The End of Pax Americana

In The End of Pax Americana, Naoki Sakai focuses on U.S. hegemony's long history in East Asia and the effects of its decline on contemporary conceptions of internationality. Engaging with themes of nationality in conjunction with internationality, the civilizational construction of differences between East and West, and empire and decolonization, Sakai focuses on the formation of a nationalism of hikikomori, or “reclusive withdrawal”—Japan’s increasingly inward-looking tendency since the late 1990s, named for the phenomenon of the nation’s young people sequestering themselves from public life. Sakai argues that the exhaustion of Pax Americana and the post--World War II international order—under which Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China experienced rapid modernization through consumer capitalism and a media revolution—signals neither the “decline of the West” nor the rise of the East, but, rather a dislocation and decentering of European and North American political, economic, diplomatic, and intellectual influence. This decentering is symbolized by the sense of the loss of old colonial empires such as those of Japan, Britain, and the United States.

Homes for Canadians (II)

According to Giorgio Agamben, the Greek term for ‘habitual dwelling place,’ or ‘habit,’ is ethos. The rise to prominence in the twentieth century of the modern idea of the suburb, or ‘suburbia,’ held open the door to the potential realization of the American (and Canadian) dream ethos of universal home ownership. The tantalizing appeal of a the ideal of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ have become key terms in the Post World War Two pursuit of a mode of ‘dwelling’ linked to consumer capitalism. Yet for Frankfurt School critics such as Theodor W. Adorno, the pursuit of this suburban ideal induced a deep sense of ennui such that to feel ‘at home’ in such a suburban environment challenged the very foundations of the dwelling place of Western civilization. “It is part of morality,” Adorno concluded in his book, Minima Moralia, “not to be at home in one’s home.” This text is an exercise in examining this question of ‘dwelling’ and ‘home’ through an allegorical poetical focus (drawn from Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire) focusing on a newly completed suburb in the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Haunted Psychologies

The anime adaptation of the light novel franchise Bakemonogatari was released in 2009. The story revolves around the character Araragi Koyomi, a high school student in his senior year who encounters a powerful vampire during a school break and is transformed into a semi-supernatural being himself. However, this is not merely an example of a supernaturally-focused anime, but rather is a discussion on the impact of capitalism on the subjectivity of the individual. The narrative and experience of viewing Bakemonogatari is a commentary on the trauma of postmodernity and otaku consumption’s failure to remediate the objectification of consumer-capitalism. The series’ design and narrative choices is designed to attract otaku, to whose consumption these patterns are designed to appeal, and thereby give warning to otaku concerning the potential dangers posed by their approach towards media. The characters in this series are possessed by Specters who dredge up and yet simultaneously suppress this traumatic state of existence in a world without catharsis and without justice. Otaku, attracted to moe-kyara to escape the drudgery and misery of the three-dimensional world, are shown that this escape itself is a form of harm—like Araragi, they turn meaning into a form of self-flagellation and heap untold suffering on the moe-kyara towards which they are inextricably drawn.

Selling Religion

The chapter shows how Billy Graham’s crusades played an important role in shaping a new relationship between religious life, consumerism, and business culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Graham’s American revival meetings were run with businesslike efficiency, supported by the local business communities, and embedded in vast marketing and media campaigns. Graham himself embodied modern consumer culture and middle-class aspiration. This chapter explores how British and German church leaders and ordinary Christians experienced, discussed, and critiqued a more consumer- and business-oriented faith. While evangelicals and lay Christians in particular were willing to adopt a more businesslike attitude and consumer-oriented rhetoric through their transnational interactions with the Billy Graham team, the majority of church officials in Germany and the United Kingdom defended their more critical stance toward an embrace of consumer capitalism, thus leaving untapped an important source in the battle against secularization.

Power of Body / Power of Mind: Arts and Crafts, New Thought, and Popular Women’s Literature at the Fin de Siècle

The article describes the impact of two popular fin de siècle philosophical movements—Arts and Crafts and New Thought—on both well-known authors like Frank Norris and Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the lesser-known writers it reads more closely: Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Madeline Yale Wynne. Although their values were antithetical, Arts and Crafts and New Thought shared striking similarities in the ways they yoked consumption habits to personal well-being and used fiction to understand and endorse popular secular philosophies. These women-led movements shaped enduring national ideologies and the literature of their period, which tends to either synthesize the beliefs of both movements or represent one as patently superior to the other through satire or protest. The recovery of the history of these movements and their contribution to American literature not only retraces a lost genealogy of popular ideas that have shaped our culture, but also demonstrates the centrality of female thinkers and writers to the development of our present-day notions about how to transcend the grinding forces of consumer capitalism in everyday life.

