Sites of attractiveness: Japanese women and westernized representations of feminine beauty

Ever since Japan's entry into global geopolitics, scholars have identified Japanese popular cultural texts as a terrain on which this country's complex relationship to the West is negotiated. Few studies, however, have adequately addressed how such texts—and Western influence in general—might be experienced differently by different groups and/or strata of Japanese society. Inspired by the work of postcolonial feminist scholars who argue that gender, race, class, and cultural identity must be examined in relationship to each other, this study focuses on a group of 29 women with whom the author conducted interviews and extensive participant observation during eight months of fieldwork in a small Japanese community. It examines, in particular, how these women negotiated Westernized representations of feminine beauty omnipresent in the Japanese media. This article argues that even though informants assertively critiqued and actively negotiated media representations, their own conceptions of attractiveness—and their daily relationships to their physical selves—matched those of the Westernized media‐defined ideals. In view of these findings, it concludes with a call for a more systematic and critical assessment of gender in transcultural relations.     

“It’s about respect!” college-athlete activism and left neoliberalism

This essay offers a critique of left neoliberalism with reference to certain tendencies in cultural studies, antiracist politics, disparity discourse, and college sports. Where the dominant tendency in cultural studies has been to produce complex analyses of identity-based oppression, this article insists on a conception of class politics that, on the one hand, calls for more attention to exploitation and, on the other, de-emphasizes the “working-class identity” model. By examining two recent episodes of athlete activism in college sports—namely, the much-admired “strike against racism” at the University of Missouri in 2015 and the widely condemned (and ultimately unsuccessful) effort by Northwestern University football players to form a union in 2014—the article contends that the commitment to eliminating racism and indifference to ending exploitation in these contexts reflects the broader commitments of a “left-wing” neoliberalism that devotes itself to ending inequality without redistributing wealth.     

Writing the History of Humanity: The Role of Museums in Defining Origins and Ancestors in a Transnational World

This article explores the question of how transnational audiences experience anthropology exhibitions in particular, and the natural history museum overall. Of interest are the ways in which natural history museums reconcile anthropological notions of humanity's shared evolutionary history—in particular, African origins accounts—with visitors' complex cultural identities. Through case studies of British, American, and Kenyan museum audiences, this research probed the cultural preconceptions that museum visitors bring to the museum and use to interpret their evolutionary heritage. The research took special notice of audiences of African descent, and their experiences in origins exhibitions and the natural history museums that house them. The article aims to draw connections between natural history museums and the dynamic ways in which museum visitors make meaning. As museums play an increasing role in the transnational homogenization of cultures, human origins exhibitions are increasingly challenged to communicate an evolutionary prehistory that we collectively share, while validating the cultural histories that make us unique.     

Commodity,Culture, Common Sense: Media Research and Paradigm Dialogue

Recent debates between scholars representing political economy and cultural studies are reminiscent of exchanges between administrative and critical researchers in the 1970s and 1980s that produced no clearly opposing valuations undergirding their respective paradigms. Little real dialogue seems likely from the current debates between cultural studies and political economy, particularly as represented in the "colloquy" between them published in Critical Studies in Mass Communication. A close reading of that colloquy reveals stereotypes at work, which contrasts sharply with scholarship applying more integrative approaches, particularly the work applying critical research and theorizing on media artifacts, media institutions, and media audiences.     

What Cultural,Critical and Communication Might Mean—And Why Cultural Studies Is a Bit Like Rave Culture

Responding to the editor's request for reflections on the key terms in the title of this journal, this somewhat autobiographical and possibly self-indulgent piece reflects on their changing meanings and on the ways in which cultural studies has changed and declined since the early 1990s. Cultural studies, the piece asserts, is a bit like rave culture, because like that subcultural formation of music and dance, it was big and quite innovative in the 1990s, but lost its edge in the twenty first century – although interesting offshoots continue beyond the places where it ‘originated’. The piece also suggests some reasons for the decline of cultural studies. More importantly, it tries to understand the term ‘critical’ via politics. It expresses some preferences, in terms of what constitutes good critical writing, and outlines some key elements of good critical analysis of culture.     

