CENSURING SOUNDS: TAPES, TASTE, AND THE CREATION OF EGYPTIAN CULTURE

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Andrew Simon

AbstractIn this article, I argue that audiocassette technology decentralized state-controlled Egyptian media long before the advent of al-Jazeera and the Internet. By enabling any citizen to become a cultural producer, as opposed to a mere consumer, the mass medium and its users sparked significant anxiety in the mid-to-late 20th century, when contentious cassette recordings led many local critics to assert that “vulgar” tapes were poisoning public taste, undermining high culture, and endangering Egyptian society. This article breaks down these arguments and shows that audiotapes actually broadcast a vast variety of voices. Thus, underlying many criticisms of cassette content, I contend, was not simply a concern for aesthetic sensibilities but a desire to dictate who created Egyptian culture during a time of tremendous change. By unpacking these discussions, this article harnesses Egypt as a case study to enhance prevailing investigations of sound, popular culture, and mass media in Middle East studies.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel LaChance ◽  
Paul Kaplan

Popular documentary representations of crime and punishment have traditionally tended to fall into two camps: programs that are critical of law enforcement agencies and those that are sympathetic to them. In this article, we show how programs that present themselves as critical of legal authorities can nonetheless reinforce the “law and order punitivism” that underlay the ratcheting up of harsh punishment in the late 20th century. In a case study of the popular documentary miniseries Making a Murderer, we show how this can happen when texts fetishize the question of a criminal defendant’s innocence, adopt a “good versus evil” approach to players in the criminal justice system, and perpetuate a procedural rather than substantive vision of justice. Arguments are supported by a close reading of Making a Murderer and illustrated by a line of discussion it inspired in an internet forum.


2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-243
Author(s):  
Randall L. Waller ◽  
Christina L. Iluzada

This research focuses on the crisis that the documentary Blackfish precipitated at SeaWorld. The study begins with a brief account of the growth and evolution of SeaWorld and the financial and reputational damage that followed Blackfish’s release in 2013. A literature review of framing and frame theory follows. Next, the three issue-related, transformative frames embedded in the text/video of Blackfish are identified and analyzed; then the three main counter frames deployed by SeaWorld are identified and analyzed. The conclusion discusses how and why Blackfish prevailed in this high-profile framing contest. It does so by discussing the resonance, coherence, and credibility of the documentary’s anticaptivity narrative and its superiority over SeaWorld’s counterframing campaign. Perhaps even more important, the conclusion briefly examines how the tectonic shift in late-20th-century public opinion regarding animal rights—the kairotic backdrop of this crisis—forced SeaWorld to fundamentally change its business model in order to meet the dictates of this new ethos and to reestablish its postcrisis legitimacy.


First Monday ◽  
2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kofoworola Jagboro

The Internet is arguably one of the most significant technological developments of the late 20th century. However, despite the added benefits of this tool to learning, teaching and research, a number of problems still plague Internet connectivity and usage in the Nigerian University system. The objective of this study was to evaluate the level of utilization of the Internet for academic research at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Questionnaires were administered to postgraduate students spanning art and science based programmes. The results from the analysis of the responses showed that the use of the Internet ranked fourth (17.26 percent) among the sources of research materials. However, respondents who use the Internet ranked research materials (53.42 percent) second to e-mail (69.86 percent). The study concludes that the use of the Internet for academic research would significantly improve through the provision of more access points at Departmental and Faculty levels.


2012 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Magdalena Szubstarska

Images: Actors in the Network examines the properties of an image floating around the Internet: the ability of connecting people without usage of words, bonding them because of the mutual feelings they have about the reality outside. Images that are reposted between the users of digital forms such as tumblelogs or microblogs (the article uses soup.io for the case study) cover the needs, fears and aspirations of not only ordinary web-users, but also the users of the contemporary culture and economic system. An image is no longer a passive, visual piece – it acts by joining, addressing and portraying the desires, thoughts of the users. This phenomenon can be connected with Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, and with the ideas of W.J.T. Mitchell about the active images. The example of soup.io shows how easy it is to bond people through sharing particular images, but also how certain tools of popular culture can be used to create something new. Although it seems as soup.io users are not interested in connecting with anyone but themselves, their microblog is the message to the outside, it is their collage portrait that makes them visible to the others. Image is then not only the tool of connection, but also the tool of representation. What is important, most of the images that can be found on soup.io are anonymous – which means that they no longer belong to a certain person, but become independent and free to act.


