Review of Ofcom policy investigation: “The future of children's television programming”

The review looks at the recent review of children's television broadcasting by the governmental regulator in the UK, Ofcom. It suggests that the research represents a valuable addition to the policy literature by filling the gap in previous research, particularly by providing an in-depth analysis of the economics of the sector. However, it questions the direct impact of the report on the subject matter if it is integrated (as proposed) into the more general review of Public Service Broadcasting.     

The Stunt of “Paving Lights”

“Paving lights”, popular in the countryside of Shanghai, is a stunt to pave with rice and colored mineral powders different deity portraits, symbolic patterns and couplets.     

On communication among “unequals”

This analysis was stimulated by the problem in international development of communication between development personnel and members of the populations with whom they work. Building on the work of Bateson and the Ardeners, I propose a theoretical framework that incorporates the “inarticulateness of women” (as discussed by Ardener) and a similar phenomenon I have observed in situations of contact between people of unequal status, in general. Three ethnographic examples of the dynamics of communication between “unequals”¹ and the resulting “inarticulateness” are then provided: one between rural and urban dwellers in Iran: one between women and men from two subcultures in rural America; and one among male and female scientists from different countries and different scientific paradigms. I conclude with a set of policy recommendations, that follow from the proposed theory.     

The role of adoptive parents’ intergroup contact in fostering the well-being of adoptees: The “extended intragroup contact effect”

The present study examines the effects of a new cultural socialization strategy on the well-being of transracially adopted adolescents and emerging adults. Specifically, we propose a novel strategy focused on the role of adoptive parents’ positive contact with members of their children’s ethnic group of origin, which we labelled “extended intragroup contact.” The hypothesis was that observing ingroup members (adoptive parents, belonging to the family ingroup) engaging in contact with another ingroup (members of children’s original ethnic group) would be associated with adoptees’ meaning in life and, in turn, with well-being. A self-report questionnaire was administered to 120 families, each composed of transracial adoptees (all born in Latin American countries) and their adoptive parents. The results were generally supportive of predictions, showing that knowing of positive interactions between members of two different ingroups (family ingroup and ethnic ingroup) had beneficial effects for the well-being of transracial adoptees. The theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed, focusing on the importance of investigating extended intragroup contact as a strategy for improving the well-being of disadvantaged group members.     

The Andamans as a “sea of islands”: reconnecting old geographies through poaching

The rise of military and political tensions in the Indo-Pacific maritime zone has brought new attention to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. With this visibility has come a disturbing awareness in some quarters that this Indian archipelago is qualitatively different from the rest of the country. Whether defined in terms of unorthodox cultural practices or the unauthorized presence of other national bodies, the multicultural habitus of the Andamans is deeply unsettling from a geopolitical standpoint that imagines the islands as a natural extension of a homogeneous national-territorial space. This article argues that the persistence of cultural and other heterogeneities in the Andamans should be read as a trace of histories that are intimately tied to the location of this archipelago. Framing the archipelago as a “sea of islands” lying off the littoral of the Andaman Sea rather than as an extension of Indian national space permits unauthorized social relations to become visible again. Once we redraw island geographies, spectral presences begin to appear, taking the form of both foreign bodies as well as narrative contradictions. Currently, these specters are interpellated under the sign of “poaching,” a portmanteau of activities that joins indigenous, settlers, outsiders, and Nature in an illicit assemblage that is presumed to lie outside the law. Contradictions of the poaching discourse should be read as signs of recalcitrance: the complexity of the Andamans that cannot be erased by the violence of denial.     

Being a Man,Being a Member: Masculinity and Community in Britain’s Working Men’s Clubs, 1945–1960*

By 1960, there were more than 3,500 working men’s clubs in Britain, with a combined membership of more than two million people. This article explores their post-war transformation from small homosocial enclaves for drinking and bar-games to larger family-oriented entertainment venues, while they continued to provide social, welfare and educational activities for local communities. Operating on the boundaries of public and private life, they remained alternative sites of domesticity to the home, in which men nurtured relations with both friends and family. Nevertheless, though women and children came to represent a significant presence in the clubs, their cultures remained largely patriarchal and discriminatory. I argue that working men’s clubs provided important sources of agency, community and continuity for their members, during a period of rapid social and cultural change.     