The Feminization of Social Media Labor

While early techno-utopianists heralded the potential of the internet to challenge social hierarchies, most would concede that today’s digital media landscape is profoundly inequitable. Traditional markers of identity and inequality—including subjectivities of gender and femininity—persist online and are foregrounded across mainstream social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. Against this backdrop, this chapter explores the ostensible feminization of various modes of social media labor, with particular attention to the cultures and practices of social media production and promotion (i.e., platformed content creation, digital entrepreneurship, social media management). To show how these activities are—much like earlier categories of “women’s work”—rendered socially and/or economically invisible, the authors examine four interrelated features of feminized labor: (1) the demand for emotional and affective expressions, (2) the discipline of aesthetics through the fraught ideal of “visibility,” (3) mandates for various kinds of flexibility, and (4) a deep imbrication with consumer capitalism. In exploring each of these features, the authors show how the patterned devaluation of gender-coded labor is exacerbated along other axes of oppression, including race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality. The authors conclude by calling for future inquiries into other cultures and expressions of social media labor, along with broader interrogations of platform visibility, vulnerability, and governance.

Trailer Park Boys and the Promotional Cultures of Cannabis in Canada: Audiences, Influencers, and Imminent Commodities

While Canada, like most other nation states, has adopted various aspects of neoliberalism, the recent Cannabis Act presents ideological tensions and practical concerns given its advertising and promotional restrictions. Given the rise of neoliberalism within the dominant social, economic, and cultural system of consumer capitalism, it seems contradictory for the Canadian state to develop legislation that creates (or at least, legalizes) a new market wherein advertising and promotions (i.e., the driving forces of consumer capitalism) are effectively made absent. This article identifies and interrogates the existing tensions and contradictions between the Cannabis Act and the promotional cultures of consumer capitalism, as well as the ways in which the Trailer Park Boys (TPB) “brand” and performers (as promotional intermediaries) have attempted to circumvent the existing promotional restrictions. Beginning with a review of the existing literature regarding relevant theoretical perspectives and key concepts, the article provides a brief overview of the Cannabis Act, its promotional restrictions, and the exemptions and legal loopholes thereof. Finally, in presenting and engaging with a case study, this article concludes that the TPB brand has, effectively, circumvented the Cannabis Act’s existing restrictions and subsequently become a multi-platform promotional intermediary.

Homes for Canadians (I)

According to Giorgio Agamben, the Greek term for ‘habitual dwelling place,’ or ‘habit,’ is ethos. The rise to prominence in the twentieth century of the modern idea of the suburb, or ‘suburbia,’ held open the door to the potential realization of the American (and Canadian) dream ethos of universal home ownership. The tantalizing appeal of a the ideal of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ have become key terms in the Post World War Two pursuit of a mode of ‘dwelling’ linked to consumer capitalism. Yet for Frankfurt School critics such as Theodor W. Adorno, the pursuit of this suburban ideal induced a deep sense of ennui such that to feel ‘at home’ in such a suburban environment challenged the very foundations of the dwelling place of Western civilization. “It is part of morality,” Adorno concluded in his book, Minima Moralia, “not to be at home in one’s home.” This text is an exercise in examining this question of “dwelling” and “home” through an allegorical poetical focus (drawn from Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire) focusing on a newly completed suburb in the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Exploring the issue of environmental degradation in the era of mass consumerism and digital media as the solution

As the price of clothing continues to globally decline, demand and consumption rise in tandem. This relationship between mass production and consumption has earned the title “fast fashion” as it values efficiency and inexpensive manufacturing methods and materials. The environmental costs however, of producing, consuming and ultimately discarding so much clothing is unparalleled. Although there is growing pressure on the industry to engage in more socially and environmentally-responsible practices, this pressure does not in any fundamental way contradict the logic of consumer capitalism. The following research project places the responsibility and agency of conscious consumer behaviour back into the hands of individuals in hopes of disrupting the cycle of mass production and consumption. Leveraging the power and influence of social media, this project reflects upon the current role of Instagram as a propagator of consumer culture and reimagines it as a catalyst for mindful purchasing behaviour among the female millennial demographic.