesthetics of the European refugee crisis
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  Authors: Daniel Darvay
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This essay explores the shifting matrix underlying the pervasive theater that enacts the making and unmaking of human subjectivity by focusing on key historical transformations and prominent contemporary manifestations. Offering a comparative analysis of Denis Diderot’s theory of the actor, and Antonin Artaud’s theater of cruelty, I argue that the paradox of the human had led to human–artwork hybrids well before the digital age of the posthuman recast the body as virtuality. Drawing on a broader understanding and scope of human–artwork hybridization, I examine two different yet equally memorable and infamous responses in 2015 to the European refugee crisis: the Petra László video and Norbert Baksa’s Der Migrant. The aesthetic and cultural practices revolving around the staging of the European refugee crisis constitute a key sphere in which this hybridization is tested, played out and in the context of East-Central Europe, calibrated to a ballad tradition whose generic conventions were reinvented in conjunction with a growing national identity in the 19th century. The ballad of ‘The Walled-Up Wife’ has enjoyed sustained popularity in East-Central Europe, ever since its anachronistic ‘rediscovery’ in multiple national literatures around the mid 1800s. It deserves critical attention, for its extensive cultural history as well as its rich vernacular heritage can shed new light on the ways in which the idea of material embodiment comes to bear extended meanings for a reconceptualization of the human in digital spaces of aesthetic rather than merely socio-political signification.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-11-11T07:17:49Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231209762
A feminism of the soul' Postfeminism, postsecular feminism and
contemporary feminine spiritualities
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  Authors: Ella Poutiainen
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Increasingly popular ‘feminine spiritualities’ urge women to foster personal transformation and social change through spiritual empowerment and healing of ‘the feminine’. However, in spite of feminist undertones, feminism is rarely explicitly evoked, and is often even rejected. Gender scholars have debated over the ambivalent feminism of contemporary spiritualities, which are readily seen as closer to postfeminist rather than feminist ideals, or framed as a form of old-fashioned cultural feminism. While some recent analyses do explore the feminist potential of feminine spiritualities in more positive terms, the debates often lack practitioner perspectives on feminism and deeper considerations of the practitioners’ own self-definitions. Based on ethnographic interview material across Finnish and Anglo-American contexts, this article explores how adherents of feminine spirituality imagine feminism, and whether they consider their spirituality to be feminist or not and why. I argue that while practitioners hold varying, often ambiguous positions in relation to feminism, the narratives iterate shared themes that render feminism and feminine spirituality as incompatible: an emphasis on femininity over feminism, and a focus on spirituality instead of politics. Furthermore, practitioners critique mainstream feminism for being too secular, while often simultaneously agreeing with feminist criticisms of both cultural feminist and postfeminist ideals. I suggest that failing to take the voices of spiritual women into account prevents constructive dialogue and solidarity among secular and spiritual feminists as well as non-feminist women, and offers little room for emerging postsecular feminist identities.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-11-11T07:15:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231208718
The work of documentary relationships
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  Authors: Emily Coleman
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Relationships between documentary-makers and their subjects are a core concern of the scholarship, typically analysed in relation to issues of power and exploitation. This article instead considers documentary relationships as a form of work, examining what it means when a job entails the production of intimate connections, which are also subject to commercial pressures and imperatives. Relationship-building is an intrinsic part of the filmmaker’s job, but takes place around its margins: often unpaid and unacknowledged by the media industries. A consequence of this lack of status and recognition is that an appropriate professional framework has yet to be developed, with worrying implications for training, regulation and duty of care. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted over a period of 4 years, this article conceptualises the work of documentary relationships as a practice of creative labour, by considering how they function interpersonally, procedurally and organisationally. Through a discussion of emotional labour, I will explore how the permeability between work life and intimacy impacts both filmmakers and contributors alike, considering the various ways their experiences take shape within the structural context of contemporary media production.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-11-08T11:30:35Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231208501
Making the invisible visible
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  Authors: Shana Almeida, Agata Lisiak
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-11-08T11:27:31Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231208379
Black dis/engagement: negotiating mainstream media presence and refusal
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  Authors: Emma-Lee Amponsah
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article presents a conceptualization and exploration of ‘Black dis/engagement’, which refers to Black people’s ‘non-presence’ in mainstream media and involves a simultaneous engagement with grassroots community media that divert – to various degrees – from the norms of white respectability. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with media practitioners (journalists, writers, digital media producers, and activists) of Black African descent in Belgium, this study challenges popular media diversity discourses that equate mainstream media visibility and engagement with social progress and disengagement with quite the opposite: an alarming loss. Drawing on Black ontology and feminist epistemologies of refusal rooted in histories of marronage and Black fugitivity, the study sheds light on how Black people create, write, and engage outside the mainstream, and examines the possibilities and limitations that Black individuals can encounter along the way. The study reveals that while some Black critical voices have found platforms within mainstream media, there is increasing skepticism and questioning among Black individuals and communities toward mainstream media infrastructures and cultures. Centering Black people’s agency and decentering the demands of dominant media cultures, the article sheds light on the diverse ways in which Black people have withdrawn from mainstream media, established digital community spaces, and engaged in various forms of community activities. Recognizing the fluid and contextual nature of Black dis/engagement, the author underscores the importance of valuing and understanding the diverse strategies employed by Black individuals and communities to navigate and resist oppressive media systems.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-11-08T11:21:22Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231207913
Water, earth, fire, air: Banal nationalism and Avatar: The Last Airbender
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  Authors: William Kerr
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article argues that children’s media can be a powerful source for embedding nationalist assumptions from an early age, by looking at Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel The Legend of Korra. In the shows, the world is divided into four discrete nations. Drawing on Billig’s concept of banal nationalism, I intend to explore how, despite being critical of nationalism, they nevertheless reinforce and communicate core tenets of national ideology: that nations are the natural way of organising the world. This then leads to wider conclusions about how children’s media can communicate and embed these ideas.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-28T09:23:18Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231206385
Book review: Johnny Walker, Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom,
1978–92
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  Authors: Daniel Herbert
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-26T10:55:55Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231209764
Book review: Eleftheria J. Lekakis, Consumer Activism: Promotional Culture
and Resistance
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  Authors: Yesim Kaptan
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-26T10:53:24Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231206789
Book review: Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, Confidence Culture
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  Authors: Emily Elizabeth Hoyle
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-13T07:22:54Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231206353
Spotlight on discrimination at work: Italian actresses’ construction of
digital spaces of feminist struggle
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  Authors: Emanuela Naclerio, Giulia Giorgi
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The article contributes to the studies of digital spaces and women’s action by analysing the case of Amleta, a collective founded during Covid-19 pandemic by a group of Italian theatre actresses. Using a digital ethnographic approach that combines data coming from Amleta’s Instagram account and in-depth interviews with content creators, this study considers how actresses employ digital spaces to challenge violence and discrimination in the workplace. By looking at actresses’ digital action, the study sheds light on the reinterpretation of #metoo narratives and on the construction of non-conventional digital spaces in the struggle for an equal environment in the cultural and creative industries. Given the centrality of informational activism and communicative labour for Amleta’s activities, we argue that knowledge dissemination becomes a political tool, both challenging the status quo and allowing women to move their experiences from an individualised understanding towards a level of collective awareness. The research accounts for how feminist practices can promote social change beyond branded uses of social media platforms.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-12T12:01:59Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231199065
