Films about ordinary people: the Japanese home drama and virtual ethnography

Beyond text? ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 127-144
Author(s):  
Catherine Russell
Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072097389
Author(s):  
Tankut Atuk

This article revisits the concept of (virtual) cruising with the purpose of uncovering an often-disregarded fact in queer theory: that cruising is equally about rejecting as it is about welcoming others/otherness. With the help of two critical conceptual tools, community and immunity, that I borrow from Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito, this paper discusses how a particular Geosocial Networking Application, Hornet, both enables and undermines the emergence of a virtual community in Istanbul, Turkey. While defying heteronormativity, Hornet reproduces violence in the shape of homonormativity, endangering what it claims to offer originally: community. By addressing cruising in relation not only to community but also immunity, this article makes an intervention in queer theory’s tendency to reduce cruising to a universal welcoming of otherness. This paper aims to revisit both the communitarian potentials and immunitarian risks of cruising in the light of a rather politicized analysis grounded in the everyday experiences of ordinary people.


2019 ◽  
pp. 91-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rostislav I. Kapeliushnikov

Using published estimates of inequality for two countries (Russia and USA) the paper demonstrates that inequality measuring still remains in the state of “statistical cacophony”. Under this condition, it seems at least untimely to pass categorical normative judgments and offer radical political advice for governments. Moreover, the mere practice to draw normative conclusions from quantitative data is ethically invalid since ordinary people (non-intellectuals) tend to evaluate wealth and incomes as admissible or inadmissible not on the basis of their size but basing on whether they were obtained under observance or violations of the rules of “fair play”. The paper concludes that a current large-scale ideological campaign of “struggle against inequality” has been unleashed by left-wing intellectuals in order to strengthen even more their discursive power over the public.


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Kayla Wheeler

For scholars, the internet provides a space to study diverse groups of people across the world and can be a useful way to bypass physical gender segregation and travel constraints. Despite the potential for new insights into people’s everyday life and increased attention from scholars, there is no standard set of ethics for conducting virtual ethnography on visually based platforms, like YouTube and Instagram. While publicly accessible social media posts are often understood to be a part of the public domain and thus do not require a researcher to obtain a user’s consent before publishing data, caution must be taken when studying members of a vulnerable community, especially those who have a history of surveillance, like African-American Muslims. Using a womanist approach, the author provides recommendations for studying vulnerable religious groups online, based on a case study of a YouTube channel, Muslimah2Muslimah, operated by two African-American Muslim women. The article provides an important contribution to the field of media studies because the author discusses a “dead” online community, where users no longer comment on the videos and do not maintain their own profiles, making obtaining consent difficult and the potential risks of revealing information to an unknown community hard to gauge.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 657-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilhelm J. Wessels

The book of Jeremiah reflects a particular period in the history of Judah, certain theological perspectives and a particular portrayal of the prophet Jeremiah. Covenant theology played a major role in Jeremiah’s view of life and determined his expectations of leaders and ordinary people. He placed high value on justice and trustworthiness, and people who did not adhere to this would in his view bear the consequences of disobedience to Yahweh’s moral demands and unfaithfulness. The prophet expected those in positions of leadership to adhere to certain ethical obligations as is clear from most of the nouns which appear in Jeremiah 5:1–6. This article argues that crisis situations in history affect leaders’ communication, attitudes and responses. Leaders’ worldviews and ideologies play a definitive role in their responses to crises. Jeremiah’s religious views are reflected in his criticism and demands of people in his society. This is also true as seen from the way the people and leaders in Judah responded to the prophet’s proclamation. Jeremiah 5:1–6 emphasises that knowledge and accountability are expected of leaders at all times, but in particular during unstable political times.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 284-284
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

This wonderfully illustrated book accompanied an exhibition that took place at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, from June 8 to September 23, 2018, authored by two well established and respected art historian*s, who provide us with a sweeping view of the world of monsters and many other related creatures in medieval fantasy. While previous research mostly focused on monsters in the narrow sense of the word, i.e., grotesque and oversized human-like creatures normally threatening ordinary people in their existence, Lindquist and Mittman pursue a much broader perspective and incorporate also many other features in human imagination, including wonders, aliens, Jews, Muslims, strangers in general, the femme fatale, sirens, undines, mermaids (but there is no reference to the Melusine figure, though she would fit much better into the general framework), devils, and evil spirits. However, I do not understand why ‘gargoyles’ have been left out here. This vast approach allows them also to address the beasts from the Physiologus tradition, then natural wonders, giants, and then, quite surprisingly, religious scenes in psalters (148), depictions of nobles playing chess (150; where are the wild men alleged surrounding the players?), the whore of Babylon (153), figures from the Apocalypse, and anything else that smacks of wonder.


Author(s):  
Diane Jeske

Emotions play a critical role in both moral deliberation and moral action. Understanding the emotions and how they ought to interact with theoretical principles is an important part of fulfilling our duty of due care in moral deliberation. By examining the Nazi police squads and the Nazi virtue of “hardness,” we can come to see how ordinary people can suppress their emotions in order to carry out morally odious tasks. We can then see that the methods we use to live with our treatment of nonhuman animals bear striking similarities to the methods used by those in the police squads. Ted Bundy, a psychopath, suggests that a lack of emotions can hinder our ability to grasp moral concepts, thus showing that even while emotions must be regulated by theory, they also play an important role in any full understanding of the significance of moral demands.


Author(s):  
Jaime Kucinskas

The mindful elite attracted new high-status sympathizers in targeted organizations by using their professional symbolic power, social status, and social skill to build legitimacy for meditation and other contemplative practices. In this chapter the author builds upon scholarship on legitimation by identifying the various kinds of legitimation the contemplatives are able to secure. These different kinds of legitimacy are interrelated and build upon each other over time, creating a cultural movement that is increasingly difficult to derail. However, in building their base among a privileged coterie of social, economic, and intellectual elites, the contemplatives risk losing touch with ordinary people and the issues of inequality that affect them. This weakens the contemplatives’ ability to stand by and implement direct social reforms to influence root causes of the issues they care about, such as rising inequality, greed, and materialism.


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