The data analytics industry and the promises of real-time knowing: perpetuating and deploying a rationality of speed

This article draws upon a sample of 34 data analytics providers in order to explore the rhetorical framing of the speediness of the data analytic solutions that they offer. General perceptions of cultural speed-up frame understandings of organisational life, against this backdrop of data analytics are presented as a potential solution to the need to speed-up and keep-up with the competition. As a result, it is argued that notions of speedy analytics are central to the spread and intensification of data-led decision-making, governance and ordering processes. The promises of real-time knowing are one means by which organisational speed and agility are seen to be achievable. The result is the pushing back of the limits of datafication. This article is concerned with the power of the data analytics industry and the powerful ways in which this industry presents and projects properties and promises onto data and data analytics. It suggests that this industry taps into, cultivates and then attempts to deploy the wider rationality of a need for speed.     

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.

     

Diversity in teams and the success of cultural products

This study investigates what is necessary to create successful intercultural motion pictures. We test hypotheses on the effects of (1) the production team and the cast composition (team members’ cultural backgrounds, industry tenure, social networks, education, star status, age, and gender) and (2) film characteristics (set locations, movie genre) on the overall performance of German movies at home and abroad. The empirical results demonstrate that offering cultural familiarity (teams from a diverse cultural background, international settings) provides a sense of familiarity to audiences outside the domestic market and enhances the performance of the film abroad. Yet, domestic success depends on different factors. These issues are underexplored because producers can rarely build on systematic research when attempting to customize films to different cultural settings. The paper shows how to target international audiences more effectively.     

Something new: value and change in finance*

ABSTRACT

Ethnographic and social scientific accounts of the financiers that buy and sell companies for profit often homogenize the players in these social dramas, relying on blunt, totalizing definitions of culture or overly deterministic articulations of habitus. This article, drawing on a two-year study of private equity investors, offers an alternative analytic frame for making sense of how private equity people buy and sell companies. It explores the ways in which private equity people make arguments persuading one another and the larger public that an investment is worth making. Important to these arguments are not only substantive content, the evidence that investors marshal to support a thesis, but also reflective evaluation of what counts as good evidence, meta-commentary. It is in these split levels of analysis that we can appreciate the cultural diversity within finance, Wall Street, and investment banking. I will also suggest that understanding how investors are arguing substantively as well as meta-pragmatically begins to outline a useful theory of culture change within the world of investment banking.     

The moral economy of face: marketized gift and depoliticized solidarity in South Korea’s fair trade

ABSTRACT

Metaphors of ‘face’ are often found in South Korea’s fair trade activism, as fair trade is frequently described as ‘face-to-face commerce’ and its goal is presented as pursuing ‘global trade with a human face.’ By asking how and why fair trade relies on the metaphors of face, this article analyzes the political implications and limits of the trope. I first examine the intimate connection between gift-exchange and face based on Marcel Mauss’s analysis of the gift and I present face as a locus of symbolic recognition and politics. Next, drawing on ethnographic research into Beautiful Coffee, the largest fair trade organization in South Korea, I illuminate fair trade as a hybrid practice of ‘marketized gift-exchange’ in which the various faces of producers and consumers are produced and circulated along with market transactions. In examining the meanings of those faces, I maintain that the prevalent metaphor of face in fair trade betrays the contradictory nature of market-based solidarity that is sought through the activism to redefine the whole economic structure based on moral and ethical practices.     

Art versus commerce in the movie industry: a Two-Path Model of Motion-Picture Success

Previous studies of the movie industry have raised questions concerning the problematic relationship between the success-related aspects of artistic excellence and commercial appeal. The present article proposes that—when the former is measured by industry recognition (Oscars and other awards) and the latter by market performance (box office and video rentals) and when the former hinges on the evaluative judgments of reviewers and consumers (ratings of excellence) and the latter on the level of buzz among these audience members (amount of attention, word of mouth, or click of mouse)—the two phenomena are essentially separable as independent paths to conceptually distinct and empirically uncorrelated aspects of motion-picture success. An analysis of data for 190 movies from the year 2003 shows that reviewer-and-consumer evaluations and buzz respond differently to a film’s marketing clout (production budget, opening screens, and opening box office) and that these audience responses contribute independently to a film’s industry recognition and market performance along two separable paths. These findings suggest various implications for movie marketers, film producers, actors or actresses, and other members of the motion-picture industry.

