Cultural and media studies Books

Book SynopsisModern Luck sets out to explore the enigma of luck''s presence in modernity, examining the hybrid forms it has taken on in the modern imagination in modern luck stories across literature, film, music, television and theatre.

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Book SynopsisAgeing with Smartphones in Urban Chile analyses the experience of ageing with smartphones for Peruvian migrants aged around 60, who have lived in Chile for over 20 years.

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Book SynopsisAgeing with Smartphones in Urban Chile analyses the experience of ageing with smartphones for Peruvian migrants aged around 60, who have lived in Chile for over 20 years.

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Book SynopsisCollecting data about our lives, our bodies and our behaviours has become a part of everyday practice that promises greater self-awareness, healthier living and increased productivity. This book focuses on the dialectical relationship between users and designers of self-tracking technology to examine how logics of datafication redefine the body. It explores what these emerging relations mean for imagining, designing and analysing sociotechnical systems that bring about self-tracking. Jethani provides a genealogy of self-tracking to situate the notions of quantified and quantifiable selves as problematic data regimes within contemporary digital culture. It charts the origins of self-tracking from within the blueprint of the "Californian Ideology" to a global social movement which now reaches beyond self-experimentation to encompass the wider trajectories of using wearable sensor technology in the neoliberal management of health, wellbeing and productivity. The book reframes and theorises the quantified self by re-examining and developing arguments of how bodies "disappear" (Jewson), are made "docile" (Foucault) and get caught up in "rhythms" (Lefebvre) by datafication. The concept of a "quantised" self is introduced as a means of reading into and exposing the inherent political interests being served when self-tracking technology is introduced into clinical, home and workplace settings. Drawing from case studies of self-tracking in practice, the final chapter sketches the outline of a mutual praxis of critique and design that allows us to reimagine the politics embedded in sociotechnical systems of self-tracking and to consider possibilities of intervention.Table of ContentsPART I. VISIONS QUANTIFIED AND QUANTIFIABLE SERVICES Chapter 1. The Quantified Self Chapter 2. The Quantifiable Self: Precision Medicine, the Quantified “All” and the Disappearance of Body PART II. RULES THE EMBODIED PRACTICES OF SELF TRACKING AND Chapter 3. Lessons from Electronic Monitoring Chapter 4. Sociometry PART III. THE QUANTISED SELF:DISCIPLINE AND DESIGN Chapter 5. The Quantised Self Chapter 6. Conclusion: Anticipating the Quantised Self in Design

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Book SynopsisThis interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the impact of media, emerging technologies, and education on the resilience of the so-called post-truth society. This book explores if a return to civic participation, enhanced critical media literacy, journalism for the public good, techno-interventions and lifelong learning systems can collectively foster a more engaged global citizenry. The post-truth society is associated with a raft of terms that challenge the very notion of what should constitute a democratic and inclusive society: the decline and fall of reason; the disruption of the public sphere; the spread of misleading information; fake news; culture wars; the rise of subjectivity; the co-opting of language; filters, silos and tribes; attention deficits; trolls, polarisation and hyper-partisanship; the conversion of popularity into legitimacy; manipulation by "populist"; leaders, governments, and fringe actors; algorithmic control, targeted messaging and native advertising; surveillance and platform capitalism. The contributions from scholars, technologists, policy-makers and activists raise critical questions about the nature and power of knowledge in the 21st century. Readers are challenged to question their own role in perpetuating certain narratives and to also understand the lived context of people on all sides of a given debate. The diverse perspectives by geography, sector, gender and world-views will widen the appeal of this work to an international audience trying to understand the resilience of the post-truth society.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction; Alex Grech PART 1. Repurposing Education for the Post-Truth Society Chapter 2. Post-truth Society: Toward a Dialogical Understanding of Truth; John P. Portelli and Soudeh Oladi Chapter 3. Macro Authorities and Micro Literacies: The New Terrain of Information Politics; Bryan Alexander Chapter 4. The Learning Challenge in the 21st Century; Harry Anthony Patrinos Chapter 5. The Pre-Truth Era in MENA, News Ecology and Critical News Literacy; Abeer Al-Najjar Chapter 6. Critical Literacy is at the Heart of an Answer; Emma Pauncefort Chapter 7. Societal Reorientation via Programmable Trust: A Case for Piloting New Models of Open Governance in Education; Walter Fernando Balser, Steve Diasio and Taylor Kendal PART 2. Repurposing Media for the Post-Truth Society Chapter 8. Fact to Fake: The Media World as It Was and Is Today; Michael Bugeja Chapter 9. Post-News Journalism in the Post-Enlightenment Era; Hossein Derakhshan Chapter 10. How Can Wikipedia Save Us All? Assuming Good Faith from All Points of View in the Age of Fake News and Post-truth; Toni Sant Chapter 11. Public Rebuttal, Reflection and Responsibility. Or, an Inconvenient Answer to Fake News; Ruben Brave Chapter 12. The Kony 2012 Campaign: A Milestone of Visual Storytelling for Social Engagement; Massimiliano Fusari Chapter 13. Post-truth Visuals, Untruth Visuals; Gorg Mallia Chapter 14. Reflections on the Visual Truth and War Photography - A Historian’s Perspective; Anna Topolska Chapter 15. It is Time for Journalists to Save Journalism; Lina Zuluaga and Phillip Long PART 3. Future-proofing for the Post-Truth Society Chapter 16. Karl Marx and the Blockchain; Devraj Basu and Murdoch J. Gabbay Chapter 17. Two Sides to Every Story. The Truth, Post-truth, and the Blockchain Truth; Joshua Ellul, Alex Grech, and Gordon Pace Chapter 18. Decentralised Verification Technologies and the Web; Allan Third and John Domingue Chapter 19. How Do We Know What is True?; Natalie Smolenksi Chapter 20: Social Technologies and their Unplanned Obsolescence; Daniel Hughes

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Book SynopsisThis stand-out book appreciably contributes to growing debates within Science and Technology Studies concerned with cultural politics, the emergence of citizen science and civil society interventions in shaping technology. By drawing on fieldwork data, Savvides examines the bourgeoning 3D printing culture outside the professional lab in Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and Fab Labs. This engaging ethnography not only builds arguments on tracing the historical roots of makers and Hackerspaces, 3D printing technology and political narratives surrounding these new technological environments; it also illustrates how 3D printing has configured parallel grassroots innovation in experimental spaces in the UK, Germany and Cyprus and brought together hobbyist maker communities, activists and entrepreneurs alike. The study also addresses the convergence of activism and the maker culture with prevalent cultural imaginaries - such as the visionary creator within decentralized and distributive manufacturing, the idea of autopoietic social systems, or the imaginative leap to space colonization - and touches upon challenges and motivations in the field of grassroots innovation by examining how it';s organized and conducted in semi-informal contexts.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Approaching 3D printing Chapter 2. A history of 3D printing: 3 waves of development Chapter 3. 3D printing enmeshing in ideology, cultural imaginaries and political narratives Chapter 4. 3D printing in Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and Fab Labs Chapter 5. 3D print in everyday life: crafting, innovation and learning Conclusion: 3D printing as a message

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Book Synopsis Since the early 1990s, phenomenology and cognitivism have become two of the most influential approaches to film theory. Yet far from being at odds with each other, both approaches offer important insights on our subjective experience of cinema. Emotions, Ethics, and Cinematic Experience explores how these two approaches might work together to create a philosophy of film that is both descriptively rich and theoretically productive by addressing the key relationship between cinematic experience, emotions, and ethics.Table of Contents Preface List of illustrations Introduction: Phenomenology Encounters Cognitivism Robert Sinnerbrink Chapter 1. Fascist Affect in 300 Carl Plantinga Chapter 2. Other Sides: Loving and Grieving with Heart of a Dog and Merleau-Ponty's Depth Saige Walton Chapter 3. Elemental Imagination and Film Experience: Climate Change and the Cinematic Ethics of Immersive Filmworlds Ludo de Roo Chapter 4. Toward a Model of Distributed Affectivity for Cinematic Ethics: Ethical Experience, Trauma, and History Brigid Martin Chapter 5. Grey Gardens and the Problem of Objectivity: Notes on the Ethics of Observational Documentary Mathew Abbott Chapter 6. Synthetic Beings and Synthespian Ethics: Embodiment Technologies in Science/Fiction Jane Stadler

