A cry and an outcry: Oplakvane (complaining) as a term for communication practice

This study examined the term oplakvane in Bulgarian discourse. It refers to a communication practice – similar to complaining – and a range of associated cultural meanings for ways to construct a socio-economic and political reality. Data for this study included naturally occurring talk recorded during social events, interview responses from 50 participants, and a range of media postings from newspapers and online sources. These were examined through the lens of ethnography of communication and studies of terms for talk. By examining the term's context, potency, use, messages, meanings, and enactments, a larger cultural landscape is made available, illustrating how oplakvane not only describes negative talk, but references a communication ritual that serves to: (1) release the frustrations of everyday life, (2) celebrate and reinforce feelings of fate and despair, and (3) identify and locate a national Bulgarian character.     

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.     

Two stories,one vision: A plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication

This paper calls for a “fifth moment” in the field of intercultural communication that re-examines modern culture’s values, beliefs, and assumptions about human being in the world and the role of such in fomenting today’s ongoing planetary-wide ecological crises. To conduct this re-examination, we turn to ethnoautobiography, a framework rooted in story and in the indigenous paradigm. We raise deep questions regarding the default assumptions of a discipline ensconced almost exclusively within the monocultural logic of modern culture and civilization. We end by posing key problematics that we deem crucial for renewing the discipline toward contemporary relevance, ecological awareness, and responsibility.     

Research and Publication by Communication Faculty in East Africa: A Challenge to the Global Community of Communication Scholars

Abstract

Few African scholars publish articles in top journals, present papers at prestigious conferences, or produce monographs that influence the direction of the field of communication as a whole. We explored hindrances to scholarly productivity in East Africa by administering questionnaires to faculty members at five leading communication departments and conducting in-depth interviews with department heads, librarians, and other senior faculty members. Results indicated that an increase in institutional priority on research and publication makes this an opportune juncture for collaboration with the international scholarly community to facilitate research and publication activity by African academics.     

Imagined futures in mineral exploration

ABSTRACT

This paper uses ethnographic and archival data to analyze the creation and legitimation of predictions in industrial mineral exploration in Sweden. The search for exploitable ore deposits is a finance intensive process of resource creation in which mineral explorationists (e)valuate mineral deposits in order to assess their future minability. This paper builds on the recent literature on ‘imagined futures’ and futurework and combines it with the conceptual toolkit provided by (e)valuation research in order to outline how mineral explorationists establish a deposit’s existence and its future minability. Arguing that the creation of imagined futures plays an important role in mining and other social and economic phenomena, this article shows how imagined futures are created, and by whom, in the field of industrial mineral exploration, and how the creation of these futures is situated in a universe of actors’ beliefs, of valuation devices, and of norms and standards. The paper also shows how industrial standards guide this predictive enterprise and provides legitimacy to the results.     

Slumdog Millionaire Meets “India Shining”: (Trans)national Narrations of Identity in South Asian Diaspora

Abstract

This study uses the filmic text Slumdog Millionaire to examine how the tension between the nation and the transnational was communicated within South Asian diaspora. Findings from the textual analysis of commentary in the New York Times, The Guardian and the Times of India show that identity is articulated in purist as well as hybrid ways among South Asian diasporans. A lack of comfortable fit between cultural identity and place is evident. The analysis also shows that diasporic identity, hybridity, nation-state, and transnational forces work in particular configurations to raise consciousness about subaltern oppressions and exclusions within multiscalar operations of power and representation in globalizing conditions. Implications for intercultural communication and transitions are discussed.     

Transfiguring identity: Social relationships and intercultural communication between foreign “children” and Japanese “parents”

This paper examines how intercultural communication and interpersonal relationships between Japanese “parents” and African “children” are capable of destabilizing status quo notions of identification. Using qualitative ethnographic data, this paper demonstrates how intercultural interactions unfold in ways that engender new forms of sociality, which underscore the diversifying nature of majority–minority relationships in Japan. Drawing on theoretical insights from applied linguistics and communications studies, this paper suggests that the material products of these relationships warrant increased scholarly attention because they are capable of positing compelling challenges to existing understandings of identity, as well as to the ways various groups conceptualize themselves in relation to others.     

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.     

