Commemorative places,political spaces: Virginia Indians,the Jamestown Quadricentennial,and the quest for sovereignty

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the cross-cultural communication strategies deployed by a coalition of indigenous tribes in Virginia to leverage the Quadricentennial commemoration of the founding at Jamestown in support of their sovereignty campaign. The tensions between Jamestown’s mythos as the “birthplace of democracy” and the natives’ historical and contemporary lived experiences, combined with the national and international attention focused on the events, constructed the 400th anniversary “celebrations” as a compelling location for social action. The coalition employed intercultural communicative practices—particularly cross-cultural dialogue and negotiation—as means of mobilizing these tensions to renegotiate their relationship with the federal government, illustrating the intersection of intercultural communication, memory, and identity.     

Neoliberalism,Nationalism, and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Analysis of a Japan's Neoliberal Nationalism Discourse under Globalization

Abstract

This paper attempts to draw implications of neoliberalism for intercultural communication by critically analyzing a Japanese neoliberal nationalism discourse. In January 2000, a governmental report proposed adopting English as an official language of Japan. Utilizing the notion of representation as a methodological lens for the analysis, this essay first examines how Japanese culture and communication, which have played key roles in asserting Japanese “uniqueness” along with the Japanese language, are redefined in the report. This essay then investigates how Japan's relations with Asia and the West—two significant discursive “Others” for constructing Japan's identity—are depicted in the text and situate the representation of Japanese culture and communication in the discursive triad for further contextualizing the analysis.     

The Philippine–American War and the American Debates about the Necessity and Legality of the “Water Cure,” 1901–1903

Abstract

This essay provides a critical genealogical study of the “water cure” controversies that took place during the Philippine–American War. The author extends the work of Foucault and Agamben to argue that a biopolitical review of this controversy illustrates how many of the legal and cultural arguments used to legitimate the water cure have resurfaced in contemporary debates about waterboarding and enhanced interrogations techniques. The essay also illustrates how anti-imperialists and other critics of Theodore Roosevelt's administration tried to use these water-cure debates as discursive vehicles for complaining about the systematic abuse of Filipinos during the Philippine “Insurrection.”     

Communicating citizenship in China’s digital society

ABSTRACT

This research explores the (inter-) cultural dimension of communicating citizenship in China’s new media environment. It adopts speech codes theory as a theoretical and methodological framework to examine the historically situated and socially constructed meanings of citizenship and the normative communicative conduct for practicing “good citizenship” in China. Through a systematic analysis of Chinese online discourse surrounding two social events, this study captures one speech code pertaining to communicating citizenship that is premised on a paradox – citizenship is interpreted by the Chinese as a legal entitlement that they deserve, but it is simultaneously treated as an aspirational and unattainable ideal. Additionally, speaking sensibly and morally with a communal orientation is heavily emphasized in this speech code as it is considered a valuable communicative practice for performing “good citizenship.” Finally, participating in online collective actions such as “topping posts” is rendered an acceptable and effective way to communicate and enact citizen rights in China.     

Mapping migrant vernacular discourses: Mestiza consciousness,nomad thought,and Latina/o/x migrant movement politics in the United States

ABSTRACT

This essay reads the Latina/o/x migrant vernacular discourses that emerge out of pro-migrant activism. Anzaldúa’s notion of mestizaje – a logic of border consciousness – is put into conversation with Deleuze’s notion of nomad thought – a logic of movement – to inform a rhetorical strategy for reading the vernacular archive of social movement discourse. The “No Papers, No Fear” is one such social movement that demonstrate the logic of mestizaje/nomadism in their communication strategies. This study illuminates three tensions that define the ways Latina/o/x migrants in the US navigate the spaces of citizenship: tensions between movement/stasis, migrant identity/national identity, and fear/safety.     

To Be or Not To Be?—China's Cultural Policy and Counterhegemony Strategy Toward Global Hollywood from 1994 to 2000

Abstract

The study critically reviews China's cultural policy and counterhegemony strategy against global Hollywood from 1994 to 2000. The central argument is that the Chinese government's strategy of using the so-called main melody propagandistic films to battle against Hollywood from 1994 to 2000 is ineffective in terms of film market recouped and quality films produced, but may be considered partially successful in terms of the technological renovation of film exhibition infrastructure. The reason lies in the conflict between a planned production and a market demand, plus an ambivalent explanation of the function of the film industry and an unclear definition of the cultural policy. This conflict not only speaks to the complexity of global-local interplay, but also reflects the fundamental dilemma of China's “one-party market economy” (Kahn, 2002, ¶ 2), and its contradictory perspective on globalization. The study also revisits the thesis of “cultural imperialism” and calls for a more synthesized way to explain the complex global-local dialectic.     

