Journal articles on the topic 'Women educators – United States-History – 19th century'

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1

Valentová, Vendulka. "Studium práv a profesní uplatnění žen ve vybraných státech Evropy a USA od konce 19. století do 30. let 20. století." PRÁVNĚHISTORICKÉ STUDIE 52, no. 3 (January 27, 2023): 71–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/2464689x.2022.39.

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Women have generally been permitted to study law properly at university since the late 19th century. The first country to allow women to study at university level was the United States of America. In Europe, it has been possible for women to study law at the universities and practise it, particularly as attorneys-at-law, later than in the USA, but with equal success.
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Ryan, Ann Marie. "Catholic women educators’ discourse and educational measurement in the early twentieth century in the United States." Paedagogica Historica 55, no. 3 (November 13, 2018): 416–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2018.1537294.

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King, D. Brett, Brittany L. Raymond, and Jennifer A. Simon-Thomas. "History of Sport Psychology in Cultural Magazines of the Victorian Era." Sport Psychologist 9, no. 4 (December 1995): 376–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/tsp.9.4.376.

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The 19th century can be characterized as a time of avid public interest in team and spectator sports. As diverse and challenging new sports were developed and gained popularity, many articles on a rudimentary sport psychology began to appear in cultural magazines in the United States and Great Britain. Athletes, physicians, educators, journalists, and members of the public wrote on topics such as profiles and psychological studies of elite athletes, the importance of physical training, exercise and health, and the detrimental effects of professional sports to the role of age, gender, and culture in sports. Although a scientific foundation for such observations was largely absent, some of the ideas expressed in early cultural magazines anticipate contemporary interests in sport psychology.
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Nguyen Thi, Bich. "History of women: research on the uniqual legal location of American women in modern history (XVI - XIX century)." Journal of Science Social Science 66, no. 2 (May 2021): 169–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.18173/2354-1067.2021-0037.

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Today, the values of human rights, civil rights and especially the issue of gender equality (men and women equal rights) have become an urgent and decisive requirement for social progress. However, throughout the centuries, women's legal discrimination has been a historically common phenomenon on a global scale. Even in a country as proud of its democratic traditions as the United States, women are considered “second-class” citizens and their contributions seem to “disappear” in history. It was not until the 1960s - 1970s, under the influence of the Civil Rights Revolution, that the study of American women's history as an independent field attracted the attention of scholars. Within the scope of the article, the author focuses on analyzing two main issues: understanding the “second-class” status of American women in legal terms and trying to explain what causes inequality to exist. world in such a persistent way throughout the modern period (16th - 19th centuries) in the history of this country. From there, it helps readers to systematically and objectively view the efforts of American women in the struggle for their legal citizenship later.
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Arditi, Jorge. "The Feminization of Etiquette Literature: Foucault, Mechanisms of Social Change, and the Paradoxes of Empowerment." Sociological Perspectives 39, no. 3 (September 1996): 417–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1389255.

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This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the “other” within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the “other,” and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been.
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Mitsyuk, Natalia A., and Anna V. Belova. "Midwifery as the first official profession of women in Russia, 18th to early 20th centuries." RUDN Journal of Russian History 20, no. 2 (December 15, 2021): 270–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.22363/2312-8674-2021-20-2-270-285.

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The authors study the institutionalization of midwife specialization among women in Russia in the period from the 18th through the early 20th centuries. The main sources are legislative acts, clerical documents, as well as reports on the activities of medical institutions and maternity departments. The authors use the approaches of gender history, and the concept of professionalization as developed by E. Freidson. Midwifery was the first area of womens work that was officially recognized by the state. There were three main stages on the way to professionalizing the midwifery profession among women. The first stage (covering the 18th century) is associated with attempts to study and systematize the activities of midwives. The practical experience of midwifes was actively sought by doctors whose theoretical knowledge was limited. The second stage of professionalization (corresponding to the first half of the 19th century) was associated with the normative regulation of midwife work and the formation of a professional hierarchy in midwifery. The third stage (comprising the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century) saw a restriction of the midwives spheres of activity, as well as the active inclusion of male doctors in practical obstetrics and their rise to a dominant position. With the development of obstetric specialization, operative obstetrics, and the opening of maternity wards, midwives were relegated to a subordinate position in relation to doctors. In contrast to the United States and Western European countries, Russia did not have professional associations of midwives. Intra-professional communication was weak, and there was no corporate solidarity. In Soviet medicine, finally, the midwives subordinate place in relation to doctors was only cemented.
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Schram, C. "30. Abortion and the fall of midwifery in 19th Century North America." Clinical & Investigative Medicine 30, no. 4 (August 1, 2007): 43. http://dx.doi.org/10.25011/cim.v30i4.2790.

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The 19th Century in North America was a time of many social and scientific changes that impacted the field of medicine. A result of one such change was the medicalization of childbirth, as the primary care of women during labour shifted from midwives to physicians. While there is ample discourse on the many factors that contributed to this shift, there is very little discussion on the role played by abortion. Studying abortion in the 19th Century is often limited by a paucity of primary sources from the physicians who performed abortions and women who obtained them. Although most authors who discuss the midwifery shift do not make any mention of a role played by the issue of abortion, it has been addressed and supported by primary sources. This raises the question, why is abortion not discussed in histories on the medicalization of childbirth by other authors? The objectives of this paper are historical and histographic. First, it will present the evidence on the use of abortion as a political tool employed by some policy makers, physicians and the media to discourage women from choosing midwives for their childbirth care. Second, it will analyze possible reasons why this topic is not addressed by the majority of historians of childbirth in 19th Century North America. Are the authors concerned about the varying social views of abortion, the associated politics, the lack of primary sources, or are they personally uncomfortable with the subject? Only the authors themselves can truly know their reasons for neglecting the subject of abortion in their work, but this analysis will show how issues that influence historians determine the version of the past that is produced and propagated into the present and the future. Borst CG. Catching Babies: the Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. Bourgeault B, Davis-Floyd R, eds. Reconceiving Midwifery. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Dodd DE, Gorham D, eds. Caring and Curing: Historical Perspectives on Women and Healing in Canada. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994. Wertz DC, Wertz RW. Lying In; a History of Childbirth in America (expanded edition published 1989 by Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz) New York: Free Press; London: Macmillan, 1977. Reagan LJ. Linking midwives and abortion in the Progressive Era. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1995; 69(4):569-98. Reagan LJ. When Abortion Was a Crime, Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. London: University of California Press, 1997.
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Hemalatha, G., M. Divya Sri, I. Shruthi Antonia, M. Narmatha, and E. Arun Kumar. "The Voice of Africans’ Journey of Culture and their Historical Evidence through Literature." International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews 04, no. 01 (2023): 1610–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.55248/gengpi.2023.4145.

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Women authors from Africa have been and continue to be able to assert themselves as writers on a national and international scale. African-American women's voices are among the most potent literary voices of the latter half of the 20th century. However, regarding the literary tradition, particularly in the middle of the 19th century, there has always been a connection between white supremacy and male superiority throughout the history of the United States. The masculinization of the literary field at the time meant that the male perspective, whether black or white, seemed to speak for both genders and yet could not fully manifest female oppression in a patriarchal society. Women were not only racial outcasts; they were also oppressed due to their gender. Even though race issues have always played a significant role in everyday life, there has always been a divide between white people and black people; However, within this last group was a smaller group of women who had been subjected to not only racial prejudice but also sexist customs, slavery, and other forms of marginalization, including within their own culture.
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Woods, Mary. "The First American Architectural Journals: The Profession's Voice." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 48, no. 2 (June 1, 1989): 117–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/990351.

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American architectural journals first appeared in the second half of the 19th century. Encouraged by advances in printing and graphic technologies, they were part of a general trend toward specialized journalism during this period. The architectural periodical developed along with journals for women, clerics, railroad engineers, and grocers. Yet it also resulted from publishers' desires to capitalize on the success of house pattern books and the widespread interest in architecture that they created. Despite these favorable omens the early American architectural journals foundered; they had troubled and short lives, generally lasting only two years. The premise of this paper is that their success depended on the architectural profession's direct involvement and support and the backing of a major publishing house. Beginning with the first periodicals of the 1850s and 1860s, architectural journalism identified itself with the emerging profession; its editorials asserted the architects' primacy in design and construction and distinguished their role from the builders'. Professional and educational issues, in fact, took precedence over aesthetic and stylistic discussions in editorial columns and articles. Yet the journals displayed the same pragmatism that had characterized builders' guides and pattern books, the first architectural literature published in the United States.
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Hilton, K. C. "Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the 19th-Century United States. By Lori D. Ginzberg (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1990. xii plus 230 pp. $25.00)." Journal of Social History 26, no. 2 (December 1, 1992): 433–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jsh/26.2.433.

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11

Zsuzsanna, Vajda. "Pszichometria Magyarországon a 20. század első felében." Pedagógiatörténeti Szemle 2, no. 1–2 (July 19, 2017): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.22309/ptszemle.2016.1.1.

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Kulcsszavak: az értelmi képességek mérése, gyerekek és az iskola, a képességmérés bevezetése MagyarországonA modern pszichológia megszületésében - ezt a pszichológushallgatók már a bevezető kurzusokon megtanulják – alapvető szerepet játszott, hogy a 19. század derekára létrejöttek a mentális funkciók mérésének elvi és gyakorlati lehetőségei. Az egyszerűbb megismerő funkciók (érzékelés, emlékezés) mellett az értelmi képességek jelentették az első komplex emberi sajátosságot, amelynek mérésével a kutatók kísérleteztek. A koponya- és agytérfogat- vizsgálatoktól nem túlságosan hosszú út vezetett az értelem teljesítmény alapú méréséig, amelynek legsikeresebb változata a mai módszerekre is hatást gyakorló Alfred Binet nevéhez fűződik. Binet módszere gyorsan elterjedt a világ fejlettebbik felében, alig néhány éven belül Magyarországra is eljutott. Vajon tartogat-e érdekességeket a több, mint egy évszázaddal ezelőtt zajlott hazai adaptáció bemutatása a mai olvasónak?Key words: measurement of mental capacities, children and schooling, introduction of mental testing in Hungary.By the end of the 19th century many attempts had been made for the sake of measurement of mental capacities. It was nevertheless a theoretical and a practical need: having „objective” data about human skills was a condition of becoming psychology as „science”. Hence educators wanted to learn more about cognitive development of children and to understand why certain children could not keep up with their peers in the classrooms of schools. In the early 19ties Binet and Simon’s test gained ground in Europe and United States and it has been soon introduced into Hungary too. This paper gives a surway of the history of its introduction, its social and historical background and the people who took part in it.
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Barton, Patricia. "Imperialism, Race, and Therapeutics: The Legacy of Medicalizing the “Colonial Body”." Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 36, no. 3 (2008): 506–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-720x.2008.298.x.

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The BiDil controversy in America coincides with a renewed interest in the linkages between race and therapeutics, whether in the medical history of the United States itself, or in the colonial world. During the colonial era in South Asia, many anthropological and medical researchers conducted research which compared the European and “colonial” body, contrasting everything from blood composition to brain weight between the races of the Indian Empire. This, as Mark Harrison has shown, was fundamentally a phenomenon of the 19th century, arguing that “[i]t was only after 1800 that racial identities came to be fixed and that India was viewed with terror, as a reservoir of filth and disease.” Racist attitudes in British Indian colonial medicine are not hard to discover. They underpinned, for instance, campaigns to improve the appallingly high maternal and infant mortality rates in which the blame was placed squarely upon the women and the indigenous midwives who delivered them rather than the poverty in which they lived. As such, Peers Dimmock, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Calcutta Medical School, opened his address to the First Indian Medical Congress in 1894 with a diatribe against “the unclean and repulsive traditionary [sic] methods of the native midwives.”
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McCray, Kenja. ""Talk Doesn't Cook the Soup"." Murmurations: Emergence, Equity and Education 1, no. 1 (July 30, 2018): 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.31946/meee.v1i1.28.

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The creator, Kenja McCray, is an Associate Professor of History at Atlanta Metropolitan State College (AMSC), where she teaches United States and African American history. AMSC is an institution within the University System of Georgia offering an affordable liberal arts education and committed to serving a diverse, urban student population. McCray has a B.A. from Spelman College, an M.A. from Clark Atlanta University, and a Ph.D. from Georgia State University. Her areas of interest are the 19th and 20th century U. S., African Americans, Africa and the diaspora, transnational histories, women, class and social history. The creator of this essay believes education should be a life-altering process, not only in the intellectual or the economic sense, but also cognitively uplifting. She experienced personal change in college through interacting with professors. She strives to give students a similarly inspirational experience. The encounter should be empowering and should change the way they see themselves and their relationships to the world. The intent of this creative piece is to share the creator’s contemplations on a rites of passage program in which she participated during her college years. She asserts that, given current cultural trends signaling a renewed interest in African-centered ideals and black pride, many aspects of the program could interest current students looking for safe spaces in increasingly intolerant times. This essay will interest researchers, student leaders, student activities advisors, and other administrators seeking to create and develop inclusive campus programs.
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Arping, Åsa. ""The miss Austen of Sweden"." Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap 48, no. 1-2 (January 1, 2018): 18–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.54797/tfl.v48i1-2.7591.

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”The Miss Austen of Sweden”. Fredrika Bremer in the 1840s America and Historiographical Revaluation How did Fredrika Bremer’s (1801–1865) depictions of Scandinavian family life become so immensely popular in the United States in the 1840s, and what did this transatlantic success have to do with gender, translation, media history, and nation building? In an attempt to trace the prerequisites for the intense yet rather short lived American ”Bremer-mania”, this article focuses on the period 1842 to 1844 – a task greatly facilitated by the last decades’ substantialdigitizing of book collections and historical press material. The investigation shows that Bremer’s breakthrough occurred in a very specific situation in American social-, cultural-, and media history, and that her novels filled certain needs in the ongoing postcolonial struggle to foil British cultural hegemony. In this process, Bremer’s depictions of young women fighting for freedom offered a transfer identity, a position that for obvious reasons was provisional and temporary. As publishers started to invest in local writers, the boom for Scandinavian fiction soon decreased, and has left few traces in the history of the 19th century American novel. Fredrika Bremer’s American career is yet another example of how translated literature and international dissemination is inadequately reflected in national literary historiography. However, considering the last decades’ growing focus on transcultural dissemination, it is eligible that future research pays more attention to the diversity of literary flows and circulations.
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Besozzi, Sheida. "Did a flower grow in hell? Reading the modern history of Iran through the nonviolent participation of women in political struggles." Relaciones Internacionales, no. 51 (October 31, 2022): 149–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.15366/relacionesinternacionales2022.51.008.

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This article’s objective is to place the modern history of Iran in relation to nonviolent struggles within the optic of the role of women within them, and to link these episodes with the feminist struggle in Iran. It will cover the years that span from the 1870s until 2021 by placing at the centre of the discussion the role of women in civil resistance struggles. Of particular interest will be national governmental changes, from the monarchic era to a theocratic republic; the presence of Britain and Russia, and later the United States; the mass mobilizations during the end of the nineteenth century and the Iranian Revolution; and gender equality campaigns, as well as more individual acts of resistance through cyber feminist campaigns. This paper aims to show the role of women in these struggles as interconnected with the Iranian feminist movement both inside Iran and in the diaspora. Various episodes in Iranian modern history, such as the Tobacco Protests at the end of the 19th century, the Constitutional Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century and the Iranian revolution of 1979, as well as uprisings that preceded it between 1977 and 1979, have been studied within the civil resistance literature. All of these events showed that ordinary people had the power to topple authoritarian rule in their country through the use of nonviolent strategies. One of the most important references in nonviolent action studies, Gene Sharp, has suggested that 198 methods exist to efficiently overthrow dictatorial regimes around the world, and that these methods and techniques had to be collectively put into practice in order for them to be successful (Sharp, 1973, 2005). Various studies, mostly based on quantitative analysis and historical documentation, have demonstrated that nonviolent strategies have been in many instances much more successful than violence in achieving freedom from authoritarian rule (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011; Chenoweth, 2021). In the Iranian socio-political context, the three aforementioned civil resistance struggles managed to establish a constitution and the creation of a parliament at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the ousting of an autocratic leader in 1979. All of these episodes are considered to be examples of civil resistance techniques that have managed to topple the authoritarian regimes present at that time in Iran. All of these struggles included the nonviolent participation of Iranian women, even though that participation has not sufficiently been brought to light in the Iranian history scholarship. The Tobacco Movement and the Constitutional Revolution represent the origins of a feminist conscience in Iran, and of women’s engagement with gender politics (Mahdi, 2004). Policies relating to women’s health, education, work and public life in general were present in both Pahlavi monarchies. However, whilst attempts were made to democratise the image of women, as well as their status, the Pahlavi regime did not achieved gender equality in Iran due to the strengthening of the class divide and its intensification by the persistent presence of British and American interests in the country. With the installing of the Islamic regime in Iran in 1979, the advances in women’s rights that had been accomplished during the previous decades, thanks to the increased presence of women in public life, disappeared in the blink of an eye. The very many risks, nonetheless, have not prevented Iranian women from fighting for their rights through campaigns such as the One Million Signatures Campaign (1MSC) (2006-2009), or more recent internet gender campaigns such as My stealthy Freedom and White Wednesdays. Studies that have connected civil resistance struggles in Iran to women’s rights (see Beyerle, 2008; Davoudi Mohajer et al., 2009) have begun to pave the way for further developments and it is from this standpoint that the paper wants to make its contribution. The field of Resistance Studies where the subfield of civil resistance is located has been getting wider and deeper, incorporating different meanings and types of resistance acts, where collective as well as more individual stands have been taken into consideration. Poststructuralist, postcolonial and feminist outlooks have expanded the subfield of civil resistance, and the Iranian case clearly shows that the civil resistance scholarship can be applied to situations that involve the toppling of authoritarian regimes, internet gender equality campaigns, and also to those perspectives that take into consideration the transnational field. By placing attention on the links between nonviolent action and the Iranian feminist movement this article also shows the continuities and discontinuities of the participation of women in the civil resistance struggles in Iran, which in turn have to do with the different historical circumstances. As the paper will show, one key aspect has to do with the role of Iranian feminists in the diaspora who have supported and sometimes created civil resistance movements for gender equality in Iran. Sharp took the role of third parties into consideration (1973) within civil resistance movements, but it was not until Andrew Rigby’s study on the Palestinian diaspora and civil resistance (2009) that actors such as diasporas have been placed under increasing interest as supporters of civil resistance movements in their countries of origin (Dudouet, 2015; Stephan and Chenoweth, 2021). Part 1 locates the arguments within a theoretical framework that links the subfield of nonviolent action with feminist perspectives from the fields of International Relations and Resistance Studies. Following this first section, the paper is divided into another five sections. Part 2 deals with the civil resistance struggles at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, as well as the role of women in them and the feminist movement. Next, part 3 of the article centres itself on the Pahlavi Monarchy that preceded the Islamic Revolution by looking at the position of women in Iran as well as the Iranian feminist movement. Part 4 looks at the nonviolent orientation of the Iranian revolution and the role of women therein, while part 5 locates the discussion on civil resistance within a more recent period and the conjunction with the Iranian diaspora. The article ends with a section dedicated to concluding remarks where future research lines will be suggested.
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Perez, Shelby. "Palestine…It Is Something Colonial." American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 35, no. 4 (October 29, 2018): 64–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajiss.v35i4.475.

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not existed since the beginning of time. Hatem Bazian explores the roots of the conflict, locating the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project under the tutelage of British colonial efforts. Bazian’s text is a look at and beyond first-hand accounts, an investigation of and critical analysis of settler practice in relation to similar texts such as Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Alan Dowty’s Israel/Palestine, and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Hatem Bazian’s Palestine…it is something colonial is not an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Readers should possess a basic understanding of the conflict and history of the region over the last century. Nor does this text provide the reader with an unbiased look at the timeline of events since the inception of the Zionist movement. Palestine…it is something colonial instead is a rich critique of the Zionist movement and British colonialism. It investigates the way British colonialism influenced Zionism and how Zionism adopted colonial ideas and practices. Bazian locates Zionism as a settler colonialist movement still at work today, which historically planned and systematically executed the removal of Palestinians from their land, with the aid of the United Kingdom and (later) the United States. Bazian examines Ottoman collapse, the colonization of Palestine by the British, Israel’s biblical theology of dispossession, as well as British colonial incubation of Zionism, Zionism as a Eurocentric episteme, the building of Israel through ethnic cleansing, and the Nakba, all of these culminating in legalized dispossession. Throughout the text, Bazian is able to tie each chapter to the present state of affairs and remind the audience of the trauma of a people forcibly removed. Bazian opens with the straightforward assertion that “Palestine is the last settler-colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding in the 21st century with no end in sight” (17). In chapter one, “Dissecting the Ottomans and Colonizing Palestine,” Bazian navigates the biased historiography of the fall of the Ottoman empire, linking the collapse of the empire to the colonizing forces of Europe which sought to ensure access to the newly discovered oil in the region as well as to Asia and Africa. Bazian masterfully steers the reader through the history of European intervention, and in particular on behalf of Christians as ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Europe is historically anti-Jewish; at the turn of the century, Zionism was determined to solve Europe’s “Jewish Problem” and maintain a stronghold in the Middle East, he writes. In chapter two, “Israel’s Biblical Theology of Dispossession,” Bazian explores the biblical roots of Zionist ideology. The chapter opens with a discussion of a contemporary Bedouin tribe being expelled in the Negev. Bazian writes that “the biblical text gets transformed into policy by the Zionist state, by which it then normalizes or makes legal the wholesale theft of Palestinian lands and expulsion of the population”(57) using legal documents such as the Levy Report. These policies create “facts on the ground” which lead to “legalized expulsions.” The Bible was central to the historical development of the European Christian supremacist idea of the Holy Land. The loss of the territory conquered during the Crusades ruptured this notion, a break “fixed” through Zionism. In chapter three, “British Colonialism and Incubation of Zionism,”Bazian begins to address British colonialism and Zionism as complementary. Bazian uses primary texts from British political actors of the time, such as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Balfour, to establish the anti-Semiticinspiration for British actions of the time. Bazian also successfully uses the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement to establish the double dealings of the British in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. Bazian uses many primary texts in this chapter effectively, though their organization could leave readers confused. Chapter four, “Zionism: Eurocentric Colonial Epistemic,” continues the themes of the prior chapter as the colonial influence is cemented. In this chapter, Bazian explores the subterfuge and the genius propaganda selling Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” along with “making the desert bloom”—as if the indigenous Arab people were not there. Bazian frames this chapter within the Zionist ideology of the peoples living in the land being only a barrier to a Jewish state in Palestine. Bazian uses primary sources (e.g., Herzl) to defend the assertion that the removal of the Palestinian people was always a piece of the Zionist plan. Bazian also includes Jewish critical voices (e.g., excerpts from the reporter Ella Shohat) to establish the European Jewish bias against the indigenous Arab peoples, including Sephardic Jews. Bazian that these biases and the effort to remove Palestinians from their land defined the early Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel in chapter five, “Building a State and Ethnic Cleansing.” This chapter draws extensively on primary sources: correspondence, reports, declarations, agreements, commissions, and maps. Bazian struggles to organize these rich resources in a clear fashion; however, his analysis matches the richness of the sources. These sources establish the “legalized” systematic removal of the Palestinians from the land by the Israelis in 1948. In chapter six, “The Nakba,” Bazian uses further legal documents and first-hand accounts to trace the forced removal of Palestinians. He pays homage to the trauma while critically dissecting the process of legalizing ethnic cleansing and peddling the innocence of the Israelis to the rest of the world. Bazian profoundly concludes his chapter with the story of a Palestinian boy who witnessed the mass executions of men and women of his village and marched away from his home. The boy, now a man, closed his story with poignant words that capture the horror of the Nakba: “The road to Ramallah had become an open cemetery” (241). After the land was emptied the new state of Israel needed to legally take possession of the Palestinian-owned property. Chapter seven, “Colonial Machination,” elaborates this process: “the State of Israel is structured to give maximum attention to fulfillment of the settler-colonial project and the state apparatus is directed toward achieving this criminal enterprise” (243). The name “Palestine” is erased as a name for the land and the peoples; former colonial and Ottoman laws were twisted to support a systematic theft of the land. Bazian concludes his book with a look to the future: “What is the way forward and Palestine’s de-colonial horizon?” (276). He lays out the options available for true and lasting peace, discounting out of hand the twostate solution as impossible due to the extent of the settlements in the West Bank. He also dismisses both the options of the removal of Palestinians and the removal of the Jewish people. He instead posits a way forward through a one-state solution, leaving how this is to be done to the reader and the people of Israel/Palestine to determine. Bazian has contributed a full-bodied analysis of primary sources to defend his assertion that Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement with its goal being a land devoid of the indigenous people. The organization of the text, the lack of sectioning in the chapters, and the technical insertion and citation of primary sources could be improved for clearer reading. Bazian thoroughly defends his thesis with tangible evidence that Zionism is something colonial, and has been something colonial from the start. This is a text that complicates the narrative of what colonialism is, what the State of Israel is, and who and what Palestine is, together establishing the book as required reading for understanding nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shelby Perez Master’s Divinity Candidate Chicago Theological Seminary
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17

Perez, Shelby. "Palestine…It Is Something Colonial." American Journal of Islam and Society 35, no. 4 (October 29, 2018): 64–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v35i4.475.

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not existed since the beginning of time. Hatem Bazian explores the roots of the conflict, locating the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project under the tutelage of British colonial efforts. Bazian’s text is a look at and beyond first-hand accounts, an investigation of and critical analysis of settler practice in relation to similar texts such as Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Alan Dowty’s Israel/Palestine, and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Hatem Bazian’s Palestine…it is something colonial is not an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Readers should possess a basic understanding of the conflict and history of the region over the last century. Nor does this text provide the reader with an unbiased look at the timeline of events since the inception of the Zionist movement. Palestine…it is something colonial instead is a rich critique of the Zionist movement and British colonialism. It investigates the way British colonialism influenced Zionism and how Zionism adopted colonial ideas and practices. Bazian locates Zionism as a settler colonialist movement still at work today, which historically planned and systematically executed the removal of Palestinians from their land, with the aid of the United Kingdom and (later) the United States. Bazian examines Ottoman collapse, the colonization of Palestine by the British, Israel’s biblical theology of dispossession, as well as British colonial incubation of Zionism, Zionism as a Eurocentric episteme, the building of Israel through ethnic cleansing, and the Nakba, all of these culminating in legalized dispossession. Throughout the text, Bazian is able to tie each chapter to the present state of affairs and remind the audience of the trauma of a people forcibly removed. Bazian opens with the straightforward assertion that “Palestine is the last settler-colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding in the 21st century with no end in sight” (17). In chapter one, “Dissecting the Ottomans and Colonizing Palestine,” Bazian navigates the biased historiography of the fall of the Ottoman empire, linking the collapse of the empire to the colonizing forces of Europe which sought to ensure access to the newly discovered oil in the region as well as to Asia and Africa. Bazian masterfully steers the reader through the history of European intervention, and in particular on behalf of Christians as ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Europe is historically anti-Jewish; at the turn of the century, Zionism was determined to solve Europe’s “Jewish Problem” and maintain a stronghold in the Middle East, he writes. In chapter two, “Israel’s Biblical Theology of Dispossession,” Bazian explores the biblical roots of Zionist ideology. The chapter opens with a discussion of a contemporary Bedouin tribe being expelled in the Negev. Bazian writes that “the biblical text gets transformed into policy by the Zionist state, by which it then normalizes or makes legal the wholesale theft of Palestinian lands and expulsion of the population”(57) using legal documents such as the Levy Report. These policies create “facts on the ground” which lead to “legalized expulsions.” The Bible was central to the historical development of the European Christian supremacist idea of the Holy Land. The loss of the territory conquered during the Crusades ruptured this notion, a break “fixed” through Zionism. In chapter three, “British Colonialism and Incubation of Zionism,”Bazian begins to address British colonialism and Zionism as complementary. Bazian uses primary texts from British political actors of the time, such as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Balfour, to establish the anti-Semiticinspiration for British actions of the time. Bazian also successfully uses the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement to establish the double dealings of the British in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. Bazian uses many primary texts in this chapter effectively, though their organization could leave readers confused. Chapter four, “Zionism: Eurocentric Colonial Epistemic,” continues the themes of the prior chapter as the colonial influence is cemented. In this chapter, Bazian explores the subterfuge and the genius propaganda selling Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” along with “making the desert bloom”—as if the indigenous Arab people were not there. Bazian frames this chapter within the Zionist ideology of the peoples living in the land being only a barrier to a Jewish state in Palestine. Bazian uses primary sources (e.g., Herzl) to defend the assertion that the removal of the Palestinian people was always a piece of the Zionist plan. Bazian also includes Jewish critical voices (e.g., excerpts from the reporter Ella Shohat) to establish the European Jewish bias against the indigenous Arab peoples, including Sephardic Jews. Bazian that these biases and the effort to remove Palestinians from their land defined the early Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel in chapter five, “Building a State and Ethnic Cleansing.” This chapter draws extensively on primary sources: correspondence, reports, declarations, agreements, commissions, and maps. Bazian struggles to organize these rich resources in a clear fashion; however, his analysis matches the richness of the sources. These sources establish the “legalized” systematic removal of the Palestinians from the land by the Israelis in 1948. In chapter six, “The Nakba,” Bazian uses further legal documents and first-hand accounts to trace the forced removal of Palestinians. He pays homage to the trauma while critically dissecting the process of legalizing ethnic cleansing and peddling the innocence of the Israelis to the rest of the world. Bazian profoundly concludes his chapter with the story of a Palestinian boy who witnessed the mass executions of men and women of his village and marched away from his home. The boy, now a man, closed his story with poignant words that capture the horror of the Nakba: “The road to Ramallah had become an open cemetery” (241). After the land was emptied the new state of Israel needed to legally take possession of the Palestinian-owned property. Chapter seven, “Colonial Machination,” elaborates this process: “the State of Israel is structured to give maximum attention to fulfillment of the settler-colonial project and the state apparatus is directed toward achieving this criminal enterprise” (243). The name “Palestine” is erased as a name for the land and the peoples; former colonial and Ottoman laws were twisted to support a systematic theft of the land. Bazian concludes his book with a look to the future: “What is the way forward and Palestine’s de-colonial horizon?” (276). He lays out the options available for true and lasting peace, discounting out of hand the twostate solution as impossible due to the extent of the settlements in the West Bank. He also dismisses both the options of the removal of Palestinians and the removal of the Jewish people. He instead posits a way forward through a one-state solution, leaving how this is to be done to the reader and the people of Israel/Palestine to determine. Bazian has contributed a full-bodied analysis of primary sources to defend his assertion that Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement with its goal being a land devoid of the indigenous people. The organization of the text, the lack of sectioning in the chapters, and the technical insertion and citation of primary sources could be improved for clearer reading. Bazian thoroughly defends his thesis with tangible evidence that Zionism is something colonial, and has been something colonial from the start. This is a text that complicates the narrative of what colonialism is, what the State of Israel is, and who and what Palestine is, together establishing the book as required reading for understanding nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shelby Perez Master’s Divinity Candidate Chicago Theological Seminary
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18

Whalen, Brian. "Introduction." Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 9, no. 1 (August 15, 2003): vii—x. http://dx.doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v9i1.112.