An assemblage of framings and tamings: multi-sited analysis of infrastructures as a methodology

ABSTRACT

The social life of methods – the idea that research methods are an important topic of inquiry in and of themselves – has been receiving increasing interest in scholarship on the organisation of the economy and social life, including Science and Technology Studies (STS). In STS, especially ethnographic methods have been important for decades. This article develops an ethnographic methodology for the study of a very new case that challenges the assumptions underpinning many STS ethnographies. This case is the networked energy infrastructure, and we specifically focus on its risk management and markets. Drawing upon recent STS interest in multi-sited ethnography, the article’s research design is termed the multi-sited analysis of infrastructures (MSAI), and it develops the concepts of framing and taming to focus on meaning formation as mundane sense-making and as technicalised reasoning on different sites. We demonstrate these concepts in a multi-sited ethnography of energy infrastructure and its risk management and market activities in public regulation, special control rooms (including energy trading), and households. The article rounds up by explaining how the application of our methodology contributes to the advancement of interests in multi-sited ethnography, relating our research to the previous work in the fields of STS, infrastructure studies, and their methods.     

Epistemic Living Spaces,International Mobility,and Local Variation in Scientific Practice

This article explores local variations in scientific practice through the lens of scientists’ international mobility. Its aim is twofold: to explore how the notion of epistemic living spaces may be mobilised as a tool for systematically exploring differences in scientific practice across locations, and to contribute to literature on scientific mobility. Using material from an interview study with scientists with experience of international mobility, and epistemic living spaces as an analytical frame, the paper describes a set of aspects of life in science that interviewees described as being different in different places. These axes of variation were: embodied routines of research; resource levels and salaries; daily or longer-term rhythms of scientific life (and their relation to rhythms of home or family); ‘efficiency’ and how work time is used; degree of hierarchy; the nature of social interactions between colleagues; the purposes of research; the social and interpersonal organisation of knowledge production; and the scale or ambition of research. In presenting an exploratory overview of these variations, the article points the way for future comparative investigation of epistemic cultures through studies of international mobility.

     

Appraisal models of intercultural communication apprehension among sojourners

We used R. S. Lazarus’ (Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) appraisal theory of emotions to propose a theoretical model of anxiety, upon which we built two empirical models centering on intercultural communication apprehension (ICA), distinguished by timing. We tested the models in three samples: Chinese in the US (N?=?268), US Americans who studied abroad (N?=?419), and US Americans in the US (N?=?515). The models achieved good fit. The results showed that during an anticipated or actual intercultural interaction, people had multiple, potentially conflicting goals. The goal-related appraisals of the situation resulted in emotional reactions, such as ICA, as well as coping strategies. ICA and coping further influenced people’s immediacy behaviors and the intention to interact. Our empirical models supported the utility of the theoretical framework for all three samples, and provided advice for practitioners to improve sojourners’ time abroad.     

Interculturality as an interactional achievement: Doubting others’ nationality and accounting for the doubt

ABSTRACT

This article examines the notion of interculturality in face-to-face, multilingual, ordinary interactions. The focus is on how participants perform constituent actions by reference to members’ normative expectations to a specific membership category. Employing ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this article elucidates interculturality is an interactional achievement in interaction. More specifically, I describe interactional practices for doubting others’ nationality and accounting for doubts accomplished by particular interactional practices in a specific interactional position. Analyzing these interactional contingencies produced by participants demonstrates that members’ practices to make interculturality relevant in a temporal unfolding of the activity and shows how they reflexively use interculturality as a resource for constituent actions. This study contributes to the existing literature on the interactional construction of international and intercultural communication, and on the situated, sequential, and embodied organization of interculturality.     

Connecting Community Voices: Using a Latino/a Critical Race Theory Lens on Environmental Justice Advocacy

Abstract

This study examines the contested space of environmental inequity and demonstrates how engaged intercultural communication research can be used to put forth seldom heard cultural environmental meaning systems. In an attempt to bridge ecojustice–environmentalist divides, we use Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to understand and promote practices of Hispanic communities enacting environmental justice and cultural activism. We also exemplify the value of an explicit focus on the role of race in environmental issues for communication scholarship.     

Cosmopolitical encounters: Prototyping at the National Zoo in Santiago,Chile

This article presents an empirical reflection on how the prototyping of an environmental enrichment device for chimpanzees at the National Zoo of Chile precipitates a cosmopolitical encounter. Using material produced by design students, zookeepers and the chimps Judy and Gombe, we describe how prototyping iterations establish open processes of dialogue and encounters among humans and nonhumans. The case will demonstrate how prototyping can go further than the generation of models of an original. On the contrary, the cosmopolitical encounter emerging from the prototyping process makes evident a truly ontological vocation, acknowledging humans and other-than-human beings as singular entities. Its provisional and malleable nature turns this device into a privileged locus for the exploration of interspecies entanglement. Although zoos are scientifically organized institutions, in this case we observe how its anthropocentric hierarchy was performatively reshuffled at certain moments of the prototyping process. The cosmopolitical qualities of the prototyping process analyzed derive from its capacity to deploy an ethics of attention and care between the agencies at play, that is, for unfold gestures of mutual vulnerability. Finally, we propose prototyping as a device for moving from cosmopolitics as a way of understanding the world to cosmopolitics as a matter of design.     