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Book Synopsis Recent world-wide political developments have persuaded many people that we are again living in what Hannah Arendt called “dark times.” Jackson’s response to this age of uncertainty is to remind us how much experience falls outside the concepts and categories we habitually deploy in rendering life manageable and intelligible. Drawing on such critical thinkers as Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Jaspers, whose work was profoundly influenced by the catastrophes that overwhelmed the world in the middle of the last century, Jackson explores the transformative and redemptive power of marginalized voices in the contemporary conversation of humankind.Trade Review “Through trenchant analysis and interplay of such thinkers as Hannah Arendt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Theodor Adorno, he exposes how these survivors of trauma unpack the complexity of identity formation, the act of identifying, and the tendency to use categories to control complicated human standpoints…This book could be useful for courses in anthropology, philosophy, contemporary literature, and sociology. – Recommended.” • Choice “…a brilliant, masterful, and urgent book.” • Reading Religion “It is Jackson’s unmatched ability to pay attention to the details of human life using seemingly mundane interactions as the basis for developing a philosophy of human existence that makes his work so compelling to read and think with. Throughout the book, Jackson shows that he is not just a master of existential dialectical thinking, but also of existential dialectical writing…As a growing number of anthropologists are attempting to make sense of the breakdown in trust and understanding that increasingly characterizes socio-political spaces across the world, Critique of Identity Thinking offers crucial theoretical and epistemological guidance in troubled times.” • Zeitschrift für Ethnologie “Critique of Identity Thinking contains a wisdom, which comes from a lifetime of reading, writing, and doing ethnography, and it is a reminder of the redemptive power of not distinguishing so clearly between biography and ethnography as well as between science and art.” • Conflict & Society “The author is a master weaver. The tapestry he offers draws together many threads. Its colors are dusky and subdued. It is a dark work, the inspiration and provocation of which is the darkness of the times in which we presently live… a masterpiece.” • James Faubion, Rice UniversityTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Mistaken Identities: The Task of Thinking in Dark Times Chapter 2. Radical Empiricism and the Little Things of Life Chapter 3. The Witch as a Category and as a Person Chapter 4. The New Materialisms Chapter 5. Words and Deeds Chapter 6. Critique of Cultural Fundamentalism Chapter 7. Existential Scarcity and Ethical Sensibility Chapter 8. Identification and Description: An Essay on Metaphor Chapter 9. Islam and Identity among the Kuranko Chapter 10. In Defense of Existential Anthropology Notes Index

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Book Synopsis Our modern culture is increasingly expressed in the form of digital artifacts, yet archaeology is in its infancy when it comes to researching and understanding them. The study and reverse engineering of digital artifacts is no longer the exclusive domain of computer scientists. Presented by way of analogy to the process of archaeological fieldwork familiar to readers, the 1986 Electronic Arts game Amnesia is used as a vehicle to explain the procedure and thought process required to reverse engineer a digital artifact. As a go-to reference to learn how to begin studying the digital, Amnesia is shown to be a multi-layered artifact with a complex backstory; through it, topics in data compression, copy protection, memory management, and programming languages are covered.Trade Review “Highly recommended. All readers” • Choice "This is a fascinating exploration of a single digital artefact. It reminds the reader that digital ‘things’ are still physical – and from those physical fluctuations representing ones and zeros the book walks the reader through the process of reconstructing what the code actually was, what it did, why it did it, and why it matters.” • Shawn Graham, Carleton UniversityTable of Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface Part I:Pre-Excavation Introduction Chapter 1. Reconnaissance Chapter 2. Evaluation Chapter 3. Strategy and Research Questions Part II: Excavation Chapter 4. Fragments Chapter 5. Publisher Logo Chapter 6. Text Encoding Chapter 7. Interpreter Chapter 8. Text Encoding, Revisited Chapter 9. Parser Chapter 10. Finding Locations Chapter 11. Copy Protection Part III: Post-Excavation Chapter 12. Analysis Conclusion Index

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Book SynopsisMonsters show us our deepest fears and anxieties, our discomfort with difference, and our simultaneous repulsion with and fascination for the other. Understanding that the concept of the monster can be a political tool used to dehumanize opponents and a psychological tool that can help us reconsider our beliefs, Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous analyses and explores the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human societies. Introducing the innovative practice of “imagining monsters” as a way to rethink the key organizing principles in our society that we have traditionally taken for granted, the authors explore not only what monsters are but, most importantly, what monsters reveal about us. This cutting-edge collection of chapters challenges us to contradict worldviews, such as the binary of gender, that have organized our thinking for millennia. Showcasing discussions loaded with ontological, ideological, socio-political, and aesthetic implications, the monstrous is rendered uncannily familiar as our own public and domestic socio-political and psycho-emotional realities are subjected to scrutiny. Launching a critical question: when faced with an existential threat, what can we do? The authors show us how the study of monsters and monstrosity is perfectly positioned to answer. Tackling this question from a unique interdisciplinary scope, the research presented in the chapters are interesting reading for a variety of researchers interested in monsters and the monstrous from across sub-disciplines.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Monsters and the Monstrous; M. Susanne Schotanus Imagining Monsters Chapter 1. Malign by Design: Imaginatively Visualising Lovecraft and the Aesthetic of Monstrosity; Gerard Gibson Chapter 2. Racial Terror and the Struggle for Freedom in the HBO series Lovecraft Country; Elena Apostolaki Chapter 3. Media Makes the Monster: Battered and Abused to Monstrous Killer; Melissa Blackie Chapter 4. Talking Monsters; Gerard Gibson, Elena Apostolaki, and Melissa Blackie Gendered Monsters Chapter 5. Femicide on the Frontier: Analysing Motives behind the Femicide Crisis in Ciudad Juàrez; Chloë Isabel Olivo Chapter 6. Dragula and the Expansive Queerness of the Drag Supermonster; Russ Martin Chapter 7. X-Men: The Normative System Disguised as Mutant; Francesca Lopez Chapter 8. The Making of Monstrosity: Exploring the Monster Figure Through the Lens of Gender; Chloë Isabel Olivo, Russ Martin, and Francesca Lopez Domestic Monsters Chapter 9. Mothers, Monsters, & Media: Examining the Parallel Between Motherhood and the Monster; Megan Johnson Chapter 10. Extra-diegesis, Domesticity, and the Uncanny in the Transnational Films of Guillermo del Toro; Woodrow Hood Concluding Thoughts on Monsters and the Monstrous; Woodrow Hood and M. Susanne Schotanus

