scholarly journals The Beguiling: Glamour in/as Platformed Cultural Production

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511989877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Hearn ◽  
Sarah Banet-Weiser
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Digital Content ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Information Awareness ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Popular Feminism

Arguing that questions of power expressed through aesthetic form are too often left out of current approaches to digital culture, this article revives the modernist aesthetic category of glamour in order to analyze contemporary forms of platformed cultural production. Through a case study of popular feminism, the article traces the ways in which glamour, defined as a beguiling affective force linked to promotional capitalist logics, suffuses digital content, metrics, and platforms. From the formal aesthetic codes of the ubiquitous beauty and lifestyle Instagram feeds that perpetuate the beguiling promise of popular feminism, to the enticing simplicity of online metrics and scores that promise transformative social connection and approbation, to the political economic drive for total information awareness and concomitant disciplining, predicting and optimizing of consumer-citizens, the article argues that the ambivalent aesthetic of glamour provides an apt descriptor and compelling heuristic for digital cultural production today.

An Intersectional Approach to the “Mobility Trap” That Ensnares Migrant Youth in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaorong Gu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Urban China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Migrant Youth ◽  
Political Economic

This essay explores the theory of intersectionality in the study of youths’ lives and social inequality in the Global South. It begins with an overview of the concept of intersectionality and its wide applications in social sciences, followed by a proposal for regrounding the concept in the political economic systems in particular contexts (without assuming the universality of capitalist social relations in Northern societies), rather than positional identities. These systems lay material foundations, shaping the multiple forms of deprivation and precarity in which Southern youth are embedded. A case study of rural migrant youths’ ‘mobility trap’ in urban China is used to illustrate how layers of social institutions and structures in the country’s transition to a mixed economy intersect to influence migrant youths’ aspirations and life chances. The essay concludes with ruminations on the theoretical and social implications of the political-economy-grounded intersectionality approach for youth studies.

scholarly journals A Teoria da Autonomia de Hélio Jaguaribe: um teste à luz da Política Externa Independente de Jânio Quadros (1961-1962)

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fábio Santino Bussmann
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Theory Test

Esse artigo analisa o poder explicativo da Teoria da Autonomia de Hélio Jaguaribe em relação aos momentos indubitavelmente autônomos da Política Externa Brasileira (PEB). Isso foi feito mediante o estudo de caso, em forma de teste de teoria, da Política Externa Independente (PEI) do governo Jânio Quadros, que é representativa desses momentos. O estudo de caso foi realizado por meio da análise de conteúdo no programa de pesquisa Nvivo. O argumento resultante da análise realizada é o de que a Teoria da Autonomia tem o potencial de explicar de forma mais precisa e estruturada os momentos de autonomia da PEB do que arranjos conceituais usados atualmente no estudo dos referidos momentos da PEB, já que a PEI, de forma representativa, evidencia objetivos referenciados a uma visão estrutural-hierárquica do cenário internacional, no campo político-econômico.Palavras-chave: Teoria da Autonomia, Política Externa Independente, Política Externa Brasileira.ABSTRACT:This article analyzes the explanatory power of Helio Jaguaribe's Theory of Autonomy in relation to the undoubtedly autonomous moments of Brazilian Foreign Policy (BFP). This was done through a case study, in the form of a theory test, of the Independent Foreign Policy (IFP) of the Jânio Quadros government, which is representative of these moments. The case study was conducted through content analysis in the Nvivo research program. The argument resulting from the analysis is that the Autonomy Theory has the potential to explain in a more precise and structured way the moments of autonomy of the BFP than the conceptual arrangements currently used in the study of the referred moments of the BFP, since the IFP, in a representative way, shows objectives referenced to a structural-hierarchical vision of the international scenario, in the political-economic field.Keywords: Autonomy Theory, Independent Foreign Policy, Brazilian Foreign Policy.Recebido em: 29 jan. 2019 | Aceito em: 03 dez. 2019. 

scholarly journals Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China. The Uncanny New Village

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Welfare ◽  
The Mean ◽  
China Today ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Mean Time

By taking the lived body as local, unstable, diverse, and open to urban and global incorporations, this book highlights contemporary Chinese and global reductions of diverse conditions into generalized objects, especially in the Chinese state's well-intended social welfare effort of "building socialist new villages" which in the mean time shows clearly how judgments come to be disguised as facts (Cf. Pigg 1992). The political economic roots and social determinants of "dirty villages," the strategies of inhabiting "villages with empty centers," and the local and national projects of cultural production all reveal much about class and power in China today. Unlike other close ethnographies of small places in China, this reading of local culture is considered in the context of the national and global practices that maintain a deeply divisive rural-urban divide in everyday hygienic practices. This book argues that substantive ethnographic attention to the specificities of village life in the contemporary Henan context can destabilize China's chronic rural-urban divide and contribute to an effective rural welfare intervention to improve the hygienic conditions of village life at present.

scholarly journals A Tale of Two Versions—I Am Legend (2007) and the Political Economy of Cultural Production

Nordlit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Pötzsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Propaganda Model ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Market Pressures

Based on a comparative reading of the officially released version and the director’s cut of Francis Lawrence’s movie I Am Legend (2007a; 2007b), the present contribution interrogates possible connections between the political economy of film production and aesthetic form. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and Artz’ critical study of global entertainment industries, and combining these with an analysis of Lawrence’s two versions, I argue that profit-oriented adaptations to implied market pressures are not neutral endeavours, but inherently political acts that shape aesthetic form to, often-tacitly, reiterate a received hegemonic status quo.

scholarly journals Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China. The Uncanny New Village

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Welfare ◽  
The Mean ◽  
China Today ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Mean Time

By taking the lived body as local, unstable, diverse, and open to urban and global incorporations, this book highlights contemporary Chinese and global reductions of diverse conditions into generalized objects, especially in the Chinese state's well-intended social welfare effort of "building socialist new villages" which in the mean time shows clearly how judgments come to be disguised as facts (Cf. Pigg 1992). The political economic roots and social determinants of "dirty villages," the strategies of inhabiting "villages with empty centers," and the local and national projects of cultural production all reveal much about class and power in China today. Unlike other close ethnographies of small places in China, this reading of local culture is considered in the context of the national and global practices that maintain a deeply divisive rural-urban divide in everyday hygienic practices. This book argues that substantive ethnographic attention to the specificities of village life in the contemporary Henan context can destabilize China's chronic rural-urban divide and contribute to an effective rural welfare intervention to improve the hygienic conditions of village life at present.

