The Gentrification of "Black" in Black Popular Communication in the New Millennium

This issue of Popular Communication features two particularly interesting pieces of scholarship whose salience should be noted in that the authors work expressly to extend our ideational boundaries regarding racial identity-in these two instances, the categories of Blackness and Whiteness. The authors share a common goal, though one taken with great care: to disrupt plebeian notions of what is thought to be essentialized Black cultural forms (e.g., hip-hop culture) by studying what they consider out-of-the-common practices of Blackness. Adopting the "different contexts" modality, one author locates the Black popular within Whiteness to reveal the elasticity of performative Blackness as well as evidence an accessibility to, and even mastery of, Black cultural participation by those outside of the African American race. The other author locates Blackness within "high culture" Black communicative practices and celebrates the fact that the presumed prole core of the Black popular can be elevated to a higher and, therefore, more worthy cultural plane. More, the author characterizes this ascent of Blackness as being especially noteworthy because it is facilitated by a figure believed to be marginalized within Black popular discourses-a member of the Black bourgeoisie.     

Editors' Introduction: Mapping the Field of Popular Communication

Reality TV has become a key site for experiments in "advertainment," or the merging of advertising and entertainment programming, and hence provides insight into current developments in commercial culture. Focusing on the genre's exchange value, this article examines Reality TV's commodification of various aspects of experience from privacy to diversity and, even more pragmatically, its development as a rich advertising vehicle for the digital era. Product placement, sponsorship and co-production are among the techniques examined. A discussion of Reality TV's core brand identity-a special viewing access-underscores its relation to voyeurism, pornography and, to spot advertising, all traditional techniques for attracting an audience. In many instances, the genre's high degree of commercialization signals the triumph of the market in one conspicuous area of popular communication.     

Prurient Interests: Sexuality,Ideology, and Popular Communication

The popular communication media provide a site where the contradictions between conservative and progressive cultural ideologies about sexuality (and concomitantly about power, gender, and social control) are enacted within an endless series of narratives. These narratives fulfill the economic requirements of the culture industries by an increasing focus on the sexual, including sexualities outside the mainstream. This seemingly progressive move is undermined by a variety of strategies, either within narrative outcomes or at the level of production. Such strategies offer a conservative reading that highlights the negative consequences of sexual insubordination. In the meantime, the popular press provides a platform for conservative ideologues who write about sexuality in the media without the benefit of serious research or expertise. They influence public policy while we in the academy are reluctant to seek a popular venue to discuss our work.     

Black History,Inc! Investigating the Production of Black History Through Walmart's Corporate Web Site

Social and public sites are becoming a popular medium for intellectual consumption of Black history. Given the educational climate in which many students’ exposure to Black history may come from outside of schools, the authors examine how Walmart's Black History Month Web site produced simplistic and safe narratives about African American history.     

The Girling of America: Critical Reflections on Gender and Popular Communication

The upsurge in media vehicles aimed at adolescent girl audiences has given birth to a "new breed" of teenage heroine, one whose embodiment of nontraditional gender roles has drawn widespread acclaim. This essay offers critical perspectives on this new genre, situating the figures of the new girl heroines in their sociopolitical contexts and examining them through the lens of critical feminist theory. The essay concludes that the oppositional gestures offered by these new girl heroes are swiftly recuperated within larger, conventional discourses of race, class, beauty, desire, and embodiment.     