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Book SynopsisThis volume contains an Open Access Chapter. Authenticity has become a buzzword for our times. Much of the travel industry is built around the provision of ‘authentic’ experiences, global brands fight to be seen as ‘authentic’ and social media platforms are awash with arguments about the authenticity of this post or that vlogger. But what do we mean by authenticity? And why have these debates grown so dramatically in the last two decades? This collection explores the complex and at times controversial idea of authenticity. Addressing the concept from an interdisciplinary perspective and offering a diverse range of topical cases, the authors bring together the latest empirical and conceptual scholarship addressing authenticity and its centrality to debates about contemporary culture, media and society. In this way, the authors are able to pinpoint the growing significance of the concept of authenticity, the various ways in which different disciplines approach the topic, and possible ways of advancing the field across disciplines. With sections covering travel and tourism, branding and marketing, popular culture, social media and political communication this exciting and innovative collection will make fascinating and crucial reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities, and helps to define what these different disciplines mean by authenticity.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: Cultures of Authenticity; Thomas Thurnell-Read, Michael Skey, and Marie Heřmanová Part I: Tourism, Heritage and Place Chapter 2. Authenticity in Tourism Studies; Jillian M. Rickly Chapter 3. Negotiating the Spirit of Place: Towards a Performative Authenticity of Historic Buildings; Jonathan Djabarouti Chapter 4. Authenticity Issues in Nüshu Cultural Heritage in China: Authentication, Discourse, and Identity-Making; Xihuan Hu Chapter 5. Permanent Souvenirs: Traditional Tattoos and the Search for Authenticity in the Northern Philippines; Sam Pack and Justin Sun Part II: Branding, Consumption and Commodities Chapter 6. Authenticity in Material Culture, Consumption and Branding; Valerie Gannon and Andrea Prothero Chapter 7. Past and Present in Branding Authenticity: The taste of history; Iben Bredahl Jessen Chapter 8. One Brand, Multiple Authenticities: The Case of the World’s First Pay-Per-Minute Café; Alexandra Kviat OPEN ACCESS Chapter 9. Authentic Sports Branding in the Digital Age; Sian Rees Chapter 10. Authenticity, Distinction and Value in the Narratives of Chinese Consumers of Vintage Costume Jewellery; Jingrui Hu and Thomas Thurnell-Read Part III: Popular Culture Chapter 11. Introduction: Gender and Authenticity in Contemporary Popular Culture & Advertising; By Jilly Boyce Kay Chapter 12. Authenticity after Cock Rock: Emo and the Problem of Femininity; Judith Fathallah Chapter 13. ‘The Best a Man Can Be?’: Finding a Place for the ‘Real’ Man in Grooming Advertisements; Kai Prins Chapter 14. Keeping it Real? Dynamics of authenticity and branding in RuPaul’s Drag Race; Mads Møller Tommerup Andersen Part IV: Social Media Chapter 15. What I Talk About When I Talk About Authenticity: An Auto-Bibliographic Inquiry; Crystal Abidin Chapter 16. The Authenticity Gap: How Influencers Commodify Authenticity on Instagram; Lucy Frowijn, Frank Harbers, and Marcel Broersma Chapter 17. ‘I’m Always Telling You My Honest Opinion’: Influencers and Gendered Authenticity Strategies on Instagram; Marie Heřmanová Chapter 18. Liquid Figures, Solid Structures: The pursuit of an Authentic ‘Consumer Steward’ Identity in Online Communities; Yan Han Wang, Hélène de Burgh-Woodman, and Keri Spooner Part V: Politics and Political Communication Chapter 19. Authenticity in Politics and Political Communication Research: Analytic Concept and Political Issue; James Stanyer Chapter 20. Strategic Political Authenticity. How Populists Construct an Authentic Self; Christina Holtz-Bacha Chapter 21. Right Wing Co-option of the Perceived Authenticity of Citizen Journalism; Jessica Roberts Chapter 22. Post-authentic Engagement with Alternative Political Commentary on YouTube and Twitch; Daniel Jurg, Dieuwertje Luitse, Saskia Pouwels, Marc Tuters, and Ivan Kisjes Chapter 23. Exploring ‘the Authentic’ in Taiwanese Politics: An Intergenerational Analysis; Ssu-Han Yu and Miaoju Jian

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Book SynopsisThe look and feel of metropolitan France has been a notable preoccupation of French literary and visual culture since the 1980s. Numerous writers, filmmakers and photographers have been drawn to articulate France’s contrasting spatial qualities, from infrastructural installations such as roads, rail lines and ports, to peri-urban residential developments and isolated rural enclaves. In doing so, they explore how the country’s acute sense of national identity has been both asserted and challenged in topographic terms. This wide-ranging collection of essays explores how the contemporary concern with space in France has taken shape across a range of media, from recent cinema, documentary filmmaking and photographic projects through to television drama and contemporary fiction, and examines what it reveals about the state of the nation in a post-colonial and post-industrial age. The impact of global flows of capital, trade and migration can be mapped through attention to the specificities of place and topography. Investigation of liminal locations, from seaboard cities and abandoned industrial sites to refugee camps and peasant smallholdings, interrogates the assertion of a national territory (and, by extension, a national identity) through the figure of the hexagon, and highlights the fluidities, instabilities and lines of flight which render it increasingly unsettled.Trade Review'An invaluable contribution to French cultural studies [...] France in Flux provides an enlightening multi-faceted vision of issues affecting our understanding of contemporary French space and identity.' Carrie Tarr, Kingston University'With the increasing pace of globalization and the rising specter of climate change, this timely volume addresses a viewpoint that, in my opinion, will greatly benefit courses on contemporary France, literature, or cinema. [...] By examining how the French react to the rapid social, demographic, and changes via photography, film, literature, readers can better understand this France in flux.'Kory Olson, H-France'One realizes that opening our eyes to the importance of these apparently trivial, depressing, or monotonous spaces is precisely the point of this creatively-focused and thoughtfully-organized collection of essays. [...] I found in this apparently impoverished terrain a greatly enriched view of contemporary France. [...] The book as a whole delivers, richly, on the same vision. [...] This book is an essential read for anyone with a foundation in French studies. It will also be valuable to geographers, historians of photography and film, and scholars of literature and environment.'Suzanne Black, Studies in 20th & 21st Century LiteratureTable of ContentsIntroductionAri J. Blatt and Edward WelchChapter 1: Angels of History: Looking Back at Spatial Planning in the Mission photographique de la DATAREdward Welch, University of AberdeenChapter 2: Disuse and Affect: Post-Industrial Landscapes of France’s Labour LostDerek Schilling, Johns Hopkins UniversityChapter 3: Depth of Field: Farmland and Farm Life in Contemporary French DocumentaryAlison J. Murray Levine, University of VirginiaChapter 4: Sylvain George’s Minor Mode, or Cinema at the Margins of its Fragile CommunityAnna-Louise Milne, University of London Institute in ParisChapter 5: Girlhood Luminosities and Topographical Politics: 17 Filles (Delphine and Muriel Coulin, 2011) and Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014)Fiona Handyside, University of ExeterChapter 6: Les Revenants, Tignes, and the Return of Postwar ModernizationCatherine E. Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brian R. Jacobson, University of TorontoChapter 7: French Edgeland Poetics: Topography and Ecology in Jean Rolin’s Les ÉvénementsJoshua Armstrong, University of Wisconsin - MadisonChapter 8: Picturing a Nation of Local Places in the Observatoire photographique du paysage and France(s) territoire liquideAri J. Blatt, University of Virginia

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Book SynopsisThis timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and identity in France, and is the first book about humour and identity in France to be published in either English or French that analyses both debates about Charlie Hebdo and standup comedy. It examines humour, freedom of expression, and social cohesion in France during a crucial time in France’s recent history punctuated by the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. It evaluates the state of French society and attitudes to humour in France in the aftermath of the events of January 2015. This book argues that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo, although significant, only provide part of the picture when it comes to understanding humour and multiculturalism in France. This monograph fills significant gaps in French and international media coverage and academic writing, which has generally failed to adequately examine the broader picture that emerges when one examines career trajectories of notable contemporary French comedians. By addressing this failing, this book provides a more complete picture of humour, identity, and Republican values in France. By focusing primarily on contemporary comedians in France, this book explores competing uses of French Republican discourse in debates about humour, offensiveness, and freedom of expression. Ultimately, it argues that studying humour and identity in France often reveals a sense of national unease within the Republic at a time of considerable turmoil.Trade ReviewReviews'This is a well-researched, accessible and timely book. It deals with very important issues in an informed and illuminating way.'John Marks, University of Nottingham‘Ervine’s monograph is one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking monographs I have recently read… making us think and reconsider our own assumptions as humour analysts and problematizing concepts and arguments we take for granted concerning, among many other things, the “innocuous”, “inconsequential”, “playful”, or “subversive” character of humour and its “primarily” entertaining function in the public sphere.’ Villy Tsakona, European Journal of Humour ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Humour: a serious issue in contemporary FranceChapter One: Charlie Hebdo: from controversy to consensus?Chapter Two: Dieudonné: from anti-racist activism to allegations of anti-SemitismChapter Three: Jamel Comedy Club: stand-up comedy à la française?Chapter Four: Islam and humour: more than just a debate about cartoonsConclusionsBibiliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisDubai’s audacious architecture and photographic locations attract social media ‘influencers’ from around the world. How has Dubai, once a small fishing village on the edge of a desert, morphed into a hyper-modern backdrop for this global phenomenon? How can we understand these interactions as our relationships with digital technologies undergo radical change? This timely research-based study reveals how micro-celebrities and Dubai’s visible economies influence the evolution of the Emirate. Taking a cutting edge post-digital approach, underpinned by cultural studies and social media theory, Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes presents a series of unique case studies and demonstrates how Dubai is considered not only an illusion of unlimited indulgence but also a city dependent on the emerging infrastructure of visible economies, visual attractions, and ‘Instagrammable’ locations. Evaluating the cases of multiple influencers, from local to transnational content creators, Hurley reveals how residents, non-citizens and migrant workers surviving as influencers in the city of ‘likes.’ Providing a much-needed de-Westernising perspectives of Dubai’s social media influencing industry within the broader context of global platform capitalism, Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes offers an important contribution to the field of social media through illustrating visible economies in a city circuited by social media influencing.Table of ContentsPart One Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Influencer-Genealogy Part Two Chapter 3. Postdigital Visualities Chapter 4. Postdigital Cityscape Part Three Chapter 5. Picture Dubai Chapter 6. Mediatizing-self Chapter 7. Heuristics of Influence Chapter 8. Orientalist Influence Chapter 9. Mobile Migrant Labour Chapter 10. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThere had been stars before. There had been films prior to Cleopatra. But in all the cynical, greedy, magical, histrionic history of the movies, there had never been a combination like that of Elizabeth Taylor and Cleopatra.Other films may have taken more money, won more awards or attracted better reviews, but none have come close to the legend that is Cleopatra.What began in 1958 as a remake of the 1917 Theda Bara film, which starred Joan Collins and was projected to cost $2 million, would open five years later, having cost nearly twenty times as much. The budget had skyrocketed enormously as the production went through extravagant sets in two different countries, two directors and six leading men – and this was on top of Elizabeth Taylor’s $1 million fee.But it was the off-screen romance between the two on-screen leads that really cemented Cleopatra’s place in cinema history. Within weeks of Richard Burton’s arrival in Italy, he and Taylor embarked on a tumultuous and passionate love affair that kept the Cuban Missile Crisis off the front pages and was denounced by the Vatican. Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood is a story of lust, excess and hubris – and how one film nearly brought Hollywood to its knees.

