Rechercher

In the eyes of many observers the Philippine cultural icon that is synonymous with travel, as well as being the subject of numerous advertisements is the jeepney, a public-transport vehicle assembled in the style of the US military jeep but lengthened to accommodate from fourteen to twenty-two sitting passengers. What distinguishes the jeepney from run-of-the-mill public transport however is its artistic décor: a clutter and kaleidoscope of various artefacts from miniature steel horses dotting the hood, to massive, jazzy plastic or steel billboards announcing the name of the jeepney, to murals painted in fiesta colours at the sides, to a bizarre combination of items in the front windshield juxtaposing conflicting images of the Sto. Nino (the baby Jesus Christ) and stickers with sexually risqué messages.

Television programme format adaptation is becoming an increasingly significant phenomenon in India as it is in many other countries with an active domestic television industry. Some obvious successes stand out in recent years, such as Kaun Banega Crorepati, the licensed adaptation of Celador’s global format success Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and C.A.T.S., a licensed Hindi version of the US detective series Charlie’s Angels. However, sensitivity to local cultural nuances has been critical to their popular reception by Indian audiences. Yet despite a few high-profile licensed adaptations or copycatting, there are far more instances of unlicensed adaptations or cloning, sometimes subtle, other times not.

"By bringing together a provocative selection of essays and images, Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self addresses the issues of nation, race, and selfhood and how they are depicted in ways that are challenging and informative, prompting readers to consider the impact of photography on our everyday lives." "If photographs are chiefly responsible for perpetuating myths of American identity, can a different reading of these representations break down distorting stereotypes? This is the central question posed by Only Skin Deep. The authors in this book forcefully argue that race and nation - and, indeed, photography itself - are fictions, cultural constructions that shape our social interactions. Even as symbols, these photographic depictions of ethnic difference and cultural superiority have very real consequences. This collection of works and essays addresses, for example, the lingering consequences of American colonial expansion; the conflict between public and private visualizations of individuals; the role of commercial imagery in shaping gender roles; the impact of fantasy in ethnic or ethnographic photography; and the uses of science to provide justification for politicized depictions of "race."" "Accompanying a major exhibition of the same name, Only Skin Deep offers a critical rereading of the archive of the history of photography. This applies to the works of famous photographers - such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, and Edward Steichen - as well as lesser-known historical figures, including Charles Eisenmann, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Will Soule, and Toyo Miyatake. A substantial part of the book is devoted to contemporary artists and photographers who have moved beyond the multicultural approach to representations of "race" and have made an investigation of the semiotics of cultural identity a prevalent theme over the past decade. Among the recent photographers included are: Nancy Burson, Nikki S. Lee, Glenn Ligon, Paul Pfeiffer, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Andres Serrano."--(BOOK JACKET)

In this essay I examine one particular feature of the films, the song-and-dance sequences, as they draw attention to the fractious nature of the postcolonial nation while simultaneously attempting to construct a space for the articulation of a consolidated national identity.

Games like Myst, Civilisation and Anno 1602 are centred around the virtual travelling of the gamer through unknown worlds. The voyage s/he undertakes often hinges on notions of colonialist exploration, turning the gamer into a traveller who surveys and masters unknown domains and learns to control techno-scientific principles along the way. Since such games are related to a mentality of colonialism, questions should be asked about how such games can be located in its discursive formation. This paper will shed light on these questions by analysing Civilization III and my experiences of playing this game.

As the nascent field of computer games research and games studies develops, one rich area of study will be a semiotic analysis of the tropes, conventions, and ideological sub-texts of various games. This article examines the centrality of race and gender in the narrative, character development, and ideologies of platform video games, paying particular attention to the deployment of stereotypes, the connection between pleasure, fantasy and race, and their link to instruments of power. Video games represent a powerful instrument of hegemony, eliciting ideological consent through a spectrum of white supremacist projects.

Samella Lewis has brought African American Art and Artists fully up to date in this revised and expanded edition. The book now looks at the works and lives of artists from the eighteenth century to the present, including new work in traditional media as well as in installation art, mixed media, and digital/computer art. Generously and handsomely illustrated, the book continues to reveal the rich legacy of work by African American artists.

The US Army developed multiplayer online First Person Shooter video game, America's Army, was examined as the first instance of an entirely state-produced and directed enterprise leveraging video game popular culture. Specifically, this study is concerned with the potential of the America's Army gamespace as a US civilian-military public sphere of the Information Age, as assessed through Habermasian theories of democratic communication. Interview fieldwork was carried out in several America's Army game communities including those of real-life military personnel, Christian Evangelicals, and hackers. The political activities of these exceptional game communities are considered for the ways they escape and transcend current critical theories of Internet-based public spheres.