Uncertain hog futures: life,death, and arbitrage on the factory farm

ABSTRACT

Between 2013 and 2014, PED virus (PEDv) swept through American pig farms, killing millions of animals and causing a market panic that drove the prices of both physical pork and lean hog futures to all-time highs. However, a divergence between pricing in financial markets and on-farm realities allowed some producers to reap record profits via a unique form of biological arbitrage. This arbitrage was novel in that it allowed for an underlier (pigs) to be used to profit from fluctuations in the price of a derivative (lean hog futures). This article explores the case of PEDv to examine the entanglements and divergences between ‘real’ and ‘abstract’ values in financialized industries, paying particular attention to the schisms between the imaginaries and practices of actors in the financial and tangibly productive links of the agricultural value chain. To do so, it examines the historical co-constitution of American agriculture and the financial sector, and shows how in the contemporary moment these two ever-more-intertwined sectors are nonetheless marked by important differences. It argues that the nature of agricultural production can confound the expectations of finance, and highlights the fact that financialization entails contextually-specific practices that can lead to uneven and unexpected market outcomes.     

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.     

On the Real Limits of Self‐consciousness: Gazing Back at the Subversive Subject with Marco Bellocchio

Abstract

This article looks at Marco Bellocchio’s 2002 film My Mother’s Smile to re‐assess the central feature of Bellocchio’s cinema, i.e. its attempt to delineate a subjective strategy of subversion against a social order perceived as fundamentally repressive. In line with the director’s previous output, the film takes the Catholic Church and the family as its explicit polemical targets, endeavouring to unmask the nefarious ideological pressure they exercise on the ordinary individual in today’s Italian society. However, my reading draws on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to try and locate the disavowed (unconscious) kernel of Bellocchio’s narrative. Deploying Lacan’s controversial musings on ‘the gaze’, ‘desire’ and ‘femininity’, I suggest that the true stance of rebellion voiced by the film’s protagonist hinges on his recognition that the inconsistency of the ideological predicament he consciously struggles against paradoxically coincides with the traumatic inconsistency at the heart of his own attitude of defiance.     

Commercial success and artistic recognition of motion picture projects

This article introduces a model derived from the relational view of strategy to investigate (1) the impact of track record and financial resources on the commercial success and artistic recognition of cinema projects, and (2) the relationship between the commercial and artistic dimensions of film performance. Structural equation modeling carried out on 2,080 feature films released in the North-American theatrical market from 1988 to 1997 illustrates the mediating role of financial resources as catalysts of commercial and artistic track record resources, and unearths important conclusions relative to the specific dynamics of resource combinations in cinema projects. Results also reveal a novel hierarchy of lead actors, directors, and producers in the explanation of film performance. Last, they confirm the precedence of commercial success in the USA, and the symbolic and institutional status of US cinema as being primarily an industry.     

The business of film music in mainstream Nollywood: competing without advantage

This article addresses the business of film music in mainstream Nollywood. It does so by focusing on the materiality of the industry as an institution: its social organisation and systems of film music production; markets; networks; and power relations. Specifically, the arguments rely on social organisational theories, and economic concepts such as vertical integration and market competition alongside inferences from interviews with insider-practitioners. Findings reveal that the Nollywood film music industry is characterised by non-institutionalised vertical integration within a perfectly competitive market in which its film music composers are, essentially, competing without advantage.     

World 2: On the Significance and Impossibility of Articulation

Abstract

This article rethinks the notion of articulation as formulated in the ‘studies‐discourse’: cultural studies, gender studies, science studies. I analyse the inner workings of the concept of articulation against the background of Luis Buñuel’s film Tristana. Using the language of Spanish cultural practices, Buñuel offers the negative story of an oppressive society. The film foregrounds the role of a primordial asymmetry between the sexes in obliging articulation. This is suggestive of how articulation is interwoven with, and undone by, a radical refusal which unveils the ongoing incommensurability and inevitable disparity between the world in which we dwell and a world which remains unvoiced in the ‘studies‐discourse’: World 2, an imperceptible world which questions the fantasy of an overall and limitless emancipation inherent in the mythology of liberalism.     

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.     

The ‘diaspora advantage’ of Pauline Chan (1956–): from multicultural filmmaker to cultural broker

ABSTRACT

This is the first academic paper to critically introduce and document the 30-year screen career of Pauline Chan, Australia’s highest profile Chinese film director, television actress and media producer. Sydney-based, Vietnam-born, Hong Kong-educated and US-trained, Chan has directed six films, starred in 14 and produced four television series and films. Despite her prolific career, there has been no sustained research on her profile and repertoire. This paper evaluates the evolution of Chan’s career using the diaspora ‘advantage’ as a new approach. Characterised by mobility rather than culturalism, the term refers to the benefits brought by and skills of diaspora groups that have allowed them to flourish as transnational actors able to leverage resources in both their countries of origin and settlement. It begins by elaborating how Chan’s diaspora advantage has allowed her to challenge welfare multiculturalism and extend aesthetic multiculturalism. It further documents her transition from a multicultural filmmaker to a cultural intermediary by leveraging her diasporic advantage across the film sectors in China and Australia, and opening up new industrial routes outside of the confines of policy. Using interdisciplinary methods to screen biography that include interviews with the filmmaker, film archival research, critical cultural policy studies, and studies in Asian Australian cinema and political economy, this paper argues that the new approach of the diaspora advantage turns the deficit associated with the diaspora into a dividend that has the potential to rethink the imaginary between Asia and Australia.     