Cultural Studies Meets Rights Criticism

I would like to use this occasion to ask how thinking about law and human rights would affect the way we do cultural studies, and vice versa. The truth is that the consideration of the effectivity of many different kinds of political mobilizations around issues of rights, from transnational NGOs’ strategies of anti-imperial politics to UN's education to rethink critical legal methods and practices, have not been seriously charted or assessed in cultural studies. I use this occasion to offer a rough outline of a long-term project that tries to look at the intersections of cultural studies, law, and questions of modernity.     

To Receive Well—It's Critical

This essay explores a non-negationist approach to the “critical” by recounting cultural studies's recent articulation of intellectual work to social movement practice. The academicization of cultural studies is evaluated not as cooptation of criticality, but as subsumption, which creates new platforms for action. Ultimately, Cultural Studies would benefit from its own “reception study” in which its powers to be affected could be enhanced to reconnect it with ongoing popular struggles.     

Color,Caste and the Public Sphere

Broadcast network newsrooms are powerful gatekeepers, setting cultural standards and attitudes for America at large via the stories they tell and the images they project. In 1968, the federal Kerner Commission chastised American news media for ignoring race, and seeing through the “white man’s eyes” and speaking from “the white perspective.” Grounded in critical and cultural studies and organizational theory, this study analyzes the experiences of 23 post-Civil Rights generation black journalists working in broadcast newsrooms who continue to struggle against anti-black cultural norms and attitudes at great physical, psychological and financial cost.     

“Think With Me:” David Carr's Enduring Invitation

David Wildon Carr (1945–2016) was recognized in the international cultural community as a scholar and instigator whose critical thinking challenged museum practitioners to reflect on the purpose and responsibility of their work. In his recent papers and lectures, he argued that those discussing museum experiences are late to enter into a dialogue already in progress—a dialogue which carefully considers the whole person in a community, and wherein thinking with a museum is an enterprise embedded in the learner's experience. This forum, written by three museum professionals in response to his recent untimely death, is intended to capture personal impressions of Carr's contribution to the continuing work of museums. Each author quotes from Carr's writings, since his words have such enduring strength—a strength that will continue to resonate long into the future. Each also offers readers some personal background on his work as a teacher.     

Learning about power and success: Young urban adolescents interpret TV culture

Using media education and cultural studies perspectives, I analyze ethnographic data gathered among diverse twelve and thirteen‐year‐olds who live in New York City. Three case studies show that individual interpretations of favorite TV figures, understood in relation to lived experiences, indicate tacit learning about dialectical issues of identity and social power relations. The dynamics of this learning challenges media educators to account for and address students’ actual cultural experiences of identity and social power in association with their media experiences. In addition, these young people's TV interpretations point to their learning about participation in corporate media culture via the system of image and message construction—a powerful means of success in the United States. Thus media educators must confront their students’ dreams and expectations about succeeding in capitalist terms, while encouraging their criticisms in a democratic spirit.     

论当下民族档案学科研究对象的塑造

作为民族档案学研究的重要对象,民族档案的界定已不足以反映我们当下所遇到的事实与现实,需要采用一种新的视角和叙事框架来对待。民族档案的认定要在"文化生态——民族档案——人——民族文化"的认知系统中进行,由认知对象到建构对象,最终实现现实生活与理论追寻的对话。     

No Escape: Culture and Economics in the Present

This essay suggests that cultural studies, media studies and communications need to focus on the changes and challenges associated with this particular historical conjuncture, and re-assess the kinds of analysis that can most fruitfully contribute to this critical project. This requires rethinking some conventional assumptions about everyday life, media texts and communications technologies so that a more nuanced understanding of the imbrication between culture, labour and economy in the present moment may be developed.     

“New Conformism Redux”

To assess future priorities for cultural studies, this essay returns to the later writings of Raymond Williams, in particular his concerns about “new conformism.” It is argued that today we face comparable analytical challenges in which the pressures of institutionalization, and a strain of ahistoricism, have produced a “weak materialism” in contemporary cultural critique. The essay recommends a flexible and context-driven navigation of the current dominant tendencies toward micro-recuperative and macro-epistemological analysis, and proposes that this flexibility is the preferred mode of assuring that the dynamism of culture is captured by our critical methods.     

