Barre Matters: Hybrid Formations of Ballet and Group Fitness

Somatechnics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Pirkko Markula
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Group Exercise ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Fitness Industry ◽  
Body Ideal ◽  
Health Eating

Employing a variety of theoretical approaches, feminist researchers have critiqued the fitness industry of its singular emphasis on the impossible, narrowly defined feminine body ideal that is likely to cause more mental (e.g., body dissatisfaction) and physical ill health (eating disorders, injuries) than improve fitness. With the focus on social construction of gendered identities, there has been less problematisation of the materiality of the fitness practices and their impact on the cultural production of the moving body. In this article, I adopt a Latourian approach to seek for a more complete account of the body in motion and how it matters in the contemporary world. A barre class as a popular group exercise class that combines ballet and exercise modalities offers a location for such an examination due to the centrality of a non-human object, the barre, that distinguishes it from other group exercise classes. I consider how exercise practices may be constituted in relation to a material object, the barre, and how the physical and material intersect, historically, with the cultural politics of fitness and dance from where the barre originates. To do this, I trace the journey of the barre from ballet training to the fitness industry to illustrate how human and non-human associations create a hybrid collective.

The Concept of treaty in Islamic Jurisprudence: A comparative view of the classical jurists

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Labeeb Bsoul
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Third ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
Shed Light

This article aims to shed light on a particular area in the field of Islamic International law (siyar) treaty in Islamic jurisprudence. It addresses a comparative view of classical jurists of treaties both theoretically and historically and highlights their continued relevance to the contemporary world. Since the concept of treaty a lacuna in scholarship as well as the familiar of international legal theorists to study and integrate the Islamic treaty system into the body of modern international law in order to have a mutual understanding and respect and honor for treaties among nations. I would like to present a series of three parts the first one addresses the concept of treaty in Islamic jurisprudence the second addresses the process of drafting treaties and their conclusion and the third addresses selected treaties, including the treaty of H{udaybiya that took place between Muslims and non-Muslims..

Dancing Women

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usha Iyer
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material History ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Hindi Cinema

Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, an ambitious study of two of South Asia’s most popular cultural forms—cinema and dance—historicizes and theorizes the material and cultural production of film dance, a staple attraction of popular Hindi cinema. It explores how the dynamic figurations of the body wrought by cinematic dance forms from the 1930s to the 1990s produce unique constructions of gender, stardom, and spectacle. By charting discursive shifts through figurations of dancer-actresses, their publicly performed movements, private training, and the cinematic and extra-diegetic narratives woven around their dancing bodies, the book considers the “women’s question” via new mobilities corpo-realized by dancing women. Some of the central figures animating this corporeal history are Azurie, Sadhona Bose, Vyjayanthimala, Helen, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, and Saroj Khan, whose performance histories fold and intersect with those of other dancing women, including devadasis and tawaifs, Eurasian actresses, oriental dancers, vamps, choreographers, and backup dancers. Through a material history of the labor of producing on-screen dance, theoretical frameworks that emphasize collaboration, such as the “choreomusicking body” and “dance musicalization,” aesthetic approaches to embodiment drawing on treatises like the Natya Sastra and the Abhinaya Darpana, and formal analyses of cine-choreographic “techno-spectacles,” Dancing Women offers a variegated, textured history of cinema, dance, and music. Tracing the gestural genealogies of film dance produces a very different narrative of Bombay cinema, and indeed of South Asian cultural modernities, by way of a corporeal history co-choreographed by a network of remarkable dancing women.

Presenting the Prisoner

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Chamberlen
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Women's Imprisonment ◽  
The Look

This chapter considers the importance of gender, a key concept for this book, in the examination of the punishment–body relation, and reviews findings on the look of the body and the management of physical, gendered appearance within the restricted and complex politics of imprisonment. It focuses particularly on the role of dress in custody and on various consumptive props used by women to manage their gendered identities and performances in various prison moments and stages. It argues that women’s imprisonment is gendered and combines a mix of penal and patriarchal controls and impositions on women that come together to form a sense of double oppression.

scholarly journals The City in the Age of Remix

Media-N ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Nazmeeva
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Architectural Practice ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Space Dynamics ◽  
Web Social

As a method of cultural production and communication, remix has permeated the way the social space is perceived, conceived of and lived. Physical social space is captured, constructed and mediated with digital tools and by a multitude of users. The explosive use of cultural software and social media is actively shaping the experience of architectural and urban space. Smart city movement proponents advocate for a kind of participatory decision-making in cities that is akin to digital social space dynamics. Within the architectural practice, the space is first produced as a digital remix. The social space, both online or offline, physical or digital, crowdsourced or expert-designed, is socially produced as a collective assemblage of the fragments of digital images.  This essay aims to outline four trajectories by which physical (architectural and urban) social space is intertwined and remixed with digital (social media and the web) social space, and the broader implications of such cross-hatchings. Additionally, this paper aims to bring this term to architectural and urban discourse. Positing that remix has become the dominant model of spatial production in the contemporary world, what are the implications of it for the social space and for the public? 