Why is the hit Singapore edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? must-see TV?1. Watch it so that you can hold the ‘hottest topic’ with your friends. 2. So you can be encouraged by the courage of some contestants who are bold enough to brave national TV when apparently they have not read enough. 3. So you can judge for yourself if you are bold (and knowledgeable) enough to brave national TV for your possible 1st million. 4. So you can call the number on screen and make your 1st million. 5. Finally, watch it to see for yourself that Singaporeans are not as well read and as globalized as we all think we are.

From the 1967 live satellite program "Our World" to MTV music videos in Indonesia, from French television in Senegal to the global syndication of African American sitcoms, and from representations of terrorism on German television to the international Teletubbies phenomenon, TV lies at the nexus of globalization and transnational culture. Planet TV provides an overview of the rapidly changing landscape of global television, combining previously published essays by pioneers of the study of television with new work by cutting-edge television scholars who refine and extend intellectual debates in the field. Organized thematically, the volume explores such issues as cultural imperialism, nationalism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, ethnicity and cultural hybridity. These themes are illuminated by concrete examples and case studies derived from empirical work on global television industries, programs, and audiences in diverse social, historical, and cultural contexts. Developing a new critical framework for exploring the political, economic, sociological and technological dimensions of television cultures, and countering the assumption that global television is merely a result of the current dominance of the West in world affairs, Planet TV demonstrates that the global dimensions of television were imagined into existence very early on in its contentious history. Parks and Kumar have assembled the critical moments in television's past in order to understand its present and future. Contributors include Ien Ang, Arjun Appadurai, Jose B. Capino, Michael Curtin, Jo Ellen Fair, John Fiske, Faye Ginsburg, R. Harindranath, Timothy Havens, Edward S. Herman, Michele Hilmes, Olaf Hoerschelmann, Shanti Kumar, Moya Luckett, Robert McChesney, Divya C. McMillin, Nicholas Mirzoeff, David Morley, Hamid Naficy, Lisa Parks, James Schwoch, John Sinclair, R. Anderson Sutton, Serra Tinic, John Tomlinson, and Mimi White.

According to the 2000 census, Latinos/as have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Images of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture suggest a Latin Explosion at center stage, yet the topic of queer identity in relation to Latino/a America remains under examined. Juana María Rodríguez attempts to rectify this dearth of scholarship in Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces, by documenting the ways in which identities are transformed by encounters with language, the law, culture, and public policy. She identifies three key areas as the project’s case studies: activism, primarily HIV prevention; immigration law; and cyberspace. In each, Rodríguez theorizes the ways queer Latino/a identities are enabled or constrained, melding several theoretical and methodological approaches to argue that these sites are complex and dynamic social fields. As she moves the reader from one disciplinary location to the other, Rodríguez reveals the seams of her own academic engagement with queer latinidad. This deftly crafted work represents a dynamic and innovative approach to the study of identity formation and representation, making a vital contribution to a new reformulation of gender and sexuality studies.

Ainsi en fut-il de la restitution en août 1999 par le Royal Ontario Museum des ossements des quelque cinq cents ancêtres wendats, illégalement extirpés en 1947 de la fosse commune d'Ossosané par les anthropologues du Musée, ceux-ci ayant retracé le site du dernier grand festin collectif en Huronie en 1636 (alors décrit par le père Brébeuf), ce qui a donné lieu à la résurgence d'une nouvelle grande fête des Morts, célébrée de de manière privée par les quatre nations de la diaspora wendatte, sous les offices d'un chamane iroquois traditionnaliste parlant encore le huron ; - la réactivation de ces types de créations comme manifestation authentiquement artistique autochtone et surtout comme mécanismes culturels de transmission aux jeunes générations. Bien que l'habitation nomade de la tente, sous la forme de tipi, fût celle qui a été la plus diffusée médiatiquement (entendre le cinéma hollywoodien et les séries de télévision des cow-boys et des Indiens des années cinquante et soixante pour identifier ceux qu'on appelle, depuis l'erreur d'identification du continent par Christophe Colomb, les « Indiens »), sa stylisation par une découpe moderne se démarquait des nombreuses reproductions kitsch. La performance An Indian Act Shooting the Indian Act (1997) de l'artiste Lawrence Paul Xuweluptun, dont rendait compte une projection vidéo accompagnant son exposition « Coulour Zone », en avril 2000, au Centre Saydie Bronfman de Montréal, et l'installation multimédia Resig/Nation (1999) de l'artiste saulteux et métis Edward Poitras au Lieu, Centre en art actuel, à Québec à l'hiver 2000, étaient radicales

This essay examines the cultural specificity of the gangster genre. In hip-hop gangsta films, the inclusion of black women as central to the gangster business not only transforms the gangster genre but, more important, adheres to black cultural norms. The films New Jack City, Sugar Hill, and Set It Off serve as case studies.