Multinational Going Cultural: A Postcolonial Deconstruction of Cultural Intelligence

Abstract

Cultural intelligence (CQ) has emerged as a popular construct for understanding and dealing with the problems of cross-cultural adjustment and cross-cultural communication that transnational corporations face. In this article, we critique the discursive moves through which CQ is presented as a competitively advantageous tool for global organizations, deconstruct its theorization and measurement, and discuss its role in perpetuating transnational hegemony. This article thus exposes the implicit relationship between academic knowledge production and transnational organizational practice that maximizes profits while simultaneously downplaying transnational globalization's oppressive consequences such as job vulnerability, unemployment, and exploitation.     

Culture,Communication, and Peacebuilding: A Reflexive Multi-Dimensional Contextual Framework

Abstract

This article argues that intercultural communication scholars should play a central role in advancing the study and practice of peacebuilding. A reflexive, multi-dimensional and contextualized framework for viewing peacebuilding is proposed, with a focus on personal, relational, and structural dimensions. Three topical areas—community engagement, intercultural dialogue, and alliance building—are used to illustrate the framework and point to possibilities for additional research and development. Seven strategies for applying this framework in the complex arena of intractable conflicts are proposed and described.     

People-based marketing and the cultural economies of attribution metrics

This article examines People-Based Marketing (PBM) to theorize the cultural economies of attribution metrics. Through an analysis of marketing discourses, acquisition patterns, and marketing collaborations, it examines how platform capitalism is increasingly directed towards developing cross-device identity standards that consolidate performance metrics across digital markets. PBM extends the processes of platform capitalization across media properties, and the ways that claims of value and relevance are imbricated with the metricization of behavioral change in digital markets. The imperative of PBM to standardize techniques of identification and to make media increasingly measurable across markets has been a catalyst for new forms of data resolutions through strategic acquisitions and identity resolution consortiums. Moreover, emerging regulatory changes such as GDPR may in effect further reinforce trends towards the consolidation of data management and analytics platforms necessary to resolve identity across markets.     

Ethical consumption applications as failed market innovations: exploring consumer (non) acceptance of ‘quasi’ market devices

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I conceptualise ethical consumption applications (ECAs) as market innovations inflected in processes of configuring market actors and market (re)framings. The introduction of ECAs through the work of civil society is not only about changing frames of market exchange, but also work in the register of making ‘good consumers’ and consumers as ‘agents of change’ and moralising markets. Thus, a more accurate concept for these devices is suggested: ‘quasi’ market devices. The main aim of this paper is to analyse how consumers attached to and resisted use of ECAs designed to assist in product choices and shape responsible everyday practices. Based on qualitative fieldwork in Sweden, the article applies a methodology grounded in Science and Technology-inspired market studies in combination with Consumer Culture Theory’s (CCT) interest in identity work and sense-making associated with technology consumption. Although available at the time of the empirical data collection period of the study, all three apps were off the market during the analytic work of this paper; a major argument for focusing on barriers to acceptance of the apps and trying to conceptualise how such non-acceptance can be understood.     

Internally Incentivized Interdisciplinarity: Organizational Restructuring of Research and Emerging Tensions

Interdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: (1) in the allocation of platform resources, (2) in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, (3) in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding.

     

Intimacy and Self-Abstraction: Radio as New Media in Aboriginal Australia

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of Indigenous radio stations around Australia began to use digital programming and digital music libraries, at times pre-programming their broadcast signal days in advance through various forms of digital audio workstation (DAW). This shift initially caused both celebration and concern, and occasioned reflection by many producers on how radio ought to work and sound. For some producers the shift to digital pre-programming seemed a threat to the intimate address that Aboriginal radio entailed. On the other hand, some of these same producers began to re-imagine the audience to which such indigenous media might now aspire and to celebrate the sheer quantity of Aboriginal programming that a smaller number of producers could now produce. In challenging radio's naturalised ‘liveness’ for Aboriginal radio producers this oscillation suggests a distinct media ideology (Gershon 2010a), a sense of what radio media ought to accomplish, that draws together forms of intimate address and public abstraction. In my analysis I re-imagine John Durham Peters' heuristic dichotomy of dialogue and dissemination as a tension between intimacy and self-abstraction in order to suggest how radio as ‘new media’ continues to animate some longstanding dynamics of Aboriginal cultural production.