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This volume of Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad offers a wide variety of approaches and topics in international education research. First, readers will note the geographic diversity that the articles represent; they examine study abroad topics in Africa, Argentina, Costa Rica, France, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam. Second, the articles cover a wide-range of issues, including language acquisition, risk management, recruitment of minority students for study abroad, evaluation of cultural integration, and financial inequities in study abroad. Third, this volume contains articles by a variety of authors, including U.S.-based study abroad administrators, faculty members, and on-site resident directors. Finally, the modes of inquiry are as varied as the topics and authors. Research approaches in this volume include survey instruments, interviews, participant observation, case studies, literature review, as well as analytical essays. This diversity of geography, issues, authors, and modes of inquiry has from the beginning characterized the content of Frontiers and been one of its chief strengths. When the first volume of Frontiers appeared in 1995, one was hard pressed to find many research-based and analytical studies in the field, let alone the diversity of such work that this volume represents. In this regard, Frontiers has matured along with the field of international education, and today, almost ten years later, this volume reflects the growing importance being placed on research on the critical aspects of our work. The opening article by Lilli Engle and John Engle, “Study Abroad Levels: Toward a Classification of Program Types,” offers a revolutionary perspective by which international educators may categorize and judge study abroad programs. Their proposed typology makes qualitative distinctions between study abroad program models based on their view of a spectrum of cultural immersion. Frontiers readers will find their analysis provocative, stimulating study abroad professionals to examine programming in useful ways. In “Women and Cultural Learning in Costa Rica: Reading the Contexts,” Adele Anderson reviews research on Costa Rica’s cultural context, student adjustment and tourism theory, relating them to American student experiences, and she includes data from ethnographic observations and interviews collected during three years as a resident director of short-term programs. Anderson introduces a tool that may be used by resident directors to guide student cultural adjustment more systematically. Mark Ritchie, an on-site resident director in Thailand, provides a very useful analysis of study abroad risk management in his article, “Risk Management in Study Abroad: Lessons from the Wilderness.” Ritchie draws upon the principles of wilderness education, especially as it is conducted in developing countries, in offering recommendations for study abroad risk management. Readers will appreciate his suggestions for reducing risk by applying the experiential techniques of wilderness education. J. Scott Van Der Meid’s study, “Asian Americans: Factors Influencing the Decision to Study Abroad,” examines the factors that influence Asian American students’ decision to study abroad, and provides useful suggestions for considering ways to increase study abroad participation among this population. As the field of study abroad continues to seek ways to increase minority participation in study abroad, Van Der Meid’s study offers a model for examining this question among all ethnic groups. In their analysis of an innovative Vietnam study abroad program, “History Lived and Learned: Students and Vietnam Veterans in an Integrative Study Abroad Course,” Raymond Scurfield, Leslie Root, and Andrew Wiest et al, analyze the collaborative learning experience of students and Vietnam veterans in a program that combined the teaching of Vietnam culture and military history with an exploration of the mental health aspects of combat and post-war recovery of the veterans. This article discusses the lessons learned from the experience of designing and implementing a study abroad program that integrates history education with therapeutic objectives. Jennifer Coffman and Kevin Brennan analyze the economic imbalance of African educational exchange with the United States in their article, “African Studies Abroad: Meaning and Impact of America’s Burgeoning Export Industry.” Coffman and Brennan recommend developing more equitable models of reciprocity by examining the economics of U.S. – African exchanges, and by reconsidering the ways in which African study abroad programs are conceived and implemented in light of their social and intellectual impact. “Development of Oral Communication Skills Abroad” by Christina Isabelli-Garcia examines the impact of a semester study abroad program in Argentina on the second language acquisition of three American university Spanish learners. Isabelli-Garcia’s study measures the development of two aspects of communications skills: first, fluency and performance in the oral functions of narration, and, second, description and supporting an opinion. Her study provides insight into the conditions of a study abroad program that best promote the acquisition of improved oral communication skills in a target language. In “Studying Abroad in Nepal: Assessing Impact,” Patricia Farrell and Murari Suvedi present the perceived impact of studying in Nepal on students’ academic program, personal development, and intellectual development. Using a survey instrument as well as interviews and case studies, the authors link the reported outcomes to the objectives of the study abroad program. We are pleased to include in this volume of Frontiers an essay by Patti McGill Peterson, “New Directions for the Global Century.” McGill Peterson’s analysis of the changing and challenging context for global education inspires us to meet the demands of the 21st century with determination, creativity, and enhanced global collaboration. This volume of Frontiers concludes with reviews of books of interest to international educators, each relating to diverse intellectual foundations of the field: Jean-Philippe Mathy’s Extrême-Occident: French Intellectuals and America, Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, and First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power by Warren Zimmermann. We encourage our readers to continue to suggest books of interest, and to submit reviews for consideration. The update on the Forum on Education Abroad that appears at the back of this volume reflects the continuing fruitful collaboration between Frontiers and the Forum. Together with the Forum, Frontiers will continue to encourage and support research studies on study abroad topics, and to disseminate this research as widely as possible. The next volume of Frontiers, due to be published in November, 2004, will be our tenth anniversary volume. It is appropriate that this anniversary volume will be a Special Issue that focuses on the assessment of the learning outcomes of study abroad, a topic that reflects the maturation of a field that is now beginning to document the results of its activity. Other Special Issues that are in the planning stages include: curriculum integration and study abroad, the arts and study abroad, and student development and study abroad. Finally, I want to thank the new sponsors of Frontiers who, together with our existing sponsors, make the publication of this journal possible. The sponsors of Frontiers are institutions with a strong commitment to international education, and we are proud to be supported by them. The editorial board takes seriously its responsibility to provide the very best writing about and research on study abroad to our readers, and the support of our sponsors makes this mission possible. Brian J. Whalen Editor
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Jim, Danny, Loretta Joseph Case, Rubon Rubon, Connie Joel, Tommy Almet, and Demetria Malachi. "Kanne Lobal: A conceptual framework relating education and leadership partnerships in the Marshall Islands." Waikato Journal of Education 26 (July 5, 2021): 135–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.15663/wje.v26i1.785.

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Education in Oceania continues to reflect the embedded implicit and explicit colonial practices and processes from the past. This paper conceptualises a cultural approach to education and leadership appropriate and relevant to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. As elementary school leaders, we highlight Kanne Lobal, a traditional Marshallese navigation practice based on indigenous language, values and practices. We conceptualise and develop Kanne Lobal in this paper as a framework for understanding the usefulness of our indigenous knowledge in leadership and educational practices within formal education. Through bwebwenato, a method of talk story, our key learnings and reflexivities were captured. We argue that realising the value of Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices for school leaders requires purposeful training of the ways in which our knowledge can be made useful in our professional educational responsibilities. Drawing from our Marshallese knowledge is an intentional effort to inspire, empower and express what education and leadership partnership means for Marshallese people, as articulated by Marshallese themselves. Introduction As noted in the call for papers within the Waikato Journal of Education (WJE) for this special issue, bodies of knowledge and histories in Oceania have long sustained generations across geographic boundaries to ensure cultural survival. For Marshallese people, we cannot really know ourselves “until we know how we came to be where we are today” (Walsh, Heine, Bigler & Stege, 2012). Jitdam Kapeel is a popular Marshallese concept and ideal associated with inquiring into relationships within the family and community. In a similar way, the practice of relating is about connecting the present and future to the past. Education and leadership partnerships are linked and we look back to the past, our history, to make sense and feel inspired to transform practices that will benefit our people. In this paper and in light of our next generation, we reconnect with our navigation stories to inspire and empower education and leadership. Kanne lobal is part of our navigation stories, a conceptual framework centred on cultural practices, values, and concepts that embrace collective partnerships. Our link to this talanoa vā with others in the special issue is to attempt to make sense of connections given the global COVID-19 context by providing a Marshallese approach to address the physical and relational “distance” between education and leadership partnerships in Oceania. Like the majority of developing small island nations in Oceania, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has had its share of educational challenges through colonial legacies of the past which continues to drive education systems in the region (Heine, 2002). The historical administration and education in the RMI is one of colonisation. Successive administrations by the Spanish, German, Japanese, and now the US, has resulted in education and learning that privileges western knowledge and forms of learning. This paper foregrounds understandings of education and learning as told by the voices of elementary school leaders from the RMI. The move to re-think education and leadership from Marshallese perspectives is an act of shifting the focus of bwebwenato or conversations that centres on Marshallese language and worldviews. The concept of jelalokjen was conceptualised as traditional education framed mainly within the community context. In the past, jelalokjen was practiced and transmitted to the younger generation for cultural continuity. During the arrival of colonial administrations into the RMI, jelalokjen was likened to the western notions of education and schooling (Kupferman, 2004). Today, the primary function of jelalokjen, as traditional and formal education, it is for “survival in a hostile [and challenging] environment” (Kupferman, 2004, p. 43). Because western approaches to learning in the RMI have not always resulted in positive outcomes for those engaged within the education system, as school leaders who value our cultural knowledge and practices, and aspire to maintain our language with the next generation, we turn to Kanne Lobal, a practice embedded in our navigation stories, collective aspirations, and leadership. The significance in the development of Kanne Lobal, as an appropriate framework for education and leadership, resulted in us coming together and working together. Not only were we able to share our leadership concerns, however, the engagement strengthened our connections with each other as school leaders, our communities, and the Public Schooling System (PSS). Prior to that, many of us were in competition for resources. Educational Leadership: IQBE and GCSL Leadership is a valued practice in the RMI. Before the IQBE programme started in 2018, the majority of the school leaders on the main island of Majuro had not engaged in collaborative partnerships with each other before. Our main educational purpose was to achieve accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), an accreditation commission for schools in the United States. The WASC accreditation dictated our work and relationships and many school leaders on Majuro felt the pressure of competition against each other. We, the authors in this paper, share our collective bwebwenato, highlighting our school leadership experiences and how we gained strength from our own ancestral knowledge to empower “us”, to collaborate with each other, our teachers, communities, as well as with PSS; a collaborative partnership we had not realised in the past. The paucity of literature that captures Kajin Majol (Marshallese language) and education in general in the RMI is what we intend to fill by sharing our reflections and experiences. To move our educational practices forward we highlight Kanne Lobal, a cultural approach that focuses on our strengths, collective social responsibilities and wellbeing. For a long time, there was no formal training in place for elementary school leaders. School principals and vice principals were appointed primarily on their academic merit through having an undergraduate qualification. As part of the first cohort of fifteen school leaders, we engaged in the professional training programme, the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL), refitted to our context after its initial development in the Solomon Islands. GCSL was coordinated by the Institute of Education (IOE) at the University of the South Pacific (USP). GCSL was seen as a relevant and appropriate training programme for school leaders in the RMI as part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded programme which aimed at “Improving Quality Basic Education” (IQBE) in parts of the northern Pacific. GCSL was managed on Majuro, RMI’s main island, by the director at the time Dr Irene Taafaki, coordinator Yolanda McKay, and administrators at the University of the South Pacific’s (USP) RMI campus. Through the provision of GCSL, as school leaders we were encouraged to re-think and draw-from our own cultural repository and connect to our ancestral knowledge that have always provided strength for us. This kind of thinking and practice was encouraged by our educational leaders (Heine, 2002). We argue that a culturally-affirming and culturally-contextual framework that reflects the lived experiences of Marshallese people is much needed and enables the disruption of inherent colonial processes left behind by Western and Eastern administrations which have influenced our education system in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Kanne Lobal, an approach utilising a traditional navigation has warranted its need to provide solutions for today’s educational challenges for us in the RMI. Education in the Pacific Education in the Pacific cannot be understood without contextualising it in its history and culture. It is the same for us in the RMI (Heine, 2002; Walsh et al., 2012). The RMI is located in the Pacific Ocean and is part of Micronesia. It was named after a British captain, John Marshall in the 1700s. The atolls in the RMI were explored by the Spanish in the 16th century. Germany unsuccessfully attempted to colonize the islands in 1885. Japan took control in 1914, but after several battles during World War II, the US seized the RMI from them. In 1947, the United Nations made the island group, along with the Mariana and Caroline archipelagos, a U.S. trust territory (Walsh et al, 2012). Education in the RMI reflects the colonial administrations of Germany, Japan, and now the US. Before the turn of the century, formal education in the Pacific reflected western values, practices, and standards. Prior to that, education was informal and not binded to formal learning institutions (Thaman, 1997) and oral traditions was used as the medium for transmitting learning about customs and practices living with parents, grandparents, great grandparents. As alluded to by Jiba B. Kabua (2004), any “discussion about education is necessarily a discussion of culture, and any policy on education is also a policy of culture” (p. 181). It is impossible to promote one without the other, and it is not logical to understand one without the other. Re-thinking how education should look like, the pedagogical strategies that are relevant in our classrooms, the ways to engage with our parents and communities - such re-thinking sits within our cultural approaches and frameworks. Our collective attempts to provide a cultural framework that is relevant and appropriate for education in our context, sits within the political endeavour to decolonize. This means that what we are providing will not only be useful, but it can be used as a tool to question and identify whether things in place restrict and prevent our culture or whether they promote and foreground cultural ideas and concepts, a significant discussion of culture linked to education (Kabua, 2004). Donor funded development aid programmes were provided to support the challenges within education systems. Concerned with the persistent low educational outcomes of Pacific students, despite the prevalence of aid programmes in the region, in 2000 Pacific educators and leaders with support from New Zealand Aid (NZ Aid) decided to intervene (Heine, 2002; Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). In April 2001, a group of Pacific educators and leaders across the region were invited to a colloquium funded by the New Zealand Overseas Development Agency held in Suva Fiji at the University of the South Pacific. The main purpose of the colloquium was to enable “Pacific educators to re-think the values, assumptions and beliefs underlying [formal] schooling in Oceania” (Benson, 2002). Leadership, in general, is a valued practice in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Despite education leadership being identified as a significant factor in school improvement (Sanga & Chu, 2009), the limited formal training opportunities of school principals in the region was a persistent concern. As part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded project, the Improve Quality Basic Education (IQBE) intervention was developed and implemented in the RMI in 2017. Mentoring is a process associated with the continuity and sustainability of leadership knowledge and practices (Sanga & Chu, 2009). It is a key aspect of building capacity and capabilities within human resources in education (ibid). Indigenous knowledges and education research According to Hilda Heine, the relationship between education and leadership is about understanding Marshallese history and culture (cited in Walsh et al., 2012). It is about sharing indigenous knowledge and histories that “details for future generations a story of survival and resilience and the pride we possess as a people” (Heine, cited in Walsh et al., 2012, p. v). This paper is fuelled by postcolonial aspirations yet is grounded in Pacific indigenous research. This means that our intentions are driven by postcolonial pursuits and discourses linked to challenging the colonial systems and schooling in the Pacific region that privileges western knowledge and learning and marginalises the education practices and processes of local people (Thiong’o, 1986). A point of difference and orientation from postcolonialism is a desire to foreground indigenous Pacific language, specifically Majin Majol, through Marshallese concepts. Our collective bwebwenato and conversation honours and values kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness) (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Pacific leaders developed the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative for and by Pacific People (RPEIPP) in 2002 to take control of the ways in which education research was conducted by donor funded organisations (Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). Our former president, Dr Hilda Heine was part of the group of leaders who sought to counter the ways in which our educational and leadership stories were controlled and told by non-Marshallese (Heine, 2002). As a former minister of education in the RMI, Hilda Heine continues to inspire and encourage the next generation of educators, school leaders, and researchers to re-think and de-construct the way learning and education is conceptualised for Marshallese people. The conceptualisation of Kanne Lobal acknowledges its origin, grounded in Marshallese navigation knowledge and practice. Our decision to unpack and deconstruct Kanne Lobal within the context of formal education and leadership responds to the need to not only draw from indigenous Marshallese ideas and practice but to consider that the next generation will continue to be educated using western processes and initiatives particularly from the US where we get a lot of our funding from. According to indigenous researchers Dawn Bessarab and Bridget Ng’andu (2010), doing research that considers “culturally appropriate processes to engage with indigenous groups and individuals is particularly pertinent in today’s research environment” (p. 37). Pacific indigenous educators and researchers have turned to their own ancestral knowledge and practices for inspiration and empowerment. Within western research contexts, the often stringent ideals and processes are not always encouraging of indigenous methods and practices. However, many were able to ground and articulate their use of indigenous methods as being relevant and appropriate to capturing the realities of their communities (Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014; Thaman, 1997). At the same time, utilising Pacific indigenous methods and approaches enabled research engagement with their communities that honoured and respected them and their communities. For example, Tongan, Samoan, and Fijian researchers used the talanoa method as a way to capture the stories, lived realities, and worldviews of their communities within education in the diaspora (Fa’avae, Jones, & Manu’atu, 2016; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014; Vaioleti, 2005). Tok stori was used by Solomon Islander educators and school leaders to highlight the unique circles of conversational practice and storytelling that leads to more positive engagement with their community members, capturing rich and meaningful narratives as a result (Sanga & Houma, 2004). The Indigenous Aborigine in Australia utilise yarning as a “relaxed discussion through which both the researcher and participant journey together visiting places and topics of interest relevant” (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010, p. 38). Despite the diverse forms of discussions and storytelling by indigenous peoples, of significance are the cultural protocols, ethics, and language for conducting and guiding the engagement (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014). Through the ethics, values, protocols, and language, these are what makes indigenous methods or frameworks unique compared to western methods like in-depth interviews or semi-structured interviews. This is why it is important for us as Marshallese educators to frame, ground, and articulate how our own methods and frameworks of learning could be realised in western education (Heine, 2002; Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). In this paper, we utilise bwebwenato as an appropriate method linked to “talk story”, capturing our collective stories and experiences during GCSL and how we sought to build partnerships and collaboration with each other, our communities, and the PSS. Bwebwenato and drawing from Kajin Majel Legends and stories that reflect Marshallese society and its cultural values have survived through our oral traditions. The practice of weaving also holds knowledge about our “valuable and earliest sources of knowledge” (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019, p. 2). The skilful navigation of Marshallese wayfarers on the walap (large canoes) in the ocean is testament of their leadership and the value they place on ensuring the survival and continuity of Marshallese people (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019; Walsh et al., 2012). During her graduate study in 2014, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner conceptualised bwebwenato as being the most “well-known form of Marshallese orality” (p. 38). The Marshallese-English dictionary defined bwebwenato as talk, conversation, story, history, article, episode, lore, myth, or tale (cited in Jetnil Kijiner, 2014). Three years later in 2017, bwebwenato was utilised in a doctoral project by Natalie Nimmer as a research method to gather “talk stories” about the experiences of 10 Marshallese experts in knowledge and skills ranging from sewing to linguistics, canoe-making and business. Our collective bwebwenato in this paper centres on Marshallese ideas and language. The philosophy of Marshallese knowledge is rooted in our “Kajin Majel”, or Marshallese language and is shared and transmitted through our oral traditions. For instance, through our historical stories and myths. Marshallese philosophy, that is, the knowledge systems inherent in our beliefs, values, customs, and practices are shared. They are inherently relational, meaning that knowledge systems and philosophies within our world are connected, in mind, body, and spirit (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Nimmer, 2017). Although some Marshallese believe that our knowledge is disappearing as more and more elders pass away, it is therefore important work together, and learn from each other about the knowledges shared not only by the living but through their lamentations and stories of those who are no longer with us (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). As a Marshallese practice, weaving has been passed-down from generation to generation. Although the art of weaving is no longer as common as it used to be, the artefacts such as the “jaki-ed” (clothing mats) continue to embody significant Marshallese values and traditions. For our weavers, the jouj (check spelling) is the centre of the mat and it is where the weaving starts. When the jouj is correct and weaved well, the remainder and every other part of the mat will be right. The jouj is symbolic of the “heart” and if the heart is prepared well, trained well, then life or all other parts of the body will be well (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). In that light, we have applied the same to this paper. Conceptualising and drawing from cultural practices that are close and dear to our hearts embodies a significant ontological attempt to prioritize our own knowledge and language, a sense of endearment to who we are and what we believe education to be like for us and the next generation. The application of the phrase “Majolizing '' was used by the Ministry of Education when Hilda Heine was minister, to weave cultural ideas and language into the way that teachers understand the curriculum, develop lesson plans and execute them in the classroom. Despite this, there were still concerns with the embedded colonized practices where teachers defaulted to eurocentric methods of doing things, like the strategies provided in the textbooks given to us. In some ways, our education was slow to adjust to the “Majolizing '' intention by our former minister. In this paper, we provide Kanne Lobal as a way to contribute to the “Majolizing intention” and perhaps speed up yet still be collectively responsible to all involved in education. Kajin Wa and Kanne Lobal “Wa” is the Marshallese concept for canoe. Kajin wa, as in canoe language, has a lot of symbolic meaning linked to deeply-held Marshallese values and practices. The canoe was the foundational practice that supported the livelihood of harsh atoll island living which reflects the Marshallese social world. The experts of Kajin wa often refer to “wa” as being the vessel of life, a means and source of sustaining life (Kelen, 2009, cited in Miller, 2010). “Jouj” means kindness and is the lower part of the main hull of the canoe. It is often referred to by some canoe builders in the RMI as the heart of the canoe and is linked to love. The jouj is one of the first parts of the canoe that is built and is “used to do all other measurements, and then the rest of the canoe is built on top of it” (Miller, 2010, p. 67). The significance of the jouj is that when the canoe is in the water, the jouj is the part of the hull that is underwater and ensures that all the cargo and passengers are safe. For Marshallese, jouj or kindness is what living is about and is associated with selflessly carrying the responsibility of keeping the family and community safe. The parts of the canoe reflect Marshallese culture, legend, family, lineage, and kinship. They embody social responsibilities that guide, direct, and sustain Marshallese families’ wellbeing, from atoll to atoll. For example, the rojak (boom), rojak maan (upper boom), rojak kōrā (lower boom), and they support the edges of the ujelā/ujele (sail) (see figure 1). The literal meaning of rojak maan is male boom and rojak kōrā means female boom which together strengthens the sail and ensures the canoe propels forward in a strong yet safe way. Figuratively, the rojak maan and rojak kōrā symbolise the mother and father relationship which when strong, through the jouj (kindness and love), it can strengthen families and sustain them into the future. Figure 1. Parts of the canoe Source: https://www.canoesmarshallislands.com/2014/09/names-of-canoe-parts/ From a socio-cultural, communal, and leadership view, the canoe (wa) provides understanding of the relationships required to inspire and sustain Marshallese peoples’ education and learning. We draw from Kajin wa because they provide cultural ideas and practices that enable understanding of education and leadership necessary for sustaining Marshallese people and realities in Oceania. When building a canoe, the women are tasked with the weaving of the ujelā/ujele (sail) and to ensure that it is strong enough to withstand long journeys and the fierce winds and waters of the ocean. The Kanne Lobal relates to the front part of the ujelā/ujele (sail) where the rojak maan and rojak kōrā meet and connect (see the red lines in figure 1). Kanne Lobal is linked to the strategic use of the ujelā/ujele by navigators, when there is no wind north wind to propel them forward, to find ways to capture the winds so that their journey can continue. As a proverbial saying, Kanne Lobal is used to ignite thinking and inspire and transform practice particularly when the journey is rough and tough. In this paper we draw from Kanne Lobal to ignite, inspire, and transform our educational and leadership practices, a move to explore what has always been meaningful to Marshallese people when we are faced with challenges. The Kanne Lobal utilises our language, and cultural practices and values by sourcing from the concepts of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). A key Marshallese proverb, “Enra bwe jen lale rara”, is the cultural practice where families enact compassion through the sharing of food in all occurrences. The term “enra” is a small basket weaved from the coconut leaves, and often used by Marshallese as a plate to share and distribute food amongst each other. Bwe-jen-lale-rara is about noticing and providing for the needs of others, and “enra” the basket will help support and provide for all that are in need. “Enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara” is symbolic of cultural exchange and reciprocity and the cultural values associated with building and maintaining relationships, and constantly honouring each other. As a Marshallese practice, in this article we share our understanding and knowledge about the challenges as well as possible solutions for education concerns in our nation. In addition, we highlight another proverb, “wa kuk wa jimor”, which relates to having one canoe, and despite its capacity to feed and provide for the individual, but within the canoe all people can benefit from what it can provide. In the same way, we provide in this paper a cultural framework that will enable all educators to benefit from. It is a framework that is far-reaching and relevant to the lived realities of Marshallese people today. Kumit relates to people united to build strength, all co-operating and working together, living in peace, harmony, and good health. Kanne Lobal: conceptual framework for education and leadership An education framework is a conceptual structure that can be used to capture ideas and thinking related to aspects of learning. Kanne Lobal is conceptualised and framed in this paper as an educational framework. Kanne Lobal highlights the significance of education as a collective partnership whereby leadership is an important aspect. Kanne Lobal draws-from indigenous Marshallese concepts like kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness, heart). The role of a leader, including an education leader, is to prioritise collective learning and partnerships that benefits Marshallese people and the continuity and survival of the next generation (Heine, 2002; Thaman, 1995). As described by Ejnar Aerōk, an expert canoe builder in the RMI, he stated: “jerbal ippān doon bwe en maron maan wa e” (cited in Miller, 2010, p. 69). His description emphasises the significance of partnerships and working together when navigating and journeying together in order to move the canoe forward. The kubaak, the outrigger of the wa (canoe) is about “partnerships”. For us as elementary school leaders on Majuro, kubaak encourages us to value collaborative partnerships with each other as well as our communities, PSS, and other stakeholders. Partnerships is an important part of the Kanne Lobal education and leadership framework. It requires ongoing bwebwenato – the inspiring as well as confronting and challenging conversations that should be mediated and negotiated if we and our education stakeholders are to journey together to ensure that the educational services we provide benefits our next generation of young people in the RMI. Navigating ahead the partnerships, mediation, and negotiation are the core values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). As an organic conceptual framework grounded in indigenous values, inspired through our lived experiences, Kanne Lobal provides ideas and concepts for re-thinking education and leadership practices that are conducive to learning and teaching in the schooling context in the RMI. By no means does it provide the solution to the education ills in our nation. However, we argue that Kanne Lobal is a more relevant approach which is much needed for the negatively stigmatised system as a consequence of the various colonial administrations that have and continue to shape and reframe our ideas about what education should be like for us in the RMI. Moreover, Kannel Lobal is our attempt to decolonize the framing of education and leadership, moving our bwebwenato to re-framing conversations of teaching and learning so that our cultural knowledge and values are foregrounded, appreciated, and realised within our education system. Bwebwenato: sharing our stories In this section, we use bwebwenato as a method of gathering and capturing our stories as data. Below we capture our stories and ongoing conversations about the richness in Marshallese cultural knowledge in the outer islands and on Majuro and the potentialities in Kanne Lobal. Danny Jim When I was in third grade (9-10 years of age), during my grandfather’s speech in Arno, an atoll near Majuro, during a time when a wa (canoe) was being blessed and ready to put the canoe into the ocean. My grandfather told me the canoe was a blessing for the family. “Without a canoe, a family cannot provide for them”, he said. The canoe allows for travelling between places to gather food and other sources to provide for the family. My grandfather’s stories about people’s roles within the canoe reminded me that everyone within the family has a responsibility to each other. Our women, mothers and daughters too have a significant responsibility in the journey, in fact, they hold us, care for us, and given strength to their husbands, brothers, and sons. The wise man or elder sits in the middle of the canoe, directing the young man who help to steer. The young man, he does all the work, directed by the older man. They take advice and seek the wisdom of the elder. In front of the canoe, a young boy is placed there and because of his strong and youthful vision, he is able to help the elder as well as the young man on the canoe. The story can be linked to the roles that school leaders, teachers, and students have in schooling. Without each person knowing intricately their role and responsibility, the sight and vision ahead for the collective aspirations of the school and the community is difficult to comprehend. For me, the canoe is symbolic of our educational journey within our education system. As the school leader, a central, trusted, and respected figure in the school, they provide support for teachers who are at the helm, pedagogically striving to provide for their students. For without strong direction from the school leaders and teachers at the helm, the students, like the young boy, cannot foresee their futures, or envisage how education can benefit them. This is why Kanne Lobal is a significant framework for us in the Marshall Islands because within the practice we are able to take heed and empower each other so that all benefit from the process. Kanne Lobal is linked to our culture, an essential part of who we are. We must rely on our own local approaches, rather than relying on others that are not relevant to what we know and how we live in today’s society. One of the things I can tell is that in Majuro, compared to the outer islands, it’s different. In the outer islands, parents bring children together and tell them legends and stories. The elders tell them about the legends and stories – the bwebwenato. Children from outer islands know a lot more about Marshallese legends compared to children from the Majuro atoll. They usually stay close to their parents, observe how to prepare food and all types of Marshallese skills. Loretta Joseph Case There is little Western influence in the outer islands. They grow up learning their own culture with their parents, not having tv. They are closely knit, making their own food, learning to weave. They use fire for cooking food. They are more connected because there are few of them, doing their own culture. For example, if they’re building a house, the ladies will come together and make food to take to the males that are building the house, encouraging them to keep on working - “jemjem maal” (sharpening tools i.e. axe, like encouraging workers to empower them). It’s when they bring food and entertainment. Rubon Rubon Togetherness, work together, sharing of food, these are important practices as a school leader. Jemjem maal – the whole village works together, men working and the women encourage them with food and entertainment. All the young children are involved in all of the cultural practices, cultural transmission is consistently part of their everyday life. These are stronger in the outer islands. Kanne Lobal has the potential to provide solutions using our own knowledge and practices. Connie Joel When new teachers become a teacher, they learn more about their culture in teaching. Teaching raises the question, who are we? A popular saying amongst our people, “Aelon kein ad ej aelon in manit”, means that “Our islands are cultural islands”. Therefore, when we are teaching, and managing the school, we must do this culturally. When we live and breathe, we must do this culturally. There is more socialising with family and extended family. Respect the elderly. When they’re doing things the ladies all get together, in groups and do it. Cut the breadfruit, and preserve the breadfruit and pandanus. They come together and do it. Same as fishing, building houses, building canoes. They use and speak the language often spoken by the older people. There are words that people in the outer islands use and understand language regularly applied by the elderly. Respect elderly and leaders more i.e., chiefs (iroj), commoners (alap), and the workers on the land (ri-jerbal) (social layer under the commoners). All the kids, they gather with their families, and go and visit the chiefs and alap, and take gifts from their land, first produce/food from the plantation (eojōk). Tommy Almet The people are more connected to the culture in the outer islands because they help one another. They don’t have to always buy things by themselves, everyone contributes to the occasion. For instance, for birthdays, boys go fishing, others contribute and all share with everyone. Kanne Lobal is a practice that can bring people together – leaders, teachers, stakeholders. We want our colleagues to keep strong and work together to fix problems like students and teachers’ absenteeism which is a big problem for us in schools. Demetria Malachi The culture in the outer islands are more accessible and exposed to children. In Majuro, there is a mixedness of cultures and knowledges, influenced by Western thinking and practices. Kanne Lobal is an idea that can enhance quality educational purposes for the RMI. We, the school leaders who did GCSL, we want to merge and use this idea because it will help benefit students’ learning and teachers’ teaching. Kanne Lobal will help students to learn and teachers to teach though traditional skills and knowledge. We want to revitalize our ways of life through teaching because it is slowly fading away. Also, we want to have our own Marshallese learning process because it is in our own language making it easier to use and understand. Essentially, we want to proudly use our own ways of teaching from our ancestors showing the appreciation and blessings given to us. Way Forward To think of ways forward is about reflecting on the past and current learnings. Instead of a traditional discussion within a research publication, we have opted to continue our bwebwenato by sharing what we have learnt through the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL) programme. Our bwebwenato does not end in this article and this opportunity to collaborate and partner together in this piece of writing has been a meaningful experience to conceptualise and unpack the Kanne Lobal framework. Our collaborative bwebwenato has enabled us to dig deep into our own wise knowledges for guidance through mediating and negotiating the challenges in education and leadership (Sanga & Houma, 2004). For example, bwe-jen-lale-rara reminds us to inquire, pay attention, and focus on supporting the needs of others. Through enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara, it reminds us to value cultural exchange and reciprocity which will strengthen the development and maintaining of relationships based on ways we continue to honour each other (Nimmer, 2017). We not only continue to support each other, but also help mentor the next generation of school leaders within our education system (Heine, 2002). Education and leadership are all about collaborative partnerships (Sanga & Chu, 2009; Thaman, 1997). Developing partnerships through the GCSL was useful learning for us. It encouraged us to work together, share knowledge, respect each other, and be kind. The values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity) are meaningful in being and becoming and educational leader in the RMI (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Miller, 2010; Nimmer, 2017). These values are meaningful for us practice particularly given the drive by PSS for schools to become accredited. The workshops and meetings delivered during the GCSL in the RMI from 2018 to 2019 about Kanne Lobal has given us strength to share our stories and experiences from the meeting with the stakeholders. But before we met with the stakeholders, we were encouraged to share and speak in our language within our courses: EDP05 (Professional Development and Learning), EDP06 (School Leadership), EDP07 (School Management), EDP08 (Teaching and Learning), and EDP09 (Community Partnerships). In groups, we shared our presentations with our peers, the 15 school leaders in the GCSL programme. We also invited USP RMI staff. They liked the way we presented Kannel Lobal. They provided us with feedback, for example: how the use of the sail on the canoe, the parts and their functions can be conceptualised in education and how they are related to the way that we teach our own young people. Engaging stakeholders in the conceptualisation and design stages of Kanne Lobal strengthened our understanding of leadership and collaborative partnerships. Based on various meetings with the RMI Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) team, PSS general assembly, teachers from the outer islands, and the PSS executive committee, we were able to share and receive feedback on the Kanne Lobal framework. The coordinators of the PREL programme in the RMI were excited by the possibilities around using Kanne Lobal, as a way to teach culture in an inspirational way to Marshallese students. Our Marshallese knowledge, particularly through the proverbial meaning of Kanne Lobal provided so much inspiration and insight for the groups during the presentation which gave us hope and confidence to develop the framework. Kanne Lobal is an organic and indigenous approach, grounded in Marshallese ways of doing things (Heine, 2002; Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Given the persistent presence of colonial processes within the education system and the constant reference to practices and initiatives from the US, Kanne Lobal for us provides a refreshing yet fulfilling experience and makes us feel warm inside because it is something that belongs to all Marshallese people. Conclusion Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices provide meaningful educational and leadership understanding and learnings. They ignite, inspire, and transform thinking and practice. The Kanne Lobal conceptual framework emphasises key concepts and values necessary for collaborative partnerships within education and leadership practices in the RMI. The bwebwenato or talk stories have been insightful and have highlighted the strengths and benefits that our Marshallese ideas and practices possess when looking for appropriate and relevant ways to understand education and leadership. Acknowledgements We want to acknowledge our GCSL cohort of school leaders who have supported us in the development of Kanne Lobal as a conceptual framework. A huge kommol tata to our friends: Joana, Rosana, Loretta, Jellan, Alvin, Ellice, Rolando, Stephen, and Alan. References Benson, C. (2002). Preface. In F. Pene, A. M. Taufe’ulungaki, & C. Benson (Eds.), Tree of Opportunity: re-thinking Pacific Education (p. iv). Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Education. Bessarab, D., Ng’andu, B. (2010). Yarning about yarning as a legitimate method in indigenous research. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 3(1), 37-50. Fa’avae, D., Jones, A., & Manu’atu, L. (2016). Talanoa’i ‘a e talanoa - talking about talanoa: Some dilemmas of a novice researcher. AlterNative: An Indigenous Journal of Indigenous Peoples,12(2),138-150. Heine, H. C. (2002). A Marshall Islands perspective. In F. Pene, A. M. Taufe’ulungaki, & C. Benson (Eds.), Tree of Opportunity: re-thinking Pacific Education (pp. 84 – 90). Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Education. Infoplease Staff (2017, February 28). Marshall Islands, retrieved from https://www.infoplease.com/world/countries/marshall-islands Jetnil-Kijiner, K. (2014). Iep Jaltok: A history of Marshallese literature. (Unpublished masters’ thesis). Honolulu, HW: University of Hawaii. Kabua, J. B. (2004). We are the land, the land is us: The moral responsibility of our education and sustainability. In A.L. Loeak, V.C. Kiluwe and L. Crowl (Eds.), Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, pp. 180 – 191. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific. Kupferman, D. (2004). Jelalokjen in flux: Pitfalls and prospects of contextualising teacher training programmes in the Marshall Islands. Directions: Journal of Educational Studies, 26(1), 42 – 54. http://directions.usp.ac.fj/collect/direct/index/assoc/D1175062.dir/doc.pdf Miller, R. L. (2010). Wa kuk wa jimor: Outrigger canoes, social change, and modern life in the Marshall Islands (Unpublished masters’ thesis). Honolulu, HW: University of Hawaii. Nabobo-Baba, U. (2008). Decolonising framings in Pacific research: Indigenous Fijian vanua research framework as an organic response. AlterNative: An Indigenous Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 4(2), 141-154. Nimmer, N. E. (2017). Documenting a Marshallese indigenous learning framework (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Honolulu, HW: University of Hawaii. Sanga, K., & Houma, S. (2004). Solomon Islands principalship: Roles perceived, performed, preferred, and expected. Directions: Journal of Educational Studies, 26(1), 55-69. Sanga, K., & Chu, C. (2009). Introduction. In K. Sanga & C. Chu (Eds.), Living and Leaving a Legacy of Hope: Stories by New Generation Pacific Leaders (pp. 10-12). NZ: He Parekereke & Victoria University of Wellington. Suaalii-Sauni, T., & Fulu-Aiolupotea, S. M. (2014). Decolonising Pacific research, building Pacific research communities, and developing Pacific research tools: The case of the talanoa and the faafaletui in Samoa. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55(3), 331-344. Taafaki, I., & Fowler, M. K. (2019). Clothing mats of the Marshall Islands: The history, the culture, and the weavers. US: Kindle Direct. Taufe’ulungaki, A. M. (2014). Look back to look forward: A reflective Pacific journey. In M. ‘Otunuku, U. Nabobo-Baba, S. Johansson Fua (Eds.), Of Waves, Winds, and Wonderful Things: A Decade of Rethinking Pacific Education (pp. 1-15). Fiji: USP Press. Thaman, K. H. (1995). Concepts of learning, knowledge and wisdom in Tonga, and their relevance to modern education. Prospects, 25(4), 723-733. Thaman, K. H. (1997). Reclaiming a place: Towards a Pacific concept of education for cultural development. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 106(2), 119-130. Thiong’o, N. W. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Kenya: East African Educational Publishers. Vaioleti, T. (2006). Talanoa research methodology: A developing position on Pacific research. Waikato Journal of Education, 12, 21-34. Walsh, J. M., Heine, H. C., Bigler, C. M., & Stege, M. (2012). Etto nan raan kein: A Marshall Islands history (First Edition). China: Bess Press.
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Scribner, Vaughn. "From Sailor Traps to Tourist Traps: Mermaid-Themed Tourism Destinations in the United States of America." Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 15, no. 2 (October 28, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.21463/shima.144.