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Book SynopsisEating disorders remain little understood by the public, and sensationalist stories in the media have done little to dispel simplistic and reductionist perspectives. This edited volume uses a range of language-centred approaches to provide much needed critical in-depth analysis and interdisciplinary synthesis. The book brings together researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds – including communication and information studies, journalism, linguistics, mental health, nursing, psychology and public health – in a collective endeavour to explore the complex relationship between eating disorders, public discourse and lived experiences. Topics tackled include the use of stigmatising narrative frames, stereotypes and metaphors; identity construction in online spaces; the ways in which individuals affected by eating disorders interpret media representations; and how parents write about their experiences of caring for children with eating disorders. The volume synthesises evidence from a range of data types, including UK and international newspapers, social media, online communities, blogs and forums, apps and in-depth interviews, and reflects a variety of cultural perspectives, including those held in the United States, the UK, Spain and Turkey. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners, students, mental health advocates, and anyone interested in how we make sense of eating disorders.Table of ContentsContributors Introduction Laura A. Cariola Part I Traditional Media and Public Discourse Chapter 1. Eating Disorder Metaphors in the American and Spanish Press Carolina Figueras Bates Chapter 2. Animal Metaphors in Women’s Magazines: Their Potential Link with Eating Disorders Irene López-Rodríguez Chapter 3. Challenging the Stigma of a ‘Woman’s Illness’ and ‘Feminine Problem’: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of News Stories About Eating Disorders and Men Scott Parrott, Kimberly Bissell, Nicholas Eckhart and Bumsoo Park Chapter 4. Representations of Anorexia Nervosa in National Media: A Frame Analysis of the UK Press Matt Bowen and Rhian Waller Chapter 5. Representations of Eating Disorders in Turkish News Media Hayriye Gulec Chapter 6. Experiencing Newspaper Representations of Eating Disorders: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study Laura A. Cariola and Billy Lee Chapter 7. Narrative Experiences of Social Media and the Internet from Men with Eating Disorders Gareth Lyons, Sue McAndrew and Tony Warne Part II Participatory Media and User-Generated Discourse Chapter 8. Online Negative Enabling Support Group (ONESG) Theory: Understanding Online Extreme Community Communication Promoting Negative Health Behaviours Stephen M. Haas, Nancy A. Jennings and Pamara F. Chang Chapter 9. Eating Disorder Discourse in a Diet and Fitness App Community: Understanding User Needs Through Exploratory Mixed Methods Elizabeth V. Eikey, Oliver Golden, Zhuoxi Chen and Qiuer Chen Chapter 10. Using Qualitative and Mixed-Methods Approaches to Investigate Online Communication About Eating Disorders: A Reflective Account Dawn Branley-Bell Chapter 11. ‘I’ll Never Be Skinny Enough’: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Pro-Anorexia Discourse Allyn Lueders Chapter 12. Lived Experiences of Parents Raising Children with Eating Disorders: A Thematic Analysis Emma O’Rourke and Laura A. Cariola Chapter 13. ‘Anorexia is Seen as a GOOD Thing When You’re Fat!’: Constructing ‘Eating Disorders’ in Fat Acceptance Blogs Wendy Solomons, Kate Davenport and Joanne McDowell Discussion Index

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Book SynopsisThrough a study of ten commercially published prison autobiographies, Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution unveils how prison is narrativized and socially represented as an abject and uncanny institution, shedding new light on what prison is and does in Western carceral imaginations. Unveiling the layers of editing that position prison autobiographies between fact and fiction, Tea Fredriksson delves into how true crime’s claims to factuality coexist with the genre’s inescapable horror iconography. In a thematic analysis of how autobiographical prison stories make prison ‘come alive’ on the page as a site of abject horror and eerie unsettlement, Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution explores how prison functions as a storied institution, both as a physical site of subterranean horrors and in terms of the many-layered stories told about prison and the bodies within it. Showcasing how prison expresses and distills the normative social anxieties of the global North-West and linking othering processes and unsettling likenesses as common narrational themes, Fredriksson reveals how prison is both an abject other to and a haunting, uncanny double of the outside world. A refreshing take on the study of true crime data, Haunting Prison: Exploring the Prison as an Abject and Uncanny Institution is appealing reading for scholars interested in qualitative research methods for studying crime, punishment and victimhood in popular culture.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Prison Imag(inari)es Chapter 2. Prison as an Abject (M)other Chapter 3. Subjective Abjection Chapter 4. The Haunting Prison Chapter 5. A Prison Chronotope Chapter 6. Prisons of Stone and Story

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Book SynopsisOver the past two decades, corporations and venture capitalists have adjusted business models to change the digital world. As a result, the global economy has undergone a massive shift, changing the way we work, consume and pay for things. Under this new ‘digital feudalism’, we find precarious employment via digital platforms, we buy goods and services in perpetuity through subscriptions, and we pay for it all with debt. Digital Feudalism explores this new moment in capitalism, and how reliant global economies have become on these processes of consumption, work, and debt.Trade ReviewStuart Hall famously argued that the cultural studies must maintain a “couplet” where culture and society, are articulated together in analysis and in theory. If Hall’s statements are a measure of best critical practices in cultural studies then Digital Feudalism measures up! Arditi’s development of sharp and inaugural contributions from Marxist, or critical-sociological, approaches into critique and analysis do more merely alert us to new cultural forms but, in Arditi’s hands, they allow us to view the totality of lived relations differently. Arditi illustrates how the features of our tech-laden and tech-mediated world though increasingly patterned on an ersatz hyper-modernism are, in fact, grotesque new relations of deference and servitude more closely associated with feudalism. Through an analysis of cases that exhibit the structures and practices associated with digital feudalism—subscription services, gig work, Amazon, influencers, the metaverse, and crowdfunding to name a few—Arditi reframes the strike-waves and the composition of movements to come with a warranted note of pessimism regarding capital’s "savage" capacities for adaptation. Stitching together the best of critical social theory and cultural studies, Arditi offers readers a clear and crucial lens on our current conjuncture. The prognosis? Digital Feudalism specifies that the center no longer holds. Rather, we face a less-comfortable, rougher, and far-less reasonable, democratic unfreedom beyond which there is no clear horizon line for better or for worse. -- Robert F. Carley, Associate Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M University, College StationIn Digital Feudalism, Arditi draws a straight line from Netflix to the emerging Metaverse, warning us all that the only winners in a process of endless consumption and accelerated obsolescence are the big corporations who are taking more and more value from everyone else as part of an extractive economy. The book is compelling, highly readable for a range of audiences, and deeply unnerving, framed by Squid Game as a metaphor for the new digital era, with just one exception: everyone loses. -- Tama LeaverArditi’s Digital Feudalism offers an excellent overview of the pressing developments—the negative affordances—resulting from US-based digital technologies and the ideology that informs and nourishes it. It is a book well worth reading and acting upon. -- Marcus Breen, Communication Department, Boston College, USATable of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction: A Squid Game Reality Chapter 2. Buy More, Own Less: Subscriptions and Unending Consumption Chapter 3. Working on your own: Precarious labor in the gig economy Chapter 4. Debt Peonage and Primitive Accumulation Chapter 5. Amazon and Baron Bezos Chapter 6. Unboxed: Content Creators and influencers Chapter 7. Metaverse: enclosing new spaces Chapter 8. From Patron to Patreon: Crowdfunding Information Chapter 9. Conclusion: Fed-up While Locked Down