Coverage of Mexican-American youth gangs has been a staple of local television news in the United States for decades, and its form and content have come to embody many journalistic cliches: the rising tide of violence, the spread of drug addiction, the alienated minority youth. But as this bold new study argues, these stories contain gross exaggerations that lead to the reinforcement of stereotypes about Mexican-American young people and the Mexican-American community in general. Indeed, the police and community leaders greatly influence the content of this coverage by deciding what information to make available to the news media, while reporters select certain sources and ignore others, thus slanting the story even further. Source: Publisher

Singapore has changed dramatically in the last forty years, moving in the 1960s and 1970s from domestic import substitution to low-cost exportoriented goods. Then in the 1980s developing a regional financial and business hub and now increasingly positioning itself as an exporter of capital and expertise (Courtenay 1995: 90). With exceptionally high economic growth rates most years, a GNP per capita of US$6,000 more than Australia and three times Australia’s annual average growth, Singapore has attracted a high percentage of foreign direct investment. Despite exhibiting similar advantages to Australia in terms of a well-educated workforce, competitive pricing, developed transport and telecommunications and citizens from culturally diverse business, family and personal networks throughout the region, Singapore’s media and resultant civil and civic development has not been as progressive and liberal as Australia’s and indeed has not kept pace. So it would appear that state existence, security and prosperity as desired ends for Singapore do not necessarily rely on an equal strengthening of the public sphere, or at least this is not evident to date.

"This dissertation traces the presence of installation-based practices among artists of Aboriginal ancestry via selected exhibitions across Canada. It begins with a methodological perspective on Canadian art history, federal law, and human science, as a means of establishing a contextual backdrop for the art under consideration. The rise of an Indian empowerment movement during the twentieth century is then shown to take on an international voice which had cultural ramifications at the 1967 Canadian International and Universal Exhibition. Nascent signs of a multi-mediatic aesthetic are distinguished in selected works in Canadian Indian Art '74, as well as through Native-run visual arts programs. First Nations art history is charted via new Canadian art narratives starting in the early 1970s, followed by the development of spatial productions and hybrid discourses in New Work By a New Generation in 1982, and Stardusters in 1986. The final chapter opens with a history of installation art since the Second World War, as related to the pronounced presence of multi-mediactic works in Beyond History in 1989. Post-colonial and postmodern theories are deployed to conclusively situate both the artistic and political concerns featured throughout this study, and lead into the analysis of selected installations at Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives and Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. These 1992 shows in the national capital region ultimately confirm the maturation of a particular socio-political aesthetic that tested issues of Canadian identity, while signifying Aboriginal sites of difference."--

Japan in the 1990s differs vastly from what it had been two or three decades earlier. The Japanese state has undergone such a fundamental change that it has been described as a ‘regime shift’ (Pempel 1998). Although the longterm ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has returned to power after its defeat in 1993, it no longer has an absolute majority in the Cabinet. Surrounded by numerous scandals and corruption charges, both the government and bureaucracy have undergone major reforms to increase transparency and reduce bureaucratic influence over the policy-making process. The Japanese Diet has, for example, passed the Information Disclosure Law to increase openness in the administration. Economic policies have also been transformed to cope with the malaise characterised by continuing problems of bad loans in the financial sector, rising unemployment and declining manufacturing productivity.

This book provides a glimpse of thirteenth-century life and death in a southern Ontario Iroquoian community. The renovation of a Toronto soccer field in 1997 resulted in the accidental discovery of an Iroquoian ossuary--a large pit containing the remains of at least 87 people. The pit was excavated and recorded, and the remains reburied in accordance with the wishes of the Six Nations Council of Oshweken. Scientific analyses of the bones resulted in a remarkably detailed demographic profile of the Moatfield people, along with indicators of their health and diet. The book reports these findings and includes a complete database of maps and profiles on an accompanying CD-ROM. Ronald F. Williamson is president of Archaeological Services Inc., Toronto. Susan Pfeiffer is professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. Source: Publisher

The question of why civil society presents such appeal for commentators, scholars and journalists writing about developing nations is an important one. The most likely explanation is that a kind of global faith exists in civil society as the driving force of a new world order. This global transformation, exemplified by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, celebrates people’s freedom to participate in public discourse, and ultimately in processes of directly electing political representatives. In this sense the concepts of civil society and the public sphere come together to describe a global anti-authoritarian groundswell where the power of ideas is linked to global cultural development.