Equity, diversity and inclusivity: Once more, with feeling
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  Authors: Rowan Aust
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines how gratitude influences the practice of British television production workers. It does so through a case study which asked television production workers to consider their work through the prism of gratitude: were they grateful for their work' Using semi-structured interviews, the data revealed that yes, workers were grateful but still identified many punitive working practices. These practices have simultaneously been identified by the industry itself, and there is an improvement discourse through the equity, diversity and inclusivity agendas. I argue here that equity, diversity and inclusivity measures are ineffective – as they have been proven to be elsewhere – because they do not consider the feeling(s), such as gratitude, of working in television. In failing to make this a consideration, equity, diversity and inclusivity work cannot address the inequalities it is there to resolve. This is because understanding the felt experience illuminates the fuller encounter of working in a particular environment. This includes the potential inhibition that gratitude can catalyse through indebtedness. In understanding what these feelings catalyse when cooperating in what they know to be an unfair system, equity, diversity and inclusivity work can be progressed beyond a model predicated on assimilation, to something that achieves substantive change.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-06T09:23:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231201560
‘Je te crois’ (‘I believe you’): Pragmatics of a feminist slogan,
or silencing and the scene of address in post-#MeToo France
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  Authors: Julie Gaillard
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  In the context of a failure of #MeToo in France and in light of the intrinsic limitations of this movement, ‘I believe you’ has become one of the battle cries of contemporary French feminism, appearing on protest signs during activist performances and demonstrations, but also on street-pastings disseminated in urban spaces by grassroots feminist collectives. Through a pragmatic analysis of this statement-slogan paradoxically addressed to everyone singularly and to no one in particular, this article demonstrates the performative dimension of post-#MeToo French feminism which aims at once to individually repair and collectively denounce the wrong caused by the silencing of victims of sexual and gender-based violence. Building on Jean-François Lyotard’s philosophical elaboration of the phrastic mechanisms at stake in negationism, as well as feminist scholarship on believability, to demonstrate how the pragmatics of silencing throws survivors into a state of social death, I show how ‘I believe you’ – through the interplay of first- and second-person pronouns – allows the re-subjectivation of individual survivors who encounter it serendipitously in public spaces. Turning to the contextual analysis of activist configurations that have recently mobilized ‘je te crois’ in public space, I then show how this slogan creates feminist counter-spaces where the vulnerability of assembled bodies becomes the site of political subversion.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-10-04T12:09:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231199951
Book review: Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kathryn Claire Higgins, Believability:
Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt
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  Authors: Tanya Serisier
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-09-30T12:29:54Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231204966
The travelogue cooking show in a sub-state nation: Representing Scotland
in British food television
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  Authors: Christine Knight, Ana Tominc
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Food television offers a new and unique lens on national identity, the Anglo-Scottish relationship, and their cultural representation in contemporary Britain. This article is based on the analysis of three British travelogue cooking shows, first broadcast between 1995 and 2011, about Scotland and its food. The programmes analysed exemplify and reinforce long-standing cultural constructions of the relationship between England and Scotland as sub-state nations of the United Kingdom, as well as illustrating and creating new national scripts, notably in relation to class and gender. These ‘homeland’ travelogue cooking shows consistently associate Scotland with a defined set of local and traditional foods, closely associated with a Romantic construction of Scotland, its history and landscape. However, the programmes also indicate wider changes in British and Scottish food culture during this period, including the rise of the local food movement and the increasing economic success and cultural confidence of the Scottish food and drink industry. The article highlights the role of celebrity chefs in the cultural construction of contemporary British sub-state national relationships.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-09-30T12:28:20Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231199952
The ethics of representing perpetrators in documentaries on genocide
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  Authors: Julian Johannes Immanuel Koch
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Current discourse on the representation of genocide claims that we are currently experiencing ‘the shift from the era of the witness to the era of the perpetrator’. This raises ethical concerns over why and how documentaries engage with perpetrators. Based on an assessment of 203 documentaries on seven genocides, my article makes three kinds of contribution in addressing these concerns: (1) It discusses the ethics of representing perpetrators in archival footage, reenactments or interviews in a wider corpus than those covered in recent discussions. (2) It uncovers a broad range of ethical reasons for why documentary filmmakers engage with perpetrators, rather than seeking to establish a singular ethical ground for this engagement. This approach can do better justice to the varying cultural, historical and political contexts of the respective genocides, the different production contexts and target audiences of the documentaries, and the different styles and types of documentaries that inform the ethics of perpetrator representation. (3) It introduces two broad categories of perpetrator representation in documentaries that conceptualize the ethical purposes of this engagement differently.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-09-29T09:13:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231201558
Book review: Joanne Hollows, Celebrity Chefs, Food Media and the Politics
of Eating
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  Authors: Ana Tominc
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-09-14T12:14:49Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231198512
Listening to the cultural acoustics of migrant voices: The archived
conversations of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the British
Library’s ‘Listening Project’
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  Authors: Tanvi Solanki
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  I examine the cultural acoustics of voice and listening in relation to the experience of migration and displacement through an analysis of a selection of digitized audio recordings of intimate one-on-one conversations between asylum seekers originally recorded by local British Broadcasting Corporation’s radio stations in booths set up throughout the United Kingdom, with the unedited recordings digitally archived by the British Library for the public. My approach to this archive is constituted by a concept and practice I call listening to difference. My case studies are two Somali siblings, a Syrian father and son, and two friends from Algeria and the Congo, and their relationality to the norms of Standard British Listening. My aim is to show how listening to these conversations can make us aware of our own limiting preconceptions in our listening and when and why they occur. Listening to ourselves listening will work against aurally mediated racial ideologies as it necessitates reflecting upon our own automatized, enculturated biases, as well as that of technologies of recording and transcription such as automated speech recognition. It challenges preconceptions about those voices marked as deviating from unmarked norms long established by the legacies of European Enlightenment humanism. Critically listening to those who are othered and belong to communities radically different from our own involves the exposure of aural power differentials and is particularly urgent during a time of an unprecedented increase of refugees accompanied by an increased controlling of national borders antagonistic to refugees and immigrants.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-09-14T12:13:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231198052
The digital pregnancy: A qualitative study of Danish women’s use of
pregnancy apps
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  Authors: Martin Lindhardt, Emma Balslev Brandsborg, Camilla Vesterager Hansen, Anne Bentzen Nielsen
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Based on an interview study with Danish women, this article explores how the frequent use of pregnancy mobile applications shapes the lived or experienced pregnancy. More specifically, we look at a reported dilemma between, on one hand, using the information of pregnancy apps on bodily and fetal developments to gain a sense of control over individual pregnancies and, on the other hand, an experience of the apps becoming something of a controlling factor in the lives of pregnant women. Respondents reported that the information of the apps created different kinds of concerns and that they became almost obsessed with comparing their own symptoms with the apps’ standardized information on what they could expect to experience at specific stages of the pregnancy. Our analysis draws on a socio-material perspective that acknowledges the ability of technology to enact certain kinds of experiences and shape concerns. We argue that the power of the apps (so to speak) is related, in part to the abundance of information they provide, which may contribute to a sensation of never knowing enough, but also in part to the use of apps becoming an integrated part of everyday cell phone routines.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-09-05T11:35:06Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231193812
The intimacy triple bind: Structural inequalities and relational labour in
the influencer industry
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  Authors: Zoë Glatt