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Beginning in the mid-19th Century, American boosters, business owners, and city planners fostered various mermaid-themed/named destinations. In doing so, these men and women contributed to the modern American tourism complex, which relied upon Americans’ efforts to commodify the natural world for market purposes and, in turn, distinguish their locales among a burgeoning network of tourist destinations. This article details 19th Century attempts to mermaid brand particular locations and, subsequently, the development of mermaid themed tourist attractions in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
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Haller, Beth. "Switched at Birth: A Game Changer for All Audiences." M/C Journal 20, no. 3 (June 21, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1266.

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The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Family Network show Switched at Birth tells two stories—one which follows the unique plot of the show, and one about the new openness of television executives toward integrating more people with a variety of visible and invisible physical embodiments, such as hearing loss, into television content. It first aired in 2011 and in 2017 aired its fifth and final season.The show focuses on two teen girls in Kansas City who find out they were switched due to a hospital error on the day of their birth and who grew up with parents who were not biologically related to them. One, Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano), lives with her wealthy parents—a stay-at-home mom Kathryn (Lea Thompson) and a former professional baseball player, now businessman, father John (D.W. Moffett). She has an older brother Toby (Lucas Grabeel) who is into music. In her high school science class, Bay learns about blood types and discovers her parents’ blood types could not have produced her. The family has professional genetic tests done and discovers the switch (ABC Family, “This Is Not a Pipe”).In the pilot episode, Bay’s parents find out that deaf teen, Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc), is actually their daughter. She lives in a working class Hispanic neighbourhood with her hairdresser single mother Regina (Constance Marie) and grandmother Adrianna (Ivonne Coll), both of whom are of Puerto Rican ancestry. Daphne is deaf due to a case of meningitis when she was three, which the rich Kennishes feel happened because of inadequate healthcare provided by working class Regina. Daphne attends an all-deaf school, Carlton.The man who was thought to be her biological father, Angelo Sorrento (Gilles Marini), doesn’t appear in the show until episode 10 but becomes a series regular in season 2. It becomes apparent that Daphne believes her father left because of her deafness; however, as the first season progresses, the real reasons begin to emerge. From the pilot onwards, the show dives into clashes of language, culture, ethnicity, class, and even physical appearance—in one scene in the pilot, the waspy Kennishes ask Regina if she is “Mexican.” As later episodes reveal, many of these physical appearance issues are revealed to have fractured the Vasquez family early on—Daphne is a freckled, strawberry blonde, and her father (who is French and Italian) suspected infidelity.The two families merge when the Kennishes ask Daphne and her mother to move into their guest house in order get to know their daughter better. That forces the Kennishes into the world of deafness, and throughout the show this hearing family therefore becomes a surrogate for a hearing audience’s immersion into Deaf culture.Cultural Inclusivity: The Way ForwardShow creator Lizzy Weiss explained that it was actually the ABC Family network that “suggested making one of the kids disabled” (Academy of Television Arts & Sciences). Weiss was familiar with American Sign Language (ASL) because she had a “classical theatre of the Deaf” course in college. She said, “I had in the back of my head a little bit of background at least about how beautiful the language was. So I said, ‘What if one of the girls is deaf?’” The network thought it was wonderful idea, so she began researching the Deaf community, including spending time at a deaf high school in Los Angeles called Marlton, on which she modelled the Switched at Birth school, Carlton. Weiss (Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) says of the school visit experience:I learned so much that day and spoke to dozens of deaf teenagers about their lives and their experiences. And so, this is, of course, in the middle of writing the pilot, and I said to the network, you know, deaf kids wouldn’t voice orally. We would have to have those scenes only in ASL, and no sound and they said, ‘Great. Let’s do it.’ And frankly, we just kind of grew and grew from there.To accommodate the narrative structure of a television drama, Weiss said it became clear from the beginning that the show would need to use SimCom (simultaneous communication or sign supported speech) for the hearing or deaf characters who were signing so they could speak and sign at the same time. She knew this wasn’t the norm for two actual people communicating in ASL, but the production team worried about having a show that was heavily captioned as this might distance its key—overwhelmingly hearing—teen audience who would have to pay attention to the screen during captioned scenes. However, this did not appear to be the case—instead, viewers were drawn to the show because of its unique sign language-influenced television narrative structure. The show became popular very quickly and, with 3.3 million viewers, became the highest-rated premiere ever on the ABC Family network (Barney).Switched at Birth also received much praise from the media for allowing its deaf actors to communicate using sign language. The Huffington Post television critic Maureen Ryan said, “Allowing deaf characters to talk to each other directly—without a hearing person or a translator present—is a savvy strategy that allows the show to dig deeper into deaf culture and also to treat deaf characters as it would anyone else”. Importantly, it allowed the show to be unique in a way that was found nowhere else on television. “It’s practically avant-garde for television, despite the conventional teen-soap look of the show,” said Ryan.Usually a show’s success is garnered by audience numbers and media critique—by this measure Switched at Birth was a hit. However, programs that portray a disability—in any form—are often the target of criticism, particularly from the communities they attempting to represent. It should be noted that, while actress Katie Leclerc, who plays Daphne, has a condition, Meniere’s disease, which causes hearing loss and vertigo on an intermittent basis, she does not identify as a deaf actress and must use a deaf accent to portray Daphne. However, she is ASL fluent, learning it in high school (Orangejack). This meant her qualifications met the original casting call which said “actress must be deaf or hard of hearing and must speak English well, American Sign Language preferred” (Paz, 2010) Leclerc likens her role to that of any actor to who has to affect body and vocal changes for a role—she gives the example of Hugh Laurie in House, who is British with no limp, but was an American who uses a cane in that show (Bibel).As such, initially, some in the Deaf community complained about her casting though an online petition with 140 signatures (Nielson). Yet many in the Deaf community softened any criticism of the show when they saw the production’s ongoing attention to Deaf cultural details (Grushkin). Finally, any lingering criticisms from the Deaf community were quieted by the many deaf actors hired for the show who perform using ASL. This includes Sean Berdy, who plays Daphne’s best friend Emmett, his onscreen mother, played by actress Marlee Matlin, and Anthony Natale who plays his father; their characters both sign and vocalize in the show. The Emmett character only communicates in ASL and does not vocalise until he falls in love with the hearing character Bay—even then he rarely uses his voice.This seemingly all-round “acceptance” of the show gave the production team more freedom to be innovative—by season 3 the audience was deemed to be so comfortable with captions that the shows began to feature less SimCom and more all-captioned scenes. This lead to the full episode in ASL, a first on American mainstream television.For an Hour, Welcome to Our WorldSwitched at Birth writer Chad Fiveash explained that when the production team came up with the idea for a captioned all-ASL episode, they “didn’t want to do the ASL episode as a gimmick. It needed to be thematically resonant”. As a result, they decided to link the episode to the most significant event in American Deaf history, an event that solidified its status as a cultural community—the 1988 Deaf President Now (DPN) protest at Gallaudet University in Washington. This protest inspired the March 2013 episode for Switched at Birth and aired 25 years to the week that the actual DPN protest happened. This episode makes it clear the show is trying to completely embrace Deaf culture and wants its audience to better understand Deaf identity.DPN was a pivotal moment for Deaf people—it truly solidified members of a global Deaf community who felt more empowered to fight for their rights. Students demanded that Gallaudet—as the premier university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students—no longer have a hearing person as its president. The Gallaudet board of trustees, the majority of whom were hearing, tried to force students and faculty to accept a hearing president; their attitude was that they knew what was best for the deaf persons there. For eight days, deaf people across America and the world rallied around the student protestors, refusing to give in until a deaf president was appointed. Their success came in the form of I. King Jordan, a deaf man who had served as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the time of the protest.The event was covered by media around the world, giving the American Deaf community international attention. Indeed, Gallaudet University says the DPN protest symbolized more than just the hiring of a Deaf president; it brought Deaf issues before the public and “raised the nation’s consciousness of the rights and abilities of deaf and hard of hearing people” (Gallaudet University).The activities of the students and their supporters showed dramatically that in the 1980s deaf people could be galvanized to unite around a common issue, particularly one of great symbolic meaning, such as the Gallaudet presidency. Gallaudet University represents the pinnacle of education for deaf people, not only in the United States but throughout the world. The assumption of its presidency by a person himself deaf announced to the world that deaf Americans were now a mature minority (Van Cleve and Crouch, 172).Deaf people were throwing off the oppression of the hearing world by demanding that their university have someone from their community at its helm. Jankowski (Deaf Empowerment; A Metaphorical Analysis of Conflict) studied the Gallaudet protest within the framework of a metaphor. She found a recurring theme during the DPN protest to be Gallaudet as “plantation”—which metaphorically refers to deaf persons as slaves trying to break free from the grip of the dominant mastery of the hearing world—and she parallels the civil rights movement of African Americans in the 1960s. As an example, Gallaudet was referred to as the “Selma of the Deaf” during the protest, and protest signs used the language of Martin Luther King such as “we still have a dream.” For deaf Americans, the presidency of Gallaudet became a symbol of hope for the future. As Jankowski attests:deaf people perceived themselves as possessing the ability to manage their own kind, pointing to black-managed organization, women-managed organizations, etc., struggling for that same right. They argued that it was a fight for their basic human rights, a struggle to free themselves, to release the hold their ‘masters’ held on them. (“A Metaphorical Analysis”)The creators of the Switched at Birth episode wanted to ensure of these emotions, as well as historical and cultural references, were prevalent in the modern-day, all-ASL episode, titled Uprising. That show therefore wanted to represent both the 1988 DPN protest as well as a current issue in the US—the closing of deaf schools (Anderson). The storyline focuses on the deaf students at the fictitious Carlton School for the Deaf seizing one of the school buildings to stage a protest because the school board has decided to shut down the school and mainstream the deaf students into hearing schools. When the deaf students try to come up with a list of demands, conflicts arise about what the demands should be and whether a pilot program—allowing hearing kids who sign to attend the deaf school—should remain.This show accomplished multiple things with its reach into Deaf history and identity, but it also did something technologically unique for the modern world—it made people pay attention. Because captioning translated the sign language for viewers, Lizzy Weiss, the creator of the series, said, “Every single viewer—deaf or hearing—was forced to put away their phones and iPads and anything else distracting … and focus … you had to read … you couldn’t do anything else. And that made you get into it more. It drew you in” (Stelter). The point, Weiss said, “was about revealing something new to the viewer—what does it feel like to be an outsider? What does it feel like to have to read and focus for an entire episode, like deaf viewers do all the time?” (Stelter). As one deaf reviewer of the Uprising episode said, “For an hour, welcome to our world! A world that’s inconvenient, but one most of us wouldn’t leave if offered a magic pill” (DR_Staff).This episode, more than any other, afforded hearing television viewers an experience perhaps similar to deaf viewers. The New York Times reported that “Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers commented by the thousands after the show, with many saying in effect, “Yes! That’s what it feels like” (Stelter).Continued ResonancesWhat is also unique about the episode is that in teaching the hearing viewers more about the Deaf community, it also reinforced Deaf community pride and even taught young deaf people a bit of their own history. The Deaf community and Gallaudet were very pleased with their history showing up on a television show—the university produced a 30-second commercial which aired within the episode, and held viewing parties. Gallaudet also forwarded the 35 pages of Facebook comments they’d received about the episode to ABC Family and Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz said of the episode (Yahr), “Over the past 25 years, [DPN] has symbolised self-determination and empowerment for deaf and hard of hearing people around the world”. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) also lauded the episode, describing it as “phenomenal and groundbreaking, saying the situation is very real to us” (Stelter)—NAD had been vocally against budget cuts and closings of US deaf schools.Deaf individuals all over the Internet and social media also spoke out about the episode, with overwhelmingly favourable opinions. Deaf blogger Amy Cohen Efron, who participated in 1988′s DPN movement, said that DPN was “a turning point of my life, forcing me to re-examine my own personal identity, and develop self-determinism as a Deaf person” and led to her becoming an activist.When she watched the Uprising episode, she said the symbolic and historical representations in the show resonated with her. In the episode, a huge sign is unfurled on the side of the Carlton School for the Deaf with a girl with a fist in the air under the slogan “Take Back Carlton.” During the DPN protest, the deaf student protesters unfurled a sign that said “Deaf President Now” with the US Capitol in the background; this image has become an iconic symbol of modern Deaf culture. Efron says the image in the television episode was much more militant than the actual DPN sign. However, it could be argued that society now sees the Deaf community as much more militant because of the DPN protest, and that the imagery in the Uprising episode played into that connection. Efron also acknowledged the episode’s strong nod to the Gallaudet student protestors who defied the hearing community’s expectations by practising civil disobedience. As Efron explained, “Society expected that the Deaf people are submissive and accept to whatever decision done by the majority without any of our input and/or participation in the process.”She also argues that the episode educated more than just the hearing community. In addition to DPN, Uprising was filled with other references to Deaf history. For example a glass door to the room at Carlton was covered with posters about people like Helen Keller and Jean-Ferdinand Berthier, a deaf educator in 19th century France who promoted the concept of deaf identity and culture—Efron says most people in the Deaf community have never heard of him. She also claims that the younger Deaf community may also not be aware of the 1988 DPN protest—“It was not in high school textbooks available for students. Many deaf and hard of hearing students are mainstreamed and they have not the slightest idea about the DPN movement, even about the Deaf Community’s ongoing fight against discrimination, prejudice and oppression, along with our victories”.Long before the Uprising episode aired, the Deaf community had been watching Switched at Birth carefully to make sure Deaf culture was accurately represented. Throughout season 3 David Martin created weekly videos in sign language that were an ASL/Deaf cultural analysis of Switched at Birth. He highlighted content he liked and signs that were incorrect, a kind of a Deaf culture/ASL fact checker. From the Uprising episode, he said he thought this quote from Marlee Matlin’s character said it all, “Until hearing people walk a day in our shoes they will never understand” (Martin). That succinctly states what the all-ASL episode was trying to capture—creating an awareness of Deaf people’s cultural experience and their oppression in hearing society.Even a deaf person who was an early critic of Switched at Birth because of the hiring of Katie Leclerc and the use of SimCom admitted he was impressed with the all-ASL episode (Grushkin):all too often, we see media accounts of Deaf people which play into our society’s perceptions of Deaf people: as helpless, handicapped individuals who are in need of fixes such as cochlear implants in order to “restore” us to society. Almost never do we see accounts of Deaf people as healthy, capable individuals who live ordinary, successful lives without necessarily conforming to the Hearing ‘script’ for how we should be. And important issues such as language rights or school closings are too often virtually ignored by the general media.In addition to the episode being widely discussed within the Deaf community, the mainstream news media also covered Uprising intensely, seeing it as a meaningful cultural moment, not just for the Deaf community but for popular culture in general. Lacob wrote that he realises that hearing viewers probably won’t understand what it means to be a deaf person in modern America, but he believes that the episodeposits that there are moments of understanding, commonalities, and potential bridge-building between these two communities. And the desire for understanding is the first step toward a more inclusive and broad-minded future.He continues:the significance of this moment can’t be undervalued, nor can the show’s rich embrace of deaf history, manifested here in the form of Gallaudet and the historical figures whose photographs and stories are papered on the windows of Carlton during the student protest. What we’re seeing on screen—within the confines of a teen drama, no less—is an engaged exploration of a culture and a civil rights movement brought to life with all of the color and passion it deserves. It may be 25 years since Gallaudet, but the dreams of those protesters haven’t faded. And they—and the ideals of identity and equality that they express—are most definitely being heard.Lacob’s analysis was praised by several Deaf people—by a Deaf graduate student who teaches a Disability in Popular Culture course and by a Gallaudet student who said, “From someone who is deaf, and not ashamed of it either, let me say right here and now: that was the most eloquent piece of writing by someone hearing I have ever seen” (Emma72). The power of the Uprising episode illustrated a political space where “groups actively fuse and blend their culture with the mainstream culture” (Foley 119, as cited in Chang 3). Switched at Birth—specifically the Uprising episode—has indeed fused Deaf culture and ASL into a place in mainstream television culture.ReferencesABC Family. “Switched at Birth Deaf Actor Search.” Facebook (2010). <https://www.facebook.com/SwitchedSearch>.———. “This Is Not a Pipe.” Switched at Birth. Pilot episode. 6 June 2011. <http://freeform.go.com/shows/switched-at-birth>.———. “Not Hearing Loss, Deaf Gain.” Switched at Birth. YouTube video, 11 Feb. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5W604uSkrk>.Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “Talking Diversity: ABC Family’s Switched at Birth.” Emmys.com (Feb. 2012). <http://www.emmys.com/content/webcast-talking-diversity-abc-familys-switched-birth>.Anderson, G. “‘Switched at Birth’ Celebrates 25th Anniversary of ‘Deaf President Now’.” Pop-topia (5 Mar. 2013). <http://www.pop-topia.com/switched-at-birth-celebrates-25th-anniversary-of-deaf-president-now/>.Barney, C. “’Switched at Birth’ Another Winner for ABC Family.” Contra Costa News (29 June 2011). <http://www.mercurynews.com/tv/ci_18369762>.Bibel, S. “‘Switched at Birth’s Katie LeClerc Is Proud to Represent the Deaf Community.” Xfinity TV blog (20 June 2011). <http://xfinity.comcast.net/blogs/tv/2011/06/20/switched-at-births-katie-leclerc-is-proud-to-represent-the-deaf-community/>.Chang, H. “Re-Examining the Rhetoric of the ‘Cultural Border’.” Essay presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Dec. 1988.DR_Staff. “Switched at Birth: How #TakeBackCarlton Made History.” deafReview (6 Mar. 2013). <http://deafreview.com/deafreview-news/switched-at-birth-how-takebackcarlton-made-history/>.Efron, Amy Cohen. “Switched At Birth: Uprising – Deaf Adult’s Commentary.” Deaf World as I See It (Mar. 2013). <http://www.deafeyeseeit.com/2013/03/05/sabcommentary/>.Emma72. “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest.” Comment. The Daily Beast (28 Feb. 2013). <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/abc-family-s-switched-at-birth-asl-episode-recalls-gallaudet-protest.html>.Fiveash, Chad. Personal interview. 17 Jan. 2014.Gallaudet University. “The Issues.” Deaf President Now (2013). <http://www.gallaudet.edu/dpn_home/issues.html>.Grushkin, D. “A Cultural Review. ASL Challenged.” Switched at Birth Facebook page. Facebook (2013). <https://www.facebook.com/SwitchedatBirth/posts/508748905835658>.Jankowski, K.A. Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric. Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1997.———. “A Metaphorical Analysis of Conflict at the Gallaudet Protest.” Unpublished seminar paper presented at the University of Maryland, 1990.Lacob, J. “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest.” The Daily Beast 28 Feb. 2013. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/abc-family-s-switched-at-birth-asl-episode-recalls-gallaudet-protest.html>.Martin, D. “Switched at Birth Season 2 Episode 9 ‘Uprising’ ASL/Deaf Cultural Analysis.” David Martin YouTube channel (6 Mar. 2013). <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA0vqCysoVU>.Nielson, R. “Petitioned ABC Family and the ‘Switched at Birth’ Series, Create Responsible, Accurate, and Family-Oriented TV Programming.” Change.org (2011). <http://www.change.org/p/abc-family-and-the-switched-at-birth-series-create-responsible-accurate-and-family-oriented-tv-programming>.Orangejack. “Details about Katie Leclerc’s Hearing Loss.” My ASL Journey Blog (29 June 2011). <http://asl.orangejack.com/details-about-katie-leclercs-hearing-loss>.Paz, G. “Casting Call: Open Auditions for Switched at Birth by ABC Family.” Series & TV (3 Oct. 2010). <http://seriesandtv.com/casting-call-open-auditions-for-switched-at-birth-by-abc-family/4034>.Ryan, Maureen. “‘Switched at Birth’ Season 1.5 Has More Drama and Subversive Soapiness.” The Huffington Post (31 Aug. 2012). <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/switched-at-birth-season-1_b_1844957.html>.Stelter, B. “Teaching Viewers to Hear with Their Eyes Only.” The New York Times 8 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/arts/television/teaching-viewers-to-hear-the-tv-with-eyes-only.html>.Van Cleve, J.V., and B.A. Crouch. A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America. DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1989.Yahr, E. “Gallaudet University Uses All-Sign Language Episode of ‘Switched at Birth’ to Air New Commercial.” The Washington Post 3 Mar. 2013 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/gallaudet-university-uses-all-sign-language-episode-of-switched-at-birth-to-air-new-commercial/2013/03/04/0017a45a-8508-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_blog.html>.
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22

Noyce, Diana Christine. "Coffee Palaces in Australia: A Pub with No Beer." M/C Journal 15, no. 2 (May 2, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.464.

