scholarly journals A Gendered Economy of Pleasure

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-48
Author(s):  
Catharina Landström
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gender And Technology ◽  
Female User ◽  
Gendered Economy

This paper analyses cultural signification in the co-production of gender and technology. Focusing on the popular genre of motoring magazines, it discerns a pattern organising men and women in opposite relations to cars. Men’s relationships with cars are premised on passion and pleasure while women are figured as rational and unable to attach emotionally to cars. This “gendered economy of pleasure” is traced in a close reading of motoring magazine representations of cars and humans. Further, a DVD representation of the Volvo YCC, a concept car developed by women for an imagined female user, is discussed in relation to this semiotic pattern. The paper is conceptual, texts are interpreted in order to bring forward aspects of meaning-making that are not immediately obvious. The objective is to critically illuminate one aspect of the cultural production of the car as a masculine technology.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Expressive Culture ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Cultural Negotiation ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

This is an interdisciplinary study of how Kiowa men and women made, wore, displayed and discussed expressive culture. Kiowa men and women used the arts to represent new ways of understanding and representing Kiowa identity that resonated with their changed circumstances during the Progressive Era and twentieth century. Kiowas represented themselves individually and collectively through cultural production that emphasized the significance of change and cultural negotiation, gender, the ties and tensions over tribally specific and intertribal identities.

scholarly journals Power Relations in the Force Field of Academia: A Close Reading of Srividya Natarajan’s No Onions Nor Garlic

SAGE Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401983744
Author(s):  
Averi Mukhopadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Second Homes ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

University campuses serve as second homes for students, teachers, administrators, and parents coming from diverse regions, religions, classes, castes, and different genders. Interaction and camaraderie between the major characters in the academe develop. The bonhomie that exists between the stakeholders of the academe has its own rules, rules that are marked by the interference of power. The one wielding more power by virtue of one’s position, class, caste, or gender tries to dictate the terms of a particular relationship. Relations evolve as power relations, whereby a specific code of conduct regarding speech, behavior, thought, writing, love, and life is laid down for all—from administrators and professors to students and parents. This article studies how in a location as specific as Chennai University as described in Srividya Natarajan’s No Onions Nor Garlic, the ideological prejudices and hierarchical divisions highlighted by the play of power affect the daily life of the academe and chart out the course of action for everyone, from professors, students, high caste, low caste to men and women, involved in power relations. On the basis of that, this article suggests power in general serves not only to suppress the powerless but is productive also, as countering power with power creates a proper kind of resistance that blurs the difference between the agent and the target of power in power relations.

Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 12-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Schneider ◽  
Rebecca J. Atencio
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Conventional Approach ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Best Sellers ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
The Military

A conventional approach that takes into account only official reckonings might lead one to believe that Brazil has lacked a culture of memory of the military regime, at least until recently. Widening the scope to include cultural production, however, provides a different view: one of a long tradition of reckoning with the dictatorship. In postauthoritarian Brazil, the process of transition has been marked by a disjuncture between the profusion of cultural responses to the dictatorship era and the legalistic silence resulting from the 1979 amnesty law, which continues to grant impunity to former human rights perpetrators. An approach that, instead of emphasizing political measures, asks how cultural production may have impacted Brazil’s particular way of approaching its violent past helps to answer such questions as how to reconcile the lack of popular mobilization in the 1980s with the fact that guerrilla memoirs turned out to be best sellers and whether culture served as a catalyst for debates about the authoritarian past. In the Brazilian context cultural production appears to strengthen the amnesty framework (“reconciliation”) rather than to undermine or overcome it (mobilizing for punishment). The function of cultural and memory work is double-edged, requiring a close reading of both the portrayal of violence in each cultural work and the larger historical and political context of each country case. Estudos convencionais sobre o processo de acerto de contas no Brasil, que somente consideram mecanismos institucionais, podem dar a impressão de que ao país tem faltado uma cultura de memória sobre o regime militar, pelo menos até recentemente. Contudo, ao ampliar o escopo da análise para englobar a produção cultural, percebe-se uma ótica diferente: uma longa tradição de embates e reflexões sobre a ditadura militar. No Brasil pós-ditatorial o processo de transição tem sido caracterizado por um desalinhamento entre as várias respostas culturais aos crimes da ditadura e o silêncio jurídico resultante da anistia de 1979, que continua agraciando com impunidade os agentes que outrora violaram direitos humanos. Um tratamento que, ao invés de enfatizar medidas políticas, questiona de que maneira a produção cultural pode ter impactado a forma específica em que o Brasil lidou com seu passado violento ajuda a explicar como se reconcilia a falta de mobilização popular nos anos 80 com a transformação de certas memórias de ex-guerrilheiros em verdadeiros best sellers no mesmo período. Ademais, permite avaliar se a produção cultural serviu como catalisador de debates sobre o passado autoritário. No contexto brasileiro, a produção cultural tende a reforçar a moldura reconciliadora criada pela anistia. A função da cultura é uma faca de dois gumes: requer uma leitura meticulosa tanto da retratação da violência em cada obra cultural como dos contexto histórico e político do país em questão.