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The careers of social media content creators, or influencers, live or die by their ability to cultivate and maintain an invested audience-community. To this end, they are encouraged to practise what has been framed as ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild, 2002 [1983]) and ‘relational labour’ (Baym, 2018), commodifying their personalities, lives and tastes in order to build ‘authentic’ self-brands and intimacy with audiences. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the London influencer industry (2017–2023), this article examines emotional/relational labour through an intersectional feminist lens, foregrounding the ways in which structural inequalities shape relationships between creators and their audiences. The tolls of managing audience relationships are higher for marginalised creators – especially those making stigmatised and less brandable content genres – who find themselves on an uneven playing field in the challenges they face as well as the coping strategies at their disposal. These creators are in an intimacy triple bind, already at higher risk of trolling and harassment, yet under increased pressure to perform relational labour, adversely opening them up to further harms in the form of weaponised intimacy. This article explores four key tactics that creators employ in response to such conditions, as they navigate relational labour and boundaries with audiences: (1) leaning into making rather than being content; (2) (dis)engaging with anti-fans through silence; (3) retreating into private community spaces, away from the exposure of public platforms; and, in parallel, (4) turning off public comments. The adverse experiences of marginalised creators who speak about their identities and experiences online raise serious concerns about the viability of content creation as a career for these groups, as well as the lack of accountability and responsibility that platforms show towards the creators who generate profit for them.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-31T09:06:08Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231194156
‘We live in a capitalist world, we need to survive!’: Feminist
cultural work, platform capitalism, and pandemic precarity
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  Authors: Hannah Curran-Troop
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This paper analyses the working practices of several feminist creative and cultural enterprises in London (which I term ‘feminist CCIs’). In particular, it shows how pandemic precarity has driven feminist CCIs towards more entrepreneurial, self-promotional, and self-branding practices in order to sustain their work. Drawing on both digital ethnographic material and interviews with 12 workers in feminist CCIs conducted online between 2020 and 2022, the article provides insights into the landscape and contemporary realities of arts and cultural funding within these fields. It considers how decades of austerity measures and cuts have forced some feminist CCIs to operate independently outside of the UK public sector funding models. Survival tactics include adopting corporate funding models, subscription and membership schemes, platformisation and digitalisation. Focusing on funding, money and subjectivity, it unpacks the contradictions these imperatives bring to feminist politics: tensions about which some feminist CCI workers themselves are aware of and critical of. In the process, this paper considers how activism, feminism, entrepreneurialism, and precarity are fused together and negotiated in this form of ‘freelance feminism’.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-31T09:03:28Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231193821
Science as an ‘object of love’ – affective milieus in
the neoliberal university
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  Authors: Johanna Hokka
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This study examines the affective milieus in the neoliberal university. Previous studies have demonstrated that, despite harsh neoliberal realities, academics still express a love for academic work. This study uses love as its conceptual tool to analyse the different forms of love that academics attach to science. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s theoretisations of affect, this study shows that emotions play a crucial role in organising social order. Emotions work to divide academia into separate ingroups that have different visions of the virtues of science that represent the object of love for its proponents. While analysing higher education magazines with affective-discursive reading, the results of this study show that the neoliberal university favours the forms of love in which the individual ethos and competition are highly valued, while those forms of love that highlight collegial and emancipatory values are on trial. Overall, this study contributes to critical discussions of the neoliberal university by demonstrating the power of emotions in the construction of conflicting, intersecting and overlapping ways of othering and the complex assemblage of affective milieus that exist in today’s academia.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-26T12:38:28Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231193811
Advocacy for territorial and people-centered approaches to development in
Romania: Place attachment based on industrial heritage
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  Authors: Oana-Ramona Ilovan, Paul Mutică
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This research focuses on the stories of two small yet unique settlements in Transylvania, Romania: the town of Petrila and the village of Roșia Montană, former mining settlements, currently deemed disadvantaged. Our research inquires about the relevance of their industrial heritage for inhabitants’ place attachment during a long-term process of resistance to neoliberal development and change that caused the partial loss of material and immaterial heritage. We used qualitative discourse analysis to process inhabitants’ accounts in two documentaries: Planeta Petrila and Roșia Montană, a Place on the Brink. Our findings show that place attachment is very strong and painful with many of the locals and is closely connected to industrial heritage and the past. Both industrial heritage and inhabitants’ place attachment based on this heritage are crucial resources for any future strategy that considers territorial and people-centered approaches to development, within a paradigm of sustainability and inclusiveness.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-24T08:48:47Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231192825
#MeToo in British schools: Gendered differences in teenagers’
awareness of sexual violence
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  Authors: Tanya Horeck, Jessica Ringrose, Betsy Milne, Kaitlynn Mendes
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article explores how British secondary school students responded to and made sense of the rising public awareness of sexual violence in British society that emerged during lockdowns for COVID-19. Based on the findings from a 2021–2022 study conducted in five secondary schools, the article explores the gendered discrepancies in girls’ and boys’ awareness of violence against girls and women. In particular, it examines how the youth participants in this study responded to two related media stories during lockdown: the news of Sarah Everard’s kidnapping and murder by a police officer and the viral spread of sexual abuse testimonies on the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ Instagram page and website. The article demonstrates how girls were more likely to experience, recognize, and discuss sexual violence, in part due to feminist consciousness raising during lockdown via digital technologies like Instagram and TikTok. Although some boys did recognize the problem of violence against women, in general, they were much less aware of Sarah Everard’s murder and Everyone’s Invited and were prone to absorbing manosphere-like discourses around false rape accusations In focus groups, some boys deployed a defensive masculinity and adopted a discourse of male victimhood, which denied the scale and scope of violence against girls and women. However, through involving boys in focus group discussion with both us and their male peers about power and privilege, progress was made in challenging and counteracting rape myths and anti-feminist male victimization narratives.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-19T11:42:47Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231191490
Book review: Jian Lin, Chinese Creator Economies: Labor and Bilateral
Creative Workers
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  Authors: Yue Zheng, Lin Song
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-09T09:13:00Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231189793
Nationalized anti-feminism: A collusion between nationalism and
gender-equal sexism
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  Authors: Renyi He
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The COVID-19 crisis has led to a global resurgence of nationalism, which can be observed from major political events like presidential elections to everyday culture such as video games. In a recent online debate over sexualized female characters, Chinese male gamers excessively incorporated nationalist discourses to justify their anti-feminist arguments. Their discursive campaign provides an opportunity to explore the rising nationalist sentiment in the post-pandemic era and the linkage between nationalism and sexism as well. This study analyzed male players’ online posts and generalized their discursive strategies – the true gamer identity, anti-political correctness rhetoric, and the gender antagonism accusation – to incorporate nationalist discourse to make their anti-feminist arguments more persuasive and subtle. The study also explains how this anti-feminism fits in with frames of gender-equal sexism, and how the findings can help understand information interpretation tactics employed by misogynists.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-09T09:11:00Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231191486
Feminist activists discuss practices of monetisation: Digital feminist
activism, neoliberalism and subjectivity
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  Authors: Christina Scharff
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article explores the politics of ‘freelance feminism’ by drawing on 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with digital feminist activists. By documenting and analysing the different ways in which digital feminist activism can be monetised, the article shows that the potential to generate income is frequently discussed by, and contemplated among, activists. As this article argues, the monetisation of digital feminist activism goes beyond the application of market principles to political protest movements. When activism is monetised, activists’ emotional investments and passion become mobilised and tied to income generation. At the same time, and through emphases on self-branding and ‘authenticity’, activists’ selves are formed and rearranged in line with neoliberal values of entrepreneurialism and market competition. This article therefore shows that the workings of neoliberalism in digital feminist activism play out on an economic level, and also on the levels of affect and subjectivity.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-05T11:31:21Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231188224