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Abstract:
The term “coffee palace” was primarily used in Australia to describe the temperance hotels that were built in the last decades of the 19th century, although there are references to the term also being used to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom (Denby 174). Built in response to the worldwide temperance movement, which reached its pinnacle in the 1880s in Australia, coffee palaces were hotels that did not serve alcohol. This was a unique time in Australia’s architectural development as the economic boom fuelled by the gold rush in the 1850s, and the demand for ostentatious display that gathered momentum during the following years, afforded the use of richly ornamental High Victorian architecture and resulted in very majestic structures; hence the term “palace” (Freeland 121). The often multi-storied coffee palaces were found in every capital city as well as regional areas such as Geelong and Broken Hill, and locales as remote as Maria Island on the east coast of Tasmania. Presented as upholding family values and discouraging drunkenness, the coffee palaces were most popular in seaside resorts such as Barwon Heads in Victoria, where they catered to families. Coffee palaces were also constructed on a grand scale to provide accommodation for international and interstate visitors attending the international exhibitions held in Sydney (1879) and Melbourne (1880 and 1888). While the temperance movement lasted well over 100 years, the life of coffee palaces was relatively short-lived. Nevertheless, coffee palaces were very much part of Australia’s cultural landscape. In this article, I examine the rise and demise of coffee palaces associated with the temperance movement and argue that coffee palaces established in the name of abstinence were modelled on the coffee houses that spread throughout Europe and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Enlightenment—a time when the human mind could be said to have been liberated from inebriation and the dogmatic state of ignorance. The Temperance Movement At a time when newspapers are full of lurid stories about binge-drinking and the alleged ill-effects of the liberalisation of licensing laws, as well as concerns over the growing trend of marketing easy-to-drink products (such as the so-called “alcopops”) to teenagers, it is difficult to think of a period when the total suppression of the alcohol trade was seriously debated in Australia. The cause of temperance has almost completely vanished from view, yet for well over a century—from 1830 to the outbreak of the Second World War—the control or even total abolition of the liquor trade was a major political issue—one that split the country, brought thousands onto the streets in demonstrations, and influenced the outcome of elections. Between 1911 and 1925 referenda to either limit or prohibit the sale of alcohol were held in most States. While moves to bring about abolition failed, Fitzgerald notes that almost one in three Australian voters expressed their support for prohibition of alcohol in their State (145). Today, the temperance movement’s platform has largely been forgotten, killed off by the practical example of the United States, where prohibition of the legal sale of alcohol served only to hand control of the liquor traffic to organised crime. Coffee Houses and the Enlightenment Although tea has long been considered the beverage of sobriety, it was coffee that came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcohol. When the first coffee house opened in London in the early 1650s, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from the Middle East—hot, bitter, and black as soot. But those who tried coffee were, reports Ellis, soon won over, and coffee houses were opened across London, Oxford, and Cambridge and, in the following decades, Europe and North America. Tea, equally exotic, entered the English market slightly later than coffee (in 1664), but was more expensive and remained a rarity long after coffee had become ubiquitous in London (Ellis 123-24). The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak “small beer” and wine. Both were safer to drink than water, which was liable to be contaminated. Coffee, like beer, was made using boiled water and, therefore, provided a new and safe alternative to alcoholic drinks. There was also the added benefit that those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert rather than mildly inebriated (Standage 135). It was also thought that coffee had a stimulating effect upon the “nervous system,” so much so that the French called coffee une boisson intellectuelle (an intellectual beverage), because of its stimulating effect on the brain (Muskett 71). In Oxford, the British called their coffee houses “penny universities,” a penny then being the price of a cup of coffee (Standage 158). Coffee houses were, moreover, more than places that sold coffee. Unlike other institutions of the period, rank and birth had no place (Ellis 59). The coffee house became the centre of urban life, creating a distinctive social culture by treating all customers as equals. Egalitarianism, however, did not extend to women—at least not in London. Around its egalitarian (but male) tables, merchants discussed and conducted business, writers and poets held discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments, and philosophers deliberated ideas and reforms. For the price of a cup (or “dish” as it was then known) of coffee, a man could read the latest pamphlets and newsletters, chat with other patrons, strike business deals, keep up with the latest political gossip, find out what other people thought of a new book, or take part in literary or philosophical discussions. Like today’s Internet, Twitter, and Facebook, Europe’s coffee houses functioned as an information network where ideas circulated and spread from coffee house to coffee house. In this way, drinking coffee in the coffee house became a metaphor for people getting together to share ideas in a sober environment, a concept that remains today. According to Standage, this information network fuelled the Enlightenment (133), prompting an explosion of creativity. Coffee houses provided an entirely new environment for political, financial, scientific, and literary change, as people gathered, discussed, and debated issues within their walls. Entrepreneurs and scientists teamed up to form companies to exploit new inventions and discoveries in manufacturing and mining, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution (Standage 163). The stock market and insurance companies also had their birth in the coffee house. As a result, coffee was seen to be the epitome of modernity and progress and, as such, was the ideal beverage for the Age of Reason. By the 19th century, however, the era of coffee houses had passed. Most of them had evolved into exclusive men’s clubs, each geared towards a certain segment of society. Tea was now more affordable and fashionable, and teahouses, which drew clientele from both sexes, began to grow in popularity. Tea, however, had always been Australia’s most popular non-alcoholic drink. Tea (and coffee) along with other alien plants had been part of the cargo unloaded onto Australian shores with the First Fleet in 1788. Coffee, mainly from Brazil and Jamaica, remained a constant import but was taxed more heavily than tea and was, therefore, more expensive. Furthermore, tea was much easier to make than coffee. To brew tea, all that is needed is to add boiling water, coffee, in contrast, required roasting, grinding and brewing. According to Symons, until the 1930s, Australians were the largest consumers of tea in the world (19). In spite of this, and as coffee, since its introduction into Europe, was regarded as the antidote to alcohol, the temperance movement established coffee palaces. In the early 1870s in Britain, the temperance movement had revived the coffee house to provide an alternative to the gin taverns that were so attractive to the working classes of the Industrial Age (Clarke 5). Unlike the earlier coffee house, this revived incarnation provided accommodation and was open to men, women and children. “Cheap and wholesome food,” was available as well as reading rooms supplied with newspapers and periodicals, and games and smoking rooms (Clarke 20). In Australia, coffee palaces did not seek the working classes, as clientele: at least in the cities they were largely for the nouveau riche. Coffee Palaces The discovery of gold in 1851 changed the direction of the Australian economy. An investment boom followed, with an influx of foreign funds and English banks lending freely to colonial speculators. By the 1880s, the manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy boomed and land prices were highly inflated. Governments shared in the wealth and ploughed money into urban infrastructure, particularly railways. Spurred on by these positive economic conditions and the newly extended inter-colonial rail network, international exhibitions were held in both Sydney and Melbourne. To celebrate modern technology and design in an industrial age, international exhibitions were phenomena that had spread throughout Europe and much of the world from the mid-19th century. According to Davison, exhibitions were “integral to the culture of nineteenth century industrialising societies” (158). In particular, these exhibitions provided the colonies with an opportunity to demonstrate to the world their economic power and achievements in the sciences, the arts and education, as well as to promote their commerce and industry. Massive purpose-built buildings were constructed to house the exhibition halls. In Sydney, the Garden Palace was erected in the Botanic Gardens for the 1879 Exhibition (it burnt down in 1882). In Melbourne, the Royal Exhibition Building, now a World Heritage site, was built in the Carlton Gardens for the 1880 Exhibition and extended for the 1888 Centennial Exhibition. Accommodation was required for the some one million interstate and international visitors who were to pass through the gates of the Garden Palace in Sydney. To meet this need, the temperance movement, keen to provide alternative accommodation to licensed hotels, backed the establishment of Sydney’s coffee palaces. The Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company was formed in 1878 to operate and manage a number of coffee palaces constructed during the 1870s. These were designed to compete with hotels by “offering all the ordinary advantages of those establishments without the allurements of the drink” (Murdoch). Coffee palaces were much more than ordinary hotels—they were often multi-purpose or mixed-use buildings that included a large number of rooms for accommodation as well as ballrooms and other leisure facilities to attract people away from pubs. As the Australian Town and Country Journal reveals, their services included the supply of affordable, wholesome food, either in the form of regular meals or occasional refreshments, cooked in kitchens fitted with the latest in culinary accoutrements. These “culinary temples” also provided smoking rooms, chess and billiard rooms, and rooms where people could read books, periodicals and all the local and national papers for free (121). Similar to the coffee houses of the Enlightenment, the coffee palaces brought businessmen, artists, writers, engineers, and scientists attending the exhibitions together to eat and drink (non-alcoholic), socialise and conduct business. The Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace located in York Street in Sydney produced a practical guide for potential investors and businessmen titled International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney. It included information on the location of government departments, educational institutions, hospitals, charitable organisations, and embassies, as well as a list of the tariffs on goods from food to opium (1–17). Women, particularly the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were a formidable force in the temperance movement (intemperance was generally regarded as a male problem and, more specifically, a husband problem). Murdoch argues, however, that much of the success of the push to establish coffee palaces was due to male politicians with business interests, such as the one-time Victorian premiere James Munro. Considered a stern, moral church-going leader, Munro expanded the temperance movement into a fanatical force with extraordinary power, which is perhaps why the temperance movement had its greatest following in Victoria (Murdoch). Several prestigious hotels were constructed to provide accommodation for visitors to the international exhibitions in Melbourne. Munro was responsible for building many of the city’s coffee palaces, including the Victoria (1880) and the Federal Coffee Palace (1888) in Collins Street. After establishing the Grand Coffee Palace Company, Munro took over the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor) in 1886. Munro expanded the hotel to accommodate some of the two million visitors who were to attend the Centenary Exhibition, renamed it the Grand Coffee Palace, and ceremoniously burnt its liquor licence at the official opening (Murdoch). By 1888 there were more than 50 coffee palaces in the city of Melbourne alone and Munro held thousands of shares in coffee palaces, including those in Geelong and Broken Hill. With its opening planned to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Australia and the 1888 International Exhibition, the construction of the Federal Coffee Palace, one of the largest hotels in Australia, was perhaps the greatest monument to the temperance movement. Designed in the French Renaissance style, the façade was embellished with statues, griffins and Venus in a chariot drawn by four seahorses. The building was crowned with an iron-framed domed tower. New passenger elevators—first demonstrated at the Sydney Exhibition—allowed the building to soar to seven storeys. According to the Federal Coffee Palace Visitor’s Guide, which was presented to every visitor, there were three lifts for passengers and others for luggage. Bedrooms were located on the top five floors, while the stately ground and first floors contained majestic dining, lounge, sitting, smoking, writing, and billiard rooms. There were electric service bells, gaslights, and kitchens “fitted with the most approved inventions for aiding proficients [sic] in the culinary arts,” while the luxury brand Pears soap was used in the lavatories and bathrooms (16–17). In 1891, a spectacular financial crash brought the economic boom to an abrupt end. The British economy was in crisis and to meet the predicament, English banks withdrew their funds in Australia. There was a wholesale collapse of building companies, mortgage banks and other financial institutions during 1891 and 1892 and much of the banking system was halted during 1893 (Attard). Meanwhile, however, while the eastern States were in the economic doldrums, gold was discovered in 1892 at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and, within two years, the west of the continent was transformed. As gold poured back to the capital city of Perth, the long dormant settlement hurriedly caught up and began to emulate the rest of Australia, including the construction of ornately detailed coffee palaces (Freeman 130). By 1904, Perth had 20 coffee palaces. When the No. 2 Coffee Palace opened in Pitt Street, Sydney, in 1880, the Australian Town and Country Journal reported that coffee palaces were “not only fashionable, but appear to have acquired a permanent footing in Sydney” (121). The coffee palace era, however, was relatively short-lived. Driven more by reformist and economic zeal than by good business sense, many were in financial trouble when the 1890’s Depression hit. Leading figures in the temperance movement were also involved in land speculation and building societies and when these schemes collapsed, many, including Munro, were financially ruined. Many of the palaces closed or were forced to apply for liquor licences in order to stay afloat. Others developed another life after the temperance movement’s influence waned and the coffee palace fad faded, and many were later demolished to make way for more modern buildings. The Federal was licensed in 1923 and traded as the Federal Hotel until its demolition in 1973. The Victoria, however, did not succumb to a liquor licence until 1967. The Sydney Coffee Palace in Woolloomooloo became the Sydney Eye Hospital and, more recently, smart apartments. Some fine examples still survive as reminders of Australia’s social and cultural heritage. The Windsor in Melbourne’s Spring Street and the Broken Hill Hotel, a massive three-story iconic pub in the outback now called simply “The Palace,” are some examples. Tea remained the beverage of choice in Australia until the 1950s when the lifting of government controls on the importation of coffee and the influence of American foodways coincided with the arrival of espresso-loving immigrants. As Australians were introduced to the espresso machine, the short black, the cappuccino, and the café latte and (reminiscent of the Enlightenment), the post-war malaise was shed in favour of the energy and vigour of modernist thought and creativity, fuelled in at least a small part by caffeine and the emergent café culture (Teffer). Although the temperance movement’s attempt to provide an alternative to the ubiquitous pubs failed, coffee has now outstripped the consumption of tea and today’s café culture ensures that wherever coffee is consumed, there is the possibility of a continuation of the Enlightenment’s lively discussions, exchange of news, and dissemination of ideas and information in a sober environment. References Attard, Bernard. “The Economic History of Australia from 1788: An Introduction.” EH.net Encyclopedia. 5 Feb. (2012) ‹http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/attard.australia›. Blainey, Anna. “The Prohibition and Total Abstinence Movement in Australia 1880–1910.” Food, Power and Community: Essays in the History of Food and Drink. Ed. Robert Dare. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1999. 142–52. Boyce, Francis Bertie. “Shall I Vote for No License?” An address delivered at the Convention of the Parramatta Branch of New South Wales Alliance, 3 September 1906. 3rd ed. Parramatta: New South Wales Alliance, 1907. Clarke, James Freeman. Coffee Houses and Coffee Palaces in England. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1882. “Coffee Palace, No. 2.” Australian Town and Country Journal. 17 Jul. 1880: 121. Davison, Graeme. “Festivals of Nationhood: The International Exhibitions.” Australian Cultural History. Eds. S. L. Goldberg and F. B. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 158–77. Denby, Elaine. Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Ellis, Markman. The Coffee House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. Federal Coffee Palace. The Federal Coffee Palace Visitors’ Guide to Melbourne, Its Suburbs, and Other Parts of the Colony of Victoria: Views of the Principal Public and Commercial Buildings in Melbourne, With a Bird’s Eye View of the City; and History of the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, etc. Melbourne: Federal Coffee House Company, 1888. Fitzgerald, Ross, and Trevor Jordan. Under the Influence: A History of Alcohol in Australia. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2009. Freeland, John. The Australian Pub. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1977. Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace. International Exhibition Visitors Pocket Guide to Sydney, Restaurant and Temperance Hotel. Sydney: Johnson’s Temperance Coffee Palace, 1879. Mitchell, Ann M. “Munro, James (1832–1908).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National U, 2006-12. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/munro-james-4271/text6905›. Murdoch, Sally. “Coffee Palaces.” Encyclopaedia of Melbourne. Eds. Andrew Brown-May and Shurlee Swain. 5 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00371b.htm›. Muskett, Philip E. The Art of Living in Australia. New South Wales: Kangaroo Press, 1987. Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker & Company, 2005. Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company Limited. Memorandum of Association of the Sydney Coffee Palace Hotel Company, Ltd. Sydney: Samuel Edward Lees, 1879. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Teffer, Nicola. Coffee Customs. Exhibition Catalogue. Sydney: Customs House, 2005.
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23

Fordham, Helen A. "Friends and Companions: Aspects of Romantic Love in Australian Marriage." M/C Journal 15, no. 6 (October 3, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.570.

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Introduction The decline of marriage in the West has been extensively researched over the last three decades (Carmichael and Whittaker; de Vaus; Coontz; Beck-Gernshein). Indeed, it was fears that the institution would be further eroded by the legalisation of same sex unions internationally that provided the impetus for the Australian government to amend the Marriage Act (1961). These amendments in 2004 sought to strengthen marriage by explicitly defining, for the first time, marriage as a legal partnership between one man and one woman. The subsequent heated debates over the discriminatory nature of this definition have been illuminating, particularly in the way they have highlighted the ongoing social significance of marriage, even at a time it is seen to be in decline. Demographic research about partnering practices (Carmichael and Whittaker; Simons; Parker; Penman) indicates that contemporary marriages are more temporary, fragile and uncertain than in previous generations. Modern marriages are now less about a permanent and “inescapable” union between a dominant man and a submissive female for the purposes of authorised sex, legal progeny and financial security, and more about a commitment between two social equals for the mutual exchange of affection and companionship (Croome). Less research is available, however, about how couples themselves reconcile the inherited constructions of romantic love as selfless and unending, with trends that clearly indicate that romantic love is not forever, ideal or exclusive. Civil marriage ceremonies provide one source of data about representations of love. Civil unions constituted almost 70 per cent of all marriages in Australia in 2010, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The civil marriage ceremony has both a legal and symbolic role. It is a legal contract insofar as it prescribes a legal arrangement with certain rights and responsibilities between two consenting adults and outlines an expectation that marriage is voluntarily entered into for life. The ceremony is also a public ritual that requires couples to take what are usually private feelings for each other and turn them into a public performance as a way of legitimating their relationship. Consistent with the conventions of performance, couples generally customise the rest of the ceremony by telling the story of their courtship, and in so doing they often draw upon the language and imagery of the Western Romantic tradition to convey the personal meaning and social significance of their decision. This paper explores how couples construct the idea of love in their relationship, first by examining the western history of romantic love and then by looking at how this discourse is invoked by Australians in the course of developing civil marriage ceremonies in collaboration with the author. A History of Romantic Love There are many definitions of romantic love, but all share similar elements including an intense emotional and physical attraction, an idealisation of each other, and a desire for an enduring and unending commitment that can overcome all obstacles (Gottschall and Nordlund; Janowiak and Fischer). Romantic love has historically been associated with heightened passions and intense almost irrational or adolescent feelings. Charles Lindholm’s list of clichés that accompany the idea of romantic love include: “love is blind, love overwhelms, a life without love is not worth living, marriage should be for love alone and anything less is worthless and a sham” (5). These elements, which invoke love as sacred, unending and unique, perpetuate past cultural associations of the term. Romantic love was first documented in Ancient Rome where intense feelings were seen as highly suspect and a threat to the stability of the family, which was the primary economic, social and political unit. Roman historian Plutarch viewed romantic love based upon strong personal attraction as disruptive to the family, and he expressed a fear that romantic love would become the norm for Romans (Lantz 352). During the Middle Ages romantic love emerged as courtly love and, once again, the conventions that shaped its expression grew out of an effort to control excessive emotions and sublimate sexual desire, which were seen as threats to social stability. Courtly love, according to Marilyn Yalom, was seen as an “irresistible and inexhaustible passion; a fatal love that overcomes suffering and even death” (66). Feudal social structures had grounded marriage in property, while the Catholic Church had declared marriage a sacrament and a ceremony through which God’s grace could be obtained. In this context courtly love emerged as a way of dealing with the conflict between the individual and family choices over the martial partner. Courtly love is about a pure ideal of love in which the knight serves his unattainable lady, and, by carrying out feats in her honour, reaches spiritual perfection. The focus on the aesthetic ideal was a way to fulfil male and female emotional needs outside of marriage, while avoiding adultery. Romantic love re-appeared again in the mid-eighteenth century, but this time it was associated with marriage. Intellectuals and writers led the trend normalising romantic love in marriage as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s valorisation of reason, science and materialism over emotion. Romantics objected to the pragmatism and functionality induced by industrialisation, which they felt destroyed the idea of the mysterious and transcendental nature of love, which could operate as a form of secular salvation. Love could not be bought or sold, argued the Romantics, “it is mysterious, true and deep, spontaneous and compelling” (Lindholm 5). Romantic love also emerged as an expression of the personal autonomy and individualisation that accompanied the rise of industrial society. As Lanz suggests, romantic love was part of the critical reflexivity of the Enlightenment and a growing belief that individuals could find self actualisation through the expression and expansion of their “emotional and intellectual capacities in union with another” (354). Thus it was romantic love, which privileges the feelings and wishes of an individual in mate selection, that came to be seen as a bid for freedom by the offspring of the growing middle classes coerced into marriage for financial or property reasons. Throughout the 19th century romantic love was seen as a solution to the dehumanising forces of industrialisation and urbanisation. The growth of the competitive workplace—which required men to operate in a restrained and rational manner—saw an increase in the search for emotional support and intimacy within the domestic domain. It has been argued that “love was the central preoccupation of middle class men from the 1830s until the end of the 19th century” (Stearns and Knapp 771). However, the idealisation of the aesthetic and purity of love impacted marriage relations by casting the wife as pure and marital sex as a duty. As a result, husbands pursued sexual and romantic relationships outside marriage. It should be noted that even though love became cemented as the basis for marriage in the 19th century, romantic love was still viewed suspiciously by religious groups who saw strong affection between couples as an erosion of the fundamental role of the husband in disciplining his wife. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries romantic love was further impacted by urbanisation and migration, which undermined the emotional support provided by extended families. According to Stephanie Coontz, it was the growing independence and mobility of couples that saw romantic love in marriage consolidated as the place in which an individual’s emotional and social needs could be fully satisfied. Coontz says that the idea that women could only be fulfilled through marriage, and that men needed women to organise their social life, reached its heights in the 1950s (25-30). Changes occurred to the structure of marriage in the 1960s when control over fertility meant that sex was available outside of marriage. Education, equality and feminism also saw women reject marriage as their only option for fulfilment. Changes to Family Law Acts in western jurisdictions in the 1970s provided for no-fault divorce, and as divorce lost its stigma it became acceptable for women to leave failing marriages. These social shifts removed institutional controls on marriage and uncoupled the original sexual, emotional and financial benefits packaged into marriage. The resulting individualisation of personal lifestyle choices for men and women disrupted romantic conventions, and according to James Dowd romantic love came to be seen as an “investment” in the “future” that must be “approached carefully and rationally” (552). It therefore became increasingly difficult to sustain the idea of love as a powerful, mysterious and divine force beyond reason. Methodology In seeking to understand how contemporary partnering practices are reconstituting romantic love, I draw upon anecdotal data gathered over a nine-year period from my experiences as a marriage celebrant. In the course of personalising marriage ceremonies, I pose a series of questions designed to assist couples to explain the significance of their relationship. I generally ask brides and grooms why they love their fiancé, why they want to legalise their relationship, what they most treasure about their partner, and how their lives have been changed by their relationship. These questions help couples to reflexively interrogate their own relationship, and by talking about their commitment in concrete terms, they produce the images and descriptions that can be used to describe for guests the internal motivations and sentiments that have led to their decision to marry. I have had couples, when prompted to explain how they know the other person loves them say, in effect: “I know that he loves me because he brings me a cup of coffee every morning” or “I know that she loves me because she takes care of me so well.” These responses are grounded in a realism that helps to convey a sense of sincerity and authenticity about the relationship to the couple’s guests. This realism also helps to address the cynicism about the plausibility of enduring love. The brides and grooms in this sample of 300 couples were a socially, culturally and economically diverse group, and they provided a wide variety of responses ranging from deeply nuanced insights into the nature of their relationship, to admissions that their feelings were so private and deeply felt that words were insufficient to convey their significance. Reoccurring themes, however, emerged across the cases, and it is evident that even as marriage partnerships may be entered into for a variety of reasons, romantic love remains the mechanism by which couples talk of their feelings for each other. Australian Love and Marriage Australians' attitudes to romantic love and marriage have, understandably, been shaped by western understandings of romantic love. It is evident, however, that the demands of late modern capitalist society, with its increased literacy, economic independence and sexual equality between men and women, have produced marriage as a negotiable contract between social equals. For some, like Carol Pateman, this sense of equality within marriage may be illusory. Nonetheless, the drive for individual self-fulfilment by both the bride and groom produces a raft of challenges to traditional ideas of marriage as couples struggle to find a balance between independence and intimacy; between family and career; and between pursuing personal goals and the goals of their partners. This shift in the nature of marriage has implications for the “quest for undying romantic love,” which according to Anthony Giddens has been replaced by other forms of relationship, "each entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it” (qtd. in Lindholm 6). The impact of these social changes on the nature of romantic love in marriage is evident in how couples talk about their relationship in the course of preparing a ceremony. Many couples describe the person they are marrying as their best friend, and friendship is central to their commitment. This description supports research by V.K. Oppenheimer which indicates that many contemporary couples have a more “egalitarian collaborative approach to marriage” (qtd. in Carmichael and Whittaker 25). It is also standard for couples to note in ceremonies that they make each other happy and contented, with many commenting upon how their partners have helped to bring focus and perspective to their work-oriented lives. These comments tend to invoke marriage as a refuge from the isolation, competition, and dehumanising elements of workplaces. Since emotional support is central to the marriage contract, it is not surprising that care for each other is another reoccurring theme in ceremonies. Many brides and grooms not only explicitly say they are well taken care of by their partner, but also express admiration for their partner’s treatment of their families and friends. This behaviour appears to be seen as an indicator of the individual’s capacity for support and commitment to family values. Many couples admire partner’s kindness, generosity and level of personal self-sacrifice in maintaining the relationship. It is also not uncommon for brides and grooms to say they have been changed by their love: become kinder, more considerate and more tolerant. Honesty, communication skills and persistence are also attributes that are valued. Brides and grooms who have strong communication skills are also praised. This may refer to interpersonal competency and the willingness to acquire the skills necessary to negotiate the endless compromises in contemporary marriage now that individualisation has undermined established rules, rituals and roles. Persistence and the ability not to be discouraged by setbacks is also a reoccurring theme, and this connects with the idea that marriage is work. Many couples promise to grow together in their marriage and to both take responsibility for the health of their relationship. This promise implies awareness that marriage is not the fantasy of happily ever after produced in romantic popular culture, but rather an arrangement that requires hard work and conscious commitment, particularly in building a union amidst many competing options and distractions. Many couples talk about their relationship in terms of companionship and shared interests, values and goals. It is also not uncommon for couples to say that they admire their partner for supporting them to achieve their life goals or for exposing them to a wider array of lifestyle choices and options like travel or study. These examples of interdependence appear to make explicit that couples still see marriage as a vehicle for personal freedom and self-realisation. The death of love is also alluded to in marriage ceremonies. Couples talk of failed past relationships, but these are produced positively as a mechanism that enables the couple to know that they have now found an enduring relationship. It is also evident that for many couples the decision to marry is seen as the formalisation of a preexisting commitment rather than the gateway to a new life. This is consistent with figures that show that 72 per cent of Australian couples chose to cohabit before marriage (Simons 48), and that cohabitation has become the “normative pathway to marriage” (Penman 26). References to children also feature in marriage ceremonies, and for the couples I have worked with marriage is generally seen as the pre-requisite for children. Couples also often talk about “being ready” for marriage. This seems to refer to being financially prepared. Robyn Parker citing the research of K. Edin concludes that for many modern couples “rushing into marriage before being ‘set’ is irresponsible—marrying well (in the sense of being well prepared) is the way to avoid divorce” (qtd. in Parker 81). From this overview of reoccurring themes in the production of Australian ceremonies it is clear that romantic love continues to be associated with marriage. However, couples describe a more grounded and companionable attachment. These more practical and personalised sentiments serve to meet both the public expectation that romantic love is a precondition for marriage, while also avoiding the production of romantic love in the ceremony as an empty cliché. Grounded descriptions of love reveal that attraction does not have to be overwhelming and unconquerable. Indeed, couples who have lived together and are intimately acquainted with each other’s habits and disposition, appear to be most comfortable expressing their commitment to each other in more temperate, but no less deeply felt, terms. Conclusion This paper has considered how brides and grooms constitute romantic love within the shifting partnering practices of contemporary Australia. It is evident “in the midst of significant social and economic change and at a time when individual rights and freedom of choice are important cultural values” marriage remains socially significant (Simons 50). This significance is partially conveyed through the language of romantic love, which, while freighted with an array of cultural and historical associations, remains the lingua franca of marriage, perhaps because as Roberto Unger observes, romantic love is “the most influential mode of moral vision in our culture” (qtd. in Lindholm 5). It is thus possible to conclude, that while marriage may be declining and becoming more fragile and impermanent, the institution remains important to couples in contemporary Australia. Moreover, the language and imagery of romantic love, which publicly conveys this importance, remains the primary mode of expressing care, affection and hope for a partnership, even though the changed partnering practices of late modern capitalist society have exposed the utopian quality of romantic love and produced a cynicism about the viability of its longevity. It is evident in the marriage ceremonies prepared by the author that while the language of romantic love has come to signify a broader range of more practical associations consistent with the individualised nature of modern marriage and demystification of romantic love, it also remains the best way to express what Dowd and Pallotta describe as a fundamental human “yearning for communion with and acceptance by another human being” (571). References Beck, U., and E. Beck-Gernsheim, Individualisation: Institutionalised Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. London: Sage, 2002. Beigel, Hugo G. “Romantic Love.” American Sociological Review 16.3 (1951): 326–34. Carmichael, Gordon A, and Andrea Whittaker. “Forming Relationships in Australia: Qualitative Insights into a Process Important to Human Well Being.” Journal of Population Research 24.1 (2007): 23–49. Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking, 2005. Croome, Rodney. “Love and Commitment, To Equality.” The Drum Opinion, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News. 8 June 2011. 14 Aug. 2012 < http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2749898.html >. de Vaus, D.L. Qu, and R. Weston. “Family Trends: Changing Patterns of Partnering.” Family Matters 64 (2003): 10–15. Dowd, James T, and Nicole R. Pallotta. “The End of Romance: The Demystification of Love in the Postmodern Age.” Sociological Perspectives 43.4 (2000): 549–80. Gottschall, Jonathan, and Marcus Nordlund. “Romantic Love: A Literary Universal?” Philosophy and Literature 30 (2006): 450–70. Jankowiak, William, and Ted Fischer, “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love,” Ethnology 31 (1992): 149–55. Lantz, Herman R. “Romantic Love in the Pre-Modern Period: A Sociological Commentary.” Journal of Social History 15.3 (1982): 349–70. Lindholm, Charles. “Romantic Love and Anthropology.” Etnofoor 19:1 Romantic Love (2006): 5–21. Parker, Robyn. “Perspectives on the Future of Marriage.” Australian Institute of Family Studies 72 Summer (2005): 78–82.Pateman, Carole. “Women and Consent.” Political Theory (1980): 149–68. Penman, Robyn. “Current Approaches to Marriage and Relationship Research in the United States and Australia.” Family Matters 70 Autumn (2005): 26–35. Simons, Michelle. “(Re)-forming Marriage in Australia?” Australian Institute of Family Matters 73 (2006): 46–51.Stearns, Peter N, and Mark Knapp. “Men and Romantic Love: Pinpointing a 20th-Century Change.” Journal of Social History 26.4 (1993): 769–95. Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.
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24

Nijhawan, Amita. "Mindy Calling: Size, Beauty, Race in The Mindy Project." M/C Journal 18, no. 3 (June 3, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.938.