Dispatches from the Street

Abstract

This study examines the personal worlds of homeless campers in Tucson, Arizona in the late 1990s to discover how the homeless contend with new sociospatial strategies of control. Tucson is typical of the dozens of U.S. cities that are attempting to evict street people from urban cores that have been rediscovered as frontiers for development and capital investment. The article draws from a year-long ethnographic case study of six campers to analyze their everyday talk and placemaking as interrelated productions of meaning. The analysis shows that the campers’ meaning making was inseparable from their material struggles to survive. They used their talk and placemaking to construct alternative homes and workplaces, an alternative, self-affirming definition of homelessness, and the foundations of a critique against the “system” of institutions producing poverty and inequality. Their meaning making constituted a “weapon of the weak” which the campers deployed to wage a kind of symbolic guerrilla war against the dominant discourse on homelessness.     

Becoming American

Abstract

This study explored how a cohort of Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. nearly 40 years ago have become acculturated to the U.S. by watching American television when they first arrived. The study used two concepts of the integrative communication theory: enculturation and acculturation. The study described how these Asian Indians did not grow up watching television in India. Hence, they became enculturated into American television. This cohort also watched television to learn how to act “American,” and thus became acculturated to the U.S. Furthermore, the study created linkage between the uses and gratifications theoretical perspective and the need for acculturation.     

European Identity: Across Which Lines? Defining Europe Through Public Discourses on the Roma

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the impact of cultural identity on: (a) motivations for engaging in deceptive communication, (b) the perceived “deceptiveness” of a range of deceptive responses, and (c) the willingness to use various deception strategies. Participants from three different locations (Hong Kong, Hawai'i, and mainland United States) were provided with a questionnaire designed to assess cultural identity, motivations for deception, perceptions of the deceptiveness of a range of various deceptive messages, and the willingness to use various available deception strategies. Results indicated that higher degrees of interdependence were related to a greater overall motivation to deceive for both self- and other-benefit. Furthermore, results suggest that whereas those characterized by higher degrees of independence will tend to perceive any message that departs from the truth as highly deceptive in nature, those characterized by higher degrees of interdependence will be more likely to perceive messages that depart from truth as “not deceptive.” Finally, the willingness to use the various deception strategies was found to be moderated by effects of the self-benefit versus other-benefit situations. Current findings provide preliminary evidence that culture is indeed a relevant factor that can no longer be ignored in future theorizing and investigation of deceptive communication phenomena.     

“A Delicious Way to Help Save Lives”: Race,Commodification, and Celebrity in Product (RED)

Abstract

The Product (RED) campaign raises money to fight AIDS in Africa by helping to sell brand-name merchandise to affluent consumers. This paper examines the racialized representations of the (RED) website and the campaign's use of a consumer–celebrity fund-raising model. Through the analytical lens of critical cultural studies, I argue that (RED) commodifies Africans and “African-ness” under a celebratory guise, and reinscribes a narrative of Africa as a “problem child.” The campaign paradoxically trades on the very disparities of global capitalism that propel the AIDS crisis. It is central in (re)producing the human consequences of globalization, shoring up a symbolic and material marketplace marked by extreme poverty and extreme consumption.     

Editor's Statement: On (Not) Feeling Rebellious

Abstract

This study is a mixed methods analysis of how French-Muslims respond to a French law banning the wearing of religious symbols in French public schools. In summer 2007, 356 French-Muslims were surveyed, and 20 of those Muslims were interviewed for this analysis. The statistical analysis reveals religiosity to be a significant predictor of French-Muslims’ negative sentiment toward la Loi 2004-228, the ban on the wearing of religious symbols in French public schools. In the interviews, French-Muslims express how they perceive la Loi 2004-228 as stifling Islamic religious identity and freedom, and leading to religious and political struggles in France. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the current situation in France represents a struggle over assimilation and how the issue of and controversy over Muslim immigration has spread throughout the European Union.     

Glocalized whiteness: Sustaining and reproducing whiteness through “skin toning” in post-colonial Ghana

This research explores the changing discourse surrounding skin lightening currently referred to as “skin toning” in sub-Saharan Africa. This study problematizes the “skin toning” discourse which deceitfully implies that dark-skinned individuals can “slightly lighten” their skin with fewer social and physical consequences. Through critical discourse analysis of an interview with a former Ghanaian beauty queen (Nasara) on YouTube, it became evident that she utilized specific neoliberal ideologies to discursively frame “skin bleaching.” The concurrent interpretations of skin toning speak to the spaces where gender, race, class, and social status intersect to create particular subjectivities and produce particular discourses at specific times.     

Trust the artist versus trust the tale: performance implications of talent and self-marketing in folk music

Based on a unique dataset of artists that are active in the German market for folk music—the third largest music genre in terms of popularity and sales—I study what factors determine the artists’ success. Following Rosen (Am Econ Rev 71(5):845–858, 1981), I test if differences in artistic performance have a direct effect on financial rewards as regards physical and digital record sales (“direct superstar effect”). Following Adler (Handbook on the economics of art and culture. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1985), I also study sales effects of a media presence of artists (“classical superstar effect”). Controlling for various contingency factors (e.g., record labels’ support, artists’ socio-demographics), I deal with an economic issue of general interest: Does it pay more to develop your skills in your core business to perfection or to maintain the current level of skills and invest in self-marketing; and do these effects apply to all folk artists alike? Rather contrary to studies on pop and rock genres, I find that higher ability increases artists’ revenues disproportionately, but simultaneously, openly competing for the recognition of one’s talent holds substantial economic risk. I also observe a positive effect of various types of media presence on financial rewards. However, these income determinants have different impacts on sales in physical versus in digital markets, and their effects vary across the success distribution from low- to top-selling artists as well.     