Ethnography and Criminal Cultures: Urban Change and the Context of Ethnographic Fieldwork

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-113
Author(s):  
Dick Hobbs
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Post Industrial

This chapter addresses ethnographies of criminal culture. It refers in particular to the fluctuating political economic context within which this academic tradition has functioned and its historical trajectory. It addresses criminal cultures of the industrial era, the ethnographic studies that chart the criminal cultures that emerged from post-industrial society, and the constraints imposed upon contemporary ethnographers by the neoliberal university. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the author’s long-term engagement in the field, and queries the relevance of the concept of criminal culture by referring to an ongoing case study that is informed by the political economy of post-industrial society rather than by the dead hand of criminological orthodoxy.

Positioning construction workers' vocational training of Guangdong in the global political-economic spectrum of skill formation

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Pan ◽  
Le Chen ◽  
Wenting Zhan
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Training ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The State ◽  
Construction Workers ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Skill Formation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Economic

PurposeThis paper explores the vocational training of construction workers in Guangdong Province of China and identifies its position in the global political-economic spectrum of skill formation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews construction vocational education and training (VET) of major political economies to develop a theoretical framework that guides an in-depth case study of Guangdong. Document analysis, field trip observations, meetings and semi-structured interviews were combined to explore the political-economic environment, political stakeholders and quality assurance mechanisms of industrial training in Guangdong's construction sector. The findings were compared with construction VET of other economies reported in the literature.FindingsConstruction training in Guangdong is deeply rooted in the local history and culture, under strong dominance of the state, while continually evolves to respond to the fluid market and therefore can be conceptualised as “market-in-state”. The political stakeholders are embedded within the state to ensure that skills policies are implemented in-line with industry policies. The differences between the training of Guangdong and its foreign counterparts are attributed to their divergent political-economic models.Research limitations/implicationsAs the case study was undertaken only with Guangdong, the generalisability of its findings can be improved through future research within a broader context of multiple provinces of China through both qualitative and quantitative research approaches.Practical implicationsPlausible foreign VET approaches are likely adaptable to the Chinese context only when conducive political-economic environment could be enabled. The findings are useful for developing countries to learn from the VET experience of industrialised economies. Construction workers' training in Guangdong can be improved by strengthening labour regulation at lower subcontracting levels and ensuring the presence of industrial associations and unions for collective training supervision.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the field of construction engineering and management with a theoretical framework that guides empirical studies on the influence of the political-economic environment upon the ways political stakeholders develop and participate in construction VET. The exploration based on this framework revealed the position of the vocational training of construction workers in Guangdong in the global political-economic spectrum of skill formation.

scholarly journals Shooting Yourself First in the Foot, then in the Head: Normative Democracy Is Suffocating, and then the Coronavirus Came to Light

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 722-740 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Carr
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract This text starts with the premise that ‘normative democracy’ has rendered our societies vulnerable and burdened with unaddressed social inequalities. I highlight three central arguments: (1) Social media, and, consequently, citizen engagement are becoming a significant filter that can potentially re-imagine the political, economic, and social worlds, which increasingly bleed over to how we might develop and engage with ‘democracy’; to this end, I introduce a brief case study on the nefarious interpretation of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 to underscore the tension points in normative democracy; (2) Capitalism, or neoliberalism, needs to be more fully exposed, interrogated, and confronted if ‘normative, representative, hegemonic, electoral democracy’ is to be re-considered, re-imagined, and re-invented; the perpetuation of social inequalities lays bare the frailty of normative democratic institutions; (3) Covid-19 has exposed the fault lines and fissures of normative democracy, illustrating here the ‘common sense’ ways that power imbalances are sustained, which leaves little room for social solidarity; I present herein the case of the economic/labor dynamic in Quebec during the coronavirus. Ultimately, I believe the quest to re-imagine a more meaningful, critically engaged democracy, especially during a context that is imbued with a political, economic, and public health crisis, cannot be delayed much longer.

From Financialization to Vulture Developmentalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Haberly
Keyword(s):  
Development Policy ◽  
Abu Dhabi ◽  
Reverse Direction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Bottom Line ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Financial Interests ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter dissects the potential and limitations of South-North strategic sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investment as a tool for catalyzing technological upgrading in the developing world. After an overview of the problems posed by financialized, neoliberal globalization for conventional development policy tools, and how states are seeking to overcome these limitations through the use of strategic SWFs, there follows a model of the political-economic factors conditioning the ability of developing countries to use South-North strategic SWF investment to promote technology transfer in the reverse direction. This model describes the politics of SWF-led development in terms of not only the “double bottom line” of SWF-owning state political and financial interests, but also a second double-bottom line encompassing the political and financial interests of multiple host economy actors. A case study of Abu Dhabi shows how this has simultaneously enabled and constrained state attempts to use South-North strategic SWF-investment to accelerate domestic economic development.

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