The role of cultural production in celebrity politics: Comparing the campaigns of Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura (1999) and Donald Trump (2016)

Politics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
David S Moon
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Political Campaign ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Celebrity Politics

This article draws out the significant similarities between the political insurgencies of Jesse Ventura in 1999 and Donald Trump in 2016, charting their own premillennial political collaborations as members of the Reform Party, before identifying wider lessons for studies of contemporary celebrity politicians through a comparison of their individual campaigns. Its analysis is based upon the concept of the ‘politainer’, introduced by Conley and Schultz, into which it incorporates Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of the carnival fool. The heterodox nature of both Ventura and Trump’s political campaign styles, it argues, is in part explained by the nature of the cultural spheres within which their public personas were produced; specifically, the fact that these personas, which they carried over from the entertainment to political spheres, were produced within genres of popular culture generally positioned as having ‘low’ cultural value. This, it argues, furnished both with an anti-establishment ethos as ‘no bullshit’ straight-talkers, marking them as outsider candidates able to act as conduits for political protest by an electorate alienated from mainstream political elites. It concludes by emphasising the potential importance that political celebrities’ specific cultural production can play in shaping a subsequent political campaign in general.

scholarly journals Studying Platforms and Cultural Production: Methods, Institutions, and Practices

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512094327
Author(s):  
David B Nieborg ◽  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Thomas Poell
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Market Theory ◽  
Industry Studies ◽  
Production Methods ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Time Transformations

This introduction to the second special collection of articles on the platformization of the cultural industries foregrounds research methods and practices. Drawing from the 12 articles included in this collection, as well as the 14 articles published in the first collection, we identify commonalities in approaches, consistencies in traditions, and uniform modes of analysis. We argue that approaches that have been deployed in media industry studies for decades—semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis, content analysis, and participant observation—remain productive. At the same time, transformations in the temporalities and curation of cultural production require updated modes of investigation and analysis. As such, we spotlight contributors’ novel methods and innovative theoretical approaches, such as the walkthrough method and multi-sided market theory.

On the Production of the Body Ideal

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Chance
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Body Ideal

How to organise your body 101: postfeminism and the (re)construction of the female body through How to Look Good Naked

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiana Tsaousi
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Television Show ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Feminine Beauty ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Gender Constructions ◽  
The Impact

The aim of this article is to highlight the attention given by recent makeover shows, and specifically How to Look Good Naked, to the ‘underneath’ as a way of (re)organising the female body. I examine whether this ‘turn’ or change in media’s direction is an appreciation of the real female body (an unmodified body) or whether this is a mere (re-)organisation of the body into a controllable base of overall appearance and a further embedding of Western conceptions of beauty and of the notion that the manipulation of appearance is essential to the construction of the feminine identity and to the measure of women’s social worth. Informed by postfeminist discourse and critique, I analyse the British reality makeover television show How to Look Good Naked, discuss the extent to which it actually provides an alternative to prevailing cultural discourses around feminine beauty and scrutinise the impact that it seems to have on the identities of the women who participate. I analyse how the show, as the ultimate postfeminist show, inscribes gendered identities and practices, and I examine how postfeminism has created spaces for such shows to exist and affirm hegemonic gender constructions based on consumption practices.

Morrissey as Latina/o Literary and Cultural Icon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa M. Hidalgo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Fourth Decade ◽  
The World ◽  
United States Mexico ◽  
North And South America

Morrissey is a singer and songwriter from Manchester, England. He rose to prominence as a popular-music icon as the lead singer for the Manchester band The Smiths (1982–1987). After the breakup of The Smiths, Morrissey launched his solo career in 1988. In his fourth decade as a popular singer, Morrissey continues to tour the world and sell out shows in venues throughout Europe and the United Kingdom, Asia and Australia, and across North and South America. Although Morrissey enjoys a fiercely loyal global fan base and inspires fans all over the world, his largest and most creatively expressive fans, arguably, are Latinas/os in the United States and Latin America. He is especially popular in Mexico and with Chicanas/os from Los Angeles, California, to San Antonio, Texas. How does a white singer and pop icon from England become an important cultural figure for Latinas/os? This entry provides an overview of Morrissey’s musical and cultural importance to fans in the United States–Mexico borderlands. It introduces Morrissey, examines the rise of Latina/o Morrissey and Smiths fandom starting in the 1980s and 1990s, and offers a survey of the fan-produced literature and other cultural production that pay tribute to the indie-music star. The body of fiction, films, plays, poetry, and fans’ cultural production at the center of this entry collectively represent of Morrissey’s significance as a dynamic and iconic cultural figure for Latinas/os.

Funeral and Bereavement Rituals of Kota Indians and Orthodox Jews

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helene S. Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Community Involvement ◽  
Orthodox Jews ◽  
The Body ◽  
Anticipatory Socialization ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
World Today ◽  
Close Parallel

Two ancient subcultures, the Kota Indians and Orthodox Jews, existing in the contemporary world today, practice funeral and bereavement rituals as they did in past centuries. Although these societies differ greatly, their rituals are in close parallel. These rituals show respect for the body of the deceased, remove the defiling spirit, assure its proper arrival to the afterlife, and assist the bereaved. The expression of grief is encouraged through a prolonged and graduated bereavement period. A clearly defined emotional closure limits grief and acknowledges the continuation of life. The requirement of community involvement relieves the mourner from isolation and provides the comforters with an opportunity for anticipatory socialization.

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