Subaltern voices and postcolonial schizophrenia: The political tensions of M.I.A.’s Kala

ABSTRACT

Banned from the U.S. during the “war on terror,” the British/Sri Lankan hip-hop artist M.I.A. responded by recording her 2007 album Kala in multiple locations throughout the global South, collating indigenous musical styles and unorthodox recording techniques. Via a critical/cultural analysis, this paper explores M.I.A.’s work on Kala as subaltern resistance mobilized by “differential movement,” particularly in its mode of production, which operated outside of, and in opposition to, institutional mechanisms designed to expunge or neutralize politically subversive art and artists. Yet M.I.A.’s musical sampling also surfaces conflicts between creative freedom and cultural appropriation, emblematizing “postcolonialist/postmodern schizophrenia” (Vályi, 2011. Remixing cultures: Bartók and Kodály in the age of indigenous cultural rights. In K. McLeod & R. Kuenzli (Eds.), Cutting across media: Appropriation art, interventionist collage, and copyright law (pp. 219–236). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.).     

Landscapes,Heritage and Culture

Landscapes, Heritage and Culture interact in accordance with two directions: the Heritage Landscapes and the Landscape's Cultures. This paper introduces a model of the complex system of such interactions occurring along these two directions and within two co-evolving frameworks:

• -the “knowledge framework” corresponding to the space-time associated to the requirements, creation and utilisation of the cultural objects under consideration;
• -the “valorization framework” corresponding to the space-time associated to the monitoring, conservation and fruition of the cultural objects as emerging from the knowledge framework.

Main methodologies concerning the management of the interactions systems of Landscapes, Heritage and Culture are also proposed.     

Criticism strategies and their underlying cultural norms in online interactions: A study of native speakers of Persian and English

This study investigated cross-cultural perception of Persian and American speakers and the strategies they employed to level criticisms on Facebook. Seventeen strategies were discovered, 10 of which were used by both groups, three by Persians, and four by only Americans. Content analysis demonstrated that Persian speakers employed more indirect strategies, while Americans mainly chose direct strategies. Underlying sociocultural norms were investigated through interviews which revealed Persians preferred to save hearer's face and respect their “shakhsiat.” It was also found that Persians observe the cultural schema of “ru-dar-b?yesti” and “adab va ehteram” when criticizing, while Americans used direct assertive criticisms politely.     

Markets of Islam: performative charity and the Muslim middle classes in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article examines the ways in which middle class Muslims in Turkey talk about Islamic ‘community’ and analyses these discourses in relation to the phenomenon of market Islam. The evidence is drawn from the author’s ethnographic fieldwork with donors, managers, and volunteers of a government friendly Islamic NGO, the Light House (Deniz Feneri Sosyal Yard?mla?ma ve Dayan??ma Derne?i) in 2009–2010, followed by subsequent trips in 2013 and 2015. I argue that Islamic charity is not merely a calculative economic behaviour or a reflection of deep-seated religious values, but rather a performative site of market Islam. In seeking to reconcile a faith-based understanding of charity with diverse interpretations of the neoliberal economy, I show that middle-class Muslims adhered to two discourses of ‘community’: whereas donors saw charitable giving as a market-enhancing mechanism, NGO managers defined their charitable work as part of an Islamic project focused on economic redistribution. Although they conceptualized the relationship between faith and markets in divergent ways, both discourses of market Islam posit ‘community’ as an intrinsic component of governing the poor in Turkey.     

Muslim women against FEMEN: Asserting agency in online spaces

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the activist group FEMEN and the online reactions to their “International Topless Jihad Day” protests. Specifically, I analyze the vernacular discourses present in the Facebook group Muslim Women Against FEMEN and their counter-protests as they articulate their dissatisfaction with FEMEN’s imperialist feminism. I argue that online spaces can provide meaningful sites for Muslim women to reassert their agency alongside of, rather than despite of, their Muslim identity. Tensions over the boundaries of feminist activism help us understand how digital spaces can aid in developing a more capacious understanding of agency that actively decolonizes imperialist feminist politics.     

The rhetorical force of “global archival memory”: (Re)Situating archives along the global memoryscape

ABSTRACT

This essay engages the possibilities and pitfalls of UNESCO’s Memory of the World program for fostering “global archival memory.” Archives function as rhetorical weapons for both political control and social justice within national and regional contexts. The constitution of global archival memory shifts archives’ borders beyond nation-bound contexts, creating space for contention, deliberation, and debate within a presentist transnational arena. Approaching archives as symbols capable of marshaling cross-cultural identifications furthers memory scholars’ conceptions of transnational memories and communities. It responds to rhetorical scholars’ calls to further engage archives, while drawing on archival studies, memory studies, and rhetorical theories of memory.