The effect of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction among immigrants: Does host national identity matter?

Overqualification is a form of person-job misfit that is common among those who reside in a foreign country. It is associated with poor work-related well-being and can inhibit full adjustment to the host society. The goal of our study is to examine the impact of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction among immigrants. Furthermore, we investigated immigrants’ host national identity as a moderator of the impact of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction. We analysed longitudinal online survey data from 124 Italian and Spanish immigrants who migrated to Germany between 2000 and 2014. Regression analyses show that perceived overqualification is negatively associated with job satisfaction six months later. Furthermore, host national identity moderates the association between perceived overqualification and job satisfaction: low overqualification is beneficial for job satisfaction whereas high overqualification is a threat for job satisfaction, especially for immigrants who identify strongly with the host society. We do not find corresponding direct and moderating effects on career satisfaction. We conclude that indicators of acculturation, such as host national identity, are worth considering in order to understand the impact of person-job misfit on work-related well-being among immigrants.     

Cold,Cold Heart: Who's Afraid of No Country for Old Men?

Stories of people killing people are a central part of culture and contain profound statements about important human issues. Senseless killings are particularly problematic. The long history of senseless killings in movies leads up to the 2007 movie, No Country for Old Men, in which senselessness has been raised to a peak. Although it is not a great commercial success, the movie has been recognized as deep, powerful, and important. In particular, the senseless killer has been judged to be one of the most frightening in movie history. The meaning of this fear may be found in examining the social and cultural context of contemporary life.     

The history of the unspeakable: Shimokawa Masaharu’s The forgotten history of evacuation

ABSTRACT

Histories of wartime Japan often focus on the Japanese home islands after Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on 15 August 1945. Japanese citizens living in Korea, Manchuria, and elsewhere in the far-flung Japanese Empire are usually left out of the historiographical record. In a new book about the evacuees—hikiagesha—from the defunct Empire, Shimokawa Masaharu presents a vivid, harrowing portrait of the suffering of those who had to make their way back to Japan after the end of the Greater East Asia War. In particular, Shimokawa focuses on Izumi Sei’ichi, who established a sanatorium and abortuary in Fukuoka for women who had been raped by enemy soldiers.     

The Cultural Construction of the Girl “Teen”: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Feminine Adolescence Portrayed in Popular Culture

The social category of “teen” has become ubiquitous in Western English-speaking popular culture. Also, with the global success of cultural products from the United States of America, such as music, movies and television programs featuring teens, the word “teen” is being employed in other cultures and languages. However, a comparison of the girl teen—often portrayed as a vulnerable stage of human development—with other cultural representations of developing womanhood (the Japanese shoujo and the French jeune fille en fleur) shows the representation of the “teen” to be a construction of its cultural context and questions its universal applicability.     

Clarifying the link between acculturation experiences and parent–child relationships among families in cultural transition: The promise of contemporary critiques of acculturation psychology

The field of acculturation psychology has been the focus of recent critique, calling into question current conceptualizations of acculturation experiences among families in cultural transition. This paper will consider how these critiques can inform theory and research that aims to clarify the link between the process of acculturation and the quality of parent–child relationships among families in cultural transition. For example, while the concepts of process and change are central to psychological approaches to understanding acculturation, this has not always been successfully reflected in choice of research methodology. Further, some theorists highlight the problem of conflating culture and national identity and of homogenizing culture into a few essentialize traits, psychological characteristics or sets of discourses. This paper will outline how a focus on the dynamic and complex process of acculturation opposes ideas of acculturative experiences as acontextual, ahistorical, and independent with some teleological endpoint. It is suggested that acculturation experiences should be reconceptualized as a dialogic, relationally constituted, and continually negotiated (unfinalizable) process. Finally, it is suggested that narrative and qualitative methodologies represent an especially useful way to highlight the fluctuations in acculturative experiences within a family context, and might offer greater promise in clarifying the link between acculturation experiences and the quality of parent–child relationships among families in cultural transition.     