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Book SynopsisOn 26 April 1986, the unthinkable happened near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat: two massive steam explosions ruptured No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, immediately killing 30 people and setting off the worst nuclear accident in history. The explosions were followed by an open-air reactor core fire that released huge amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere for the next nine days, spreading across the Soviet Union, parts of Europe, and especially neighbouring Belarus, where around 70% of the waste landed. The following clean-up operation involved more than half a million personnel at a cost of $68 billion, and a further 4,000 people were estimated to have died from disaster-related illnesses in the following 20 years. Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident (including 95 villages in Belarus), and much of the area returned to the wild, with the nearby city of Pripyat now a ghost town. Chernobyl provides a photographic exploration of the catastrophe and its aftermath in 180 authentic photos. See the twisted wreckage of No. 4 Reactor, the cause of the nuclear disaster; marvel at historic photos of the clean-up operation, with helicopters spraying decontamination liquid and liquidators manually clearing radioactive debris; see the huge cooling pond used to cool the reactors, and which today is home to abundant wildlife, despite the radiation; explore the ghost town of Pripyat, with its decaying apartment blocks, empty basketball courts, abandoned amusement park, wrecked schools, and deserted streets.Table of ContentsContents: Chapter 1: Before the Disaster The Chernobyl Power Complex, lying about 130km (80 miles) north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20km (14 miles) south of the border with Belarus, consisted of four nuclear reactors. Units 1 and 2 were constructed between 1970 and 1977, while units 3 and 4 of the same design were completed in 1983. Two more reactors were planned, but in the aftermath of the disaster construction was cancelled. Within a 30km (20-mile) radius of the power plant, including the city of Pripyat and town of Chernobyl, the total population was approximately 140,000 at the time of the accident. Chapter 2: Catastrophe at Chernobyl A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April. By the time that the operator moved to shut down the reactor, the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition. The interaction of very hot fuel with the cooling water led to fuel fragmentation along with rapid steam production and an increase in pressure. The overpressure caused the 1000 t cover plate of the reactor to become partially detached, rupturing the fuel channels. Intense steam generation then spread throughout the whole core, causing a steam explosion. The clean up operation involved first the use of robots then army reservists to physically clear the debris and clean the remaining reactors. In some areas, workers could not stay any longer than 40 seconds before the radiation they received reached the maximum authorized dose a human being should receive in his entire life. Chapter 3: Pripyat – Urban Wasteland First built in the 1970s, Pripyat was a thriving town of 50,000 designed to serve the needs of the nuclear power plant, with local sports facilities, an amusement park, a fire station, police station, hospitals, and five schools with places for more than 6000 students. Today, the town stands deserted, with many of the public buildings, apartment blocks and businesses decaying and returned to nature. In 1986, the city of Slavutych was constructed to replace Pripyat, just 60km (40 miles) to the east, and provides homes for more than 20,000 people. Chapter 4: Belarus Counts the Cost The Polesie Reserve, established in 1988, now covers an area of more than 800 square miles and is divided into three regions: Brahin, Khoiniki, and Naroulia. Before the disaster, this largely agrarian region was home to more than 22,000 people spread across 95 villages, including numerous settlements of Old Believers, a schismatic Orthodox Christian sect. Now it’s home to moose, deer, lynx, and bison, as well as 48 of Belarus’s 189 species of endangered plants. Chapter 5: Chernobyl Today Reactor No. 4 was enclosed in a large concrete shelter, which was erected quickly (by October 1986) to allow continuing operation of the other reactors at the plant. The New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure was completed in 2017, having been built adjacent and then moved into place on rails. It is an arch 110 metres high, 165 metres long and spanning 260 metres, covering both unit 4 and the hastily-built 1986 structure. The cooling pond at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Pripyat, Ukraine) has abundant wildlife, despite the radiation present in the area. There are some accounts of wels catfish (Silurus glanis) growing up to 350 pounds and having a lifespan of up to 50 years. Index