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When characters in the Fox Television sitcom The Mindy Project call Mindy Lahiri fat, Mindy sees it as a case of misidentification. She reminds the character that she is a “petite Asian woman,” that she has large, beautiful breasts, that she has nothing in common with fat people, and the terms “chubbster” and “BBW – Big Beautiful Woman” are offensive and do not apply to her. Mindy spends some of each episode on her love for food and more food, and her hatred of fitness regimes, while repeatedly falling for meticulously fit men. She dates, has a string of failed relationships, adventurous sexual techniques, a Bridget Jones-scale search for perfect love, and yet admits to shame in showing her naked body to lovers. Her contradictory feelings about food and body image mirror our own confusions, and reveal the fear and fascination we feel for fat in our fat-obsessed culture. I argue that by creating herself as sexy, successful, popular, sporadically confident and insecure, Mindy works against stigmas that attach both to big women – women who are considered big in comparison to the societal size-zero ideal – and women who have historically been seen as belonging to “primitive” or colonized cultures, and therefore she disrupts the conflation of thinness to civilization. In this article, I look at the performance of fat and ethnic identity on American television, and examine the bodily mechanisms through which Mindy disrupts these. I argue that Mindy uses issues of fat and body image to disrupt stereotypical iterations of race. In the first part of the paper, I look at the construction of South Asian femininity in American pop culture, to set up the discussion of fat, gender and race as interrelated performative categories. Race, Gender, Performativity As Judith Butler says of gender, “performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names” (Bodies, 2). Bodies produce and perform their gender through repeating and imitating norms of clothing, body movement, choices in gesture, action, mannerism, as well as gender roles. They do so in such a way that the discourses and histories that are embedded in them start to seem natural; they are seen to be the truth, instead of as actions that have a history. These choices do not just reflect or reveal gender, but rather produce and create it. Nadine Ehlers takes performativity into the realm of race. Ehlers says that “racial performativity always works within and through the modalities of gender and sexuality, and vice versa, and these categories are constituted through one another” (65). In this sense, neither race nor gender are produced or iterated without also producing their interrelationship. They are in fact produced through this interrelationship. So, for example, when studying the performativity of black bodies, you would need to specify whether you are looking at black femininity or masculinity. And on the other hand, when studying gender, it is important to specify gender where? And when? You couldn’t simply pry open the link between race and gender and expect to successfully theorize either on its own. Mindy’s performance of femininity, including her questions about body image and weight, her attractive though odd clothing choices, her search for love, these are all bound to her iteration of race. She often explains her body through defining herself as Asian. Yet, I suggest in a seeming contradiction that her othering of herself as a big woman (relative to normative body size for women in American film and television) who breaks chairs when she sits on them and is insecure about her body, keeps the audience from othering her because of race. Her weight, clumsiness, failures in love, her heartbreaks all make her a “normal” woman. They make her easy to identify with. They suggest that she is just a woman, an American woman, instead of othering her as a South Asian woman, or a woman from a “primitive”, colonized or minority culture.Being South Asian on American Television Mindy Lahiri (played by writer, producer and actor Mindy Kaling) is a successful American obstetrician/gynaecologist, who works in a successful practice in New York. She breaks stereotypes of South Asian women that are repeated in American television and film. Opposite to the stereotype of the traditional, dutiful South Asian who agrees to an arranged marriage, and has little to say for him or herself beyond academic achievement that is generally seen in American and British media, Mindy sleeps with as many men as she can possibly fit into a calendar year, is funny, self-deprecating, and has little interest in religion, tradition or family, and is obsessed with popular culture. The stereotypical characteristics of South Asians in the popular British media, listed by Anne Ciecko (69), include passive, law-abiding, following traditional gender roles and traditions, living in the “pathologized” Asian family, struggling to find self-definitions that incorporate their placement as both belonging to and separate from British culture. Similarly, South Asian actors on American television often play vaguely-comic doctors and lawyers, seemingly with no personal life or sexual desire. They are simply South Asians, with no further defining personality traits or quirks. It is as if being South Asian overrides any other character trait. They are rarely in lead roles, and Mindy is certainly the first South Asian-American woman to have her own sitcom, in which she plays the lead. What do South Asians on American television look and sound like? In her study on performativity of race and gender, Ehlers looks at various constructions of black femininity, and suggests that black femininity is often constructed in the media in terms of promiscuity and aggression (83), and, I would add, the image of the mama with the big heart and even bigger bosom. Contrary to black femininity, South Asian femininity in American media is often repressed, serious, concerned with work and achievement or alternatively with menial roles, with little in terms of a personal or sexual life. As Shilpa S. Dave says in her book on South Asians in American television, most South Asians that appear in American television are shown as immigrants with accents (8). That is what makes them recognizably different and other, more so even than any visual identification. It is much more common to see immigrants of Chinese or Korean descent in American television as people with American accents, as people who are not first generation immigrants. South Asians, on the other hand, almost always have South Asian accents. There are exceptions to this rule, however, the exceptions are othered and/or made more mainstream using various mechanisms. Neela in ER (played by Parminder Nagra) and Cece in New Girl (played by Hannah Simone) are examples of this. In both instances the characters are part of either an ensemble cast, or in a supporting role. Neela is a step removed from American and South Asian femininity, in that she is British, with a British accent – she is othered, but this othering makes her more mainstream than the marking that takes place with a South Asian accent. The British accent and a tragic marriage, I would say, allow her to have a personal and sexual life, beyond work. Cece goes through an arranged marriage scenario, full with saris and a South Asian wedding that is the more recognized and acceptable narrative for South Asian women in American media. The characters are made more acceptable and recognizable through these mechanisms. Bhoomi K. Thakore, in an article on the representation of South Asians in American television, briefly explains that after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality act, highly-educated South Asians could immigrate to the United States, either to get further education, or as highly skilled workers (149) – a phenomenon often called “brain-drain.” In addition, says Thakore, family members of these educated South Asians immigrated to the States as well, and these were people that were less educated and worked often in convenience stores and motels. Thakore suggests that immigrants to the United States experience a segmented assimilation, meaning that not all immigrants (first and second generation) will assimilate to the same extent or in the same way. I would say from my own experience that the degree to which immigrants can assimilate into American society often depends on not only financial prospects or education, but also attractiveness, skin tone, accent, English-speaking ability, interests and knowledge of American popular culture, interest in an American way of life and American social customs, and so on. Until recently, I would say that South Asian characters in American television shows have tended to represent either first-generation immigrants with South Asian accents and an inability or lack of desire to assimilate fully into American society, or second-generation immigrants whose personal and sexual lives are never part of the narrative. Examples of the former include South Asians who play nameless doctors and cops in American television. Kal Penn’s character Lawrence Kutner in the television series House is an example of the latter. Kutner, one of the doctors on Dr. House’s team, did not have a South Asian accent. However, he also had no personal narrative. All doctors on House came with their relationship troubles and baggage, their emotional turmoil, their sexual and romantic ups and downs – all but Kutner, whose suicide in the show (when he left it to join the Obama administration) is framed around the question – do we ever really know the people we see every day? Yet, we do know the other doctors on House. But we never know anything about Kutner’s private life. His character is all about academic knowledge and career achievement. This is the stereotype of the South Asian character in American television. Yet, Mindy, with her American accent, sees herself as American, doesn’t obsess about race or skin colour, and has no signs of a poor-me narrative in the way she presents herself. She does not seem to have any diasporic longings or group belongings. Mindy doesn’t ignore race on the show. In fact, she deploys it strategically. She describes herself as Asian on more than one occasion, often to explain her size, her breasts and femininity, and in one episode she goes to a party because she expects to see black sportsmen there, and she explains, “It’s a scientific fact that black men love South Asian girls.” Her production of her femininity is inextricably bound up with race. However, Mindy avoids marking herself as a racial minority by making her quest for love and her confusions about body image something all women can identify with. But she goes further in that she does not place herself in a diaspora community, she does not speak in a South Asian accent, she doesn’t hide her personal life or the contours of her body, and she doesn’t harp on parents who want her to get married. By not using the usual stereotypes of South Asians and Asians on American television, while at the same time acknowledging race, I suggest that she makes herself a citizen of the alleged “melting pot” as the melting pot should be, a hybrid space for hybrid identities. Mindy constructs herself as an American woman, and suggests that being a racial minority is simply part of the experience of being American. I am not suggesting that this reflects the reality of experience for many women in the USA who belong to ethnic minorities. I am suggesting that Mindy is creating a possible or potential reality, in which neither size nor being a racial minority are causes for shame. In a scene in the second season, a police officer chastises Mindy for prescribing birth control to his young daughter. He charges out of her office, and she follows him in to the street. She is wearing a version of her usual gear – a check-pinafore, belted over a printed shirt – her shoulders curved forward, arms folded, in the characteristic posture of the big-breasted, curvy woman. She screams at the officer for his outdated views on birth-control. He questions if she even has kids, suggesting that she knows nothing about raising them. She says, “How dare you? Do I look like a woman who’s had kids? I have the hips of an eleven-year-old boy.” She then informs him that she wolfed down a steak sandwich at lunch, has misgivings about the outfit she is wearing, and says that she is not a sex-crazed lunatic. He charges her for public female hysteria. She screams after him as he drives off, “Everyone see this!” She holds up the citation. “It’s for walking, while being a person of colour.” She manages in the space of a two-minute clip to deploy race, size and femininity, without shame or apology, and with humour. It is interesting to note that, contrary to her persona on the show, in interviews in the media, Kaling suggests that she is not that concerned with the question of weight. She says that though she would like to lose fifteen pounds, she is not hung up on this quest. On the other hand, she suggests that she considers herself a role model for minority women. In fact, in real life she makes the question of race as something more important to her than weight – which is opposite to the way she treats the two issues in her television show. I suggest that in real life, Kaling projects herself as a feminist, as someone not so concerned about size and weight, an intelligent woman who is concerned about race. On the show, however, she plays an everywoman, for whom weight is a much bigger deal than race. Neither persona is necessarily real or assumed – rather, they both reveal the complexities by which race, gender and body size constitute each other, and become cruxes for identification and misidentification. Is It Civilized to Be Fat? When Mindy and her colleague Danny Castellano get together in the second season of the show, you find yourself wondering how on earth they are going to sustain this sitcom, without an on-again/off-again romance, or one that takes about five years to start. When Danny does not want to go public with the relationship, Mindy asks him if he is ashamed of her. Imagine one of the Friends or Sex in the City women asking this question to see just how astonishing it is for a successful, attractive woman to ask a man if he is ashamed to be seen with her. She doesn’t say is it because of my weight, yet the question hangs in the air. When Danny does break up with her, again Mindy feels all the self-disgust of a woman rejected for no clear reason. As Amy Erdman Farrell suggests in her book on fat in American culture and television, fat people are not expected to find love or success. They are expected to be self-deprecating. They are supposed to expect rejection and failure. She says that not only do fat people bear a physical but also a character stigma, in that not only are they considered visually unappealing, but this comes with the idea that they have uncontrolled desires and urges (7-10). Kaling suggests through her cleverly-woven writing that it is because of her body image that Mindy feels self-loathing when Danny breaks up with her. She manages again to make her character an everywoman. Not a fat South Asian woman, but simply an American woman who feels all the shame that seems to go with weight and body image in American culture. However, this assumed connection of fat with immorality and laziness goes a step further. Farrell goes on to say that fat denigration and ethnic discrimination are linked, that popularity and the right to belong and be a citizen are based both on body size and ethnicity. Says Farrell, “our culture assigns many meanings to fatness beyond the actual physical trait – that a person is gluttonous, or filling a deeply disturbed psychological need, or is irresponsible and unable to control primitive urges” (6) – psychological traits that have historically been used to describe people in colonized cultures. Farrell provides an intriguing analysis of Oprah Winfrey and her public ups and downs with weight. She suggests that Winfrey’s public obsession with her own weight, and her struggles with it, are an attempt to be an “everywoman”, to be someone all and not only black women can identify with. Says Farrell, “in order to deracinate herself, to prove that ‘anyone’ can make it, Winfrey must lose weight. Otherwise, the weight of all that fat will always, de facto, mark her as a ‘black woman’, with all the accompanying connotations of inferior, primitive, bodily and out of control” (126). She goes on to say that, “Since the end of the 19th century, fatness has … served as a potent signifier of the line between the primitive and the civilized, feminine and masculine, ethnicity and whiteness, poverty and wealth, homosexuality and heterosexuality, past and future” (126). This suggests that Winfrey’s public confrontations with the question of weight help the women in the audience identify with her as a woman, rather than as a black woman. In a volume on fat studies, Farrell explains that health professionals have further demarcated lines between “civilization and primitive cultures, whiteness and blackness, sexual restraint and sexual promiscuity, beauty and ugliness, progress and the past” (260). She suggests that fat is not just part of discourses on health and beauty, but also intelligence, enterprise, work ethics, as well as race, ethnicity, sexuality and class. These connections are of course repeated in media representations, across media genres and platforms. In women’s magazines, an imperative towards weightloss comes hand-in-hand with the search for love, a woman’s ability to satisfy a man’s as well as her own desires, and with success in glamorous jobs. Sitcom couples on American television often feature men who are ineffectual but funny slobs, married to determined, fit women who are mainly homemakers, and in fact, responsible for the proper functioning of the family, and consequentially, society. In general, bigger women in American and British media are on a quest both for love and weight loss, and the implication is that deep-seated insecurities are connected to both weight gain, as well as failures in love, and that only a resolution of these insecurities will lead to weight loss, which will further lead to success in love. Films such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Bridget Jones’s Diary are examples of this prevailing narrative. Thakore investigates the changing image of South Asians on American television, suggesting that South Asians are represented more and more frequently, and in increasingly more central roles. However, Thakore suggests that, “all women of colour deal with hegemonic skin tone ideologies in their racial/ethnic communities, with lighter skin tone and Caucasian facial features considered more appealing and attractive … . As media producers favour casting women who are attractive, so too do the same media producers favour casting women of colour who are attractive in terms of their proximity to White physical characteristics” (153). Similarly, Lee and Vaught suggest that in American popular culture, “both White women and women of colour are represented as reflecting a White ideal or aesthetic. These women conform to a body ideal that reflects White middle class ideals: exceedingly thin, long, flowing hair, and voluptuous” (458). She goes on to say that Asian American women would need to take on a White middle class standing and a simultaneous White notion of the exotic in order to assimilate. For Mindy, then, fat allows her to be an everywoman, but also allows her to adopt her own otherness as a South Asian, and make it her own. This trend shows some signs of changing, however, and I expect that women like Lena Dunham in the HBO comedy Girls and Mindy Kaling are leading the march towards productions of diverse femininities that are at the same time iterated as attractive and desirable. On The Hollywood Reporter, when asked about the more ludicrous questions or comments she faces on social media, Kaling puts on a male voice and says, “You’re ugly and fat, it’s so refreshing to watch!” and “We’re used to skinny people, and you’re so ugly, we love it!” On David Letterman, she mentions having dark skin, and says that lazy beach holidays don’t work for her because she doesn’t understand the trend for tanning, and she can’t really relax. Mindy’s confusions about her weight and body image make her a woman for everyone – not just for South Asian women. Whereas Kaling’s concern over the question of race – and her relative lack of concern over weight – make her a feminist, a professional writer, a woman with a conscience. These personas interweave. They question both normative performances of gender and race, and question the historical conflation of size and minority identity with shame and immorality. Butler suggests that gender is “the repeated stylisation of the body” (Gender, 33). She argues that gender roles can be challenged through a “subversive reiteration” of gender (Gender, 32). In this way, women like Dunham and Kaling, through their deployment of diverse female bodies and femininities, can disrupt the normative iteration of gender and race. Their production of femininity in bodies that are attractive (just not normatively so) has more than just an impact on how we look at fat. They bring to us women that are flawed, assertive, insecure, confident, contradictory, talented, creative, that make difficult choices in love and work, and that don’t make an obsession with weight or even race their markers of self worth.References Bridget Jones’s Diary. Dir. Sharon Maguire. Miramax and Universal Pictures, 2001. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge, 1993. Ciecko, Anne. “Representing the Spaces of Diaspora in Contemporary British Films by Women Directors.” Cinema Journal 38.3 (Spring 1999): 67-90. Dave, Shilpa S. Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television. U of Illinois, 2013. Ehlers, Nadine. Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. ER. Warner Bros. Television. NBC, 1994-2009. Farrell, Amy. “‘The White Man’s Burden’”: Female Sexuality, Tourist Postcards, and the Place of the Fat Woman in Early 20th-Century U.S. Culture.” In Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay (eds.), The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Friends. Warner Bros. Television. NBC, 1994-2004. Girls. HBO Entertainment and Apatow Productions. HBO, 2012-present. House. Universal Television. Fox, 2004-2012. Lee, Stacey J., and Sabina Vaught. “‘You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin’: Popular and Consumer Culture and the Americanization of Asian American Girls and Young Women.” The Journal of Negro Education 72.4 (2003): 457-466. My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Dir. Joel Zwick. Playtone, 2002. New Girl. 20th Century Fox. Fox, 2011-present. Nicholson, Rebecca. “Mindy Kaling: ‘I Wasn’t Considered Attractive or Funny Enough to Play Myself.’” The Observer 1 June 2014. ‹http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/01/mindy-kaling-project›. Sex in the City. Warner Bros. Television and HBO Original Programming. HBO, 1998-2004. Strauss, Elissa. “Why Mindy Kaling – Not Lena Dunham – Is the Body Positive Icon of the Moment.” The Week 22 April 2014. ‹http://theweek.com/article/index/260126/why-mindy-kaling-mdash-not-lena-dunham-mdash-is-the-body-positive-icon-of-the-moment›. Thakore, Bhoomi K. “Must-See TV: South Asian Characterizations in American Popular Media.” Sociology Compass 8.2 (2014): 149-156. The Mindy Project. Universal Television, 3 Arts Entertainment, Kaling International. Fox, 2012-present. Ugly Betty. ABC Studios. ABC, 2006-2010. YouTube. “Mindy Kaling on David Letterman.” 29 April 2013. 21 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8K1ye2gnJw›. YouTube. “Mindy on Being Called Fat and Ugly on Social Media.” The Hollywood Reporter 14 June 2014. 21 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ockt-BeMOWk›. YouTube. “Chris Messina: ‘I Think Mindy Kaling’s Beautiful.’” HuffPost Live 24 April 2014. 21 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HtCjGNERKQ›.
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Watkins, Trevor, and Jonathan O. Cain. "Systemic racism in data practices." IASSIST Quarterly 46, no. 4 (December 28, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.29173/iq1079.

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Positionality statement As we begin to discuss this issue, its origins, and its importance in contemporary society, I wanted to acknowledge my positionality and the role that it may play in the formation of this issue. Jonathan O. Cain is an African-American male working in the LIS field. Before moving into administration, I taught data and digital literacy and worked on developing programs that focused on improving access to these critical skills at zero cost to learners. It is important to acknowledge my positionality and the lens through which I see the data science field. Trevor Watkins is an African American male working in the LIS field at an academic institution in an academic library. I teach critical data literacy workshops and engage in diversity and BIPOC-related digital projects with faculty, students, and the broader academic community across the country. I am also a researcher and practitioner in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science. The global pandemic, its impacts, and why it matters We first met in August 2020 to discuss the possibilities of this special issue about five months into the pandemic. We spent a good chunk of that meeting getting to know each other and, most importantly, discussed the toll the pandemic placed on our communities and us. It is probably safe to say that many of you, at some point, were uncertain of the future. Like most people worldwide, we lost family and friends or knew of people who succumbed to Covid-19 and other illnesses that weren't treated because the focus shifted to Covid-19. We get it. At one point, Covid-19 killed over three thousand people per day (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2022). According to data from the CDC, 90% of the 385,676 people who died between March and December 2020 had Covid-19 listed as the underlying cause of death on their death certificate. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery in February, Breonna Taylor in March, and George Floyd in May 2020 sparked civic unrest across the United States (US) and protests across the globe in solidarity against racial injustice. When we announced this special issue and initiated a call for papers, we didn't get much of a response initially. We expected and acknowledged that it would probably take some time before we received inquiries or proposals about the issue, the intent to submit, or any submissions. Like many of you, we are still picking up the pieces from 2020 and dealing with the aftermath of Covid-19. The pandemic may be over now, depending on whom you ask, but the emotional scars are still there and may remain so for quite some time. Patience was the one quality we all had throughout this process, which is why we can present this publication today. Data and liberatory technology Liberatory technology. This is a concept that invited contemplation as we sat down to record our reflections on this special issue. In drawing together scholars, educators, and practitioners to address the issue of data and its relationship to race, ethnicity, and representation, we, as coeditors, were making a statement about the importance of data, the material impact that this seemingly abstract and ethereal object can and does have on individual and community lives. And thinking about that impact brought liberatory technology to the front of our minds. The definition of liberator technology offered by the IDA B. Wells Just Data Lab intrigues us and invites us to grapple with that topic. They defined liberatory as something that "supports the increased freedom and wellbeing of marginalized people, especially black people outside of capitalism and settler colonial power structures" and technology as "a tool used to accomplish a task." And as we contemplate this set of definitions, we are left to question whether data can be a liberatory technology or not. (LIBERATORY TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL MARRONAGE, n.d.) In Liberation Technology: Black Protest in the Age of Franklin, Richard S. Newman draws parallels with the asserting ownership and mastery of new communication technologies and black liberation activities. Reflecting on the transformative nature of print technology, he writes, "If the Marquis de Condorcet was right in 1793 that print had unshackled Europe from medieval modes of thought and action, then it is also true that print was perhaps the first technology to liberate blacks from the servile images that had long haunted their existence in Western culture." And draws a 19th-century example of how it expressly connects to black lives post-emancipation noting "W. E. B. Du Bois certainly thought that black history and print history worked in tandem. Wherever one found newspapers in the post-Civil War South, he observed, one found some form of black freedom" (Richard S. Newman, 2009, p. 175). He even notes how scholars note that black activists embraced other communication technologies like photography "to reshape the image of African Americans in nineteenth-century culture." (Richard S. Newman, 2009, p. 175) We have no shortage of examples of how data and data-driven technologies fail to support the "increased freedom and wellbeing of marginalized people outside of capitalism and settler colonial power structures." In 2016, ProPublica published Machine Bias, a report that looks at Risk assessment technologies used in arraignment and sentencing. They report that "The formula was particularly likely to falsely flag black defendants as future, wrongly labeling them this way at almost twice the rate as white defendants" and "white defendants were mislabeled as low risk more often than black defendants" (Julia Angwin, 2016). A 2021 article, Fairness in Criminal Justice Risk Assessments: The State of the Art, in their analysis, noted, "The false negative rate is much higher for whites so that violent white offenders are more likely than violent black offenders to be incorrectly classified as nonviolent. The false positive rate is much higher for blacks so that nonviolent black offenders are more likely than nonviolent white offenders to be incorrectly classified as violent. Both error rates mistakenly inflate the relative representation of blacks predicted to be violent. Such differences can support claims of racial injustice. In this application, the trade-off between two different kinds of fairness has real bite." (Berk et al., 2021, p. 33) These are just a few examples of how these technological developments, on their own merits, fail to meet the definition offered by the authors of the "Liberatory Technology and Digital Marronage" Zine from the Ida B. Wells Just Data Labs. Reflecting on the technological path illustrated by Newman, the work of ownership and mastery of the tool provides the potential for it to be liberatory. Through this lens, the work of the Just Data Lab is exemplary for this meditation; it draws a direct line from technology, education, mastery, and liberatory technology. Data in higher education Data literacy education is an area that has been a focus of our careers in librarianship. It's a space where we saw the libraries' ability to make a meaningful impact. Data has had a tremendous impact on college campuses, from how research is conducted to the pressures colleges feel from stakeholder groups: students, governments, funders, donors, and employers to prepare students with the data and technology skills to gain employment in the knowledge economy. As colleges and universities have turned (with varying degrees of success) to meet the needs of these communities, a myriad of explorations on the importance of the representation of these marginalized communities in these systems—to combat and dismantle the harmful practices that we see embedded in the systems that drive society and the potentially debilitating consequences they produce. That is partly why the works in this special issue are so important at this moment in time. These scholars and scholar-practitioners are engaging with these issues that drive the opaque structures surrounding us. And hopefully, their work can give us another perspective on how to engage with these structures and transform them to support liberatory practices. The entries in this issue We have some fantastic articles for you to read in this issue. We open with an article by Kevin Manuel, Rosa Orlandini, and Alexandra Cooper, who discuss how the collection process of racial, ethnic, and indigenous data has evolved in the Canadian Census since 1871, the erasure of minorities and indigenous citizens from those censuses, and the work to restore and accurately identify and categorize racialized groups. In the next article, Leigh Phan, Stephanie Labou, Erin Foster, and Ibraheem Ali present a model for data ethics instruction for non-experts by designing and implementing two data ethics workshops. They make important points about the failure of academia to incorporate the ethical use of data in course curriculums and digital literacy training and demonstrate how academic libraries have become an essential resource for the academic community. Their workshop structure can be modeled for any academic library that endeavors to provide a similar service to its community. In the third article, Natasha Johnson, Megan Sapp Nelson, and Katherine Yngve, interrogate the collective and local purposes of institutional data collection and its impact on student belongingness and propose a framework based on data feminism that centers the student as a person rather than a commodity. Finally, our closing article from Thema Monroe-White focuses on marginalized and underrepresented people in the data science field. The author proposes that racially relevant and responsive teaching is necessary to recruit more people from these groups and diversify the field. She discusses how the Ladson-Billings model of cultural relevant pedagogy has been applied and is beneficial to STEM curriculums, and how a liberatory data science curriculum could promote a student's voice and sense of belonging. Conclusion We want to thank all those involved in producing this special issue. We want to thank the authors first. Their patience, dedication, and perseverance throughout this process were much appreciated. The reviewers provided timely, very detailed, and thorough feedback. We would be remised if we didn't acknowledge their hard work and labor. We would like to thank the IQ Editorial Team, Michele Hayslett and Karsten Boye Rasmussen, for working with us over the last two years, and Ofira Schwartz-Soicher, for helping us get to the finish line. Trevor Watkins Jonathan O. Cain References Berk, R., Heidari, H., Jabbari, S., Kearns, M., & Roth, A. (2021). Fairness in Criminal Justice Risk Assessments: The State of the Art. Sociological Methods & Research, 50(1), 3–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124118782533 Flipsnack. (n.d.). Liberatory Technology Zine. Flipsnack. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://www.flipsnack.com/EBC8CD77C6F/liberatory-technology-zine.html LIBERATORY TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL MARRONAGE. (n.d.). IDA B. WELLS JUST DATA LAB. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://www.thejustdatalab.com/tools-1/liberatory-technology-and-digital-marronage Mattu, J. A., Jeff Larson,Lauren Kirchner,Surya. (n.d.). Machine Bias. ProPublica. Retrieved December 17, 2022, from https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing Richard S. Newman. (2009). Liberation Technology: Black Printed Protest in the Age of Franklin. Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(1), 173–198. https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.0.0033
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Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. "“The Blood Never Stops Flowing and the Party Never Ends”: The Originals and the Afterlife of New Orleans as a Vampire City." M/C Journal 20, no. 5 (October 13, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1314.