Harry Potter and the Commodity Fetish: Activating Corporate Readings in the Journey from Text to Commercial Intertext

Recent years have seen a productive dialogue develop between political-economic and cultural approaches to media studies. In this spirit, this article draws on the analytic tools of political economy to produce a textual analysis of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. In particular, we argue that Rowling has woven throughout the Potter series a set of contradictory discourses related to class and consumerism. Yet out of this heteroglossia, AOL Time Warner—the holder of the series’ film and merchandising rights—has activated a narrow reading of Harry Potter that subordinates Rowling's critique of social inequality and materialism while amplifying those moments in the texts that celebrate the “magic” of commodity consumption. Our conclusion discusses the role such corporate activations might play in the struggle over how commodity production and consumption will be understood in the wider social field.     

博物馆观众研究简史(三)——20世纪90年代至今

博物馆观众研究领域最早的成果可以追溯到吉尔曼(Gilman)在1911年的研究工作,本文对观众评估研究的关注对象与问题进行了历史性的批判分析。本研究揭示了各类研究建立的范式,包括对实施机制的说明、对评估客观性的审问、对文化民主化研究和营销相关研究之间不协调性的强调。本文结合多年经济危机和理性化带来的影响,介绍了20世纪90年代至今博物馆观众研究的工具化,并结合观众研究的他律性的特点进行分析,提出了这一领域面临的四大挑战。     

Understanding Celebrity Endorsers in Cross-cultural Contexts: A Content Analysis of South Korean and US Newspaper Advertising

Based largely on McCracken's ‘cultural meaning transfer’ model (1989), which stresses the cultural meanings of celebrity endorsers, this study explores the characteristics that differentiate celebrity-endorser strategies in South Korean newspaper ads from those in US newspaper ads. With Hofstede's cultural typology—uncertainty avoidance and power distance—as a theoretical framework, this study finds that ads in South Korea with a high uncertainty avoidance and a high power distance culture present a higher proportion of celebrity endorsers than those in the US with a low uncertainty avoidance and a low power distance culture. However, US ads have a greater proportion of product-related celebrity endorsers in both high- and low-involvement product ads. The study also provides detailed information on foreign celebrity endorsers presented in international product ads.     

Liquid Modern Journalism with a Difference

Reflecting a change from high to liquid modern culture, journalism is said to be encountering a transformation from high towards liquid modernity. Cultural journalism, however, has been found to be “journalism with a difference”. Due to this distinctive character, the principles of general journalism do not directly apply to cultural journalism. Consequently, the manifestations and consequences of the high and liquid modern ethos appear differently in cultural journalism. Proposing a theoretical framework of the core aspects of journalism—(1) knowledge, (2) audience, (3) power, (4) time, and (5) ethics—this article argues that cultural journalists differ from other journalists in their responses to the recent transformations in the professional values, working practices and the status of journalists.     

Keyword: Journal

Given the proliferation of open-access, non-profit publication outlets for cultural studies scholars, what are the possibilities for a journal like Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, which remains tied to a print model and a for-profit publisher? This short essay considers publication of critical work as both an intellectual exercise and a strategic activity, and argues for the necessity of attending to both aspects of scholars' labor. Understanding publication as a professional strategy also implies particular ethical and political responsibilities for a critical journal that exists as an association journal, and it implies particular responsibilities for reviewers and editors.     

Contextualizing musical rhetoric: A critical reading of the pixies' “Rock Music”

Rhetorical studies of popular music have privileged formalist analysis of musical score and lyrics, suggesting a need for greater inclusion of contextual factors. By explicitly attending to the rhetorical context, critics are more likely to warrant critical judgments within social and cultural discourses, reconceptualize musical texts in intertextual terms, and actively reflect on critical performance. Such a strategy is illustrated through the critical study of the Pixies’ “Rock Music,”; a song whose meaning as an anti‐anthem can be found at a nexus of rhetorical contexts, including punk taste culture, surrealist art, musical argument, post‐punk alternative rock, and anthem rock.