Inheriting a dynasty: Family succession dramas and the moral economy of
Downton Abbey
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  Authors: Hanna Kuusela
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The role of inherited or family wealth in reproducing and even exacerbating wealth inequalities has been addressed in various studies in recent years. Bringing together representation studies with studies on cultural and moral economies, this article analyses how cultural norms indispensable to the preservation of dynastic wealth are negotiated through contemporary popular culture and television series. It introduces the concept of family succession drama, referring to television fiction that focuses on issues concerning intergenerational transmission of wealth and/or privileges and analyses the series Downton Abbey as a case study for interrogating the ambiguous affirmation of inherited wealth and dynastic privileges in a historical melodrama. By focusing on Downton Abbey, the article considers how hereditary rights and dynastic privileges are negotiated in a heritage drama in ways that also enable the legitimation of contemporary dynasty-making. While acknowledging the anxieties caused by class differences, Downton Abbey nevertheless affirms the necessity for various hereditary privileges and fortunes, thereby excluding any true alternatives for (contemporary) dynastic dynamics.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-05T11:26:50Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231187475
Retracing the racial semiotics of the other-lingual (anderstalige) in
Dutch and Afrikaans: Exploring its emergence in South Africa and its
(re-)emergence in Flanders
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  Authors: Hari Prasad Sacré, Kris Rutten
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article explores the racial semiotics of the Dutch concept of the other-lingual (de anderstalige). Multicultural discourse ostensibly encodes the otherness as merely linguistic; however, Flemish nationalist policy discourse deploys the other-lingual to discern autochthony from allochthony. Retracing the origins of this concept, we found that the concept did not originate in Dutch-speaking Europe, but we found earlier traces overseas in apartheid South Africa where the Afrikaans concept served the forced exclusion of coloured people. We conduct a semiotic analysis of the other-lingual to study how the concept racially encodes and decodes the Afrikaans language in South Africa and the Dutch language in Flanders. The dataset contains records in Dutch and Afrikaans, published in, or in regards to, the Netherlands, Suriname, Flanders (Belgium) and South Africa. Our semiotic analysis of the South African other-lingual engages with religious discourse published in 1950s South Africa. The semiotic analysis of Flemish other-lingual engages with its trajectory in Flemish Government Declarations from 1992 to 2022. The article concludes that the history of the other-lingual, revealing a racial identification between Flemings and Afrikaners, provides pivotal arguments for the contemporary understanding of race in the Dutch languages.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-08-01T05:31:50Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231184019
Talking football: Discourses about race/ethnicity among Spanish youth
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  Authors: Carmen Longas Luque, Mélodine Sommier, Jacco van Sterkenburg
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  It is commonly accepted that sports media and televised football in particular are sites where ideas about race/ethnicity are (re)produced. However, less is known about how audiences deal with these messages: do they assume these ideas are true or do they negotiate them and if so, how' Using cultural studies as our theoretical framework, we conducted 14 focus groups among Spanish youth and asked them to reflect on ideas about race/ethnicity while talking about football. Results show that interviewees had difficulty in talking about race/ethnicity and that they not only reproduced dominant discourses about race/ethnicity but also negotiated other discourses. Interviewees also described Spanish sports media as sensationalistic and money driven.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-31T10:54:40Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231189239
Markers of self-identities for young Polish diasporic female viewers of
The Magnificent Century (Turkish TV series, 2011–2014)
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  Authors: Deniz Özalpman
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This study focuses on young Polish viewers living in Vienna, the capital city of Austria, and their reception of Turkish television series. This is an under-researched audience group. The analysis gives voice to viewers’ comments through the use of semi-structured interviews to gain deep insight into their viewer experiences. The study introduces another, less-studied component of analysis by scrutinising the ways in which audiences deploy the media text of Turkish series in defining markers of their own self-identities. The analysis of this reveals ways in which viewers were able to negotiate their placement in diasporic lands and in cultural imaginaries.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-29T09:02:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231189243
Humour under occupation: Jokes and humorous anecdotes and their
reflections in Palestine
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  Authors: Noura Kamal
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Humour plays a substantial role in the dissemination of ideas, beliefs and practices. In particular, it can offer an alternative framework for addressing situations of struggle, stress and suffering, such as war, political strife and social upheaval. In Palestine, humour is manifested in many everyday interactions, functioning as a coping mechanism and offering a way to confront both the Israeli Occupation and the dire political and economic situation. This article engages with humour as it occurs in the everyday lives of Palestinians, looking at the role of humour in a specific context, in a time of political violence. One of the arguments I wish to make is that each new atrocity or each further erosion of rights is reflected in a new series of ‘in-jokes’, which enable Palestinians to refer to, make sense of and adapt to the painful realities they encounter in everyday life. The narratives of individuals’ lives in Palestine are reflected upon via the exploration of humorous daily discourse which is displayed in jokes and humorous anecdotes. I explore what thoughts, desires and fears individuals and families in Palestine share within their social networks in the form of jokes. In addition, the article traces what kind of jokes are circulated and how people in various situations react to different kinds of jokes.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-29T09:00:09Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231188912
Ageing and unruliness: Articulations of gaga feminism in representations
of ageing, gender and sexuality
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  Authors: Sara De Vuyst, Katrien De Graeve
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  In prevailing Western media discourses, older women’s anger and resistance are often portrayed as a result of the physical and mental decline inherently associated with ageing. These representations reinforce the image of older women as vulnerable subjects who are weak, frail and excluded from society. This article proposes an alternative reading of expressions of unruliness related to ageing, gender and sexuality in Western media and visual culture through the lens of Halberstam’s concept of gaga feminism. The aim is to explore how gaga feminism’s aesthetics of collapse, creative anarchy and experimentation can construct new constellations of ageing, sexuality and gender. We have conducted a critical, contextualised reading of a selection of cultural artefacts that express various elements of a gaga aesthetic. Our analysis reflects on the three central principles of gaga, specifically (1) new forms of social relations and sexualities, (2) more fluid articulations of gender and (3) creative anarchy; and on what they can mean for an anti-ageist project in media and visual culture. In this way, this article offers insights into the creative and unruly ways in which ageism, heteronormativity and sexism can be subverted and destabilised in representations.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-29T08:57:54Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231188710
Weaving the network of collectivism – Kuqing as affective glue in China:
Analyzing the reality show X-Change
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  Authors: Wei Dong, Margreth Lünenborg
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines the ways in which kuqing – bitter emotions – are performed, amplified and circulated in the Chinese reality show X-Change (2006–2008). Taking a social relational approach to affect, we understand kuqing as an embodied, socially informed and relationally inscribed affective response to suffering and pain. Building on the historical roots of kuqing, textual and audiovisual analysis is applied to capture its expressions and affective registers in the program. The analysis reveals that, while claiming to reduce the alarming urban–rural divide, the program engages in two juxtaposed and competing affective arrangements. The first recruits kuqing into neoliberal logics and individualistic subjectivity, but is counterproductive in that it reproduces structural class inequalities. The second results in a rearrangement in which kuqing circulates relationally and articulates with Confucian filiality and family ethics, weaving both the rural bitter underclass and the urban middle class into an intersubjective collectivist identity and relationship, thereby strengthening social cohesion and managing social division. Based on the analysis, we offer new insights into relationships between reality TV, power structures and the complex ‘emotional regime’ in a contemporary China challenged by its social ruptures.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-29T08:55:28Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231188707
Constructing authority in the digital age: Comparing book reviews of
professional and amateur critics
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  Authors: Rian Koreman, Marc Verboord, Susanne Janssen