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IntroductionAs both a historical and cultural entity, the city of New Orleans has long-maintained a reputation as a centre for hedonistic and carnivaleque pleasures. Historically, images of mardi gras, jazz, and parties on the shores of the Mississippi have pervaded the cultural vision of the city as a “mecca” for “social life” (Marina 2), and successfully fed its tourism narratives. Simultaneously, however, a different kind of narrative also exists in the historical folds of the city’s urban mythology. Many tales of vampire sightings and supernatural accounts surround the area, and have contributed, over the years, to the establishment and mystification of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’. This has produced, in turn, its own brand of vampire tourism (Murphy 2015). Mixed with historical rumours and Gothic folklore, the recent narratives of popular culture lie at the centre of the re-imagination of New Orleans as a vampire hub. Taking this idea as a point of departure, this article provides culturally- and historically-informed critical considerations of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’, especially as portrayed in The Originals (2013-2017), a contemporary television series where vampires are the main protagonists. In the series, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with – and are, at times, almost inseparable from – the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms.The critical connection between urban narratives and vampires representation, as far as New Orleans is concerned, is profoundly entangled with notions of both tourism and fictionalised popular accounts of folklore (Piatti-Farnell 172). In approaching the conceptual relationship between New Orleans as a cultural and historical entity and the vampire — in its folkloristic and imaginative context — the analysis will take a three-pronged approach: firstly, it will consider the historical narrative of tourism for the city of New Orleans; secondly, the city’s connection to vampires and other Gothicised entities will be considered, both historically and narratively; and finally, the analysis will focus on how the connection between New Orleans and Gothic folklore of the vampire is represented in The Originals, with the issue of cultural authenticity being brought into the foreground. A critical footnote must be given to the understanding of the term ‘New Orleans’ in this article as meaning primarily the French Quarter – or, the Vieux Carre – and its various representations. This geographical focus principally owes its existence to the profound cultural significance that the French Quarter has occupied in the history of New Orleans as a city, and, in particular, in its connection to narratives of magic and Gothic folklore, as well as the broader historical and contemporary tourism structures. A History of TourismSocial historian Kevin Fox Gotham agues that New Orleans as a city has been particularly successful in fabricating a sellable image of itself; tourism, Gotham reminds us, is about “the production of local difference, local cultures, and different local histories that appeal to visitors’ tastes for the exotic and the unique” (“Gentrification” 1100). In these terms, both the history and the socio-cultural ‘feel’ of the city cannot be separated from the visual constructs that accompany it. Over the decades, New Orleans has fabricated a distinct network of representational patterns for the Vieux Carre in particular, where the deployment of specific images, themes and motifs – which are, in truth, only peripherally tied to the city’ actual social and political history, and owe their creation and realisation more to the success of fictional narratives from film and literature – is employed to “stimulate tourist demands to buy and consume” (Gotham, “Gentrification” 1102). This image of the city as hedonistic site is well-acknowledged, has to be understood, at least partially, as a conscious construct aimed at the production an identity for itself, which the city can in turn sell to visitors, both domestically and internationally. New Orleans, Gotham suggests, is a ‘complex and constantly mutating city’, in which “meanings of place and community” are “inexorably intertwined with tourism” (Authentic 5). The view of New Orleans as a site of hedonistic pleasure is something that has been heavily capitalised upon by the tourism industry of the city for decades, if not centuries. A keen look at advertising pamphlets for the city, dating form the late Nineteenth century onwards, provides an overview of thematic selling points, that primarily focus on notions of jazz, endless parties and, in particular, nostalgic and distinctly rose-tinted views of the Old South and its glorious plantations (Thomas 7). The decadent view of New Orleans as a centre of carnal pleasures has often been recalled by scholars and lay observers alike; this vision of he city indeed holds deep historical roots, and is entangled with the city’s own economic structures, as well as its acculturated tourism ones. In the late 19th and early 20th century one of the things that New Orleans was very famous for was actually Storyville, the city’s red-light district, sanctioned in 1897 by municipal ordinance. Storyville quickly became a centralized attraction in the heart of New Orleans, so much so that it began being heavily advertised, especially through the publication of the ‘Blue Book’, a resource created for tourists. The Blue Book contained, in alphabetical order, information on all the prostitutes of Storyville. Storyville remained very popular and the most famous attraction in New Orleans until its demolition in 1919 Anthony Stanonis suggests that, in its ability to promote a sellable image for the city, “Storyville meshed with the intersts of business men in the age before mass tourism” (105).Even after the disappearance of Storyville, New Orleans continued to foster its image a site of hedonism, a narrative aided by a favourable administration, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. The French Quarter, in particular, “became a tawdry mélange of brothers and gambling dens operating with impunity under lax law enforcement” (Souther 16). The image of the city as a site for pleasures of worldly nature continued to be deeply rooted, and even survives in the following decades today, as visible in the numerous exotic dance parlours located on the famous Bourbon Street.Vampire TourismSimultaneously, however, a different kind of narrative also exists in the recent historical folds of the city’s urban mythology, where vampires, magic, and voodoo are an unavoidable presence. Many tales of vampire sightings and supernatural accounts surround the area, and have contributed, over the years, to the establishment and mystification of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’. Kenneth Holditch contends that ‘”New Orleans is a city in love with its myths, mysteries and fantasies” (quoted in McKinney 8). In the contemporary era, these qualities are profoundly reflected in the city’s urban tourism image, where the vampire narrative is pushed into the foreground. When in the city, one might be lucky enough to take one of the many ‘vampire tours’ — often coupled with narratives of haunted locations — or visit the vampire bookshop, or even take part in the annual vampire ball. Indeed, the presence of vampires in New Orleans’s contemporary tourism narrative is so pervasive that one might be tempted to assume that it has always occupied a prominent place in the city’s cultural fabric. Nonetheless, this perception is not accurate: the historical evidence from tourism pamphlets for the city do not make any mentions of vampire tourism before the 1990s, and even then, the focus on the occult side of new Orleans tended to privilege stories of voodoo and hoodoo — a presence that still survives strongly in the cultural narrative city itself (Murphy 91). While the connection between vampires and New Orleans is a undoubtedly recent one, the development and establishment of New Orleans as vampire city cannot be thought of as a straight line. A number of cultural and historical currents appear to converge in the creation of the city’s vampire mystique. The history and geography of the city here could be an important factor, and a useful starting point; as the site of extreme immigration and ethnic and racial mingling New Orleans holds a reputation for mystery. The city was, of course, the regrettable site of a huge marketplace for the slave trade, so discussions of political economy could also be important here, although I’ll leave them for another time. As a city, New Orleans has often been described – by novelists, poets, and historians alike – as being somewhat ‘peculiar’. Simone de Behaviour was known to have remarked that that the city is surrounded by a “pearl grey” and ‘luminous’ air” (McKinney 1). In similar fashion, Oliver Evans claims the city carries “opalescent hints” (quoted in McKinney 1). New Orleans is famous for having a quite thick mist, the result of a high humidity levels in the air. To an observing eye, New Orleans seems immersed in an almost otherworldly ‘glow’, which bestows upon its limits an ethereal and mysterious quality (Piatti-Farnell 173). While this intention here is not to suggest that New Orleans is the only city to have mist – especially in the Southern States – one might venture to say that this physical phenomenon, joined with other occurrences and legends, has certainly contributed to the city’s Gothicised image. The geography of the city also makes it sadly famous for floods and their subsequent devastation, which over centuries have wrecked parts of the city irrevocably. New Orleans sits at a less than desirable geographical position, is no more than 17 feet above sea level, and much of it is at least five feet below (McKinney 5). In spite of its lamentable fame, hurricane Katrina was not the first devastating geo-meteorological phenomenon to hit and destroy most of New Orleans; one can trace similar hurricane occurrences in 1812 and 1915, which at the time significantly damaged parts of the French Quarter. The geographical position of New Orleans also owes to the city’s well-known history of disease such as the plague and tuberculosis – often associated, in previous centuries, with the miasma proper to reclaimed river lands. In similar terms, one must not forget New Orleans’s history of devastating fires – primarily in the years 1788, 1794, 1816, 1866 and 1919 – which slowly destroyed the main historical parts of the city, particularly in the Vieux Carre, and to some extent opened the way for regeneration and later gentrification as well. As a result of its troubled and destructive history, Louise McKinnon claims that the city ‒ perhaps unlike any others in the United States ‒ hinges on perpetual cycles of destruction and regeneration, continuously showing “the wear and tear of human life” (McKinney 6).It is indeed in this extremely important element that New Orleans finds a conceptual source in its connection to notions of the undead, and the vampire in particular. Historically, one can identify the pervasive use of Gothic terminology to describe New Orleans, even if, the descriptions themselves were more attuned to perceptions of the city’s architecture and metrological conditions, rather than the recollection of any folklore-inspired narratives of unread creatures. Because of its mutating, and often ill-maintained historical architecture – especially in the French Quarter - New Orleans has steadily maintained a reputation as a city of “splendid decay” (McKinney, 6). This highly lyrical and metaphorical approach plays an important part in building the city as a site of mystery and enchantment. Its decaying outlook functions as an unavoidable sign of how New Orleans continues to absorb, and simultaneously repel, as McKinney puts it, “the effects of its own history” (6).Nonetheless, the history of New Orleans as a cultural entity, especially in terms of tourism, has not been tied to vampires for centuries, as many imagine, and the city itself insists in its contemporary tourism narratives. Although a lot of folklore has survived around the city in connection to magic and mysticism, for a number of reasons, vampires have not always been in the foreground of its publicised cultural narratives. Mixed with historical rumours and Gothic folklore, the recent narratives of popular culture lie at the centre of the re-imagination of New Orleans as a vampire spot: most scholars claim that it all started with the publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), but actually evidence shows that the vampire narrative for the city of New Orleans did not fully explode until the release of Neil Jordan’s cinematic adaptation of Interview with the Vampire (1994). This film really put New Orleans at the centre of the vampire narrative, indulging in the use of many iconic locations in the city as tied to vampire, and cementing the idea of New Orleans as a vampiric city (Piatti-Farnell 175). The impact of Rice’s work, and its adaptations, has also been picked up by numerous other examples of popular culture, including Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire mystery series, and its well-known television adaptation True Blood. Harris herself states in one of her novels: “New Orleans had been the place to go for vampires and those who wanted to be around them ever since Anne Rice had been proven right about their existence” (2). In spite of the fact that popular culture, rather than actual historical evidence, lies at the heart of the city’s cultural relationship with vampires, this does not detract from the fact that vampires themselves – as fabricated figures lying somewhere between folklore, history, and fiction – represent an influential part of New Orleans’s contemporary tourism narrative, building a bridge between historical storytelling, mythologised identities, and consumerism. The Originals: Vampires in the CityIndeed, the impact of popular culture in establishing and re-establishing the success of the vampire tourism narrative in New Orleans is undeniable. Contemporary examples continue to capitalise on the visual, cultural, and suggestively historical connection between the city’s landmarks and vampire tales, cementing the notion of New Orleans as a solid entity within the Gothic tourism narrative. One such successful example is The Originals. This television show is actually a spin-off of the Vampires Diaries, and begins with three vampires, the Mikaelson siblings (Niklaus, Elijah, and Rebekkah) returning to the city of New Orleans for the first time since 1919, when they were forced to flee by their vengeful father. In their absence, Niklaus's protégé, Marcel, took charge of the city. The storyline of The Originals focuses on battles within the vampire factions to regain control of the city, and eliminate the hold of other mystical creatures such as werewolves and witches (Anyiwo 175). The central narrative here is that the city belongs to the vampire, and there can be no other real Gothic presence in the Quarter. One can only wonder, even at this embryonic level, how this connects functions in a multifaceted way, extending the critique of the vampire’s relationship to New Orleans from the textual dimension of the TV show to the real life cultural narrative of the city itself. A large number of the narrative strands in The Originals are tied to city and its festivals, its celebrations, and its visions of the past, whether historically recorded, or living in the pages of its Gothic folklore. Vampires are actually claimed to have made New Orleans what it is today, and they undoubtedly rule it. As Marcel puts it: “The blood never stops flowing, and the party never ends” (Episode 1, “Always and Forever”). Even the vampiric mantra for New Orleans in The Originals is tied to the city’s existing and long-standing tourism narrative, as “the party never ends” is a reference to one of Bourbon Street’s famous slogans. Indeed, the pictorial influence of the city’s primary landmarks in The Originals is undeniable. In spite of the fact the inside scenes for The Originals were filmed in a studio, the outside shots in the series reveal a strong connections to the city itself, as viewers are left with no doubt as to the show’s setting. New Orleans is continuously mentioned and put on show – and pervasively referred to as “our city”, by the vampires. So much so, that New Orleans becomes the centre of the feud between supernatural forces, as the vampires fight witches and werewolves – among others- to maintain control over the city’s historical heart. The French Quarter, in particular, is given renewed life from the ashes of history into the beating heart of the vampire narrative, so much so that it almost becomes its own character in its own right, instrumental in constructing the vampire mystique. The impact of the vampire on constructing an image for the city of New Orleans is made explicit in The Originals, as the series explicitly shows vampires at the centre of the city’s history. Indeed, the show’s narrative goes as far as justifying the French Quarter’s history and even legends through the vampire metaphor. For instance, the series explains the devastating fire that destroyed the French Opera House in 1919 as the result of a Mikaelson vampire family feud. In similar terms, the vampires of the French Quarter are shown at the heart of the Casquette Girls narrative, a well-known tale from Eighteenth-century colonial New Orleans, where young women were shipped from France to the new Louisiana colony, in order to marry. The young women were said to bring small chests – or casquettes – containing their clothes (Crandle 47). The Originals, however, capitalises on the folkloristic interpretation that perceives the girls’ luggage as coffins potentially containing the undead, a popular version of the tale that can often be heard if taking part in one of the many vampire tours in New Orleans. One can see here how the chronicles of the French Quarter in New Orleans and the presumed narratives of the vampire in the city merge to become one and the same, blurring the lines between history and fiction, and presenting the notion of folklore as a verifiable entity of the everyday (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 25) It is essential to remember, en passant, that, as far as giving the undead their own historical chronicles in connection to New Orleans, The Originals is not alone in doing this. Other TV series like American Horror Story have provided Gothicised histories for the city, although in this case more connected to witchcraft, hoodoo, and voodoo, rather than vampires.What one can see taking place in The Originals is a form of alternate and revisionist history that is reminiscent of several instances of pulp and science fiction from the early 20th century, where the Gothic element lies at the centre of not only the fictional narrative, but also of the re-conceptualisation of historical time and space, as not absolute entities, but as narratives open to interpretation (Singles 103). The re-interpretation here is of course connected to the cultural anxieties that are intrinsic to the Gothic – of changes, shifts, and unwanted returns - and the vampire as a figure of intersections, signalling the shift between stages of existence. If it is true that, to paraphrase Paul Ricoeur’s famous contention, the past returns to “haunt” us (105), then the history of New Orleans in The Originals is both established and haunted by vampires, a pervasive shadow that provides the city itself with an almost tangible Gothic afterlife. This connection, of course, extends beyond the fictional world of the television series, and finds fertile ground in the cultural narratives that the city constructs for itself. The tourism narrative of New Orleans also lies at the heart of the reconstructive historical imagination, which purposefully re-invents the city as a constructed entity that is, in itself, extremely sellable. The Originals mentions on multiple occasions that certain bars — owned, of course, by vampires — host regular ‘vampire themed events’, to “keep the tourists happy”. The importance of maintaining a steady influx of vampire tourism into the Quarter is made very clear throughout, and the vampires are complicit in fostering it for a number of reasons: not only because it provides them and the city with a constant revenue, but also because it brings a continuous source of fresh blood for the vampires to feed on. As Marcel puts it: “Something's gotta draw in the out-of-towners. Otherwise we'd all go hungry” (Episode 1, “Always and Forever”). New Orleans, it is made clear, is not only portrayed as a vampire hub, but also as a hot spot for vampire tourism; as part of the tourism narratives, the vampires themselves — who commonly feign humanity — actually further ‘pretend’ to be vampires for the tourists, who expect to find vampires in the city. It is made clear in The Originals that vampires often put on a show – and bear in mind, these are vampires who pretend to be human, who pretend to be vampires for the tourists. They channel stereotypes that belong in Gothic novels and films, and that are, as far as the ‘real’ vampires of the series, are concerned, mostly fictional. The vampires that are presented to the tourists in The Originals are, inevitably, inauthentic, for the real vampires themselves purposefully portray the vision of vampires put forward by popular culture, together with its own motifs and stereotypes. The vampires happily perform their popular culture role, in order to meet the expectations of the tourist. This interaction — which sociologist Dean MacCannell would refer to, when discussing the dynamics of tourism, as “staged authenticity” (591) — is the basis of the appeal, and what continues to bring tourists back, generating profits for vampires and humans alike. Nina Auerbach has persuasively argued that the vampire is often eroticised through its connections to the “self-obsessed’ glamour of consumerism that ‘subordinates history to seductive object” (57).With the issue of authenticity brought into sharp relief, The Originals also foregrounds questions of authenticity in relation to New Orleans’s own vampire tourism narrative, which ostensibly bases into historical narratives of magic, horror, and folklore, and constructs a fictionalised urban tale, suitable to the tourism trade. The vampires of the French Quarter in The Originals act as the embodiment of the constructed image of New Orleans as the epitome of a vampire tourist destination. ConclusionThere is a clear suggestion in The Originals that vampires have evolved from simple creatures of old folklore, to ‘products’ that can be sold to expectant tourists. This evolution, as far as popular culture is concerned, is also inevitably tied to the conceptualisation of certain locations as ‘vampiric’, a notion that, in the contemporary era, hinges on intersecting narratives of culture, history, and identity. Within this, New Orleans has successfully constructed an image for itself as a vampire city, exploiting, in a number ways, the popular and purposefully historicised connection to the undead. In both tourism narratives and popular culture, of which The Originals is an ideal example, New Orleans’s urban image — often sited in constructions and re-constructions, re-birth and decay — is presented as a result of the vampire’s own existence, and thrives in the Gothicised afterlife of imagery, symbolism, and cultural persuasion. In these terms, the ‘inauthentic’ vampires of The Originals are an ideal allegory that provides a channelling ground for the issues surrounding the ‘inauthentic’ state of New Orleans a sellable tourism entity. As both hinge on images of popular representation and desirable symbols, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with — and are, at times, almost inseparable from — the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms. ReferencesAnyiwo, U. Melissa. “The Female Vampire in Popular Culture.” Gender in the Vampire Narrative. Eds. Amanda Hobson and U. Melissa Anyiwo. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016. 173-192. Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.Crandle, Marita Woywod. New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend. Stroud: The History Press, 2017.Gotham, Kevin Fox. Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy. New York: New York University Press, 2007.———. “Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans’ Vieux Carre’.” Urban Studies 42.7 (2005): 1099-1121. Harris, Charlaine. All Together Dead. London: Gollancz, 2008.Interview with the Vampire. Dir. Neil Jordan. Geffen Pictures, 1994. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Mistaken Dichotomies.” Public Folklore. Eds. Robert Baron and Nick Spitzer. Oxford: University of Missisippi Press, 2007. 28-48.Marina, Peter J. Down and Out in New Orleans: Trangressive Living in the Informal Economy. New York: Columia University Press, 2017. McKinney, Louise. New Orleans: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Murphy, Michael. Fear Dat New Orleans: A Guide to the Voodoo, Vampires, Graveyards & Ghosts of the Crescent City. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. The Vampire in Contemporary Popular Literature. London: Routledge, 2014. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Singles, Kathleen. Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity. Boston: de Gruyter, 2013.Souther, Mark. New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 2006. Stanonis, Anthony J. Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.The Originals. Seasons 1-4. CBS/Warner Bros Television. 2013-2017.Thomas, Lynell. Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
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Bianchino, Giacomo. "Afterwork and Overtime: The Social Reproduction of Human Capital." M/C Journal 22, no. 6 (December 4, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1611.

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In the heady expansion of capital’s productive capacity during the post-war period, E.P. Thompson wondered optimistically at potentials accruing to humanity by accelerating automation. He asked, “If we are to have enlarged leisure, in an automated future, the problem is not ‘how are men going to be able to consume all these additional time-units of leisure?’ but ‘what will be the capacity for experience of the men who have this undirected time to live?’” (Thompson 36). Indeed, linear and economistic variants of Marxian materialism have long emphasised that the socialisation of production by the use of machinery will eventually free us from work. At the very least, the underemployment produced by the automation of pivotal labour roles is supposed to create a political subject capable of agitating successfully against bourgeois and capitalist hegemony. But contrary to these prognostications, the worker of 2019 is caught up in a process of generalising work far beyond what is considered necessary by tradition, or at least the convention of what David Harvey calls “embedded liberalism” (11). As Anne Helen Peterson wrote in a recent Buzzfeed article,even the trends millennials have popularized — like athleisure — speak to our self-optimization. Yoga pants might look sloppy to your mom, but they’re efficient: you can transition seamlessly from an exercise class to a Skype meeting to child pickup. We use Fresh Direct and Amazon because the time they save allows us to do more work. (Peterson)For the work-martyr, activity in its broadest Aristotelian sense is evaluated by and subordinated to the question of efficiency and productivity. Occupations of time that were once considered external to “work” as matters of “life” (to use Kathi Weeks’s vocabulary) are reconceived as waste when not deployed in the service of value-generation (Weeks 15).The point here, then, is to provide some answers for why the decrease in socially-necessary labour time in an age of automation has not coincided with the Thompsonian expansion of free time. The current dilemma of the neoliberal “work-martyr” is traceable to the political responses generated by crises in production during the depression and the stagflationary disaccumulation of the 1960s-70s, and the major victory in the “battle for ideas” was the transformation of the political subject into human capital. This “intensely constructed and governed” suite of possible values is tasked, according to Wendy Brown, “with improving and leveraging its competitive positioning and with enhancing its (monetary and nonmonetary) portfolio value across all of its endeavours and ventures” (Brown 10). Connecting the creation of this subject in relation to personal or free time is important partly because of time’s longstanding importance to philosophies of subjectivity. But more to the point, the focus on time is important because it serves to demonstrate the economic foundations of the incursion of capitalist governance into the most private domains of existence. Against the criticism of Marx’s ‘abstract’ theory of value, one can see that the laws of capitalist accumulation make their mark in all parts of contemporary human being, including temporality. By tracing the emergence of afterwork as the unpaid continuation of the accumulation of value, one can show how each subject increasingly ‘lives’ capital. This marks a turning point in political economy. When work spills over a temporal limit, its relationship to reproduction is finally blurred to the point of indistinction. What this means for value-creation in 2019 is something in urgent need of critique.State ReproductionAccording to the Marxian theory, labour’s minimum cost is abstractly determined by the price of the labourer’s necessities. Once they have produced enough objects of value to cover these costs, the rest of their work is surplus value in the hands of the capitalist. The capitalist’s aim, then, is to extend the overall working-day for as long beyond the minimum as possible. Theoretically, the full 24 hours of the day may be used. The rise of machine production in the 19th century allowed the owners to make this theory a reality. The only thing that governed the extension of work-time was the physical minimum of labour-power’s reproduction (Marx 161). But this was on the provision that all the labourer’s “free” time was to be spent regrouping their energies. Anything in excess of this was a privilege: time wasted that could have been spent in the factory. “If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself”, says Marx, “he robs the capitalist” (162).This began to change with the socialisation of the work process and the increase in technical proficiency that labour demanded in early 20th-century industry. With the changes in the sophistication of the manufacture process, the labourer came to be factored in the production process less as an “appendage of the machine” and more as a collection of decisive skills. Fordism based itself around the recognition that capital itself was “dependent on a family-based reproduction” (Weeks 27). In Ford’s America, the sense that work’s intensity might supplant losses in the working day propelled owners of production to recognise the economic need of ensuring a robust culture of social reproduction. In capital’s original New Deal, Ford provided an increase in wages (the Five Dollar Day) in exchange for a rise in productivity (Dalla Costa v). To preserve the increased rhythm of industrial production required more than a robust wage, however. It required “the formation of a physically efficient and psychologically disciplined working class” (Dalla Costa 2). Companies began to hire sociologists to investigate how workers spent their spare time (Dalla Costa 8). They led the charge in a what we might call the first “anthropological revolution” of the American 20th century, whereby the improved wage of the worker was underpinned by the economisation of their reproduction. This was enabled by the cheapening of social necessities (and thus a reduction in socially-necessary labour time) in profound connection to the development of household economy on the backs of unpaid female labour (Weeks 25).This arrangement between capital and labour persisted until 1929. When the inevitable crisis came, however, wages faltered, and many workers joined the ranks of the unemployed. Unable to afford even the basics of their own reproduction, the working-class looked to the state. They created political and social pressure through marches, demonstrations, attacks on shops and the looting of supply trucks (Dalla Costa 40). The state held out against them, but the crisis in production eventually reached such a point of intensity that the government was forced to intervene. Hoover instituted the Emergency Relief Act and Financial Reconstruction Corporation in 1932. This was expanded the following year by FDR’s New Deal, transforming Emergency Relief into a federal institution and creating the Civil Works Association to stimulate the job market (Dalla Costa 63). The security of the working class was decisively linked to the state through the wage guarantees, welfare measures and even the legal guarantee of collective bargaining.For the most part, the state’s intervention in social reproduction took the pressure off industry by ensuring that the workforce would remain able to handle its burdens and that the unemployed would remain employable. It guaranteed a minimum wage for the employed to ensure that demand didn’t collapse, and provided care outside the workforce to women, children and the elderly.Once the state took responsibility for reproduction, however, it immediately became interested in how free time could be made efficient and cost effective. Abroad, they noted the example of European statist and corporativist approaches. Roosevelt sent a delegation to Europe to study the various measures taken by fascist and United Front governments to curb the effects of economic crisis (Dogliani 247). Among these was Mussolini’s OND (Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro) which sought to accumulate the free time of workers to the ends of production. Part of this required the responsibilisation of the broader community not only for regeneration of labour-power but the formation of a truly fascist political subject.FDR’s social reform program was able to reproduce this at home by following the example of workers’ community organisation during the depression years. Throughout the early ‘30s, self-help cooperatives, complete with “their own systems of payment in goods or currency” emerged among the unemployed (Dalla Costa 61). Black markets in consumer goods and informal labour structures developed in all major cities (Dalla Costa 34). Subsistence goods were self-produced in a cottage industry of unpaid domestic labour by both men and women (Dalla Costa 71). The paragon of self-reproducing communities was urbanised black Americans, whose internal solidarity had saved lives throughout the depression. The state took notice of these informal economies of production and reproduction, and started to incorporate the possibility of community engineering into their national plan. Roosevelt convened the Civilian Conservation Corps to absorb underemployed elements of the American workforce and recover consumer demand through direct state sponsorship (wages) (Dogliani, 247). The Committee of Industrial Organisation was transformed into a “congress” linking workers directly to the state (Dalla Costa 74). Minium wages were secured in the supreme court in 1937, then hiked in 1938 (78). In all, the state emerged at this time as a truly corporativist entity- the guarantor of employment and of class stability. From Social Reproduction to Human Capital InvestmentSo how do we get from New Deal social engineering to yoga pants? The answer is deceptively simple. The state transformed social reproduction into a necessary part of the production process. But this also meant that it was instrumentalised. The state only had to fund its workforce’s reproduction so long as this guaranteed productivity. After the war, this was maintained by a form of “embedded liberalism” which sought to provide full employment, economic growth and welfare for its citizens while anchoring the international economy in the Dollar’s gold-value. However, by providing stable increases in “relative value” (wages), this form of state investment incentivised capital flight and its spectacular consequent: deindustrialisation. The “embedded liberalism” of the state-capital-labour compromise began to breakdown with a new crisis of accumulation (Harvey 11-12). The relocation of production to non-union states and decolonised globally-southern sites of hyper-exploitation led to an ‘urban crisis’ in the job market. But as capitalist expansion carried on abroad, inflation kept dangerous pace with the rate of unemployment. This “stagflation” put irresistible pressure on the post-war order. The Bretton-Woods policy of maintaining fixed interest rates while pinning the dollar to gold was abandoned in 1971 and exchange rates were floated all over the world (Harvey 12). The spectre of a new crisis loomed, but one which couldn’t be resolved by the simple state sponsorship of production and reproduction.While many solutions were offered in place of this, one political vision singled out the state’s intervention into reproduction as the cause of the crisis. The ‘neoliberal’ political revolution began at the level of individual groups of capitalist agitants seeking governmental influence in a crusade against communism. It was given its first run on the historical pitch in Chile as part of the CIA-sponsored Pinochet revanchism, and then imported to NYC to deal with the worsening urban crisis of the 1970s. Instead of focusing on production (which required state intervention to proceed without crisis), neoliberal theory promulgated a turn to monetisation and financialisation. The rule of the New York banks after they forced the City into near-bankruptcy in 1975 prescribed total austerity in order to make good on its debts. The government was forced by capital itself to withdraw from investment in the reproduction of its citizens and workers. This was generalised to a federal policy as Reagan sought to address the decades-long deficit during the early years of his presidential term. Facilitating the global flow of finance and the hegemony of supranational institutions like the IMF, the domestic labour force now became beholden to an international minimum of socially-necessary labour time. At the level of domestic labour, the reduction of labour’s possible cost to this minimum had dramatic consequences. International competition allowed the physical limitations of labour to, once again, vanish from sight. Removed from the discourse of reproduction rights, the capitalist edifice was able to focus on changing the ratio of socially necessary labour to surplus. The mechanism that enabled them to do so was competition among the workforce. With the opening of the world market, capital no longer had to worry about the maintenance of domestic demand.But competition was not sufficient to pull off so grand a feat. What was required was a broader “battle of ideas”; the second anthropological revolution of the American century. The protections that workers had relied upon since the Fordist compromise and the corporativist solution eroded as the new “class-power” of the bourgeoisie levelled neoliberal assaults against associated labour (Harvey 23). While unions were gradually disempowered to fight the inevitable tide of deindustrialisation and capital flight, individual workers were coddled by a stream of neoliberal propaganda promising “Freedom” to those who would leave the stifling atmosphere of collective association. The success of this double enervation crippled union power, and the capitalist could rely increasingly on internal workplace wage stratification to regulate labour at an enterprise level (Dalla Costa 25). Incentive structures transformed labour rights into privileges; imagining old entitlements as concessions from above. In the last thirty years, the foundation of worker protections at large has, according to Brown, become illegible (Brown 38).Time and ValueThe reduction of time needed to produce has not coincided with an expansion of free time. The neoliberal anthropological revolution has wormed its way into the depth of the individual subject’s temporalising through a dual assault on labour conditions and propaganda. The privatisation of reproduction means that its necessary minimum is once again the subject of class struggle. Time spent unproductively outside the workplace now not only robs the capitalist, but the worker. If an activity isn’t a means to increase one’s “experience” (the vector of employability), it is time poorly spent. The likelihood of being hired for a job, in professional industries especially, is dependent on your ability to outperform others not only in your talents and skills, but in your own exploitability. Brown points out that the groups traditionally defined by the “middle strata … works more hours for less pay, fewer benefits, less security, and less promise of retirement or upward mobility than at any time in the past century” (Brown 28-29).This is what is meant by the transformation of workers into ‘human capital’. As far as the worker is concerned, the capitalist no longer purchases their labour-power: they purchase the sum of their experiences and behaviours. A competitive market has emerged for these personality markers. As a piece of human capital, one must expend one’s time not only in reproduction, but the production of their own surplus value. Going to a play adds culture points to your brand; speaking a second language gives you a competitive edge; a robust Instagram following is the difference between getting or missing out on a job. For Jess Whyte, this means that the market is now able to govern in place of the state. It exercises a command over people’s lives in and out of the workplace “which many an old tyrannical state would have envied” (Whyte 20).There is a question here of change and continuity. A survey of the 20th century shows that the reduction of ‘socially necessary labour time’ does not necessarily mean a reduction in time spent at work. In fact, the minimum around which capitalist production circulates is not worktime but wages. It is only at the political level that the working class prevented capital from pursuing this minimum. With the political victory of neoliberalism as a “restoration of class power” to the bourgeoisie, however, this minimum becomes a factor at the heart of all negotiations between capital and labour. The individual labourer lying at the heart of the productive process is reduced to his most naked form: human capital. This capital must spend all its time productively for its own benefit. Mundane tasks are avoidable, as stipulated by the piece of human capital sometimes known as Anne Helen Peterson, if they “wouldn’t make my job easier or my work better”. People are never really after-work under neoliberalism; their spare time is structurally adjusted into auxiliary labour. Competition has achieved what the state could never have dreamed of: a total governance of spare hours. This governance unites journalists tweeting from bed with Amazon workers living where they work, not to mention early-career academics working over a weekend to publish an article in an online journal that is not even paying them. These are all ways in which the privatisation of social reproduction transforms afterwork into unpaid overtime.ReferencesBrown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015.Dalla Costa, Maria. Family, Welfare, and the State: Between Progressivism and the New Deal. Brooklyn: Common Notions, 2015.Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.Engels, Friedrich, and Karl Marx. The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. R.C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1978.Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. Vol. 1 and 2. Trans. E. Aveling and E. Untermann. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 2013.Peterson, Anne Helen. “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.” Buzzfeed. 10 Oct. 2019 <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work>.Postone, Moishe. Time, Labour and Social Domination. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.Thompson, E.P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” In Stanley Aronowitz and Michael J. Roberts, eds., Class: The Anthology. Hoboken: Wiley, 2018.Wang, Jackie. Carceral Capitalism. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2018.Weeks, Kathi. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke UP, 2011.Whyte, Jessica. “The Invisible Hand of Friedrich Hayek: Submission and Spontaneous Order.” Political Theory (2017): 1-29.
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Brien, Donna Lee. "Bringing a Taste of Abroad to Australian Readers: Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1956–1960." M/C Journal 19, no. 5 (October 13, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1145.

