Article
Cultural Studies
Caroline Pelletier
Summary: This article applies a framework developed for analyzing the experience of temporality in academic research to examine the production of games as part of a more routine working life in an indie game studio in the UK. The framework allows for a re-examination of how passionate work in the cultural industries is lived day-to-day, contributing to debates about the politics of time in the games sector and expanding the vocabulary for expressing desired experiences of time in game work.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Ib Bondebjerg
Summary: This article analyzes the portrayal of the Afghan war in Danish documentaries, fictional films, and television. These films not only focus on the national and global dimensions of the war, but also provide insights into the daily lives of Afghan soldiers, civilians, and families. They explore how we can navigate war and realities in a globalized world, and how films can help us better understand people from different parts of the globe.
JOURNAL OF WAR & CULTURE STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Lawrence May, Ben Hall
Summary: "Cities: Skylines" game allows players to shape undeveloped terrains into bustling cities, but the analysis of player-generated content reveals that despite aspiring for ecocentric designs, players inadvertently reproduce the asymmetric global relationships emblematic of the Anthropocene era. This highlights the contradictions of the current era and the permeability between the material world and digital play.
Article
Cultural Studies
Santeri Raisanen
Summary: This article argues that in the Finnish welfare reform towards human-centricity, the concept of "human" is a flexible signifier that represents certain neoliberal fantasies about welfare citizenship, market society, and the state. Through an analysis of user representations in a governmental AI program, the author identifies three dominant articulations of the human: the machinic, the inadequate, and the entrepreneurial. These articulations debunk the chimeric fantasy of the human-in-the-center, representing a late-neoliberal policy regime, and highlight the role of engineers' imagination in government technopolitics.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Area Studies
Pingfan Zhang
Summary: This article examines the representational efforts made by Chinese filmmakers in the past three decades regarding the comfort women issue. It analyzes three fictional films and focuses on the depiction of violated women's bodies on screen, which evoke nationalist sentiments and challenge the nationalism produced under a dominant male public culture. The article highlights how these films address the commodification and objectification of women's sexuality, the survival crisis faced by former comfort women, and the universal suffering of comfort women regardless of their nationalities. It contributes to the study of female sexuality and the commemoration of World War II in contemporary China.
ASIAN STUDIES REVIEW
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Francis Lee
Summary: In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), there has been a concern about the analysis of powerful actors and dominant narratives. The focus has been on how certain objects, phenomena, and people are excluded from technoscientific realities. However, the problem lies in the methods used in STS, which often reify the concerns of the actors being studied. This paper proposes an analytical strategy that shifts attention from construction to de-construction, highlighting the importance of exclusion processes. By exploring the making of absence by actors, this strategy allows for the examination of the overflows in technoscience. Four types of overflows are analyzed, illustrating how the absence of certain things shapes technoscientific objects. This analytical strategy emphasizes the spaces for power and choice, enabling the examination of how objects, phenomena, and people are marginalized or rendered absent in technoscientific processes.
SCIENCE AS CULTURE
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
James Mcmullen
Summary: This article examines the historical background of seventeenth-century Japan and the role of Kumazawa Banzan, presenting his views as a variant of premodern religious thinking in line with Mircea Eliade's concept of 'anthropocosmic'. Banzan's adoption of Neo-Confucianism and his belief in an arcadian ancient Chinese era are discussed, as are his cyclical view of time, the fall from arcadia, and man's agency in post-lapsarian history. The article also addresses rulership failures and the ecological crisis in contemporary Japan, and explores the 'eternal return' characteristic of traditionalist religions, drawing parallels between Banzan's crisis diagnosis and the views of man and nature in the twenty-first century.
POSTMEDIEVAL-A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL CULTURAL STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Landi Raubenheimer
Summary: This article argues that contemporary artists in post-and decolonial contexts are using deliberate approaches to respond to and revise canonical art, which can be interpreted as acts of cultural translation. The author focuses on the historical South African landscape canon and examines how artists like Phumulani Ntuli contest and reimagine the biases and erasures in the canon. The strategies investigated include reinscribing people into colonial landscape scenes, subverting pictorial unity and naturalistic style, and using pre-colonial iconography and representations to evoke historical relationships between land and people.