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  How do cultural critics in the digital age convince audiences that their writings are valuable' What discursive strategies do they employ to construct their authority' And which differences can we see between professional critics working in institutionalized media and amateur critics contributing to online platforms' This article presents an in-depth analysis of book reviews by different critics to answer these questions. The results indicate that long-standing critical strategies are still largely intact: both professional and amateur critics construct authority by analyzing the book, contextualizing the book and discussing its reception, suggesting that amateurs have adopted to a large degree the skill sets of professionals. At the same time, amateur critics distinguish themselves by a pronounced presence of their personal experience in their reviews. This could point to a new way of constructing authority.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-29T08:53:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231187472
Urban/image: Conceptualizing Amsterdam as urban environment in virtual
renderings
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  Authors: Linda Kopitz
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article proposes that virtual renderings of speculative architectural projects provide a crucial entry point into the reimagination of sustainable urban life through the production of nature(s) within the city. Drawing on case studies of ‘sustainable’ building projects in and around Amsterdam, The Netherlands, I aim to trace the entanglement of virtual and real environments in imagining green futures. With the concept of the ‘render ghost’, James Bridle situates the people inhabiting virtual renderings ‘in the liminal space between the present and the future, the real and the virtual, the physical and the digital’ (2013). Similarly, the imaginations of nature within virtual renderings of sustainable buildings are situated at a point of in-between, a constant state of becoming. More than just visualizing their respective architectural design, the virtual renderings visualize these designs in a specific space, a specific environment – and how that environment could and would change through the spatial presence of these buildings. What makes these immaterial elements – ranging from computer-generated images to virtual renderings and augmented reality applications – particularly productive as research objects is the subjective nature of the atmosphere created in and through them, an atmospheric imagination of sustainable futures embedded in what Degen et al. call a ‘field of negotiation, tension and ambivalence’ (2017). Atmospheric in their imagination of urban environments, contingent in their temporality between the past, the present and the future, and ambiguous in their spatial grounding in simultaneously specific and generic surroundings, virtual renderings arguably allow for an engagement with the possibilities of alternative urban futures.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-26T06:57:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231186279
The unprotectables: A critical discourse analysis of older people’s
portrayal in UK newspaper coverage of Covid-19
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  Authors: Shir Shimoni
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, I draw on the systematic, policy-led negligence with which older people in the United Kingdom were handled during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, as I examine their simultaneous cultural representation across four major UK newspapers. Using content and critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate that while older people were depicted mostly through the notion of their increased risk to contract and die from the virus, this risk was consistently framed as unmanageable. I adopt a Foucauldian governmentality perspective as I argue that by framing dangers as exceeding the possibility of control and insurance, the discourse of unmanageable risk helped to dismantle the protection of older people from the virus. Moreover, I demonstrate that the unmanageable risk discourse spawned a particular kind of an older subject, one who not only is unprotectable but also invisible. I discuss how older people’s invisibility – evident in the absence of their names, voices and testimonies – operated in tandem with their unprotectability, to render them palatably disposable.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-26T05:16:37Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231185539
Book review: Karen Wells, The Visual Cultures of Childhood: Film and
Television from The Magic Lantern to Teen Vloggers
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  Authors: Tracey Jensen
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-25T12:23:31Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231184021
High art on a mug: Art merchandise in China’s contemporary art
market
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  Authors: Svetlana Kharchenkova
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article investigates the interplay between art, commerce and democratization in the contemporary art market. It studies the roles of art merchandise, such as mugs decorated with images of high art, in the contemporary art market in China. Relying on interviews, observations and other qualitative data, this article demonstrates that the merchandising of contemporary art is legitimate in China. The generation of income and promotion of artists and contemporary art generally emerged as important roles that China’s art world participants assign to art merchandise. Art merchandise is fitting for these roles in a consumer society. The prevalence of art merchandising in China stems from a lack of state support for contemporary art, and a specific cultural and historical context that makes people more attuned to accept multiples. This article contributes to the sociology of art, the literature on the democratization of art and arts marketing literature.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-07T07:45:52Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231184016
Anticonsumerist marketers: Cultural intermediaries in an era of consumer
activism
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  Authors: Adam Richard Rottinghaus
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Through the concept of ‘cultural intermediaries’, this article identifies contradictions between marketing workers’ personal and professional identities as a rich site for understanding the ethics and politics of marketing work in an era of consumer activism. It offers a case study of a small branding agency president’s attempt to resolve their personal anticonsumerist, environmental politics with their work as a marketer promoting the very forms of over/consumption that they personally oppose. The resolution comes in the form of certifying their agency as a B Corp, which legally binds them to act for people and planet as much as profit when making managerial decisions. The following account contributes to the literature on cultural intermediaries in two ways. First, it describes how resolving conflicts between different sources of identification for cultural intermediaries can shape the process and patterns of generating cultural and economic value. Second, the case suggests that promotional agencies can foster trends in a business-to-business context, rather than among retail consumers, which shift normative organizational and market practices.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-07-05T05:27:23Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231180822
When the dancing went wrong, the evening went right: An argument for
ageing and changing cultural practice
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  Authors: Mark Ball
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Inspired by a line dancing club in Stoke-on-Trent, and drawing principally on cultural theorist Raymond Williams, this article makes the case for appreciating the ways that cultural practices age and change over time. This group of line dancers held a deep, long, and collective familiarity with their practice, and through this intimacy an idiosyncratic attitude to dancing mistakes emerged. Taking these mistakes, collectively recast by dancers as ‘variations’, as the central empirical focus, I describe a sense of collective agency manifesting a solidaristic style of ageing together. Raymond Williams helps make this articulation political: in defending the time and space needed for such attitudes around practice to emerge, and the attitudes themselves.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-06-22T09:06:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231179269
#GirlBossing the university side hustle: Entrepreneurial femininities,
postfeminism and the veneer of ‘female success’ in times of crisis
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  Authors: Kim Allen, Kirsty Finn
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Against a backdrop of the growing crisis in higher education, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and a longer-term precaritisation of the youth and graduate labour market, the last 2 years have witnessed an increased visibility and promotion of flexible, entrepreneurial and often digitally mediated forms of self-employment addressed at young women, including the ‘side hustle’. With media declarations such as ‘the university side hustle has come of age’, universities themselves have begun embedding initiatives that seemingly help students launch a ‘student side hustle’ as they turn passions into entrepreneurial projects. The student side hustle has been advocated as a feasible way of not only supplementing income while studying but also investing in one’s future employability in the context of increasingly uncertain graduate outcomes. In this article we connect the emergence of the student side hustle to a broader postfeminist landscape in which (young) women are invited to engage in entrepreneurial self-employment through the promise of ‘passionate work’, financial autonomy and time-freedom. We demonstrate that in the context of higher education, where women outnumber men and dominate the degree subjects increasingly badged as ‘low value’ due to declining graduate outcomes, institutional incitements to engage in the student side hustle are distinctly gendered. Crucially, we contend that this framing and promotion of the student side hustle – in which women become the ‘poster girls’ of entrepreneurialism – works to facilitate and sustain the myths and ideals of postfeminist success while masking the ongoing crises and gendered inequalities that underpin contemporary higher education and the graduate labour market.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-06-05T12:13:41Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231177160
The spatialization of music and politics in festival spaces: The social,
symbolic and emotional structuring of the Festival of Political Songs in