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IntroductionFood Studies is a relatively recent area of research enquiry in Australia and Magazine Studies is even newer (Le Masurier and Johinke), with the consequence that Australian culinary magazines are only just beginning to be investigated. Moreover, although many major libraries have not thought such popular magazines worthy of sustained collection (Fox and Sornil), considering these publications is important. As de Certeau argues, it can be of considerable consequence to identify and analyse everyday practices (such as producing and reading popular magazines) that seem so minor and insignificant as to be unworthy of notice, as these practices have the ability to affect our lives. It is important in this case as these publications were part of the post-war gastronomic environment in Australia in which national tastes in domestic cookery became radically internationalised (Santich). To further investigate Australian magazines, as well as suggesting how these cosmopolitan eating habits became more widely embraced, this article will survey the various ways in which the idea of “abroad” is expressed in one Australian culinary serial from the post-war period, Australian Wines & Food Quarterly magazine, which was published from 1956 to 1960. The methodological approach taken is an historically-informed content analysis (Krippendorff) of relevant material from these magazines combined with germane media data (Hodder). All issues in the serial’s print run have been considered.Australian Post-War Culinary PublishingTo date, studies of 1950s writing in Australia have largely focused on literary and popular fiction (Johnson-Wood; Webby) and literary criticism (Bird; Dixon; Lee). There have been far fewer studies of non-fiction writing of any kind, although some serial publications from this time have attracted some attention (Bell; Lindesay; Ross; Sheridan; Warner-Smith; White; White). In line with studies internationally, groundbreaking work in Australian food history has focused on cookbooks, and includes work by Supski, who notes that despite the fact that buying cookbooks was “regarded as a luxury in the 1950s” (87), such publications were an important information source in terms of “developing, consolidating and extending foodmaking knowledge” at that time (85).It is widely believed that changes to Australian foodways were brought about by significant post-war immigration and the recipes and dishes these immigrants shared with neighbours, friends, and work colleagues and more widely afield when they opened cafes and restaurants (Newton; Newton; Manfredi). Although these immigrants did bring new culinary flavours and habits with them, the overarching rhetoric guiding population policy at this time was assimilation, with migrants expected to abandon their culture, language, and habits in favour of the dominant British-influenced ways of living (Postiglione). While migrants often did retain their foodways (Risson), the relationship between such food habits and the increasingly cosmopolitan Australian food culture is much more complex than the dominant cultural narrative would have us believe. It has been pointed out, for example, that while the haute cuisine of countries such as France, Italy, and Germany was much admired in Australia and emulated in expensive dining (Brien and Vincent), migrants’ own preference for their own dishes instead of Anglo-Australian choices, was not understood (Postiglione). Duruz has added how individual diets are eclectic, “multi-layered and hybrid” (377), incorporating foods from both that person’s own background with others available for a range of reasons including availability, cost, taste, and fashion. In such an environment, popular culinary publishing, in terms of cookbooks, specialist magazines, and recipe and other food-related columns in general magazines and newspapers, can be posited to be another element contributing to this change.Australian Wines & Food QuarterlyAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly (AWFQ) is, as yet, a completely unexamined publication, and there appears to be only three complete sets of this magazine held in public collections. It is important to note that, at the time it was launched in the mid-1950s, food writing played a much less significant part in Australian popular publishing than it does today, with far fewer cookbooks released than today, and women’s magazines and the women’s pages of newspapers containing only small recipe sections. In this environment, a new specialist culinary magazine could be seen to be timely, an audacious gamble, or both.All issues of this magazine were produced and printed in, and distributed from, Melbourne, Australia. Although no sales or distribution figures are available, production was obviously a struggle, with only 15 issues published before the magazine folded at the end of 1960. The title of the magazine changed over this time, and issue release dates are erratic, as is the method in which volumes and issues are numbered. Although the number of pages varied from 32 up to 52, and then less once again, across the magazine’s life, the price was steadily reduced, ending up at less than half the original cover price. All issues were produced and edited by Donald Wallace, who also wrote much of the content, with contributions from family members, including his wife, Mollie Wallace, to write, illustrate, and produce photographs for the magazine.When considering the content of the magazine, most is quite familiar in culinary serials today, although AWFQ’s approach was radically innovative in Australia at this time when cookbooks, women’s magazines, and newspaper cookery sections focused on recipes, many of which were of cakes, biscuits, and other sweet baking (Bannerman). AWFQ not only featured many discursive essays and savory meals, it also featured much wine writing and review-style content as well as information about restaurant dining in each issue.Wine-Related ContentWine is certainly the most prominent of the content areas, with most issues of the magazine containing more wine-related content than any other. Moreover, in the early issues, most of the food content is about preparing dishes and/or meals that could be consumed alongside wines, although the proportion of food content increases as the magazine is published. This wine-related content takes a clearly international perspective on this topic. While many articles and advertisements, for example, narrate the long history of Australian wine growing—which goes back to early 19th century—these articles argue that Australia's vineyards and wineries measure up to international, and especially French, examples. In one such example, the author states that: “from the earliest times Australia’s wines have matched up to world standard” (“Wine” 25). This contest can be situated in Australia, where a leading restaurant (Caprice in Sydney) could be seen to not only “match up to” but also, indeed to, “challenge world standards” by serving Australian wines instead of imports (“Sydney” 33). So good, indeed, are Australian wines that when foreigners are surprised by their quality, this becomes newsworthy. This is evidenced in the following excerpt: “Nearly every English businessman who has come out to Australia in the last ten years … has diverted from his main discussion to comment on the high quality of Australian wine” (Seppelt, 3). In a similar nationalist vein, many articles feature overseas experts’ praise of Australian wines. Thus, visiting Italian violinist Giaconda de Vita shows a “keen appreciation of Australian wines” (“Violinist” 30), British actor Robert Speaight finds Grange Hermitage “an ideal wine” (“High Praise” 13), and the Swedish ambassador becomes their advocate (Ludbrook, “Advocate”).This competition could also be located overseas including when Australian wines are served at prestigious overseas events such as a dinner for members of the Overseas Press Club in New York (Australian Wines); sold from Seppelt’s new London cellars (Melbourne), or the equally new Australian Wine Centre in Soho (Australia Will); or, featured in exhibitions and promotions such as the Lausanne Trade Fair (Australia is Guest;“Wines at Lausanne), or the International Wine Fair in Yugoslavia (Australia Wins).Australia’s first Wine Festival was held in Melbourne in 1959 (Seppelt, “Wine Week”), the joint focus of which was the entertainment and instruction of the some 15,000 to 20,000 attendees who were expected. At its centre was a series of free wine tastings aiming to promote Australian wines to the “professional people of the community, as well as the general public and the housewife” (“Melbourne” 8), although admission had to be recommended by a wine retailer. These tastings were intended to build up the prestige of Australian wine when compared to international examples: “It is the high quality of our wines that we are proud of. That is the story to pass on—that Australian wine, at its best, is at least as good as any in the world and better than most” (“Melbourne” 8).There is also a focus on promoting wine drinking as a quotidian habit enjoyed abroad: “We have come a long way in less than twenty years […] An enormous number of husbands and wives look forward to a glass of sherry when the husband arrives home from work and before dinner, and a surprising number of ordinary people drink table wine quite un-selfconsciously” (Seppelt, “Advance” 3). However, despite an acknowledged increase in wine appreciation and drinking, there is also acknowledgement that this there was still some way to go in this aim as, for example, in the statement: “There is no reason why the enjoyment of table wines should not become an Australian custom” (Seppelt, “Advance” 4).The authority of European experts and European habits is drawn upon throughout the publication whether in philosophically-inflected treatises on wine drinking as a core part of civilised behaviour, or practically-focused articles about wine handling and serving (Keown; Seabrook; “Your Own”). Interestingly, a number of Australian experts are also quoted as stressing that these are guidelines, not strict rules: Crosby, for instance, states: “There is no ‘right wine.’ The wine to drink is the one you like, when and how you like it” (19), while the then-manager of Lindemans Wines is similarly reassuring in his guide to entertaining, stating that “strict adherence to the rules is not invariably wise” (Mackay 3). Tingey openly acknowledges that while the international-style of regularly drinking wine had “given more dignity and sophistication to the Australian way of life” (35), it should not be shrouded in snobbery.Food-Related ContentThe magazine’s cookery articles all feature international dishes, and certain foreign foods, recipes, and ways of eating and dining are clearly identified as “gourmet”. Cheese is certainly the most frequently mentioned “gourmet” food in the magazine, and is featured in every issue. These articles can be grouped into the following categories: understanding cheese (how it is made and the different varieties enjoyed internationally), how to consume cheese (in relation to other food and specific wines, and in which particular parts of a meal, again drawing on international practices), and cooking with cheese (mostly in what can be identified as “foreign” recipes).Some of this content is produced by Kraft Foods, a major advertiser in the magazine, and these articles and recipes generally focus on urging people to eat more, and varied international kinds of cheese, beyond the ubiquitous Australian cheddar. In terms of advertorials, both Kraft cheeses (as well as other advertisers) are mentioned by brand in recipes, while the companies are also profiled in adjacent articles. In the fourth issue, for instance, a full-page, infomercial-style advertisement, noting the different varieties of Kraft cheese and how to serve them, is published in the midst of a feature on cooking with various cheeses (“Cooking with Cheese”). This includes recipes for Swiss Cheese fondue and two pasta recipes: spaghetti and spicy tomato sauce, and a so-called Italian spaghetti with anchovies.Kraft’s company history states that in 1950, it was the first business in Australia to manufacture and market rindless cheese. Through these AWFQ advertisements and recipes, Kraft aggressively marketed this innovation, as well as its other new products as they were launched: mayonnaise, cheddar cheese portions, and Cracker Barrel Cheese in 1954; Philadelphia Cream Cheese, the first cream cheese to be produced commercially in Australia, in 1956; and, Coon Cheese in 1957. Not all Kraft products were seen, however, as “gourmet” enough for such a magazine. Kraft’s release of sliced Swiss Cheese in 1957, and processed cheese slices in 1959, for instance, both passed unremarked in either the magazine’s advertorial or recipes.An article by the Australian Dairy Produce Board urging consumers to “Be adventurous with Cheese” presented general consumer information including the “origin, characteristics and mode of serving” cheese accompanied by a recipe for a rich and exotic-sounding “Wine French Dressing with Blue Cheese” (Kennedy 18). This was followed in the next issue by an article discussing both now familiar and not-so familiar European cheese varieties: “Monterey, Tambo, Feta, Carraway, Samsoe, Taffel, Swiss, Edam, Mozzarella, Pecorino-Romano, Red Malling, Cacio Cavallo, Blue-Vein, Roman, Parmigiano, Kasseri, Ricotta and Pepato” (“Australia’s Natural” 23). Recipes for cheese fondues recur through the magazine, sometimes even multiple times in the same issue (see, for instance, “Cooking With Cheese”; “Cooking With Wine”; Pain). In comparison, butter, although used in many AWFQ’s recipes, was such a common local ingredient at this time that it was only granted one article over the entire run of the magazine, and this was largely about the much more unusual European-style unsalted butter (“An Expert”).Other international recipes that were repeated often include those for pasta (always spaghetti) as well as mayonnaise made with olive oil. Recurring sweets and desserts include sorbets and zabaglione from Italy, and flambéd crepes suzettes from France. While tabletop cooking is the epitome of sophistication and described as an international technique, baked Alaska (ice cream nestled on liquor-soaked cake, and baked in a meringue shell), hailing from America, is the most featured recipe in the magazine. Asian-inspired cuisine was rarely represented and even curry—long an Anglo-Australian staple—was mentioned only once in the magazine, in an article reprinted from the South African The National Hotelier, and which included a recipe alongside discussion of blending spices (“Curry”).Coffee was regularly featured in both articles and advertisements as a staple of the international gourmet kitchen (see, for example, Bancroft). Articles on the history, growing, marketing, blending, roasting, purchase, percolating and brewing, and serving of coffee were common during the magazine’s run, and are accompanied with advertisements for Bushell’s, Robert Timms’s and Masterfoods’s coffee ranges. AWFQ believed Australia’s growing coffee consumption was the result of increased participation in quality internationally-influenced dining experiences, whether in restaurants, the “scores of colourful coffee shops opening their doors to a new generation” (“Coffee” 39), or at home (Adams). Tea, traditionally the Australian hot drink of choice, is not mentioned once in the magazine (Brien).International Gourmet InnovationsAlso featured in the magazine are innovations in the Australian food world: new places to eat; new ways to cook, including a series of sometimes quite unusual appliances; and new ways to shop, with a profile of the first American-style supermarkets to open in Australia in this period. These are all seen as overseas innovations, but highly suited to Australia. The laws then controlling the service of alcohol are also much discussed, with many calls to relax the licensing laws which were seen as inhibiting civilised dining and drinking practices. The terms this was often couched in—most commonly in relation to the Olympic Games (held in Melbourne in 1956), but also in relation to tourism in general—are that these restrictive regulations were an embarrassment for Melbourne when considered in relation to international practices (see, for example, Ludbrook, “Present”). This was at a time when the nightly hotel closing time of 6.00 pm (and the performance of the notorious “six o’clock swill” in terms of drinking behaviour) was only repealed in Victoria in 1966 (Luckins).Embracing scientific approaches in the kitchen was largely seen to be an American habit. The promotion of the use of electricity in the kitchen, and the adoption of new electric appliances (Gas and Fuel; Gilbert “Striving”), was described not only as a “revolution that is being wrought in our homes”, but one that allowed increased levels of personal expression and fulfillment, in “increas[ing] the time and resources available to the housewife for the expression of her own personality in the management of her home” (Gilbert, “The Woman’s”). This mirrors the marketing of these modes of cooking and appliances in other media at this time, including in newspapers, radio, and other magazines. This included features on freezing food, however AWFQ introduced an international angle, by suggesting that recipe bases could be pre-prepared, frozen, and then defrosted to use in a range of international cookery (“Fresh”; “How to”; Kelvinator Australia). The then-new marvel of television—another American innovation—is also mentioned in the magazine ("Changing concepts"), although other nationalities are also invoked. The history of the French guild the Confrerie de la Chaine des Roitisseurs in 1248 is, for instance, used to promote an electric spit roaster that was part of a state-of-the-art gas stove (“Always”), and there are also advertisements for such appliances as the Gaggia expresso machine (“Lets”) which draw on both Italian historical antecedence and modern science.Supermarket and other forms of self-service shopping are identified as American-modern, with Australia’s first shopping mall lauded as the epitome of utopian progressiveness in terms of consumer practice. Judged to mark “a new era in Australian retailing” (“Regional” 12), the opening of Chadstone Regional Shopping Centre in suburban Melbourne on 4 October 1960, with its 83 tenants including “giant” supermarket Dickens, and free parking for 2,500 cars, was not only “one of the most up to date in the world” but “big even by American standards” (“Regional” 12, italics added), and was hailed as a step in Australia “catching up” with the United States in terms of mall shopping (“Regional” 12). This shopping centre featured international-styled dining options including Bistro Shiraz, an outdoor terrace restaurant that planned to operate as a bistro-snack bar by day and full-scale restaurant at night, and which was said to offer diners a “Persian flavor” (“Bistro”).ConclusionAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly was the first of a small number of culinary-focused Australian publications in the 1950s and 1960s which assisted in introducing a generation of readers to information about what were then seen as foreign foods and beverages only to be accessed and consumed abroad as well as a range of innovative international ideas regarding cookery and dining. For this reason, it can be posited that the magazine, although modest in the claims it made, marked a revolutionary moment in Australian culinary publishing. As yet, only slight traces can be found of its editor and publisher, Donald Wallace. The influence of AWFQ is, however, clearly evident in the two longer-lived magazines that were launched in the decade after AWFQ folded: Australian Gourmet Magazine and The Epicurean. Although these serials had a wider reach, an analysis of the 15 issues of AWFQ adds to an understanding of how ideas of foods, beverages, and culinary ideas and trends, imported from abroad were presented to an Australian readership in the 1950s, and contributed to how national foodways were beginning to change during that decade.ReferencesAdams, Jillian. “Australia’s American Coffee Culture.” Australian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 23–36.“Always to Roast on a Turning Spit.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 17.“An Expert on Butter.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 11.“Australia Is Guest Nation at Lausanne.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 18–19.“Australia’s Natural Cheeses.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 23.“Australia Will Be There.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 14.“Australian Wines Served at New York Dinner.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.5 (1958): 16.“Australia Wins Six Gold Medals.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.11 (1959/1960): 3.Bancroft, P.A. “Let’s Make Some Coffee.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 10. Bannerman, Colin. Seed Cake and Honey Prawns: Fashion and Fad in Australian Food. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008.Bell, Johnny. “Putting Dad in the Picture: Fatherhood in the Popular Women’s Magazines of 1950s Australia.” Women's History Review 22.6 (2013): 904–929.Bird, Delys, Robert Dixon, and Christopher Lee. Eds. Authority and Influence: Australian Literary Criticism 1950-2000. Brisbane: U of Queensland P, 2001.“Bistro at Chadstone.” The Magazine of Good Living 4.3 (1960): 3.Brien, Donna Lee. “Powdered, Essence or Brewed? Making and Cooking with Coffee in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s.” M/C Journal 15.2 (2012). 20 July 2016 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/475>.Brien, Donna Lee, and Alison Vincent. “Oh, for a French Wife? Australian Women and Culinary Francophilia in Post-War Australia.” Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 22 (2016): 78–90.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998.“Changing Concepts of Cooking.” Australian Wines & Food 2.11 (1958/1959): 18-19.“Coffee Beginnings.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 37–39.“Cooking with Cheese.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 25–28.“Cooking with Wine.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.11 (1959/1960): 24–30.Crosby, R.D. “Wine Etiquette.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 19–21.“Curry and How to Make It.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.2 (1957): 32.Duruz, Jean. “Rewriting the Village: Geographies of Food and Belonging in Clovelly, Australia.” Cultural Geographies 9 (2002): 373–388.Fox, Edward A., and Ohm Sornil. “Digital Libraries.” Encyclopedia of Computer Science. 4th ed. Eds. Anthony Ralston, Edwin D. Reilly, and David Hemmendinger. 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Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2004.Kelvinator Australia. “Try Cooking the Frozen ‘Starter’ Way.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.9 (1959): 10–12.Kennedy, H.E. “Be Adventurous with Cheese.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 3.12 (1960): 18–19.Keown, K.C. “Some Notes on Wine.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 32–33.Krippendorff, Klaus. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004.“Let’s Make Some Coffee.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wines and Food 4.2: 23.Lindesay, Vance. The Way We Were: Australian Popular Magazines 1856–1969. 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Kent Town: Wakefield P, 2012.Seabrook, Douglas. “Stocking Your Cellar.” Australian Wines & Foods Quarterly 1.3 (1957): 19–20.Seppelt, John. “Advance Australian Wine.” Australian Wines & Foods Quarterly 1.3 (1957): 3–4.Seppelt, R.L. “Wine Week: 1959.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.10 (1959): 3.Sheridan, Susan, Barbara Baird, Kate Borrett, and Lyndall Ryan. (2002) Who Was That Woman? The Australian Women’s Weekly in the Postwar Years. Sydney: UNSW P, 2002.Supski, Sian. “'We Still Mourn That Book’: Cookbooks, Recipes and Foodmaking Knowledge in 1950s Australia.” Journal of Australian Studies 28 (2005): 85–94.“Sydney Restaurant Challenges World Standards.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 33.Tingey, Peter. “Wineman Rode a Hobby Horse.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.9 (1959): 35.“Violinist Loves Bach—and Birds.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 3.12 (1960): 30.Wallace, Donald. Ed. Australian Wines & Food Quarterly. Magazine. Melbourne: 1956–1960.Warner-Smith, Penny. “Travel, Young Women and ‘The Weekly’, 1959–1968.” Annals of Leisure Research 3.1 (2000): 33–46.Webby, Elizabeth. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.White, Richard. “The Importance of Being Man.” Australian Popular Culture. Eds. Peter Spearritt and David Walker. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1979. 145–169.White, Richard. “The Retreat from Adventure: Popular Travel Writing in the 1950s.” Australian Historical Studies 109 (1997): 101–103.“Wine: The Drink for the Home.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 2.10 (1959): 24–25.“Wines at the Lausanne Trade Fair.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 15.“Your Own Wine Cellar” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.2 (1957): 19–20.
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Marshall, P. David. "Seriality and Persona." M/C Journal 17, no. 3 (June 11, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.802.

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No man [...] can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true. (Nathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet Letter – as seen and pondered by Tony Soprano at Bowdoin College, The Sopranos, Season 1, Episode 5: “College”)The fictitious is a particular and varied source of insight into the everyday world. The idea of seriality—with its variations of the serial, series, seriated—is very much connected to our patterns of entertainment. In this essay, I want to begin the process of testing what values and meanings can be drawn from the idea of seriality into comprehending the play of persona in contemporary culture. From a brief overview of the intersection of persona and seriality as well as a review of the deployment of seriality in popular culture, the article focuses on the character/ person-actor relationship to demonstrate how seriality produces persona. The French term for character—personnage—will be used to underline the clear relations between characterisation, person, and persona which have been developed by the recent work by Lenain and Wiame. Personnage, through its variation on the word person helps push the analysis into fully understanding the particular and integrated configuration between a public persona and the fictional role that an actor inhabits (Heinich).There are several qualities related to persona that allow this movement from the fictional world to the everyday world to be profitable. Persona, in terms of origins, in and of itself implies performance and display. Jung, for instance, calls persona a mask where one is “acting a role” (167); while Goffman considers that performance and roles are at the centre of everyday life and everyday forms and patterns of communication. In recent work, I have use persona to describe how online culture pushes most people to construct a public identity that resembles what celebrities have had to construct for their livelihood for at least the last century (“Persona”; “Self”). My work has expanded to an investigation of how online persona relates to individual agency (“Agency”) and professional postures and positioning (Barbour and Marshall).The fictive constructions then are intensified versions of what persona is addressing: the fabrication of a role for particular directions and ends. Characters or personnages are constructed personas for very directed ends. Their limitation to the study of persona as a dimension of public culture is that they are not real; however, when one thinks of the actor who takes on this fictive identity, there is clearly a relationship between the real personality and that of the character. Moreover, as Nayar’s analysis of highly famous characters that are fictitious reveals, these celebrated characters, such as Harry Potter or Wolverine, sometime take on a public presence in and of themselves. To capture this public movement of a fictional character, Nayar blends the terms celebrity with fiction and calls these semi-public/semi-real entities “celefiction”: the characters are famous, highly visible, and move across media, information, and cultural platforms with ease and speed (18-20). Their celebrity status underlines their power to move outside of their primary text into public discourse and through public spaces—an extra-textual movement which fundamentally defines what a celebrity embodies.Seriality has to be seen as fundamental to a personnage’s power of and extension into the public world. For instance with Harry Potter again, at least some of his recognition is dependent on the linking or seriating the related books and movies. Seriality helps organise our sense of affective connection to our popular culture. The familiarity of some element of repetition is both comforting for audiences and provides at least a sense of guarantee or warranty that they will enjoy the future text as much as they enjoyed the past related text. Seriality, though, also produces a myriad of other effects and affects which provides a useful background to understand its utility in both the understanding of character and its value in investigating contemporary public persona. Etymologically, the words “series” and seriality are from the Latin and refer to “succession” in classical usage and are identified with ancestry and the patterns of identification and linking descendants (Oxford English Dictionary). The original use of the seriality highlights its value in understanding the formation of the constitution of person and persona and how the past and ancestry connect in series to the current or contemporary self. Its current usage, however, has broadened metaphorically outwards to identify anything that is in sequence or linked or joined: it can be a series of lectures and arguments or a related mark of cars manufactured in a manner that are stylistically linked. It has since been deployed to capture the production process of various cultural forms and one of the key origins of this usage came from the 19th century novel. There are many examples where the 19th century novel was sold and presented in serial form that are too numerous to even summarise here. It is useful to use Dickens’ serial production as a defining example of how seriality moved into popular culture and the entertainment industry more broadly. Part of the reason for the sheer length of many of Charles Dickens’ works related to their original distribution as serials. In fact, all his novels were first distributed in chapters in monthly form in magazines or newspapers. A number of related consequences from Dickens’ serialisation are relevant to understanding seriality in entertainment culture more widely (Hayward). First, his novel serialisation established a continuous connection to his readers over years. Thus Dickens’ name itself became synonymous and connected to an international reading public. Second, his use of seriality established a production form that was seen to be more affordable to its audience: seriality has to be understood as a form that is closely connected to economies and markets as cultural commodities kneaded their way into the structure of everyday life. And third, seriality established through repetition not only the author’s name but also the name of the key characters that populated the cultural form. Although not wholly attributable to the serial nature of the delivery, the characters such as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or David Copperfield along with a host of other major and minor players in his many books become integrated into everyday discourse because of their ever-presence and delayed delivery over stories over time (see Allen 78-79). In the same way that newspapers became part of the vernacular of contemporary culture, fictional characters from novels lived for years at a time in the consciousness of this large reading public. The characters or personnages themselves became personalities that through usage became a way of describing other behaviours. One can think of Uriah Heep and his sheer obsequiousness in David Copperfield as a character-type that became part of popular culture thinking and expressing a clear negative sentiment about a personality trait. In the twentieth century, serials became associated much more with book series. One of the more successful serial genres was the murder mystery. It developed what could be described as recognisable personnages that were both fictional and real. Thus, the real Agatha Christie with her consistent and prodigious production of short who-dunnit novels was linked to her Belgian fictional detective Hercule Poirot. Variations of these serial constructions occurred in children’s fiction, the emerging science fiction genre, and westerns with authors and characters rising to related prominence.In a similar vein, early to mid-twentieth century film produced the film serial. In its production and exhibition, the film serial was a déclassé genre in its overt emphasis on the economic quality of seriality. Thus, the film serial was generally a filler genre that was interspersed before and after a feature film in screenings (Dixon). As well as producing a familiarity with characters such as Flash Gordon, it was also instrumental in producing actors with a public profile that grew from this repetition. Flash Gordon was not just a character; he was also the actor Buster Crabbe and, over time, the association became indissoluble for audiences and actor alike. Feature film serials also developed in the first half-century of American cinema in particular with child actors like Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland often reprising variations of their previous roles. Seriality more or less became the standard form of delivery of broadcast media for most of the last 70 years and this was driven by the economies of production it developed. Whether the production was news, comedy, or drama, most radio and television forms were and are variation of serials. As well as being the zenith of seriality, television serials have been the most studied form of seriality of all cultural forms and are thus the greatest source of research into what serials actually produced. The classic serial that began on radio and migrated to television was the soap opera. Although most of the long-running soap operas have now disappeared, many have endured for more than 30 years with the American series The Guiding Light lasting 72 years and the British soap Coronation Street now in its 64th year. Australian nighttime soap operas have managed a similar longevity: Neighbours is in its 30th year, while Home and Away is in its 27th year. Much of the analyses of soap operas and serials deals with the narrative and the potential long narrative arcs related to characters and storylines. In contrast to most evening television serials historically, soap operas maintain the continuity from one episode to the next in an unbroken continuity narrative. Evening television serials, such as situation comedies, while maintaining long arcs over their run are episodic in nature: the structure of the story is generally concluded in the given episode with at least partial closure in a manner that is never engaged with in the never-ending soap opera serials.Although there are other cultural forms that deploy seriality in their structures—one can think of comic books and manga as two obvious other connected and highly visible serial sources—online and video games represent the other key media platform of serials in contemporary culture. Once again, a “horizon of expectation” (Jauss and De Man 23) motivates the iteration of new versions of games by the industry. New versions of games are designed to build on gamer loyalties while augmenting the quality and possibilities of the particular game. Game culture and gamers have a different structural relationship to serials which at least Denson and Jahn-Sudmann describe as digital seriality: a new version of a game is also imagined to be technologically more sophisticated in its production values and this transformation of the similitude of game structure with innovation drives the economy of what are often described as “franchises.” New versions of Minecraft as online upgrades or Call of Duty launches draw the literal reinvestment of the gamer. New consoles provide a further push to serialisation of games as they accentuate some transformed quality in gameplay, interaction, or quality of animated graphics. Sports franchises are perhaps the most serialised form of game: to replicate new professional seasons in each major sport, the sports game transforms with a new coterie of players each year.From these various venues, one can see the centrality of seriality in cultural forms. There is no question that one of the dimensions of seriality that transcends these cultural forms is its coordination and intersection with the development of the industrialisation of culture and this understanding of the economic motivation behind series has been explored from some of the earliest analyses of seriality (see Hagedorn; Browne). Also, seriality has been mined extensively in terms of its production of the pleasure of repetition and transformation. The exploration of the popular, whether in studies of readers of romance fiction (Radway), or fans of science fiction television (Tulloch and Jenkins; Jenkins), serials have provided the resource for the exploration of the power of the audience to connect, engage and reconstruct texts.The analysis of the serialisation of character—the production of a public personnage—and its relation to persona surprisingly has been understudied. While certain writers have remarked on the longevity of a certain character, such as Vicky Lord’s 40 year character on the soap opera One Life to Live, and the interesting capacity to maintain both complicated and hidden storylines (de Kosnik), and fan audience studies have looked at the parasocial-familiar relationship that fan and character construct, less has been developed about the relationship of the serial character, the actor and a form of twinned public identity. Seriality does produce a patterning of personnage, a structure of familiarity for the audience, but also a structure of performance for the actor. For instance, in a longitudinal analysis of the character of Fu Manchu, Mayer is able to discern how a patterning of iconic form shapes, replicates, and reiterates the look of Fu Manchu across decades of films (Mayer). Similarly, there has been a certain work on the “taxonomy of character” where the serial character of a television program is analysed in terms of 6 parts: physical traits/appearance; speech patterns, psychological traits/habitual behaviours; interaction with other characters; environment; biography (Pearson quoted in Lotz).From seriality what emerges is a particular kind of “type-casting” where the actor becomes wedded to the specific iteration of the taxonomy of performance. As with other elements related to seriality, serial character performance is also closely aligned to the economic. Previously I have described this economic patterning of performance the “John Wayne Syndrome.” Wayne’s career developed into a form of serial performance where the individual born as Marion Morrison becomes structured into a cultural and economic category that determines the next film role. The economic weight of type also constructs the limits and range of the actor. Type or typage as a form of casting has always been an element of film and theatrical performance; but it is the seriality of performance—the actual construction of a personnage that flows between the fictional and real person—that allows an actor to claim a persona that can be exchanged within the industry. Even 15 years after his death, Wayne remained one of the most popular performers in the United States, his status unrivalled in its close definition of American value that became wedded with a conservative masculinity and politics (Wills).Type and typecasting have an interesting relationship to seriality. From Eisenstein’s original use of the term typage, where the character is chosen to fit into the meaning of the film and the image was placed into its sequence to make that meaning, it generally describes the circumscribing of the actor into their look. As Wojcik’s analysis reveals, typecasting in various periods of theatre and film acting has been seen as something to be fought for by actors (in the 1850s) and actively resisted in Hollywood in 1950 by the Screen Actors Guild in support of more range of roles for each actor. It is also seen as something that leads to cultural stereotypes that can reinforce the racial profiling that has haunted diverse cultures and the dangers of law enforcement for centuries (Wojcik 169-71). Early writers in the study of film acting, emphasised that its difference from theatre was that in film the actor and character converged in terms of connected reality and a physicality: the film actor was less a mask and more a sense of “being”(Kracauer). Cavell’s work suggested film over stage performance allowed an individuality over type to emerge (34). Thompson’s semiotic “commutation” test was another way of assessing the power of the individual “star” actor to be seen as elemental to the construction and meaning of the film role Television produced with regularity character-actors where performance and identity became indissoluble partly because of the sheer repetition and the massive visibility of these seriated performances.One of the most typecast individuals in television history was Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek: although the original Star Trek series ran for only three seasons, the physical caricature of Spock in the series as a half-Vulcan and half-human made it difficult for the actor Nimoy to exit the role (Laws). Indeed, his famous autobiography riffed on this mis-identity with the forceful but still economically powerful title I am Not Spock in 1975. When Nimoy perceived that his fans thought that he was unhappy in his role as Spock, he published a further tome—I Am Spock—that righted his relationship to his fictional identity and its continued source of roles for the previous 30 years. Although it is usually perceived as quite different in its constitution of a public identity, a very similar structure of persona developed around the American CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. With his status as anchor confirmed in its power and centrality to American culture in his desk reportage of the assassination and death of President Kennedy in November 1963, Cronkite went on to inhabit a persona as the most trusted man in the United States by the sheer gravitas of hosting the Evening News stripped across every weeknight at 6:30pm for the next 19 years. In contrast to Nimoy, Cronkite became Cronkite the television news anchor, where persona, actor, and professional identity merged—at least in terms of almost all forms of the man’s visibility.From this vantage point of understanding the seriality of character/personnage and how it informs the idea of the actor, I want to provide a longer conclusion about how seriality informs the concept of persona in the contemporary moment. First of all, what this study reveals is the way in which the production of identity is overlaid onto any conception of identity itself. If we can understand persona not in any negative formulation, but rather as a form of productive performance of a public self, then it becomes very useful to see that these very visible public blendings of performance and the actor-self can make sense more generally as to how the public self is produced and constituted. My final and concluding examples will try and elucidate this insight further.In 2013, Netflix launched into the production of original drama with its release of House of Cards. The series itself was remarkable for a number of reasons. First among them, it was positioned as a quality series and clearly connected to the lineage of recent American subscription television programs such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dexter, Madmen, The Wire, Deadwood, and True Blood among a few others. House of Cards was an Americanised version of a celebrated British mini-series. In the American version, an ambitious party whip, Frank Underwood, manoeuvres with ruthlessness and the calculating support of his wife closer to the presidency and the heart and soul of American power. How the series expressed quality was at least partially in its choice of actors. The role of Frank Underwood was played by the respected film actor Kevin Spacey. His wife, Clare, was played by the equally high profile Robin Warren. Quality was also expressed through the connection of the audience of viewers to an anti-hero: a personnage that was not filled with virtue but moved with Machiavellian acuity towards his objective of ultimate power. This idea of quality emerged in many ways from the successful construction of the character of Tony Soprano by James Gandolfini in the acclaimed HBO television series The Sopranos that reconstructed the very conception of the family in organised crime. Tony Soprano was enacted as complex and conflicted with a sense of right and justice, but embedded in the personnage were psychological tropes and scars, and an understanding of the need for violence to maintain influence power and a perverse but natural sense of order (Martin).The new television serial character now embodied a larger code and coterie of acting: from The Sopranos, there is the underlying sense and sensibility of method acting (see Vineberg; Stanislavski). Gandolfini inhabited the role of Tony Soprano and used the inner and hidden drives and motivations to become the source for the display of the character. Likewise, Spacey inhabits Frank Underwood. In that new habitus of television character, the actor becomes subsumed by the role. Gandolfini becomes both over-determined by the role and his own identity as an actor becomes melded to the role. Kevin Spacey, despite his longer and highly visible history as a film actor is overwhelmed by the televisual role of Frank Underwood. Its serial power, where audiences connect for hours and hours, where the actor commits to weeks and weeks of shoots, and years and years of being the character—a serious character with emotional depth, with psychological motivation that rivals the most visceral of film roles—transforms the actor into a blended public person and the related personnage.This blend of fictional and public life is complex as much for the producing actor as it is for the audience that makes the habitus real. What Kevin Spacey/Frank Underwood inhabit is a blended persona, whose power is dependent on the constructed identity that is at source the actor’s production as much as any institutional form or any writer or director connected to making House of Cards “real.” There is no question that this serial public identity will be difficult for Kevin Spacey to disentangle when the series ends; in many ways it will be an elemental part of his continuing public identity. This is the economic power and risk of seriality.One can see similar blendings in the persona in popular music and its own form of contemporary seriality in performance. For example, Eminem is a stage name for a person sometimes called Marshall Mathers; but Eminem takes this a step further and produces beyond a character in its integration of the personal—a real personnage, Slim Shady, to inhabit his music and its stories. To further complexify this construction, Eminem relies on the production of his stories with elements that appear to be from his everyday life (Dawkins). His characterisations because of the emotional depth he inhabits through his rapped stories betray a connection to his own psychological state. Following in the history of popular music performance where the singer-songwriter’s work is seen by all to present a version of the public self that is closer emotionally to the private self, we once again see how the seriality of performance begins to produce a blended public persona. Rap music has inherited this seriality of produced identity from twentieth century icons of the singer/songwriter and its display of the public/private self—in reverse order from grunge to punk, from folk to blues.Finally, it is worthwhile to think of online culture in similar ways in the production of public personas. Seriality is elemental to online culture. Social media encourage the production of public identities through forms of repetition of that identity. In order to establish a public profile, social media users establish an identity with some consistency over time. The everydayness in the production of the public self online thus resembles the production and performance of seriality in fiction. Professional social media sites such as LinkedIn encourage the consistency of public identity and this is very important in understanding the new versions of the public self that are deployed in contemporary culture. However, much like the new psychological depth that is part of the meaning of serial characters such as Frank Underwood in House of Cards, Slim Shady in Eminem, or Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, social media seriality also encourages greater revelations of the private self via Instagram and Facebook walls and images. We are collectively reconstituted as personas online, seriated by the continuing presence of our online sites and regularly drawn to reveal more and greater depths of our character. In other words, the online persona resembles the new depth of the quality television serial personnage with elaborate arcs and great complexity. Seriality in our public identity is also uncovered in the production of our game avatars where, in order to develop trust and connection to friends in online settings, we maintain our identity and our patterns of gameplay. At the core of this online identity is a desire for visibility, and we are drawn to be “picked up” and shared in some repeatable form across what we each perceive as a meaningful dimension of culture. Through the circulation of viral images, texts, and videos we engage in a circulation and repetition of meaning that feeds back into the constancy and value of an online identity. Through memes we replicate and seriate content that at some level seriates personas in terms of humour, connection and value.Seriality is central to understanding the formation of our masks of public identity and is at least one valuable analytical way to understand the development of the contemporary persona. This essay represents the first foray in thinking through the relationship between seriality and persona.ReferencesBarbour, Kim, and P. David Marshall. “The Academic Online Constructing Persona.” First Monday 17.9 (2012).Browne, Nick. “The Political Economy of the (Super)Text.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 9.3 (1984): 174-82. Cavell, Stanley. “Reflections on the Ontology of Film.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Wojcik and Pamela Robertson. 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Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 22-29.Marshall, P. David. “The Cate Blanchett Persona and the Allure of the Oscar.” The Conversation (2014). 4 April 2014.Marshall, P. David “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self.” Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-70.Marshall, P. David. “Personifying Agency: The Public–Persona–Place–Issue Continuum.” Celebrity Studies 4.3 (2013): 369-71.Marshall, P. David. “The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media.” Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 35-48.Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.Martin, Brett. Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. London: Faber and Faber, 2013.Mayer, R. “Image Power: Seriality, Iconicity and the Mask of Fu Manchu.” Screen 53.4 (2012): 398-417.Nayar, Pramod K. Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society, and Celebrity Culture. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2009.Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Not Spock. Milbrae, California: Celestial Arts, 1975.Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Spock. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion, 1995.Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Stanislavski, Constantin. Creating a Role. New York: Routledge, 1989 (1961).Thompson, John O. “Screen Acting and the Commutation Test.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004 (1978). 37-48.Tulloch, John, and Henry Jenkins. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.Vineberg, Steve. Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style. New York; Toronto: Schirmer Books, 1991.Wills, Garry. John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. “Typecasting.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004. 169-89.
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Dutton, Jacqueline. "Counterculture and Alternative Media in Utopian Contexts: A Slice of Life from the Rainbow Region." M/C Journal 17, no. 6 (November 3, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.927.