Growth in Adolescent Literature: Metaphors, Scripts, and Cognitive Narratology

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Seelinger Trites
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Adolescent Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cognitive Narratology ◽  
Interpretive Strategies ◽  
Character Growth

Cognitive narratology provides a way to explore discourse as the product of embodied beings as it simultaneously affects those embodied beings. Cognitive narratology specifically investigates how embodiment influences both the author's discursive creation of story and its subsequent meaning-making as a function of the reader's cognition. This essay explores three aspects of cognitive narratology pertinent to adolescent literature: metaphor, scripts, and blending – all of which are biologically and culturally situated cognitive processes. The essay first examines embodied theories of character growth within the field of adolescent literature before moving to a close reading of Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why to illustrate the relationships between embodied metaphors, scripts, and blending. Thirteen Reasons Why demonstrates how the process of blending allows authors to fuse embodied metaphors and scripts into new narratives about adolescent growth. At stake are interpretive strategies that recognise adolescent embodiment within the culturally-defined discourses of adolescent literature.

scholarly journals A Semiotic Analysis of Gender Discursive Patterns in Pakistani Television Commercials

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Muhammad Haseeb Nasir
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Television Commercials ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Purposive Sampling ◽  
Discursive Patterns

The study is multidisciplinary that ventures into the domains of semiotics, linguistics and cultural studies. Media has become one of the most viable social institutions of disseminating information to a wider audience. It has got power to (re)frame the ideology of larger audience through its visual/linguistic content and to pave the way to social change. The current study aims to investigate the manifestation of gender discursive patterns in the Pakistani television commercials. This study draws its theoretical foundation on the theory of semiotics propounded by Dyer (1982) in her book Advertising as Communication. Semiotics is conceived an appropriate tool for the critical inquiry of the televised commercials because of its wide ranging acceptability and reliability in the meaning making process. Williamson (1978), Dyer (1982) and Jhally (1990) not only recommended but they also practically employed semiotics as a tool of investigation for critically examining the meaning making process in the commercials that enhances the reliability and validity of semiotics as a tool of inquiry. The data for the current study comprises television commercials broadcasted on famous Pakistani television channels. The sampling technique is based on non-probability purposive sampling. The rationale of choosing purposive sampling technique is to include only those commercials which reflect gender representation. The findings of the study highlight that the commercials present layers of meanings via semiotic modes at symbolic level where men and women are displayed in stereotypical manner. The existing gender narratives in the Pakistani commercials subscribes to patriarchal structures. The study presents recommendations about the change in the content of the televised material and also highlights the unexplored avenues which can be brought under considerations by the future researchers.

The Sock and Buskin or the Artisan’s Biretta

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean P. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Work Culture ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Star System ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Shared Experiences

This chapter focuses on the problems that organizing in defense of their collective interests posed for the men and women of the American stage and, indeed, for many other occupational groups on the margins of the American middle class. Beginning with an analysis of the work culture of actors, it argues that while the shared experiences of a life on the boards generated a powerful sense of group identity, individual ambition, the fuel that powered the star system, proved difficult to reconcile with the principles of collective action. It goes on to highlight how actors' leaders deployed the vocabulary of high culture and the larger language of class of which it was a part not simply to define their position in relation to the major theatrical employers but also to draw a line between those performers they deemed worthy of the label artist and those they did not. It concludes with a detailed analysis of the debate that raged within the ranks of the Actors' Equity Association over the question of affiliation with the organized labor movement. Paying careful attention to the language that the competing parties employed to articulate their respective positions, it documents the development of a schism within the theatrical community that sprang from two markedly different ways of conceptualizing the process of cultural production.