“The Horror” of Structural Racism: Helping Students Take a Critical Stance Using Classic Literature

The goal of this piece is to provide educators with the knowledge and practical application needed to build critical literacy within their students using a traditional text that might not be considered multicultural. This essay challenges the idea that “outdated” literary works have no place in today's multicultural classroom, as it connects critical literacy concepts to classic works and explores how such concepts are inherent in our society based on the ideas presented in the literature. Using Heart of Darkness, this work connects structural racism to Conrad's novella and explores how students can examine how structural racism is inherent in our society.     

A Review of “African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900–1960”

The Boston Marathon bombings in April 2013 created a new kind of discomfort in the United States about “self-radicalized” terrorists, particularly related to Muslim immigrants. The two suspected bombers, brothers with Chechen backgrounds, had attended U.S. public schools. News media portrayed the brothers as “immigrants” and often showed them as having a struggle between their Chechen and U.S. identities. This article proposes that educators consider reframing the talk and discourses about immigrants and immigration toward a more complex understanding of transnationalism. The author demonstrates her work as a former English language learner teacher and her current research in the area of transnationalism to argue for educators to teach meaningfully about this concept. The goal, the author argues, is to help create a deeper understanding of newer arrivals to the United States so that the more newly arrived have greater choices about who they become and the identities they perform.     

The Big,Bad Wolf: Resisting Corporate Evil in “Damages” and State of Play

Popular culture requires readily identifiable villains. Subcultural groups often serve this role, creating controversies. Controversies based on religion are especially bitter. As a rule, religion in the movies is inoffensively sentimental, but The Da Vinci Code is both popular and provocative, treading on the dangerous ground of Jesus's mortality. An Inconvenient Truth, another unexpectedly popular recent movie, is not as amusing, but it concerns issues Jesus cared more about.     

Risky behaviors and educational attainment among young Mexican-origin mothers: The role of acculturative stress and the educational aspiration–expectation gap

The current longitudinal study examined how Mexican-origin adolescent mothers’ (N = 204) reports of acculturative stress during late adolescence were associated with their educational attainment and engagement in risky behaviors in young adulthood, 4 years post-partum; we also examined whether this association was mediated by discrepancies between adolescents’ educational aspirations and expectations. Findings revealed that mothers’ greater reports of stress regarding English competency pressures and pressures to assimilate were associated with a larger gap between their aspirations and expectations. Mothers’ reports of greater stress from pressures against assimilation, however, were associated with a smaller gap between aspirations and expectations. As expected, a larger gap between aspirations and expectations was associated with lower educational attainment and increased engagement in risky behaviors. Finally, significant mediation emerged, suggesting that the influence of stress from English competency pressures and pressures to assimilate on young mothers’ educational attainment and engagement in risky behaviors was mediated through the aspiration–expectation gap. Findings are discussed with respect to understanding discrepancies between young mothers’ aspirations and expectations in the context of acculturative stress.     

Ethno-national boundaries in the construction of “dirty-work” occupational identity: The case of nursing care workers in diversified workplaces

Diversified domains, such as workplaces, are suitable social fields for the study of ethnic identities, because identities are constructed through comparison and negation, that is, by identifying what or who the “other” is. In the present study I explore the talk of hands-on nursing care work, a stigmatized occupational field, to illuminate ethnic identities and the strategic boundary work that care workers conduct. The study is based on 14 months of field work and 51 interviews and observations at two Israeli geriatric wards with highly diverse staff. I show that actors negotiate their care worker identity by the opposite strategies of making and unmaking ethno-national boundaries. The first strategy denies and erases ethno-national boundaries by stressing universal professional values and individual virtues; the second one demarcates boundaries between ethno-national groups, using perceived cultural differences. The discussion addresses these antithetical evaluation frameworks in relation to theories of boundary making and unmaking.