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Book Synopsis“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia” – Winston Churchill, 5 March 1946 Following the Allies’ victory in World War II, the European continent was soon divided into two broad zones of influence, with Eastern Europe coming under communist Soviet control, and the west under the oversight of the liberal democracies led by the United States. What developed over the next 40 years was a military and ideological stand-off that defined Europe and much of the world until 1989. In countries such as Germany, the Cold War divided families between the two zones of control. The two opponents competed for global dominance, building up ever greater arsenals of nuclear weapons, funding and fighting costly proxy wars in Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America, deploying espionage and trade embargoes, and even seeking technological advantage in space exploration, which became known as the “Space Race”. The Cold War provides a pictorial examination of this crucial era in 20th century history, offering the reader an instant understanding of the key events and figures in this 40-year period through 150 dramatic photographs.Table of ContentsContents: Introduction For the decades between 1946 and 1991, the Soviet Union and its allies in the Eastern Europe – the so-called ‘Soviet bloc’, united under the banner of the Warsaw Pact – and the United States of America and its allies in Western Europe, united under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – were involved in a massive geo- political and military stand-off, known as the Cold War. 1940s • Best of Enemies. Yalta Conference, Feb. 1945. Decided post-war reorganization of Europe. • Thinking the Unthinkable. Britain’s plans for ‘Operation Unthinkable’, June 1945. Didn’t happen, but intriguing straw in wind/indication of the way western strategists were thinking. NB Britain’s assumption of continued leadership role (despite recognition that plan couldn’t succeed without US help). All this about to change ... • Big Boy. Bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Aug. 1945 doesn’t just end WWII secures superpower status for USA • A War of Rhetoric. Stalin/Churchill speeches – incompatibility capitalism and communism (Feb. 1946)/’Iron Curtain’ (Mar. 1946) • Gifts to the Greeks. Civil war in newly-liberated Greece. Communists backed by USSR; monarchists by Britain. Civil War breaks out (May 1946). US support for Greek anti-communists (and, by implication, other comparable groups) firmed up in ‘Truman Doctrine’, March 1947. • Au Revoir, Indochine. First Indochina War, 1946–54. Against French, of course – though they had discreet support from USA, while Viet Minh openly assisted by Soviets. Final defeat for French at Dien Bien Phu, March–May 1954. (Maybe just mention Algeria here? Not sure it merits own entry in this context ...) Ho Chi Minh’s communists in control in North; succession of US-backed dictatorships in Republic of Vietnam. • ‘People’ Power. Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, Feb. 1948. Quick sketch of situation in other Iron Curtain countries. • Buying Allegiance? Marshall Plan inaugurated, Apr. 1948. (NB aid offered to Soviet Bloc as well but refused. Underlined East–West divide.) • Blockade! Berlin Blockade and Air Lift, Jun. 1948–May 1949. Dramatically highlighted Europe’s new divisions. • Colonial Concerns. Malayan Emergency, Jun. 1948–60. (Paradigmatic for succession of liberation struggles in former European colonies now vacated by Japan.) • The Yugoslav Exception. Tito’s split with Stalin, 1948–9. Leadership of Non- Aligned Movement, from 1955. • A Dismal Prophecy. Having already ruffled Soviet feathers with his satirical allegory Animal Farm (1945), Eng. writer George Orwell summed up the dismal achievements of the totalitarian in Nineteen Eighty-Four, published Jun. 1949. • Parity Restored. Soviet nuclear bomb tested, August 1949. • ‘Bamboo Curtain’. Establishment of PRC, Oct (and of west-orientated RoC, Taiwan, Dec.) 1949 1950s • ‘I have here in my hand ...’ Joe McCarthy speech, 9 Feb. 1950. Start of witchhunt. HUAC hearings; Hollywood Blacklist, etc. • The Red Rosenbergs. Julius and Ethel arrested as Soviet spies, July 1950. Convicted and executed 1953. (Despite strenuous campaign to save their posthumous reputations, and suggestions that the charges against them had been antisemitic in origin, discoveries in Soviet archives later confirmed their status as Russian agents. • A Friend in Francisco. A reluctant Pres. Truman prevailed on to mend fences with Franco’s dictatorship as bulwark against Communism. Marshall aid, hitherto withheld, made available to Spain from late 1950. • Cambridge Reds. Defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Cambridge 5. Kim Philby to follow Jan. 1963. • ‘The Forgotten War’. Korea, Jun. 1950–Jul. 1953 • An Escalating Arms Race. British A-Bomb detonated, 3 October, 1952; US H-Bomb first detonated, 1 Nov, 1952 • ‘Dissolve the People ...’ Workers’ Uprising in E. Berlin, 1953. Violent suppression famously satirized by leftist playwright/poet Bertolt Brecht. • Playing Dominos. US interventions Iran, Guatemala, both March 1954. Eisenhower introduces idea of ‘domino theory’ in speech that April. • ‘His Intolerance, His Brutality and His Abuse of Power’. Stalin’s rule denounced by Khrushchev at 20th Congress Sov. Comm. Party, 25 Feb. 1956. • Repression Resumed. Soviet interventions Posnan, Poland, Jun., Hungary, Oct. 1956 • Stand-Off in Suez. Row over Nasser’s Egypt buying arms from the Soviet bloc prompts West to withdraw aid from Aswan Dam project. Nasser retaliates by nationalizing Suez Canal. Attempt by Britain, France and Israel to topple him. Suez Crisis, Oct. 1956 • The Frontier Above. Sputnik 1957; prompted Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’ speech Jul. 1960. • Look Before You Leap. China inaugurates ‘Great Leap Forward’ Jan. 1958. Will end in catastrophic famine. • What the Doctor Ordered. Poet and novelist Boris Pasternak (author of Doctor Zhivago, 1957) wins Nobel Prize for Literature, 1958. Soviets furious. • ‘Socialism or Death!’ Cuban Revolution (broke out 1953) prevails, Jan. 1959. (Explicitly aligned with USSR from Dec. 1960.) • Law or Brigandage? Khrushchev’s shoe-banging address at UN, Sept. 1959. Angry at intrusions by US spy-planes. Main content of speech largely about USSR’s support for winding up of colonialism. • Road of Resistance. NVA begin opening up ‘Ho Chi Minh Trail’ to south, where Viet Cong are campaigning against Ngo Dinh Diem’s US-backed government. (Much of it ran through Laos, drawing that country into conflict later.) 1959. 1960s • The Man Who Fell to Earth. U2/Gary Powers, May 1960 • Red Flag Rift. Sino-Soviet Split. Jun. 1960. • Castro Comes to Harlem. Cuban leader arrives in NY to address UN; meets Malcolm X, Allen Ginsberg and other US figures as well as leading ‘Third World’ statesmen. Sept. 1960. • ‘No Longer Your Monkeys’. Life and death of Patrice Lumumba. Quote is from 1960. Republic of Congo (now DRC) independent from June 1960; Lumumba its PM but for just a few weeks before being overthrown by US-(and France- and Belgium-)backed Mobutu. Killed 17 Jan. 1961. • Counterrevolutionary Carve-Up. Bay of Pigs, Apr. 1961 • Dancing for Democracy. Rudolf Nureyev defects, Jun. 1961 • The Concrete Curtain. Berlin Wall built, Aug. 1961 • Superpower Poker. Cuban Missile Crisis 1963 • The False Flag of Freedom. Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Aug. 1964. • The Atomic Orient. China tests A-Bombs, Oct. 1964 • Confusion in the Caribbean. US Marines sent to Dominican Republic, Apr. 1965. Some years of instability after Trujillo’s death, 1961. Overthrow of military dictatorship spooked Johnson Administration after Cuba. Glance at situation Nicaragua, Haiti, etc. • Thunderstorm. US presence in Vietnam, established by JFK, 1961, beefed up with launch of Operation Rolling Thunder against NVA and Viet Cong positions in Vietnam and Laos (Feb. 1965) and dispatch of additional 60,000 US troops (more from allies) Apr. 1965 • Big News from Bangkok. Anti-communist ASEAN alliance launched, Aug. 1967. • ‘Shoot, Coward ...’ Che Guevara killed, La Higuera, Bolivia, 9 Oct. 1967 • ‘Never Forget History’. Quote’s from Indonesian leader Sukarno, now deposed at second attempt by Suharto (sworn in as Pres., Mar. 1968). Wave of anti- Communist repression ensues. • Spring Turns Sour. Prague Spring. Uprising crushed August, 1968. 1970s • The Storm Spreads. Tet Offensive of early 1968 had underlined ineffectiveness of what should have been irresistible US assault in Vietnam and Laos up to that point. Mounting US frustration reflected in extension of conflict to Cambodia, Apr. 1970. • Egypt Swings West. Nasser having died in 1970, Sadat’s ‘Corrective Revolution’ de-Nasserized the govt in Egypt. Soviet advisers expelled, May 1971. • Meeting Mao. Pres. Nixon’s visit to PRC, Feb. 1972. • Bobby Beats Boris. Fischer–Spassky, Reykjavik, Sept. 1972. • Saving Face. Loss of US momentum in Vietnam – and increasing ‘Vietnamization’ of the conflict, from 1970 (maybe even 1969 – despite ‘Storm Spreads’ entry above) led, slowly but inevitably, to ceasefire with North, Jan. 1973. • A Chilean Tragedy. Pinochet’s US-backed Coup in Chile, Sept. 1973. Death of Allende. • Aleksandr in Exile. Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsy, Nobel Prizewinner 1970, stripped of Soviet citizenship, 1974. • The Scientist and the State. Physicist and peace activist Andrei Sakharov, Nobel Peace Prize, 1975. Not allowed to go to Stockholm to collect it. • Red Ruin. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge come to power in Cambodia, ushering in era of ‘Killing Fields’. • Fall of Saigon. Republic of Vietnam left fighting increasingly futile rearguard action. State finally collapsed and capital taken, Apr. 1975. • Democracy and Death. East Timor’s declaration of independence (Nov. 1975) sparks long and bloody programme of repression by Suharto’s Indonesia. • African Agony. Soviet- (and Cuban-)backed MPLA take power in Angola, Feb. 1976. Lengthy civil war with UNITA (till 2002) ensues. Parallel conflict in Mozambique, where FRELIMO govt beset by RENAMO insurgency, 1977–92. • A Thorn in the Flesh. CIA’s persistent (and sometimes bizarre) attempts to assassinate Castro over the years revealed by Church Committee, 1975–6. • A Post-Mao Mellowing? Death of Mao, 1976. Economic reforms in China announced by Deng Xiaoping, Dec. 1978 • Of Socialists and Sonsofbitches. Sandinistas come to power in Nicaragua, Jul. 1979 • Afghan Outrage. Soviet-supported government in Afghanistan tottering. Russian intervention, Dec. 1979 1980s • Time Out. Moscow Olympics. Boycotted by 66 countries, following US example, in aftermath of Afghanistan invasion. Jul./Aug. 1980. (Will lead to retaliatory boycott of LA, 1984.) • Faith, Hope and Solidarity. Poles inspired by visit of Pope JPII (1979). Gdansk shipyard protests, Poland: birth of Solidarity, Aug. 1980. Lech Walesa becomes international hero. (But Gen. Jaruzelski will introduce martial law, Dec. 1981.) • ‘Star Wars’. Couple of weeks after his ‘Evil Empire’ speech, Pres. Reagan’s SDI announced, Mar. 1983 • Rematch in Moscow. Shades of Fischer–Spassky (1972) in Karpov v Kasparov Chess Match, 1984–5 • A New Broom. Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet Premier (Mar. 1985). Policies of Perestroika and Glasnost. Moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. • Out of Afghanistan. After accession of Mohammad Najibullah’s National Reconciliation govt the previous year, Sov. withdrawal from Afghanistan begins, May 1988. • Drawing the Curtain. Gorbachev announces USSR will no longer intervene militarily in Eastern Europe, Dec. 1988. Consequences in e.g. Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania in months that follow. (See also Berlin Wall bit below ...) • Beijing Bloodshed. Massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Jun. 1989 • Breaking Down the Wall. Fall of Berlin Wall, Nov. 1990 1990s • Under New Management. Boris Yeltsin elected Pres. Russia, May 1990. (Though NB, Gorbachev’s USSR still exists, at least in theory, as overarching state.) • Breaking Free. Referendums in Baltic states and Georgia lead to their independence, early months of 1991; other Caucasian and Central Asian states follow in course of the year. • Red Reaction. Unsuccessful (but scary while it lasts) ‘August Coup’ in Russia, Aug. 1991. • A Post-Communist Christmas. Gorbachev resigns; Soviet Union essentially wound up; Yeltsin calls George H.W. Bush, who announces end of the Cold War. Time for a ‘New World Order’ ... • The End of History? Fukuyama’s study. Glance at other potential problems, from gangsterism in states of former Soviet Union to Islamic radicalism elsewhere.

