scholarly journals Popular cultural representations of postfeminist religiosity in the international christian fellowship: an analysis of the “Ladies Lounge 2021” webpage

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Freudenberg ◽  
Dunja Sharbat Dar
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gender Perceptions ◽  
Christian Fellowship ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
Sociological Discourse ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractFemininity and female gender roles in conservative religious environments are highly disputed topics both within communities of faith and in sociological discourse. In light of social transformations of gender perceptions in the past decades, conservative Christians have had to reevaluate traditional understandings of womanhood in societies that have become steeped in popular culture and thoroughly mediatized. Taking this development as a point of departure, this article examines how femininity is represented in the International Christian Fellowship, particularly on its “Ladies Lounge” webpage. Advertising an annual event geared exclusively towards women, the website’s landing page contains images and text that we examine by means of visual and textual sequence analysis. Our research results reveal that women are depicted as sensually attractive and self-confidently professional while at the same time being relegated to an exclusively female sphere within (but not beyond) which they wield authority and influence. As such, femininity is represented as self-empowering, but only within a specific, postfeminist framework. This ambivalent depiction of women’s agency challenges conservative Evangelical values at the same time as it affirms them. In this sense, the study contributes the growing body of literature on gender and Evangelicalism.

scholarly journals Between neo-Ottomanism and Ottomania: navigating state-led and popular cultural representations of the past

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 33-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Ergin ◽  
Yağmur Karakaya
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractIn contemporary Turkey, a growing interest in Ottoman history represents a change in both the official state discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia appropriates, reinterprets, decontextualizes, and juxtaposes formerly distinct symbols, ideas, objects, and histories in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we distinguish between state-led neo-Ottomanism and popular cultural Ottomania, focusing on the ways in which people in Turkey are interpellated by these two different yet interrelated discourses, depending on their social positions. As the boundary between highbrow and popular culture erodes, popular cultural representations come to reinterpret and rehabilitate the Ottoman past while also inventing new insecurities centering on historical “truth.” Utilizing in-depth interviews, we show that individuals juxtapose the popular television seriesMuhteşem Yüzyıl(The Magnificent Century) with what they deem “proper” history, in the process rendering popular culture a “false” version. We also identify four particular interpretive clusters among the consumers of Ottomania: for some, the Ottoman Empire was the epitome of tolerance, where different groups lived peacefully; for others, the imperial past represents Turkish and/or Islamic identities; and finally, critics see the empire as a burden on contemporary Turkey.

Playing Politics: How Sabarimala Played Out on TikTok

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422198976
Author(s):  
Darsana Vijay ◽  
Alex Gekker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Potential Strategy

TikTok is commonly known as a playful, silly platform where teenagers share 15-second videos of crazy stunts or act out funny snippets from popular culture. In the past few years, it has experienced exponential growth and popularity, unseating Facebook as the most downloaded app. Interestingly, recent news coverage notes the emergence of TikTok as a political actor in the Indian context. They raise concerns over the abundance of divisive content, hate speech, and the lack of platform accountability in countering these issues. In this article, we analyze how politics is performed on TikTok and how the platform’s design shapes such expressions and their circulation. What does the playful architecture of TikTok mean to the nature of its political discourse and participation? To answer this, we review existing academic work on play, media, and political participation and then examine the case of Sabarimala through the double lens of ludic engagement and platform-specific features. The efficacy of play as a productive heuristic to study political contention on social media platforms is demonstrated. Finally, we turn to ludo-literacy as a potential strategy that can reveal the structures that order playful political participation and can initiate alternative modes of playing politics.

scholarly journals Beads, Pixels, and Nkisi: Contemporary Kinois Art and Reconfigurations of the Virtual

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Katrien Pype
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Stereotypical Image

AbstractIn the 2016 Abiola Lecture, Mbembe argued that “the plasticity of digital forms speaks powerfully to the plasticity of African precolonial cultures and to ancient ways of working with representation and mediation, of folding reality.” In her commentary, Pype tries to understand what “speaking powerfully to” can mean. She first situates the Abiola Lecture within a wide range of exciting and ongoing scholarship that attempts to understand social transformations on the continent since the ubiquitous uptake of the mobile phone, and its most recent incarnation, the smartphone. She then analyzes the aesthetics of artistic projects by Alexandre Kyungu, Yves Sambu, and Hilaire Kuyangiko Balu, where wooden doors, tattoos, beads, saliva, and nails correlate with the Internet, pixels, and keys of keyboards and remote controls. Finally, Pype asks to whom the congruence between the aesthetics of a “precolonial” Congo and the digital speaks. In a society where “the past” is quickly demonized, though expats and the commercial and political elite pay thousands of dollars for the discussed art works, Pype argues that this congruence might be one more manifestation of capitalism’s cannibalization of a stereotypical image of “Africa.”

Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
City Life ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.

scholarly journals The Perishable Past - On the Advantage and Disadvantage of Archaeology for Life

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Jes Wienberg
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Heritage Management ◽  
The Past ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Point Of Departure

The aim of the article is to make clear whether and in that case why archaeology is important. Often this is seen as a self-evident fact which needs no motivation. My point of departure is a concrete example, namely, the medieval church of Mårup in Denmark which will soon fall into the sea: Why is it so crucial to save or document this church and many other traces of the past? Isn't the so-called cultural heritage condemned to destruction and oblivion? Rhetorical catchwords, cultural values, justifications and explanations within cultural heritage management, archaeology, history and social anthropology are presented and critically discussed together with indirect motivations borrowed from the literature about the abuse of the past.

scholarly journals Social Gender Perceptions of Women Working in the Healthcare Sector in Turkey

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Demographic Data ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Gender Perceptions ◽  
The Family ◽  
Health Institutions ◽  
Questionnaire Method ◽  
One Way Anova

The aim of this study is to evaluate the gender perceptions of women working in the health sector. The study was conducted questionnaire method in private health institutions determined by researchers in Istanbul and Ankara. Demographic data were obtained by means of a questionnaire, t-Test and One-Way ANOVA tests were performed. As a result of the research, it was determined that the opinions of the women working in the health sector were not only in the decision of the men in the decisions taken in the family; there is no discrimination between men, girls, and boys. Keywords: Female, Gender, Healthcare Services, Social Gender, Healthcare Workers

scholarly journals Counterfactuality as a Polyphonic Assemblage. Entangled Human and Nonhuman Stories of Early Modern Sciences in Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-121
Author(s):  
Mateusz Chaberski
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Multispecies Ethnography ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Neal Stephenson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Point Of Departure

Summary In recent science-fiction literature, we can witness a proliferation of new counterfactual narratives which take the 17th century as their point of departure. Unlike steampunk narratives, however, their aim is not to criticise the socio-political effects caused by contemporary technological development. Such authors as Neal Stephenson or Ian Tregillis, among others, are interested in revisiting the model of development in Western societies, routing around the logic of progress. Moreover, they demonstrate that modernity is but an effect of manifold contingent and indeterminate encounters of humans and nonhumans and their distinct temporalities. Even the slightest modification of their ways of being could have changed Western societies and cultures. Thus, they necessitate a rather non-anthropocentric model of counterfactuality which is not tantamount to the traditional alternative histories which depart from official narratives of the past. By drawing on contemporary multispecies ethnography, I put forward a new understanding of counter-factuality which aims to reveal multiple entangled human and nonhuman stories already embedded in the seemingly unified history of the West. In this context, the concept of “polyphonic assemblage” (Lowenhaupt-Tsing) is employed to conceptualize the contingent and open-ended encounters of human and nonhuman historical actors which cut across different discourses and practices. I analyse Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle to show the entangled stories of humans and nonhumans in 17th century sciences, hardly present in traditional historiographies. In particular, Stephenson’s depiction of quicksilver and coffeehouse as nonhuman historical actors is scrutinized to show their vital role in the production of knowledge at the dawn of modernity.

scholarly journals Nostalgic transmediation: A not-so-final fantasy? Ichigo’s Sheet Music online platform as an object network of creative practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-193
Author(s):  
Ruth Barratt-Peacock ◽  
Sophia Staite
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Sheet Music ◽  
Online Platform ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Music Transcription ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Nature

Using the music of the Final Fantasy game series as our case study, we follow the music through processes of transmediation in two very different contexts: the Netflix series Dad of Light and music transcription forum Ichigo’s Sheet Music. We argue that these examples reveal transmediation acting as a process of ‘emptying’, allowing the music to carry its nostalgic cargo of affect into new relationships and contexts. This study’s theoretical combination of transmediation with Bainbridge’s object networks of social practice frame challenges normative definitions of nostalgia. The phenomenon of ‘emptying’ we identify reveals a function of popular culture nostalgia that differs from the dominant understanding as a triggering of generalized emotional longing for (or the desire to return to) the past. Instead, this article uncovers a nostalgia that is defined by personal and communal creative engagement and highlights the active and social nature of transmediated popular culture nostalgia.

Gaining a Past, Losing a Future: Web 2.0 and Internet Historicity

2012 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Allen
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Web 3.0 ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
The Web

This article explore how, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the internet became historicised, meaning that its public existence is now explicitly framed through a narrative that locates the current internet in relation to a past internet. Up until this time, in popular culture, the internet had been understood mainly as the future-in-the-present, as if it had no past. The internet might have had a history, but it had no historicity. That has changed because of Web 2.0, and the effects of Tim O'Reilly's creative marketing of that label. Web 2.0, in this sense not a technology or practice but the marker of a discourse of historical interpretation dependent on versions, created for us a second version of the web, different from (and yet connected to) that of the 1990s. This historicising moment aligned the past and future in ways suitable to those who might control or manage the present. And while Web 3.0, implied or real, suggests the ‘future’, it also marks out a loss of other times, or the possibility of alterity understood through temporality.

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