the German Democratic Republic
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  Authors: Barbara Grüning
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article examines the genesis and development of the Festival of Political Songs (Festival des Politischen Liedes) in East Berlin under the German Democratic Republic from 1970 to 1990, looking at it as one of the main engines of the German Democratic Republic-musical field in the last twenty years of its existence. In this regard, the analysis of the empirical material (in-depth interviews and video recordings) serves first to outline the main social and cultural processes which interested the Festival from its inception to its end, and second to reflect upon some specific features of the Festival as an ‘extraordinary event’ in light of Bourdieu’s concept of field. Departing from this perspective, I examine the genesis and development of the Festival, focusing especially on the contrasting effects produced by its institutionalization and internationalization and the ways these impacted both the Festival and the musical field: from the creation of music scenes, to the development of professional careers in different fields of cultural production and the mixing of mainstream and alternative musical trends. The final aim is to highlight the different understandings of publicness and openness associated with the Festival that defined its social, spatial and emotional structure during its twenty-year lifespan.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-29T09:43:40Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231173497
#ButNotMaternity: Analysing Instagram posts of reproductive politics under
pandemic crisis
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  Authors: Sara De Benedictis, Kaitlynn Mendes
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  In this article, we perform a thematic analysis of a sample of 70 #ButNotMaternity Instagram posts. #ButNotMaternity is a hashtag that emerged in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic whereby the public, healthcare workers and campaigners shared experiences and concerns about pandemic maternity care restrictions and their disproportionate disadvantages for pregnant women. In the article, we analyse four themes that emerged from our thematic analysis – Individual experiences, loneliness and overcoming adversity, Voicing anger and absurdity, Mobilising anger and calls to action and Coordinated activism. Thinking about #ButNotMaternity in the context of ‘freelance feminism’, our article has a twofold aim. First, we explore the concept of ‘freelance feminism’ through #ButNotMaternity, asking to what extent this campaign draws from freelance tactics. Second, we use the hashtag to illuminate maternity inequality and modes of resistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through our thematic analysis, we argue that while ‘freelance feminism’ might be becoming hegemonic as a dominant mode of organising feminist activism and resistance, inspired by Malik et al. (2020), we also showcase how creative campaigns are potential places where collective action, structural critique and resistance may emerge.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-29T06:09:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231173661
‘It takes a long time to become young’: A critical feminist
intersectional study of Vogue’s Non-Issue
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  Authors: Lame M Kenalemang-Palm
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Older female celebrities are increasingly visible in popular media culture, but what kinds of representations are being offered' By deploying a feminist intersectional perspective and adopting Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), this article interrogates how British Vogue’s Non-Issue communicates ideas and values about ageing and how the magazine constructs discourses through which women’s ageing is understood. The analysis shows that the Non-Issue represents older women as radical and empowered subjects. The rhetoric of freedom and choice, central to postfeminism, is prominent in the magazine and aligns with neoliberal discourses of successful ageing. Such discourses encourage women to confine themselves to never-ending, rigid forms of self-surveillance, self-monitoring and self-disciplining that ultimately subject the older female body to a ‘new’ set of bodily inscriptions and prescriptions that reinforce patriarchal standards of beauty. These standards of beauty are, however, challenged in the magazine through a recuperated do-it-yourself discourse of punk spirit rebellion that works to commodify women’s empowerment, yet still reduces women to how they look.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-27T06:04:54Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231173658
Simple solutions to wicked problems: Cultivating true believers of
anti-vaccine conspiracies during the COVID-19 pandemic
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  Authors: Stephanie Alice Baker, Eugene McLaughlin, Chris Rojek
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The pandemic has produced an abundance of medical misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Many of these narratives appear impervious to scientific evidence and indifferent to the authority of the state. This has resulted in ‘true believers’ being cast as paranoid and irrational. In this article, we take a different approach by exploring the cultural appeal of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Drawing on qualitative analysis of two leading figures of the anti-vaccination movement – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joseph Mercola – we demonstrate how these influencers establish authority by staging indignation against a corrupt scientific establishment and positioning themselves as Truthers offering simple solutions to complex (wicked) problems. By conceptualising what we refer to as the Truther Playbook, we examine how anti-vaccine Truthers capitalise on existing grievances and conditions of low institutional trust to further solidify people’s troubled relationship with institutional expertise while drawing attention to the structural conditions and social inequalities that facilitate belief in conspiracy theories. We contend that conspiracy theories offer not only offer alternative facts and narratives but are predicated on identification and in-group membership, highlighting the limits of debunking as a strategy to tackle disinformation.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-23T05:58:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231173536
Best friends forever – really' The group of friends as the ideal model
of sociability in children’s animations
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  Authors: Laura Saarenmaa
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article explores the intensifying friendship ideal current in children’s media culture. The article argues that children’s animations, such as Lego Friends, educate children about a desirable model of sociability, namely that of the closed group of friends. While the recent research on friendship has focused on the technological mechanisms of friendship in specific textual practices and platforms, the concept of friendship itself and its cultural re-significances has received less attention. In this analysis, Lego Friends is approached from the perspective of popular cultural meaning making: how and in relation to what are friendships represented as not only valuable but also necessary social relationships. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation, the article suggests that the intensifying friendship ideal reflects the contemporary adult concern of social exclusion, rooted in neoliberal economic insecurities.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-16T10:05:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231175066
‘Even if the algorithm is a terrible workmate, you just need to learn to
live with it’: Perceptions of data analytics among game industry
professionals
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  Authors: Olli Sotamaa, Heikki Tyni, Taina Myöhänen
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The digital game industry has actively integrated data-driven methods into its core processes. This interview-based study shows how game industry professionals perceive the role of data as part of their everyday work. Analysing the data-related notions and negotiations helps to explicate how mainstream data imaginaries are both reproduced and challenged in the different phases and contexts of game making. The analysis is divided into the following themes: data is everywhere, data is messy, data is constructed and data redefines creativity. The qualitative inquiry shows how the meaning of game data cannot be reduced to individual metrics or analytics services, or new positions like data analysts. Data-driven development is based on particular values and assumptions, and it creates new practices, working cultures and conflicting forms of agency.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-13T09:12:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231168568
On joining the editorial team of European Journal of Cultural Studies in
its 25th year
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  Authors: Jilly Boyce Kay
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  In this essay, I discuss my appointment as co-editor of this journal within the context of its history across its 25 years of life thus far, as well as within the field of cultural studies more broadly. I briefly consider the value and crucial importance of conjunctural analysis, cultural studies’ complex but crucial relationship to Marxism, and the generative feminist possibilities of engaging with, rather than ignoring or wholly disavowing, ‘classic’ theories of media and culture that may be problematic or limited. I also briefly identify some areas of inquiry that I see as important focal points for future cultural studies scholarship, particularly around contemporary mutations of popular and conservative feminisms, popular left politics, and the ‘culture wars’.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-11T10:22:19Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231173502
The mediated circulation of the United Kingdom’s YouthStrike4Climate
movement’s discourses and actions
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  Authors: Bart Cammaerts