Bicultural Identity Negotiation,Conflicts, and Intergroup Communication Strategies

This qualitative study explores the significant yet understudied topic of bicultural identity and intergroup-intercultural communication. Ting-Toomey’s identity negotiation theory and Giles’ communication accommodation theory guide this investigation into the meaning construction of “bicultural identity” of Asian/Caucasian individuals and their intergroup communication strategies. Bicultural identity development is a multilayered, complex lived experience. Response analysis to the research questions revealed eight thematic patterns such as bicultural construction of integrated identity, distinctive communication practice, and identity buffering strategies. These patterns culminate to the proposed idea of a “double-swing bicultural identity” model. The study concludes with a discussion on contributions, limitations, and future directions.     

internet@academia.com: Internet Studies,Popular Communication,and Academic Work

This article examines the development of Internet studies in the context of media studies and popular communication research. It describes and discusses parallel trends in popular communication and Internet studies, the formation of disciplinary structures and canons, and the costs and benefits of interdisciplinarity. It argues that the institutionalization of Internet studies can provide a means by which Internet researchers in an academic setting can engage in public debate about the social and cultural consequences of Internet technologies and in debate with institutional colleagues about resource, as well as intellectual, issues.     

New Zealand as Middle Earth: Local and Global Popular Communication in a Small Nation

The shift of the research gaze from First World concerns and research questions to the different imperatives of a small nation such as New Zealand enables scrutiny of many conventional assumptions made about globalizing processes, children's evolving public spaces, and commodified culture. New Zealand provides an invaluable site to explore the processes creating the postmodern cultural experiences of globalized popular communication. Children in New Zealand respond as joyously as children in San Jose and Sheffield to the pleasures of global popular communication, but we argue that the global can only be tracked in the ways it emerges in a variety of local/ities. Researching the particular experiences of children in a small South Pacific nation also highlights the range of challenges faced by public intellectuals in a period of rapid global technical, economic, and cultural change.     

Idealization,Inspiration, Irony: Popular Communication Tastes and Practices in the Individual Political Development of Generation X'ers

Using a theoretical frame of cultural studies and social constructivism, I analyze data collected from 15 Americans born between 1965 and 1978-"Generation X'ers"-about how they remember and understand the significance of their popular communication tastes and practices for their political socialization, or what I choose to call individual political development. This study finds that these tastes and practices have had quasi-intentional, functional importance for individual political development in this generation, importance best described as media "uses and effects." While also theorizing about the implications of the postmodern era in which "Generation X'ers" and others have lived, this work speaks to the importance of incorporating individual developmental processes and meaning-making into work on the political implications of mass media and popular communication.     

Beyond the Black and White: Female Domestic Servants,Dress and Identity in France and Britain, 1900-1939

ABSTRACT

Far from being a trivial detail, clothes fundamentally define who we are and how we are perceived by others. Drawing on a large sample of French and British servants’ memoirs, this article explores how dress served a crucial but contrasting role in the way French and British servants articulated their identities within and outside the home between 1900 and 1939. It argues that servants’ dress was deeply linked to the nature of the occupation in each country and the structure of their respective female labour markets.     

Identity Management and Relational Culture in Interfaith Marital Communication in a United States Context: A Qualitative Study

This study explored the identity management processes in interfaith marital communication in a United States setting. Sixteen marital partners participated in this interview study. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, interpreted, and analyzed. Guided by identity management theory, the interview data analysis revealed three general themes: development of the interfaith relational identity via the co-creation of a superordinate spiritual and value system; implementation of relational boundaries to prioritize the relational identity; and identification of key milestone decisions (i.e. wedding plans and children socialization coordination) interfaith partners face in their intimate relationships. Contributions, limitations, and directions for future studies on interfaith marital communication are addressed.     

Religion and Popular Rebellion,From the Capuciati to Niklashausen

ABSTRACT

The historiography of pre-modern popular uprisings tends to ascribe a religiose ‘naïveté’ to earlier revolts, placing religion as innately antithetical to popular politics. This article challenges that opposition, and argues that whilst (as Sam Cohn has recently demonstrated) medieval revolts were not by any means all ‘religious' in outlook, leadership or inspiration, those which did involve religious elements can be read more sympathetically and with greater nuance. Focusing particularly on structural similarities between the Drummer of Niklashausen (1476) and the Capuciati (1183), the article argues that longue durée forms of revolt persist, driven by a plebeian reappropriation of certain elements in orthodox religion.