CRITICAL ARTS-SOUTH-NORTH CULTURAL AND MEDIA STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Izuu Nwankwo
Summary: Jokes generate both humor and offense due to cultural differences in the perception of humor and taboo. With the increasing diversity of audiences and the online dissemination of live events, stand-up comedians face greater scrutiny for irreverent anecdotes. However, "punching up" has become an acceptable form of harmless transgression. In cross-cultural contexts, where differences amplify offense, jokes not only elicit laughter but also create discomfort.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Roger Paez
Summary: This article explores how incorporating game-based formats and playful practices can inform urban and architectural design. It presents an expanded notion of play and delves into its implications in the design process, examining its role in terms of constraints, engagement, and chance. Through case studies, the article investigates possibilities for introducing play into spatial design practice and reflects on its potential for rethinking authorship in design.
Article
Cultural Studies
Neil Carey, Angelo Benozzo, Francesco Tommasi, Mirka Koro
Summary: This article explores the possibilities of research-creation in investigating the significance and transformations of data in qualitative research, as well as the analysis of data trails. By comparing conventional research practices with experimental thinking approaches, the article raises a series of ethical, ontological, and epistemological questions about the becoming of data.
CULTURAL STUDIES-CRITICAL METHODOLOGIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Aino Korvensyrja
Summary: This article examines the interventions of the police and courts in conflicts over deportation in southern German asylum camps. Through criminalizing protest and solidarity and spreading fear, the authorities drove many migrants to leave the camps. Additionally, they portrayed black individuals as dangerous 'others', contributing to the broader deportation agenda and producing racial issues.
IDENTITIES-GLOBAL STUDIES IN CULTURE AND POWER
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Xin Yan Chew, Moussa Pourya Asl
Summary: This study examines the vulnerability and victimhood narratives faced by women in post-war Bangladesh and argues that Tahmima Anam's novel "The Good Muslim" transcends these narratives by creating a more nuanced image of women.
JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Area Studies
Kunal Munjal, Ishaan Bamba
Summary: This article conducts a socio-legal analysis of India's changing labour laws and examines the situation of migrant workers in the context of the evolving relations between state, capital, and labour. The study reveals the precariousness of migrant workers and the possibility of their legal exclusion under the revised labour codes. The reforms appear to favor capital and increase informality in employment, which has serious implications for the rights of inter-state migrant workers.
ASIAN STUDIES REVIEW
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Sohini Kar
Summary: This article examines the growing number of life insurance products targeting women in India, particularly unwaged housewives. It explores how life insurance companies incorporate feminist critique, commodify and financialize domestic labor, and focus on the reproductive bodies of women.
JOURNAL OF CULTURAL ECONOMY
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Jun Zeng
Summary: The discussion on the metaverse requires considering its cultural consequences and striking a balance between artistic imagination and technological realization. The current stage of the metaverse shows a gap between artistic imagination and technological implementation, while the future advanced stage should be a seamless integration of the real world and the virtual world.
CRITICAL ARTS-SOUTH-NORTH CULTURAL AND MEDIA STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Paolo Bartoloni, Enea Bianchi
Summary: This article explores the importance of narratives of crisis and trauma in navigating the current moment of multiple crises. By analyzing Italo Svevo's novel Zeno's Conscience and Hideo Kojima's video game Death Stranding, the authors highlight the emphasis on the process leading to crisis and the liminal space between the 'normal' and the unknown in both narratives. They also underscore the significance of ruins, desolation, and the broken as a backdrop for rediscovering everyday life and forging meaningful connections in a fragmented world.
JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Maia Green
Summary: This article investigates the role of narratives in international development by analyzing a cash transfer program in Tanzania. It explores how narratives are used to show the impact of small payments on policy changes. Development programs often use exaggerated claims to describe the expected changes for those in need of development. This overstatement perpetuates discussions on personal and financial responsibility and sustains the political and organizational arrangements of aid.
JOURNAL OF CULTURAL ECONOMY
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Mark Quigley
Summary: This essay examines the role of Ascendancy as a colonial social formation in Irish writing and culture, and its influence on anticolonial and postcolonial thought. It analyzes Samuel Beckett's reflection on power and empire, reevaluates his relationship with W. B. Yeats, and explores the significance of their relationships to Ascendancy. The essay also considers the impact of recent controversies surrounding Ireland's Decade of Centenaries and its position in global imperial history, as well as Beckett's and Yeats's legacies and Ireland's public monuments and commemorations.
INTERVENTIONS-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
(2023)
Article
Cultural Studies
Kai Wiegandt
Summary: This article discusses the emergence of reverse domination narratives in recent decades, depicting the migration of professionals from the Global North to new economic centers in the Global South, where they occupy subordinate positions. These narratives reflect the anxiety in the North about losing economic, political, and cultural influence.
INTERVENTIONS-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
(2023)