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The circulation of the discourse as well as the direct actions of the United Kingdom’s YouthStrike4Climate movement is analysed by considering the production of movement discourses in conjunction with the way in which the movement self-mediates those discourses and actions, the way the mainstream media represents them and how they were received by non-activist citizens as well as political elites. It was found that the movement discourse invokes crisis and a sense of emergency to act; the need for a green new deal is proposed with an emphasis on intersectional climate justice and more democracy and inclusion of youth voices. The Internet, social media and cloud-based platforms were used a lot, to communicate both outwards and inwards. However, the resonance of social media engagement was relatively low. Mainstream media resonance, on the contrary, was quite high and overall relatively positive, although there was also evidence of belittlement and misogyny. The movement has played its role, among others, to increase awareness of climate change and the need to act, but the direct actions of the movement were less supported and there is also still a gap in terms of class and race, which will require a more embodied rather than performative intersectionality with regard to environmental issues.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-10T05:14:27Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231165645
Identity construction and collusion in documentary of the Gaelic-speaking
community: A filmmaker’s perspective
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  Authors: Diane Maclean
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  If Gaelic has been symbolically appropriated to represent Scotland, then it follows that we need to look more closely at the part played by documentary film both of and from the Scottish Hebrides, in furthering the dissemination of what is an idealised and contested identity. As documentary is a negotiated contract between the producer and those they ‘represent’, the discussion needs to consider whether the representation of a Hebridean identity, and by extension a mythical Scottish identity, is constructed by the filmmaker, and if so, how filmic constraints and practices inform this representation. Within this framework is an acknowledgement of the extent to which Hebridean identity has been mediated by books, photographs and films for the past 300 years. This article will deliver the findings of a research project undertaken in the in the Outer Hebrides (also known as the Western Isles and Lewis & Harris). The research investigates the extent to which interviewees themselves collude with documentary makers in presenting a view of the Gael that reflects the Gaelic-speaker’s own self-assigned role as guardian of the land and traditions. As this research marries practice with research, it will present it in a semi-autobiographical style.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-02T10:31:15Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231159342
Post-racial politics, pre-emption and in/security
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  Authors: Sanjay Sharma, Jasbinder S. Nijjar
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Militarized policing strategies aiming to identify and nullify risks to national security in Western nations have become central to the biopolitical regulation of racialized populations. While the disproportionate impact of pre-emptive counter-terrorism policing on ‘Muslim’ populations has been highlighted, the post-racial techno-politics of predictive policing as a mode of securitization remain overlooked. This article argues that the ‘war on terror’ is governed by a state of crisis that conditions a pre-emptive biopolitics of containment against (unknown) future threats. We examine how predictive policing is progressively dependent on the computational production of risk to avert impending terror. As such, extant forms of counter-terrorism algorithmic profiling are shown to mobilize post-racial calculative logics that renew racial oppression while appearing race-neutral. These predictive systems and pre-emptive actions, while seeking to securitize the future by identifying and nullifying suspects, evasively remake race as risky, thus rendering security indistinguishable from insecurity. Hence, we assert that state securitization is haunted by a profound sense of racialized dread over terrorism, for it can only resort to containing, rather than resolving, the perceived threat of race.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-02T06:33:23Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231168177
Beyond door policies: Cultural production as a form of spatial regulation
in Amsterdam nightclubs
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  Authors: Timo Koren
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Understanding regulation is key to identifying and understanding the mechanisms and patterns that (re)produce social inequalities in nightclub production. Roughly speaking, researchers have focused on two forms of regulation: governmental regulation and club-led regulation. First, city councils regulate nightlife through licensing, zoning laws, nightlife districts and urban redevelopment. Second, clubs have their own incentives to regulate spaces of consumption: to ensure safety, to increase middle-class audiences’ spending power and to attract audiences with high subcultural capital. Research in this vein has so far mainly focused on door policies. However, in analysing club-led regulation, a more nuanced, intricate understanding of cultural production is key. Using David Hesmondhalgh’s cultural industries framework, this research argues that existing work on regulation presupposes pre-existing demand, neglecting that nightclubs also actively create demand. First, it highlights that clubs employ other, less visible but nonetheless exclusionary, production practices that are in effect before audiences even reach the door: hiring external organisations, genre-based formatting, locational strategies and guest lists. Second, it decentralises the role of door policies. Understood in relation to other nightclub cultural production practices, door policy research does not account for nightclubs’ assessments of door policies, venues’ financial precarity, social networks and the need to constantly attract new audiences. By doing so, I examine the workings of power in urban cultural economies by understanding cultural production as a form of spatial regulation. The research is based on 29 interviews with 36 Amsterdam-based nightlife promoters and 111 hours of short-term ethnographies in clubs and at industry events.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-05-02T06:10:34Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231165923
The menopause moment: The rising visibility of ‘the change’ in
UK news coverage
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  Authors: Shani Orgad, Catherine Rottenberg
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this article examines UK news coverage of menopause from 2001 to 2021. We show that not only has there been a dramatic rise in menopause’s visibility since 2015, and especially since 2021, but that the coverage is concentrated in the conservative right-wing press. We also document six peaks in coverage, which are driven by celebrity stories, news about menopause-related medical guidelines, national hormone replacement therapy shortages and menopause-related governmental interventions, as well as the use of menopause as a metaphor for the economy. Based on these findings, we discuss some key social, cultural and economic forces that may help explain menopause’s heightened visibility. These include the rise of popular neoliberal feminism, celebrity culture, changing demographics and changes to UK work policy, ideological notions of biological womanhood and the influence of Big Pharma. We conclude by highlighting how menopause’s new luminosity contributes to challenging its traditional invisibility and negative framing, and gendered ageism more broadly. Yet, at the same time, in its current iteration, menopause’s increased visibility may reinforce a neoliberal feminist framework that deflects attention away from understanding menopause as a social and cultural issue, while also buttressing narrow conceptions of femininity and supporting neoliberal policies that aim to keep older women in the workforce for longer.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-04-15T07:07:03Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231159562
Selling feminist stories: Popular feminism, authenticity and happiness
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  Authors: Johanna Lauri, Marcus Lauri
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  By interviewing Swedish feminist activists who sell commodities to serve feminist purposes, this study focuses on how they articulate their engagement and make it intelligible. To untangle how articulations about feminist businesses may stabilise, reshape and challenge feminist values and engagement, we use theories of popular feminism alongside discourse theory to capture its contingencies. The analysis shows that, rather than enhancing sales by the use of feminism, the interviewees articulate an interest in spreading feminism through the sale of commodities. They understand their commodities to be ‘authentic’ and ‘truly’ feminist, thereby distancing themselves from corporations that use feminism to brand their products. However, this aligns precisely with the dominant contemporary corporate branding discourse of authenticity, understood as untainted by capitalism. The interviewees want to provide their customers with confidence, a dominant trait of popular feminism, through the display of feminist expression. A quest for visibility tends to absorb political aspects, which is further illustrated in the expressed wish to avoid an aggressive, provocative or explicitly political address. Understanding popular feminism as a discursive struggle, we conclude that the domination of a happy, confidence-building feminism will render more confrontational and radical versions of feminism less visible.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-04-07T09:28:12Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494221137371
The body as theme and tool of artivism in young people
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  Authors: João Carlos Figueira Martins, Ricardo Marnoto de Oliveira Campos
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  The body occupies a prominent place in the social sciences literature, where it is understood to be an important social marker. The body is either used to classify and supervise individuals and certain social groups, or as a tool for individual agency. The body might, for this reason, be conceived as a political device in the sense that the structures of power and dominant groups have always applied methods or control, surveillance and regulation over it. Thus, several social groups have, throughout history, been stigmatised, diminished or supervised based on their skin colour, gender or sexual orientation. Equally, the body also functions as a tool of resistance, disruption and afront to the ruling norms and the status quo. In this article, we base our arguments on research developed in Portugal on young people’s activism and citizenhood. Our project focussed on creative forms of engaged citizenship and political participation encompassing a range of practices, particularly in the context of artivism. This article is based on interviews conducted with young artivists, focussing on the way in which the body assumes a central role in their political efforts and artistic practices. We have concluded that it occupies a prominent place in their discourses, becoming either a source of inspiration or a tool for their artivist endeavours.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-04-07T04:42:21Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231163647