Author(s):  
David M. K. Sheinin

During the Cold War, there were thousands of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings in Argentina (in Spanish, Objeto volador no identificado or OVNI). The mainstream media reported on many of them. In a field termed ufología, some events were explained scientifically or somewhat scientifically; most were not. These sightings and their stories lived on in a culture of thousands of OVNI aficionados and their literatures, frequently spilling into larger popular cultures. OVNI culture disrupts chronologies. It offers a picture of Cold War Argentina that breaks with longstanding popular and academic chronologies that stress a dictatorship-versus-democracy binary. That binary is real. However, OVNI culture superimposes an often-neglected Cold War chronology on the mid- to late 20th century. OVNI stories and their cultural consumption evolve and vary not with reference to violent Argentine political and historical change, but in the context of a larger transnational Cold War culture in an Argentine context. Hallmarks of OVNI culture in Argentina include the enormous influence of U.S. popular culture, as well as references to apocalyptic nuclear weapons, and unscientific notions of psychoses in explaining late-night sightings of spacecraft and extraterrestrials.


2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
WALTER ARMBRUST

My thoughts on the Internet were recently jogged by an experience with a slightly older medium, namely, satellite television. In late March 2007 I attended the Third Annual Al-Jazeera Forum, in Doha. Notwithstanding the attendance of a few academics like me, the forum was largely a networking opportunity for professional journalists, just as MESA is for professional Middle East studies academics. However, unlike MESA, forum presenters, as well as the audience, were handpicked. Even the expenses of the attendees were subsidized (my hotel bill was paid by al-Jazeera). This inevitably made the event an exercise in open self-promotion for al-Jazeera.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-440
Author(s):  
Rebecca Y. Kim

Why are missionaries coming to the United States? Why is the country that is a top missionary-sending nation also a top missionary destination? Based on an in-depth case study of one of the largest missionary-sending agencies in South Korea that sends many of its missionaries to the United States, this article explores five reasons for the phenomena of missionaries in America. These factors include the perennial importance of the Great Commission among impassioned majority-world evangelicals as well as their framing of the United States as a “great nation,” the “modern Rome,” and a dominant “Christian nation in crisis” in the late 20th century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Figen Girgin