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Book Synopsis“The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy. We will rally the world. We will be patient. We’ll be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination.” – President George W. Bush, September 12, 2001 On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists hijacked four airliners, crashing them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and near the White House, killing nearly 3,000 people. Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network quickly claimed responsibility for the outrage. The aftermath still reverberates around the world today, with President Bush declaring a “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda and its allies. By October, the US military was carrying out air strikes against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and US ground forces were deployed against bin Laden’s protectors, the incumbent Taliban regime. By June 2002 the Taliban had been ousted and a US-friendly government established in the capital, Kabul. But the campaign didn’t end there, as American and allied NATO forces became bogged down for the next two decades. Afghanistan provides a photographic exploration of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, from the first deployment of US special forces in October 2001 to the final withdrawal of US forces in August 2021. In between, the book offers a compact overview of the operations fought by the US and NATO forces against the Taliban/al- Qaeda insurgency, including the bombing of the Tora Bora cave complex, Operation Anaconda, President Obama’s deployment surge, the Navy SEAL’s assassination of Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan, the development of a local Afghan army, police force and government, the eventual withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the Afghan administration amidst renewed Taliban pressure. Afghanistan offers a concise pictorial history of the war that came to define US policy in Central Asia and the Middle East in the 21st century.Table of ContentsContents:Prologue: Afghanistan longer history – British invasions, Soviet invasion 1980s.Introduction: 9/11 Terror Attack Al-Qaeda operatives hijack four commercial airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane crashes in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Close to three thousand people die in the attacks.1: The Response: Operation Enduring Freedom President Bush signs into law a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for attacking the United States on September 11. The U.S. military, with British support, begins a bombing campaign against Taliban forces, officially launching Operation Enduring Freedom. Taliban regime unravels rapidly after its loss at Mazar-e- Sharif on November 9, 2001, to forces loyal to Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek military leader. After tracking al-Qaeda leader bin Laden to the well-equipped Tora Bora cave complex southeast of Kabul, Afghan militias engage in a fierce two-week battle (December 3 to 17) with al-Qaeda militants. It results in a few hundred deaths and the eventual escape of bin Laden, who is thought to have left for Pakistan on horseback. March 2002: Operation Anaconda, the first major ground assault and the largest operation since Tora Bora, is launched against an estimated eight hundred al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Shah-i-Kot Valley south of the city of Gardez (Paktia Province). Battle of Takur Ghar – The battle saw three helicopter landings by the U.S. on the mountain top, each greeted by direct assault from al-Qaeda forces.2: Reconstructing Afghanistan March 2002: Chairman of the Interim Administration of Afghanistan Karzai is picked is picked to head the country’s transitional government. May 2003: During a briefing with reporters in Kabul, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declares an end to “major combat.” August 2003: NATO assumes control of international security forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan, expanding NATO/ISAF’s role across the country. It is NATO’s first operational commitment outside of Europe. 2004: In historic national balloting, President Karzai becomes the first democratically elected head of Afghanistan. 2005.3: Lingering Insurgency 2006: Violence increases across the country during the summer months, with intense fighting erupting in the south in July. The number of suicide attacks quintuples from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006, while remotely detonated bombings more than double, to 1,677. With violence against nongovernmental aid workers increasing, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticizes NATO countries in late 2007 for not sending more soldiers. 2009: U.S. Marines launch a major offensive in southern Afghanistan, representing a major test for the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency strategy. President Obama announces a major escalation of the U.S. mission. In a nationally televised speech, the president commits an additional thirty thousand forces to the fight, on top of the sixty- eight thousand in place. 2010.4: Bin Laden Found Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden, responsible for the 9/11 attacks, is killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan. The death of the United States’ primary target for a war that started ten years ago fuels the long-simmering debate about continuing the Afghanistan war. President Obama outlines a plan to withdraw 33,000 troops by the summer of 2012.5: A Bloody Resurgence 2011: Amid a resilient insurgency, U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain uncertain and terrorist safe havens in Pakistan continue to undermine U.S. efforts. 2013: Afghan forces take the lead in security responsibility nationwide as NATO hands over control of the remaining ninety-five districts. The U.S.-led coalition’s focus shifts to military training and special operations-driven counterterrorism. 2017: The United States drops its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on suspected self-proclaimed Islamic State militants at a cave complex in eastern Nangarhar Province. 2018: The Taliban carry out a series of bold terror attacks in Kabul that kill more than 115 people amid a broader upsurge in violence. The attacks come as the Trump administration implements its Afghanistan plan, deploying troops across rural Afghanistan to advise Afghan brigades and launching air strikes against opium labs to try to decimate the Taliban’s finances. 2018.6: Peace Talks and Withdrawal U.S. envoy Khalilzad and the Taliban’s Baradar sign an agreement that paves the way for a significant drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and includes guarantees from the Taliban that the country will not be used for terrorist activities. President Biden announces that the United States will not meet the deadline set under the U.S.-Taliban agreement to withdraw all troops by May 1 and instead releases a plan for a full withdrawal by September 11, 2021. Facing little resistance, Taliban fighters overrun the capital, Kabul, in August 2021, and take over the presidential palace hours after President Ghani leaves the country.

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Book SynopsisAlthough tattoos have become increasingly available to us, there are still spaces where they are not accepted, and even 'othered'. Looking at the UK, where media discourses are often unfavourable towards tattooed women discussing their own bodies, this book explores how we understand tattooed women’s bodies in the UK – through the lens of gender and class. Unpacking themes which focus on how femininity is embodied, and how unwritten rules are broken or followed, Charlotte Dann demonstrates how meaning is key to our understanding of female body art. Drawing our attention to how traditional constructions of femininity are conformed to and resisted against, Dann positions media discourses of trends, regret, and transformation alongside tattooed women’s own thoughts of their tattoos. The chapters uncover how tattoos relate to the embodiment, or resistance, of femininity where the body plays a complex role – in care, in the community, and in families. Delving into the societal norms about what women should and shouldn’t do with their bodies, and looking specifically at motherhood, employment, and consumption, Dann demonstrates how meaning-making is critical to how women’s tattooed bodies are understood, and how personal narratives take centre stage in the justification for tattoos. Providing a fuller understanding of the nuances particular to tattooed women, this book equips readers to reconstruct how we theorize femininity and the body.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Tattooed bodies in the media Chapter 3. Reading the tattooed feminine body Chapter 4. Following (and breaking) the rules Chapter 5. Meaning is key Chapter 6. Embodying femininity Chapter 7. Conclusions

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the complexities and dynamics in the relationship between intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and tourism, taking as a focus the ICH at the World Cultural Heritage site in Lijiang, China. It explores the tensions between the protection of authenticity of ICH and the use of ICH in tourism commodification, and considers the perspectives of governmental officials, experts, local ICH practitioners and community members. The volume aims to redefine the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity from the perspective of the ICH practitioners and to provide theoretical guidelines for developing a sustainable ICH tourism using a people-based approach. It will be a helpful resource for students, researchers and practitioners in heritage studies, tourism, anthropology, cultural management and Chinese studies.Trade ReviewThis fascinating study explores a minority population seeking to retain its identity, values and culture while performing their 'otherness' for millions of visitors annually and in a situation of unbalanced relations of power. Su’s insightful analysis of tensions between national and international ICH discourses and policies and the locals’ 'practitioner ICH making' will prompt readers to consider heritage tourism discordances elsewhere. * Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois, USA *Based on empirical work from Yunnan Province, China, this singular volume delivers thoughtful insights into authenticity, cultural sustainability, commoditization, management challenges and opportunities, and many other profound concepts in ways other scholars heretofore have been unable to do. This book must have a place on the desks and reading lists of everyone interested in intangible heritage and tourism. * Dallen J. Timothy, Arizona State University, USA *This book makes an exciting contribution to the study of intangible cultural heritage in China. The scale of domestic tourism growth in the country has been extraordinary, and Su's analysis really gets to the heart of how world heritage designation can profoundly transform the lives, livelihoods and the cultural fabric of a place, in this case Lijiang. To understand these complex relations, the book productively engages with, and thus nicely contributes to, the literatures on critical tourism and critical heritage studies. * Tim Winter, National University of Singapore, Singapore *This book makes a significant contribution to the literature on critical tourism and heritage studies, enriching our understanding of these complex fields. It should find a prominent place on the desks and reading lists of individuals intrigued by intangible heritage and tourism. Specifically, it offers substantial value to students, academics, and practitioners across a range of disciplines. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in heritage studies, tourism, anthropology, cultural management, and Chinese studies, both at the local and global levels. * Xiaoxiao Fu, University of Central Florida, USA, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2024 *This book provides a focused examination of China’s Lijiang ICH tourism, appealing to readers who may lack prior knowledge of Chinese culture or history but are intrigued by China’s ethnic ICH tourism. In general, this work has a commendable inclination towards good research taste and broad international horizons in its scholarly pursuits. This book is strongly recommended for postgraduates in the field of tourism and heritage studies, as well as scholars examining ICH tourism matters. * Yawen Xu, Nanchang University, China, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2024 *Table of ContentsFigures, Tables, Photos Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Critical Theorisation of ICH Chapter 3. ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China Chapter 4. ICH and Tourism in Lijiang Chapter 5. Typical ICH Tourism Programmes in Lijiang Chapter 6. Value and Authenticity Chapter 7. Commodification and Integrity Chapter 8. Continuity and Transmission Chapter 9. The Sustainable Development of ICH Tourism References Index