The Good, the Bad and the Disney: Employing princesses to examine
Hungarian tweens’ understanding of gender
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  Authors: Anna Zsubori
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  By relying on diverse scholarly works within several fields – such as communication, cultural, feminist media, film and tweenhood studies – on the one hand, and conducting audience research with Hungarian informants on the other, this interdisciplinary study, as part of a bigger project, examines Hungarian tweenagers’ negotiation of gender. It does so by investigating the concept of ‘the’ princess, including but not limited to Disney Princesses, while offering unique contributions on both theoretical and methodological levels. Theoretically, it shines a light on the limitations of applying Western, post-feminist, liberal theories in a non-Western, post-socialist and ‘illiberal’ environment, and it discusses complexities of the Princess Phenomenon which have been overlooked in academia. From a methodological perspective, it presents innovative short-term ethnographic approaches, specifically in terms of conducting a gender-centred audience study with young people in an anti-gender milieu. To achieve these objectives, this work first introduces the historical, social and political contexts in contemporary Hungary. This is followed by a discussion of the theoretical and methodological approaches which it was necessary to consider before undertaking the fieldwork in Hungary. The article then analyses Hungarian children’s notions of gender by discussing their ideas about ‘the’ princess as a concept. Finally, as a summary, this study outlines its contributions to diverse academic disciplines.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-03-24T05:48:47Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231159332
Analyzing the Justice and Development Party’s changing discourse on the
headscarf issue as the constitutive part of its drift toward authoritarian
politics in Turkey
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  Authors: Betül Yarar
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  Despite its long history since the late Ottoman period in Turkey, this article focuses on the headscarf issue within a particular period; since 2002, when the Justice and Development Party has been in power. Women’s issues have always occupied a large space in the Justice and Development Party’s project(s), which articulate diverse narrative lines ranging from conservatism to liberalism. The article aims to unravel this diverse insight into the Justice and Development Party’s politics within the context of its recent political drift toward authoritarianism while particularly focusing on its headscarf discourses. It argues that the Justice and Development Party’s political drift toward authoritarianism resulted in the replacement of the earlier politics of consensus/‘non-defiance’, which refers to a conservatism that denies radicalism and avoids emphasizing controversial issues like the headscarf, with the politics of dissensus/defiance that reveal social tensions and political conflicts such as those between Islamic and secular sectors, through revitalizing the old debate on the headscarf issue. In this sense, the lifting of the headscarf bans in public institutions in 2008 can be read as a symptom, not of the Justice and Development Party’s earlier liberal stand, but of the beginning of its shift toward authoritarianism based on its religious-nationalist project, which made use of this liberal right of pious women in enhancing the gaps between oppositional groups and in consolidating its social basis. This earlier attempt has been followed by continuous use of the headscarf as a symbol drawing a border between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and signifying outrages and moral crisis for which the Justice and Development Party blamed the oppositional groups. Within this context, the article questions the ways in which the headscarf as a political symbol along with other conservative policies targeting female bodies and sexualities took a part in the constitution and consolidation of the Justice and Development Party’s radical right alliance and its authoritarian regime.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-03-06T09:35:45Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231153692
Mapping the music of migration: Emergent themes and challenges
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  Authors: Abigail Gardner, Kai Arne Hansen
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article adds to existing scholarship on music and migration by presenting and reflecting on the work undertaken in the project ‘Mapping the Music of Migration’ (2019–2021, www.mamumi.eu), which comprised partners from seven European countries and focused on storytelling about music and its potential to enable intercultural exchange and counter negative stereotypes. The key activities of the project involved the collection of migrants’ ‘Song Stories’ – personal stories about music – which were made publicly available through an interactive app. The article outlines the background and findings of the project and presents critical reflections on the various circumstances that shaped our process and results. The main objective is to give readers an insight into the key challenges and outcomes of the project, thereby calling attention to a range of themes and tensions that are of relevance to future studies of music and migration.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-03-01T05:12:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231156120
From London to Bali: Raymond Williams and communication as transport and
social networks
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  Authors: Rianne Subijanto
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article unearths Raymond Williams’ approach to communication as transport and social networks. Existing literature argues that the field of communication’s withdrawal from the study of transport leads to at least two setbacks: media presentism and a narrowed meaning of communication and culture. This article excavates Williams’ concept of ‘communication as transport and social networks’ by first revisiting his larger method of cultural materialism that sees communication as a whole complex assemblage of different modes of communication to facilitate connection. This is then followed by a discussion on the use of this concept in his various works and, more intensively, in The Country and the City. To emphasize Williams’ relevance to contemporary contexts, the next part of the article deals with an analysis of how digital media and contemporary transport networks facilitate the reproduction of Bali as a paradise. This article calls for a more dialectical understanding of communication that includes the inextricable relations between mobility and sociality, the material and the symbolic, and the transmission and the ritual in shaping human lives.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-02-10T09:17:36Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494231152886
Purging the neoliberal poison' Marina Diamandis and the cultural grammar
of popular left politics
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  Authors: Jonathan Dean
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article enquires into the discursive and affective texture of the intersections of popular culture and left/feminist politics in the current Anglo-American context. It does this primarily via a contextual reading of the recent work of Welsh/Greek pop singer Marina Diamandis (who performs under the mononym ‘Marina’), especially her 2021 single entitled ‘Purge the Poison’. Building on Sarah Banet-Weiser’s work on popular feminism, I suggest that recent years have seen the emergence within popular and commercial culture of a ‘popular left politics’ which includes – but is not limited to – popular feminism. I argue that Marina’s work – as well as its reception from fans and critics – can help us identify several constitutive features of what I call the cultural grammar of popular left politics. These include, first, a conception of knowledge as linked to the revelation of truth grounded in identity and experience; second, a projection of purity and perfectionism of self and, third, a projection of complicity onto others. I further suggest – drawing in particular on Akane Kanai’s recent work – that these features of the cultural grammar of popular left politics are testament to the centrality of neoliberalism in shaping the discursive, affective and subjective character of even ostensibly anti-neoliberal forms of politics and culture. Furthermore, in contrast to the familiar argument that neoliberalism blunts or co-opts oppositional discourses, I suggest that, in the current conjuncture, explicitly and overtly anti-neoliberal discourses are sometimes afforded a certain cachet and visibility, so long as the cultural grammar they adopt aligns with the competitive and individualistic logics of neoliberal hegemony.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-02-01T07:00:19Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494221151044
Economic martyrs and moralised others: The construction of social class in
UK media during the ‘age of austerity’
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  Authors: Lee Marsden
  Abstract: European Journal of Cultural Studies, Ahead of Print.
  This article describes the key findings of a study which critically analyses the construction of social class within UK media during the period 2010–2016 – part of the ‘age of austerity’. Focusing upon 240 newspaper articles covering six topics (emergency budget, welfare reform, workfare, bedroom tax, food banks and zero-hour contracts), the study provides critical insights into how class is constructed in an important context: namely that of economic downturn and rising inequality. The findings suggest that a pro-austerity discourse dominates the coverage. Here austerity is described as necessary, and the idea of ‘unavoidable scarcity’ forms the basis for a ‘moral divide’ between a vague in-group – the ‘ordinary hardworking people’, defined by their idealised struggle and selfless sense of duty – and an exploitative ‘other’. This both legitimises austerity and masks its broader impact. As the impacts become more apparent, however, challenges to the dominant narrative begin to appear. In the course of these challenges, the struggle inherent to class is placed back on the agenda, and class is increasingly constructed as an ‘anxious concept’ – a slippery slope down which one might fall.
  Citation: European Journal of Cultural Studies
  PubDate: 2023-01-21T05:37:57Z
  DOI: 10.1177/13675494221147746