Olfaction and emotion: The quest for olfactory restoration in two speech communities

ABSTRACT

Olfaction has been described as one of the least studied of the senses. This has certainly proven true in Communication. This project applies Ethnography of Communication and Cultural Discourse Analysis to examine the role that olfaction plays in the cultural meaning systems of two speech communities: residents surrounding the Gowanus Canal and bereaved parents. The cultural hub used to explore the cultural significance of olfaction in both speech communities is feeling. The analyses illustrate how emotions are tied to associated sensations and further become activated through radiants of dwelling, relating and acting. The analysis also shows how olfaction may serve to unify and separate members of a community. The significance of this research encourages stretching the boundaries of communication studies by examining the less studied physical senses and the boundaries of Cultural Discourse Analysis by providing distinctions that others can incorporate when examining feelings.     

When Transnational Civil Network Meets Local Context: An Exploratory Hyperlink Network Analysis of Northern/Southern NGOs' Virtual Network in China

Abstract

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are important communicators in the international arena, but few studies have explored the encounter between Northern NGOs (NNGOs) and Southern NGOs. This study examines how NNGOs build relationships with Chinese NGOs (CNGOs) online and how network positions affect the amount of local media coverage NNGOs receive. This study revealed three major findings: NNGOs occupied a disadvantageous network position; a close connection with CNGOs was crucial for NNGOs to attract media coverage; and NNGOs' and CNGOs' virtual networks demonstrated structural patterns similar to those of their offline networks. This study calls for attention to a mutually beneficial virtual communication structure.     

Deaf Queer world-making: A thick intersectional analysis of the mediated cultural body

Nyle DiMarco, a Deaf, sexually fluid celebrity, helps audiences reimagine ways of being through mediated representations of his cultural body. Within the framework of a critical intercultural communication study and through a thick intersectional approach, we analyze DiMarco’s personae as texts across three TV shows: America’s Next Top Model, Dancing with the Stars, and Difficult People. First, we attend to his moments of sexual fluidity. Next, we attend to his moments of Deaf Gain. Finally, we attend to his character’s denouncing of the hearing homonormative. Through each performance, a Deaf Queer world-making is conjured, offering discursive possibilities beyond the normative.     

Between business and morality: cultural politics in independent bookshops in China

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how cultural businesses may facilitate contentious political activity in authoritarian contexts. Existing research in Western liberal democracies has shown the widespread political activism of actors in the cultural and creative industries. Whether such activism exists in authoritarian society, how it may differ in character and form, and what implications this will have for our understanding of relations between business, politics, and culture in authoritarian countries remain to be addressed. Drawing on data collected from 55 ‘independent bookshops’ in China, I illustrate how these organisations perform ‘cultural politics,’ a type of political participation in which actors employ mainly symbolic means to express social and political concerns. The organisations’ economic relations and conditions facilitate their efforts to create spaces in which contentious questions can be raised, sensitive topics explored, and alternative ideas expressed, despite the Chinese state’s political regulation of the cultural sphere. The finding of the economic embeddedness of cultural politics sheds new light on our understanding of the political economy of cultural businesses in contemporary China.     

Buscando para nuestra latinidad: Utilizing La Llorona for Cultural Critique

Abstract

This essay analyzes the contemporary constructions of Latina/o identity, Latina/o gender and Latina/o nationality as evidenced in the self-proclaimed “first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America,” Chasing Papi. The contradictions between the film's progressive mission and the film's representations are teased out by a cross-reading of the film's usage of the popular Chicana/o mythic figure, La Llorona. Invoking La Lorona as muse and means, we find that the Latin Lover stereotype succeeds in its anti-assimilationist task while concurrently furthering confusion on who and what is a U.S. Latina/o. However, the authors also demonstrate how cultural cross-readings can provide hope out of delimiting discursive constructions.     

The editorial playlist as container technology: on Spotify and the logistical role of digital music packages

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of editorial playlists in Spotify’s streaming economy. In particular, it approaches Spotify’s playlists as container technologies – i.e. technical solutions that assemble, preserve, and transport music objects and thereby uphold logistical operations within the music industry. Such an approach seeks to complement previous research concerning playlists, which has often analyzed their emotional and affective dimensions but paid less attention to how playlists enhance calculative, mathematical, and logistical retail flows within the online music economy. On the one hand, the article considers how playlists – like containers in general – materialize principles of modularization and automation in ways that enhance control and remote oversight. On the other hand, it discusses how the playlist is far from a perfected means of measurement and control, and sometimes acts as an unruly transport device. Ultimately, the article shows how the playlist format occupies an uneasy position between order and disorder within the digital music economy which has not yet been fully accounted for in the context of music-oriented media studies.