Costume on film: How the femme fatale’s wardrobe scripted the pictorial style of 1940s film noir

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Star Image ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Double Indemnity ◽  
Mode Of Production

The character of the femme fatale and the visual style of film noir are vital elements in our understanding of that genre. Film costumes worn by the femme fatale are crucial, and are defining elements in genre recognition precisely because of their explicit cinematic visualization, rather than functioning as unequivocal signs. This article proposes a methodology for film costume researchers to conduct a pictorial analysis, without necessarily analysing film costume in terms of a meaning-making repertoire adhering to our understanding of film as a ‘language’. In the proposition of a framework for the close textual analysis of film costumes, the methodology is based on the triangulation of a shot-by-shot description, a wardrobe breakdown and an examination of production stills. This triangulation is crucial to understand the complexity of film costumes, which are defined by a wide-ranging set of factors such as: the film industry’s mode of production, the film costume’s relation to the fashion of its time, the body and star image of the actor, the work of the costume designer and his/her department, and the film-specificity. The ways in which a film costume functions in a specific shot will prove to be an important tool to analyse the pictorial characteristics of film noir and the femme fatale. To exemplify to methodology, this article proposes a close reading of an iconic film costume designed for one of the best-known performances of such a character, i.e. the white jumpsuit designed by Edith Head for Barbara Stanwyck in the closing scene of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944).

scholarly journals Moroccan Facebook Visual Narratives and Cultural Production

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Driss Faddouli
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Praxis I ◽  
Internet Art ◽  
The Creation

In this paper, I argue that the creation and circulation of the visual narratives within Facebook groups by Moroccan Facebookers largely entail and substantiate a stronger process of cultural production that has its own logic and praxis. I argue that this process of cultural production has two major facets: an aestheticization of everyday life and promulgation of specific modes of consciousness. Through the aestheticization of everyday life, I posit that Moroccan youth’s acts of cultural production increasingly blur the formal boundaries between the Internet, art, and popular culture; an aspect which fundamentally empowers their creative online input. Through the promulgation of specific modes of consciousness, I argue that the visual narratives attempt to develop and enhance the cultural sensibilities which better champion their perceptions and stances. Taken together, I claim that these major manifestations of the process of cultural production, while being deeply wedded to the Gramscian and Foucauldian perception of power dynamics, set the tone for an underlying struggle over power and meaning-making in the Moroccan society, thus seeking to intervene and exploit the gaps and contradictions in these power dynamics in society.

Rethinking alternative youth identities in Izmir: ‘Indifferently cool’ manifestations

2020 ◽  
pp. 136754942091987
Author(s):  
Ture Sahin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
Cultural Forms

This article discusses the self-identification and meaning-making processes of ‘alternative’ youth in Izmir, Turkey, by focusing on their own narratives and the microcosmos of their everyday life practices. The research argues that while alternative young individuals benefit from the global subcultural scene, particularly hipster subculture, they also create complex signifiers within their cultural environments to emphasise both individual subjectivities and shared ‘alternative’ group identities. The article claims that subcultures, with their styles, images and music that are consumed in imaginative ways, become productive and creative spheres of cultural production that are constantly at interplay with broader cultural forms in a given society. Hence, opening up a debate on youth subcultures has the potential to give salient clues about the transformations of society at large and its cultural values and beliefs. In this sense, the study formulates subcultures as offshoots – even forms of resistance – both drawing on and feeding mainstream cultural forms. The study is based on field research conducted among alternative youth in Izmir, Turkey – through participant observation, semi-structured interviews with youth groups and in-depth interviews with the owners and workers of the places where ‘alternative’ youth hang out. Since contemporary youth cultures in Turkey are a highly under-researched area, this article aims at mapping out a general framework towards a better understanding of the everyday practices and meaning worlds of alternative young people. It is hoped that this, in turn, will serve to pave the way for further research on youth subcultures in Turkey.

Technology, Gender, and Professional Identity

2013 ◽  
pp. 128-147
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Professional Values ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gender And Technology ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship

On its surface, technology does not appear to be a topic that is gendered. Both men and women use technology, and it must, therefore, be shaped by those who use it. However, both technology and gender are dependent on cultural, social, and historical contexts. These contexts shape how technologies are designed and used and how technologies and gender is understood. Currently, information technologies are associated with masculinity. In a similar manner, librarianship is gendered. Not only is the demographic makeup of the profession female-intensive, with approximately 80% of all LIS professionals being women, but some have argued that its core professional values, specifically access to information and service, are feminine in nature – as are its traditional activities, specifically cataloguing and children’s librarianship. This chapter closely examines a feminist critique of librarianship by Harris (1992) that argues librarians are embracing technology in an effort to improve the perception of librarianship and make it more masculine. The status of male librarians is examined in light of Harris’s argument, alongside an examination of Library 2.0 and how technology is used as part of its service philosophy. This chapter argues that the relationship between gender and technology is more complex than Harris argues.

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