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Book SynopsisThis original book is a much needed and far reaching exploration of post-apartheid South African life worlds. ""Entanglement"" aims to capture the contradictory mixture of innovation and inertia, of loss, violence and xenophobia as well as experimentation and desegregation, which characterises the present. The author explores the concept of entanglement in relation to readings of literature, new media forms and painting. In the process, she moves away from a persistent apartheid optic, drawing on ideas of sameness and difference, and their limits, in order to elicit ways of living and imagining that are just starting to take shape and for which we might not yet have a name. In the background of her investigations lies a preoccupation with a future-oriented politics, one that builds on largely unexplored terrains of mutuality while being attentive to a historical experience of confrontation and injury. This book works with the idea of entanglement - a rubric within which we can begin to meet the challenge of the 'after apartheid'. Entanglement offers a means by which to draw into our analyses those sites in which what was once thought of as separate come together or find points of intersection in unexpected ways. It is an idea which signals largely unexplored terrains of mutuality, wrought from a common, though often coercive and confrontational, experience. It points away from a time of resistance towards a more ambivalent moment, in which the time of potential, both latent and actively surfacing in South Africa, exists in complex tandem with new kinds of closure and opposition.Trade Review"... a finger-on-the-pulse report from the cultural frontline of contemporary South Africa. Elegantly and lucidly written, it offers a penetrating and unique analysis of the complex and paradoxical forms of culture emerging in South Africa now. -Isabel Hofmeyr, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg"

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Book SynopsisAfrican-language writing is in crisis. The conditions under which African writing developed in the past (only remotely similar to those of Western models), resulted in an inability of Eurocentric literary models to explore the hermeneutic world of African language poetics inherited from the oral and the modern worlds. Existing modes of criticism in the study of this literary tradition are often unsuited for a nuanced understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects at play in the composition, production and reading of these literatures.In African-Language Literatures, Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi charts new directions in the study of African-language literatures generally, and isiZulu fiction in particular. She proposes that African popular arts and culture models be considered as a solution to the debates and challenges informing discourses about expressive forms in African languages. Mhlambi shows how this approach brings into relationship the oral and written forms, the local and the international, and elitist and popular genres, and she places the resultant emerging, eclectic culture into its socio-historical context. She then uses this theoretical approach to explore – in a wide range of cultural products – what matters or what is of interest to the people, irrespective of social hierarchies and predispositions.It is the author’s contention that, contrary to common perception, the African-language literary tradition displays diversity, complexity and fluidity, and that this should be seen as an invitation to look at systems of meaning which do not hide their connections with the facts of power and material life.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, bibliographic, literary-critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of 'book history' for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.Trade ReviewPrint, text and book cultures in South Africa is a field-defining contribution to the country's literary scholarship. Andrew van der Vlies's introductory essay maps the conceptual terrain in a systematic and engaging way, illustrating its relevance to South Africa's literary and cultural history. The essays that follow demonstrate the archival richness and liveliness of the field, while opening doors to future research. Beyond South Africa, the book will be exemplary in showing how book histories develop under postcolonial conditions. - David Attwell, author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History (2005), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)Table of ContentsPrint cultures and colonial public spheres; local/global: south african writing and global imaginaries; three ways of looking at coetzee; questions of the archive and the uses of books; orature, image, text; ideological exigencies and the fates of books; new directions.

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Book SynopsisFight for Democracy is a penetrating and critical scrutiny of the ANC’s treatment of the print media since the inception of democracy in 1994. In this book, Glenda Daniels does not hide behind a veil of detachment, but instead makes a passionate argument for the view that newspapers and journalists play a significant role in the deepening of democratic principles.Daniels’ study goes to the heart of current debates and asks why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, is so ambivalent about the freedom of the media. What would be the consequences of a revised media policy on democracy in South Africa, and at what cost to freedom of expression?Daniels examines the pattern of paranoia that has crept into public discourse about the media and the ANC, and the conflictual relationship between the two. She argues that the ANC’s understanding of democracy, transformation and development entails (amongst other things) the rallying of the nation behind its leadership as the premier liberation movement and democratically elected representative of the majority while morally coercing black journalists and professionals into loyalty. Daniels challenges the dominant ANC view that journalists are against transformation and that they take instruction from the owners of the media houses; in short that they are ‘enemies of the people’.Fight for Democracy is a timely publication in the context of the impending clampdown on media freedom and the twin threats of the Protection of State Information Bill (Secrecy Bill) and the Media Appeals Tribunal, both of which signify closures in South Africa’s democracy.Written in a polemical style, this is a work of activism that will be essential reading for the informed public as well as those working in Journalism and Media Studies. It should interest all democrats, members of political organisations as well as academics and Right2Know activists, locally and internationally.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The ANC and the media post-apartheid; The relationship between the media and democracy; Media's challenges: legislation and commercial imperatives; Race, identity and 'The Media'; Freedom of expression: the case of Zapiro; Social fantasy: the ANC's gaze and the media appeals tribunal; The Sunday Times: Mondli versus the former Minister of Health, Manto; What is 'Developmental Journalism'?; Concluding reflections: Where is democracy headed?

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Record contracts have been the goal of aspiring musicians, but are they still important in the era of SoundCloud? Musicians in the United States still seem to think so, flocking to auditions for The Voice and Idol brands or paying to perform at record label showcases in the hopes of landing a deal. The belief that signing a record contract will almost infallibly lead to some measure of success— the “ideology of getting signed,” as Arditi defines it—is alive and well. Though streaming, social media, and viral content have turned the recording industry upside down in one sense, the record contract and its mythos still persist. Getting Signed provides a critical analysis of musicians’ contract aspirations as a cultural phenomenon that reproduces modes of power and economic exploitation, no matter how radical the route to contract. Working at the intersection of Marxist sociology, cultural sociology, critical theory, and media studies, Arditi unfolds how the ideology of getting signed penetrated an industry, created a mythos of guaranteed success, and persists in an era when power is being redefined in the light of digital technologies.

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Book SynopsisYang Liu uses her wonderfully apt pictograms to display the discordances between American and European customs with wit and wisdom. In Europe meets USA she captures her own experiences of living on both sides of the Atlantic, twinkling a fresh light onto the more obvious confusions. She also reveals the less conscious prejudices that exist between the denizens of the small continent of Europe and those of the giant United States. If the usual view of our divergences is full of clichés in which there are grains of truth, the same is true in reverse. From shopping to commuting, from going to school to romance, from working to annual leave, from football to heros—with 128 pages, this linen-bound booklet invites each side to appreciate the anomalies, change perspective and look at the world through the other’s eyes.Trade Review“…Liu’s outlook blends the details of daily experience with the most important happenings in human history.” * Designboom *“The simple, accessible, and stark visual format is necessarily reductive, designed as a thought-provoking tool to spark conversations and elicit a range of emotional responses.” * Du Hoc Hoan Cau *

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Book SynopsisWhat is it like to perceive a virtual object through the sensed presence of a virtual body? How do subject-object relations occur and can be actualized in virtual environments? Zeynep Akbal explores the impact of virtual reality (VR) technology on the subjective experience of the body and situates the results in context with existing theories in media sciences and the phenomenology of bodily perception. This study presents VR technology as a tool that can be used to more closely examine and study the fundamental intersections of the humanities and the natural sciences that explore the nature of perception.

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