Repetition or interpretation in art is based on very old times. Much earlier repetition than mechanical copying was often done for master-apprentice teaching or for eye-training purposes. Copying in the mechanical way allows the production of similarities, while copying in digital mode allowed more circulation and access of similarities. From the 20th century, the work of art has become more accessible. The artworks exhibited in various parts of the world, in museums and galleries, reach other artisans or art buyers who are miles away from them, or they are welcomed in their living spaces. The original was now in distribution with copies. A similar situation is both faster and more common today in the Internet age. A similar situation is both faster and more common today in the Internet age. Warhol, on the other hand, puts a consumption object in the art world, which does not deny mechanic reproduction, but already has a graphic design and copies with it. A soup box with thousands of copies is exhibited alone or with copies of it. It shows that art and life are intertwined or that he don’t reject the popular culture-consumption conception in their society in the age of living. The graphic design of soup boxes with thousands of copies has been repeated by Warhol and won the original with his signature in the art. These paintings are reproduced both by his contemporaries and by artists today. An artwork that is actually a copy, can it give the same effect when it is repeated? How do original, unique, copy, reappear in Campbell's Soup Cans? Why and how has Campbell's Soup Cans been repeated in art? In this research, these questions were tried to be answered through the works of the artists who recreated Campbell's Soup Boxes. ​Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file. Özet Sanatta tekrar etme ya da yorumlama çok eskilere dayanmaktadır. Mekanik yolla kopyalamadan çok daha önce tekrarlama çoğunlukla usta-çırak öğretisi ya da gözü eğitme amacıyla gerçekleştirilirken; mekanik yolla kopyalama benzerlerin üretilmesine, dijital yolla kopyalama ise benzerlerin daha fazla dolaşımına ve erişimine olanak sağladı. 20. yüzyıldan itibaren sanat yapıtı daha kolay ulaşılır hale geldi. Dünyanın çeşitli yerlerinde, müze ve galerilerde sergilenen sanat yapıtları, onlardan kilometrelerce ötede olan başka sanatçılara ya da sanat alıcılarına ulaşabildi ya da yaşam alanlarında karşılarına çıktı. Orijinal, artık kopyaları ile birlikte dağılımdaydı. Benzer durum, internet çağındaki günümüzde hem daha hızlı hem de daha yaygındır. Ancak Warhol tüm bunların ötesinde, mekanik kopyalamayı yadsımadan, hali hazırda bir grafik tasarıma sahip ve kopyaları ile birlikte dolaşımda olan bir tüketim nesnesini, sanat dünyasına sokar. Binlerce kopyası olan bir çorba kutusunu tek başına ya da onun kopyaları ile birlikte sergiler. Sanat ve yaşamı iç içe geçirir ya da yaşadığı çağda, kendi toplumundaki popüler kültür-tüketim anlayışını reddetmediğini gösterir. Binlerce kopyaya sahip olan çorba kutularının grafik tasarımı, Warhol tarafından tekrarlanarak, onun imzası ile orijinalik kazanmıştır. Onun çorba kutuları resimleri ise hem çağdaşları hem de günümüzdeki sanatçılarca tekrarlanmaktadır. Zaten kopya olan bir asıl, tekrarlandığında aynı etkiyi verebilir mi? Orijinallik, özgünlük, kopya, tekrar Campbell’s Çorba Kutuları’nda ne şekilde ortaya çıkar? Campbell’s Çorba Kutuları sanatta niçin ve ne şekilde tekrarlanmıştır? sorularına Warhol’un Campbell’s Çorba Kutuları adlı resmi ve bu resmi tekrarlayan sanatçıların yapıtları üzerinden cevap aranmaya çalışılmıştır.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 410-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Middleton

The ‘spatial turn’ in education policy studies fuelled interest in Lefebvre’s work: initially, in his work Production of Space and, more recently, Rhythmanalysis and Right to the City. Yet, although in these texts Lefebvre critiques universities and schools and introduces original pedagogical concepts, their educational strands have attracted little attention. Lefebvre’s other works available in English have been largely overlooked in education literature. As France’s first Professor of Sociology, Lefebvre was passionately engaged with education: in particular, teaching, competing for government grants and leading student activism. Critiques of education are threaded through Lefebvre’s three-volume Critique of Everyday Life, his writings on architecture and anthologies. Lefebvre’s work, The Explosion, is surprisingly neglected. A critique of French universities, it analyses student protests across Paris in 1968 – events in which Lefebvre was a leading activist. In geography and philosophy there are burgeoning secondary literatures on Lefebvre. Laying groundwork for such a literature in education, I survey Lefebvre’s references to education in all the works available in English. Arguing that Lefebvre was an educational thinker in his own right, this paper sketches a ‘roadmap’ for educational readings of Lefebvre’s prolific and largely sociological writing. This paper falls into three parts. The first uncovers core Marxist and phenomenological foundations of Lefebvre’s critiques of universities and schools. Building on these, it introduces Lefebvre’s pedagogical concepts. The second part contextualises these in relation to ‘New’ (or ‘Progressive’) education movements at ‘critical moments’ of 20th-century history. It includes a case study of one such moment – the 1968 Parisian student uprising – then outlines Lefebvre’s summation of education in the late 20th century. The third part draws together four ‘Lefebvrian’ pedagogical principles and considers their relevance today. Educational readings of Lefebvre, I suggest, can help educationists identify ‘cracks or interstices’ in ‘technocratic rationality’, suggesting strategies for resisting contemporary neo-liberal regimes.


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