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Abstract:
Introduction Utopia has always been countercultural, and ever since technological progress has allowed, utopia has been using alternative media to promote and strengthen its underpinning ideals. In this article, I am seeking to clarify the connections between counterculture and alternative media in utopian contexts to demonstrate their reciprocity, then draw together these threads through reference to a well-known figure of the Rainbow Region–Rusty Miller. His trajectory from iconic surfer and Aquarian reporter to mediator for utopian politics and ideals in the Rainbow Region encompasses in a single identity the three elements underpinning this study. In concluding, I will turn to Rusty’s Byron Guide, questioning its classification as alternative or mainstream media, and whether Byron Bay is represented as countercultural and utopian in this long-running and ongoing publication. Counterculture and Alternative Media in Utopian Contexts Counterculture is an umbrella that enfolds utopia, among many other genres and practices. It has been most often situated in the 1960s and 1970s as a new form of social movement embodying youth resistance to the technocratic mainstream and its norms of gender, sexuality, politics, music, and language (Roszak). Many scholars of counterculture underscore its utopian impulses both in the projection of better societies where the social goals are achieved, and in the withdrawal from mainstream society into intentional communities (Yinger 194-6; McKay 5; Berger). Before exploring further the connections between counterculture and alternative media, I want to define the scope of countercultural utopian contexts in general, and the Rainbow Region in particular. Utopia is a neologism created by Sir Thomas More almost 500 years ago to designate the island community that demonstrates order, harmony, justice, hope and desire in the right balance so that it seems like an ideal land. This imaginary place described in Utopia (1516) as a counterpoint to the social, political and religious shortcomings of contemporary 16th century British society, has attracted accusations of heresy (Molner), and been used as a pejorative term, an insult to denigrate political projects that seem farfetched or subversive, especially during the 19th century. Almost every study of utopian theory, literature and practice points to a dissatisfaction with the status quo, which inspires writers, politicians, architects, artists, individuals and communities to rail against it (see for example Davis, Moylan, Suvin, Levitas, Jameson). Kingsley Widmer’s book Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts reiterates what many scholars have stated when he writes that utopias should be understood in terms of what they are countering. Lyman Tower Sargent defines utopia as “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space” and utopianism as “social dreaming” (9), to which I would add that both indicate an improvement on the alternatives, and may indeed be striving to represent the best place imaginable. Utopian contexts, by extension, are those situations where the “social dreaming” is enhanced through human agency, good governance, just laws, education, and work, rather than being a divinely ordained state of nature (Schaer et al). In this way, utopian contexts are explicitly countercultural through their very conception, as human agency is required and their emphasis is on social change. These modes of resistance against dominant paradigms are most evident in attempts to realise textual projections of a better society in countercultural communal experiments. Almost immediately after its publication, More’s Utopia became the model for Bishop Vasco de Quiroga’s communitarian hospital-town Santa Fe de la Laguna in Michoacan, Mexico, established in the 1530s as a counterculture to the oppressive enslavement and massacres of the Purhépecha people by Nuno Guzmán (Green). The countercultural thrust of the 1960s and 1970s provided many utopian contexts, perhaps most readily identifiable as the intentional communities that spawned and flourished, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (Metcalf, Shared Lives). They were often inspired by texts such as Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America (1970) and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), and this convergence of textual practices and alternative lifestyles can be seen in the development of Australia’s own Rainbow Region. Located in northern New South Wales, the geographical area of the Northern Rivers that has come to be known as the Rainbow Region encompasses Byron Bay, Nimbin, Mullumbimby, Bangalow, Clunes, Dunoon, Federal, with Lismore as the region’s largest town. But more evocative than these place names are the “rivers and creeks, vivid green hills, fruit and nut farms […] bounded by subtropical beaches and rainforest mountains” (Wilson 1). Utopian by nature, and recognised as such by the indigenous Bundjalung people who inhabited it before the white settlers, whalers and dairy farmers moved in, the Rainbow Region became utopian through culture–or indeed counterculture–during the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin when the hippies of Mullumbimby and the surfers of Byron Bay were joined by up to 10,000 people seeking alternative ways of being in the world. When the party was over, many Aquarians stayed on to form intentional communities in the beautiful region, like Tuntable Falls, Nimbin’s first and largest such cooperative (Metcalf, From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality 74-83). In utopian contexts, from the Renaissance to the 1970s and beyond, counterculture has underpinned and alternative media has circulated the aims and ideals of the communities of resistance. The early utopian context of the Anabaptist movement has been dubbed as countercultural by Sigrun Haude: “During the reign of the Münster (1534-5) Anabaptists erected not only a religious but also a social and political counterculture to the existing order” (240). And it was this Protestant Reformation that John Downing calls the first real media war, with conflicting movements using pamphlets produced on the new technology of the Gutenberg press to disseminate their ideas (144). What is striking here is the confluence of ideas and practices at this time–countercultural ideals are articulated, published, and disseminated, printing presses make this possible, and utopian activists realise how mass media can be used and abused, exploited and censored. Twentieth century countercultural movements drew on the lessons learnt from historical uprising and revolutions, understanding the importance of getting the word out through their own forms of media which, given the subversive nature of the messages, were essentially alternative, according to the criteria proposed by Chris Atton: alternative media may be understood as a radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media. Alternative media privileges a journalism that is closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of “objectivity” with overt advocacy and oppositional practices. Its practices emphasize first person, eyewitness accounts by participants; a reworking of the populist approaches of tabloid newspapers to recover a “radical popular” style of reporting; collective and antihierarchical forms of organization which eschew demarcation and specialization–and which importantly suggest an inclusive, radical form of civic journalism. (267) Nick Couldry goes further to point out the utopian processes required to identify agencies of change, including alternative media, which he defines as “practices of symbolic production which contest (in some way) media power itself–that is, the concentration of symbolic power in media institutions” (25). Alternative media’s orientation towards oppositional and contestatory practices demonstrates clear parallels between its ambitions and those of counterculture in utopian contexts. From the 1960s onwards, the upsurge in alternative newspaper numbers is commensurate with the blossoming of the counterculture and increased utopian contexts; Susan Forde describes it thus: “a huge resurgence in the popularity of publications throughout the ‘counter-culture’ days of the 1960s and 1970s” (“Monitoring the Establishment”, 114). The nexus of counterculture and alternative media in such utopian contexts is documented in texts like Roger Streitmatter’s Voices of Revolution and Bob Osterlag’s People’s Movements, People’s Press. Like the utopian newspapers that came out of 18th and 19th century intentional communities, many of the new alternative press served to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the countercultural movements, often focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events (see also Frobert). The radical press in Australia was also gaining ground, with OZ in Australia from 1963-1969, and then from 1967-1973 in London. Magazines launched by Philip Frazer like The Digger, Go-Set, Revolution and High Times, and university student newspapers were the main avenues for youth and alternative expression on the Vietnam war and conscription, gay and lesbian rights, racism, feminism and ecological activism (Forde, Challenging the News; Cock & Perry). Nimbin 1973: Rusty Miller and The Byron Express The 1973 Aquarius Festival of counterculture in Nimbin (12-23 May) was a utopian context that had an alternative media life of its own before it arrived in the Rainbow Region–in student publications like Tharnuka and newsletters distributed via the Aquarius Foundation. There were other voices that announced the coming of the Aquarius Festival to Nimbin and reported on its impact, like The Digger from Melbourne and the local paper, The Northern Star. During the Festival, the Nimbin Good Times first appeared as the daily bulletin and continues today with the original masthead drawn by the Festival’s co-organiser, Graeme Dunstan. Some interesting work has been done on this area, ranging from general studies of the Rainbow Region (Wilson; Munro-Clark) to articles analysing its alternative press (Ward & van Vuuren; Martin & Ellis), but to date, there has been no focus on the Rainbow Region’s first alternative newspaper, The Byron Express. Co-edited by Rusty Miller and David Guthrie, this paper presented and mediated the aims and desires of the Aquarian movement. Though short-lived, as only 7 issues were published from 15 February 1973 to September 1973, The Byron Express left a permanent printed vestige of the Aquarian counterculture movement’s activism and ideals from an independent regional perspective. Miller’s credentials for starting up the newspaper are clear–he has always been a trailblazer, mixing “smarts” with surfing and environmental politics. After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts in history from San Diego State College, he first set foot in Byron Bay during his two semesters with the inaugural Chapman College affiliated University of the Seven Seas in 1965-6. Returning to his hometown of Encinitas, he co-founded the Surf Research accessory company with legendary Californian surfer Mike Doyle, and launched Waxmate, the first specially formulated surf wax in 1967 (Davis, Witzig & James; Warshaw 217), selling his interest in the business soon after to spend a couple of years “living the counterculture life on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai” (Davis, Witzig & James), before heading back to Byron Bay via Bells Beach in 1970 (Miller & Shantz) and Sydney, where he worked as an advertising salesman and writer with Tracks surfing magazine (Martin & Ellis). In 1971, he was one of the first to ride the now famous waves of Uluwatu in Bali, and is captured with Steven Cooney in the iconic publicity image for Albe Falzon’s 1971 film, Morning Of The Earth. The champion surfer from the US knew a thing or two about counterculture, alternative media, advertising and business when he found his new utopian context in Byron Bay. Miller and Guthrie’s front-page editorial of the inaugural issue of The Byron Express, published on 15 February 1973, with the byline “for a higher shire”, expressed the countercultural (cl)aims of the publication. Land use, property development and the lack of concern that some people in Byron had for their impact on the environment and people of the region were a prime target: With this first issue of the Byron Express, we hope to explain that the area is badly in need of a focal point. The transitions of present are vast and moving fast. The land is being sold and resold. Lots of money is coming into the area in the way of developments […] caravan parts, hotels, businesses and real estate. Many of the trips incoming are not exactly “concerned” as to what long term effect such developments might have on the environment and its people. We hope to serve as a focus of concern and service, a centre for expression and reflection. We would ask your contributions in vocal and written form. We are ready for some sock it to ya criticism… and hope you would grab us upon the street to tell us how you feel…The mission of this alternative newspaper is thereby defined by the need for a “focal point” that inscribes the voices of the community in a freely accessible narrative, recorded in print for posterity. Although this first issue contains no mention of the Aquarius Festival, there were already rumours circulating about it, as organisers Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen had been up to Main Arm, Mullumbimby and Nimbin on reconnaissance missions beginning in September 1972. Instead, there was an article on “Mullumbimby Man–Close to the Land” by Nicholas Shand, who would go on to found the community-based weekly newspaper The Echo in 1986, then called The Brunswick Valley Echo and still going strong. Another by Bob McTavish asked whether there could be a better form of government; there was a surf story, and a soul food section with a recipe for honey meade entitled “Do you want to get out of it on 10 cents a bottle?” The second issue continues in much the same vein. It is not until the third issue comes out on 17 March 1973 that the Aquarius Festival is mentioned in a skinny half column on page four. And it’s not particularly promising: Arrived at Nimbin, sleepy hamlet… Office in disused R.S.L. rooms, met a couple of guys recently arrived, said nothing was being done. “Only women here, you know–no drive”. Met Joanne and Vi, both unable to say anything to be reported… Graham Dunstan (codenamed Superfest) and John Allen nowhere in sight. Allen off on trip overseas. Dunstan due back in a couple of weeks. 10 weeks to go till “they” all come… and to what… nobody is quite sure. This progress report provides a fascinating contemporary insight into the tensions–between the local surfies and hippies on one hand, and the incoming students on the other–around the organisation of the Aquarius Festival. There is an unbridled barb at the sexist comments made by the guys, implicit criticism of the absent organisers, obvious skepticism about whether anyone will actually come to the festival, and wonderment at what it will be like. Reading between the lines, we might find a feeling of resentment about not being privy to new developments in their own backyard. The final lines of the article are non-committal “Anyway, let’s see what eventuates when the Chiefs return.” It seems that all has been resolved by the fifth issue of 11 May, which is almost entirely dedicated to the Aquarius Festival with the front page headline “Welcome to the New Age”. But there is still an undertone of slight suspicion at what the newcomers to the area might mean in terms of property development: The goal is improving your fellow man’s mind and nourishment in concert with your own; competition to improve your day and the quality of the day for society. Meanwhile, what is the first thing one thinks about when he enters Byron and the area? The physical environment is so magnificent and all encompassing that it can actually hold a man’s breath back a few seconds. Then a man says, “Wow, this land is so beautiful that one could make a quid here.” And from that moment the natural aura and spells are broken and the mind lapses into speculative equations, sales projections and future interest payments. There is plenty of “love” though, in this article: “The gathering at Nimbin is the most spectacular demonstration of the faith people have in a belief that is possible (and possible just because they want it to be) to live in love, through love together.” The following article signed by Rusty Miller “A Town Together” is equally focused on love: “See what you could offer the spirit at Nimbin. It might introduce you to a style that could lead to LOVE.” The centre spread features photos: the obligatory nudes, tents, and back to nature activities, like planting and woodworking. With a text box of “random comments” including one from a Lismore executive: ‘I took my wife and kids out there last weekend and we had such a good time. Seems pretty organized and the town was loaded with love. Heard there is some hepatitis about and rumours of VD. Everyone happy.” And another from a land speculator (surely the prime target of Miller’s wrath): “Saw guys kissing girls on the street, so sweet, bought 200 acres right outside of town, it’s going to be valuable out there some day.” The interview with Johnny Allen as the centrepiece includes some pertinent commentary on the media and reveals a well-founded suspicion of the mediatisation of the Aquarius Festival: We have tried to avoid the media actually. But we haven’t succeeded in doing so. Part of the basic idea is that we don’t need to be sold. All the down town press can do is try and interpret you. And by doing that it automatically places it in the wrong sort of context. So we’ve tried to keep it to people writing about the festival to people who will be involved in it. It’s an involvement festival. Coopting The Byron Express as an “involved” party effects a fundamental shift from an external reporting newspaper to a kind of proponent or even propaganda for the Aquarius festival and its ideas, like so many utopian newspapers had done before. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that The Byron Express should disappear very soon after the Aquarius festival. Fiona Martin and Rhonda Ellis explain that Rusty Miller stopped producing the paper because he “found the production schedule exhausting and his readership too small to attract consistent advertising” (5). At any rate, there were only two more issues, one in June–with some follow up reporting of the festival–and another in September 1973, which was almost entirely devoted to environmentally focused features, including an interview with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Byron Bay 2013: Thirty Years of Rusty’s Byron Guide What Rusty did next is fairly well known locally–surfing and teaching people how to surf and a bit of writing. When major local employer Walkers slaughterhouse closed in 1983, he and his wife, social geographer Tricia Shantz, were asked by the local council to help promote Byron Bay as a tourist destination, writing the first Byron guide in 1983-4. Incorporating essays by local personalities and dedicated visitors, the Byron guide perpetuates the ideal of environmental awareness, spiritual experimentation, and respect for the land and sea. Recent contributors have included philosopher Peter Singer, political journalist Kerry O’Brien, and writer John Ralston Saul, and Miller and Shantz always have an essay in there themselves. “People, Politics and Culture” is the new byline for the 2013 edition. And Miller’s opening essay mediates the same utopian desires and environmental community messages that he espoused from the beginning of The Byron Express: The name Byron Bay represents something that we constantly try to articulate. If one was to dream up a menu of situations and conditions to compose a utopia, Australia would be the model of the nation-state and Byron would have many elements of the actual place one might wish to live for the rest of their lives. But of course there is always the danger of excesses in tropical paradises especially when they become famous destinations. Australia is being held to ransom for the ideology that we should be slaves to money and growth at the cost of a degraded and polluted physical and social environment. Byron at least was/is a refuge against this profusion of the so-called real-world perception that holds profit over environment as the way we must choose for our future. Even when writing for a much more commercial medium, Miller retains the countercultural utopian spirit that was crystallised in the Aquarius festival of 1973, and which remains relevant to many of those living in and visiting the Rainbow Region. Miller’s ethos moves beyond the alternative movements and communities to infiltrate travel writing and tourism initiatives in the area today, as evidenced in the Rusty’s Byron Guide essays. By presenting more radical discourses for a mainstream public, Miller together with Shantz have built on the participatory role that he played in launching the region’s first alternative newspaper in 1973 that became albeit briefly the equivalent of a countercultural utopian gazette. Now, he and Shantz effectively play the same role, producing a kind of countercultural form of utopian media for Byron Bay that corresponds to exactly the same criteria mentioned above. Through their free publication, they aim to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the Rainbow Region, focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events. The Byron Bay that Miller and Shantz promote is resolutely utopian, and certainly countercultural if compared to other free publications like The Book, a new shopping guide, or mainstream media elsewhere. Despite this new competition, they are planning the next edition for 2015 with essays to make people think, talk, and understand the region’s issues, so perhaps the counterculture is still holding its own against the mainstream. References Atton, Chris. “What Is ‘Alternative’ Journalism?” Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism 4.3 (2003): 267-72. Berger, Bennett M. The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life among Rural Communards. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004. Cock, Peter H., & Paul F. Perry. “Australia's Alternative Media.” Media Information Australia 6 (1977): 4-13. Couldry, Nick. “Mediation and Alternative Media, or Relocating the Centre of Media and Communication Studies.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 103, (2002): 24-31. Davis, Dale, John Witzig & Don James. “Rusty Miller.” Encyclopedia of Surfing. 10 Nov. 2014 ‹http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/miller-rusty›. Downing, John. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Davis, J.C. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Forde, Susan. Challenging the News: The Journalism of Alternative and Independent Media. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2011. ---. “Monitoring the Establishment: The Development of the Alternative Press in Australia” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 87 (May 1998): 114-133. Frobert, Lucien. “French Utopian Socialists as the First Pioneers in Development.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 35 (2011): 729-49. Green, Toby. Thomas More’s Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico. London: Phoenix, 2004. Goffman, Ken, & Dan Joy. Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. New York: Villard Books. 2004. Haude, Sigrun. “Anabaptism.” The Reformation World. Ed. Andrew Pettegree. London: Routledge, 2000. 237-256. Jameson, Fredric. Archeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005. Levitas, Ruth. Utopia as Method. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Martin, Fiona, & Rhonda Ellis. “Dropping In, Not Out: The Evolution of the Alternative Press in Byron Shire 1970-2001.” Transformations 2 (2002). 10 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_02/pdf/MartinEllis.pdf›. McKay, George. Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. London: Verso, 1996. Metcalf, Bill. From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality: Cooperative Lifestyles in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995. ---. Shared Visions, Shared Lives: Communal Living around the Globe. Forres, UK: Findhorn Press, 1996. Miller, Rusty & Tricia Shantz. Turning Point: Surf Portraits and Stories from Bells to Byron 1970-1971. Surf Research. 2012. Molnar, Thomas. Utopia: The Perennial Heresy. London: Tom Stacey, 1972. Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New York: Methuen, 1986. Munro-Clark, Margaret. Communes in Rural Australia: The Movement since 1970. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1986. Osterlag, Bob. People’s Movements, People’s Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. New York: Anchor, 1969. Sargent, Lyman Tower. “Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies 5.1 (1994): 1-37. Schaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: New York Public Library/Oxford UP, 2000. Streitmatter, Roger. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. Columbia: Columbia UP, 2001. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Ward, Susan, & Kitty van Vuuren. “Belonging to the Rainbow Region: Place, Local Media, and the Construction of Civil and Moral Identities Strategic to Climate Change Adaptability.” Environmental Communication 7.1 (2013): 63-79. Warshaw, Matt. The History of Surfing. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011. Wilson, Helen. (Ed.). Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural Perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore, NSW: Southern Cross University Press, 2003. Widmer, Kingsley. Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts. Ann Arbor, London: UMI Research Press, 1988. Yinger, J. Milton. Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down. New York: The Free Press, 1982.
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31

Gardner, Paula. "The Perpetually Sick Self." M/C Journal 5, no. 5 (October 1, 2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1986.

Full text
Abstract:
Since the mid-eighties, personality and mood have undergone vigorous surveillance and repair across new populations in the United States. While government and the psy-complexes 1 have always had a stake in promoting citizen health, it is unique that, today, State, industry, and non-governmental organisations recruit consumers to act upon their own mental health. And while citizen behaviours in public spaces have long been fodder for diagnosis, the scope of behaviours and the breadth of the surveyed population has expanded significantly over the past twenty years. How has the notion of behavioural illness been successfully spun to recruit new populations to behavioural diagnosis and repair? Why is it a reasonable proposition that our personalities might be sick, our moods ill? This essay investigates the cultural promotion of a 'script' that assumes sick moods are possible, encourages the self-assessment of risk and self-management of dysfunctional mood, and has thus helped to create a new, adjustable subject. Michel Foucault (1976, 1988) contended that in order for subjects to act upon their selves -- for example, assess themselves via the behavioural health script -- we must view the Self as a construction, a work in progress that is alterable and in need of alteration in order for psychiatric action to seem appropriate. This conception of the self constitutes an extreme theoretical shift from the early modern belief (of Rousseau or Kant) that a core soul inhabited and shaped being, or the moral self.2 Foucault (1976) insisted that subjects are 'not born but made' through formal and informal social discourses that construct knowledge of the 'normal' self. Throughout the 19th century and the modern era, as medical, juridical, and psychiatric institutions gained increasing cultural capital, the normal self became allegedly 'knowable' through science. In turn, the citizen became 'professionalised' (Funicello 1993) -- answerable to these constructed standards, or subject to what Foucault termed biopower. In order to avoid punishments wrested upon the 'deviant' such as being placed in asylum or criminalised, citizens capitulated to social norms, and thus helped the State to achieve social order. 3 While 'technologies of power' or domination determined the conduct of individuals in the premodern era, 'technologies of the self' became prominent in the modern era.4 (Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self') These, explained Foucault, permit individuals to act upon their 'bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct and ways of being' to transform them, to attain happiness, or perfection, among other things (18). Contemporary psychiatric discourses, for example, call upon citizens to transform via self-regulation, and thus lessened the State's disciplinary burden. Since the mid-twentieth century, biopsychiatry has been embraced nationally, and played a key role in propagating self-disciplining citizens. Biopsychiatric logic is viewed culturally as common sense due to a number of occurrences. The dominant media have enthusiastically celebrated so-called biotechnical successes, such as sheep cloning and the development of better drugs to treat Schizophrenia. Hype has also surrounded newer drugs to treat depression (i.e. Prozac) and anxiety (i.e. Paxil), as well as the 'cosmetic' use of antidepressants to allegedly improve personality.5 Citizens, then, are enlisted to trust in psychiatric science to repair mood dysfunction, but also to reveal the 'true' self, occluded by biologically impaired mood. Suggesting that biopsychiatry's 'knowledge' of the human brain has revealed the human condition and can repair sick selves, these discourses have helped to launch the behavioural health script into the national psyche. The successful marketing of the script was also achieved by the diagnostic philosophy encouraged by revisions of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or Mental Disorders(the DSM; these renovations increased the number of affective (mood) and personality diagnoses and broadened diagnostic criteria. The new DSMs 6 institutionalised the pathologisation of common personality and mood distresses as biological or genetic disorders. The texts constitute 'knowledge' of normal personality and behaviour, and press consumers toward biotechnical tools to repair the defunct self. Ian Hacking (1995) suggests that new moral concepts emerge when old ones acquire new connotations, thereby affecting our sense of who we are. The once moral self, known through introspection, is thus transformed via biopsychiatry into a self that is constructed in accordance with scientific 'knowledge'. The State and various private industries have a stake in promoting this Sick Self script. Promoting Diagnosis of the Sick Self Employing the DSM's broad criteria, research by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), contends that a significant percentage of the population is behaviourally ill. The most recent Surgeon General report on Mental Health (from 1999) which also employed broad criteria, argues that a striking 50 million Americans are afflicted with a mental illness each year, most of which were non-major disorders affecting behaviour, personality and mood.7 Additionally, studies suggest that behavioural illness results in lost work days and increases demand for health services, thus constituting a severe financial burden to the State. Such studies consequently provide the State with ample reason to promote behavioural illness. In predicting an epidemic in behavioural illness and a huge increase in mental health service needs, the State has constructed health policy in accordance with the behavioural sickness script. Health policy embraces DSM diagnostic tools that sweep in a wide population by diagnosing risk as illness and links diagnosis with biotechnical recovery methods. Because criteria for these disorders have expanded and diagnoses have become more vague, however, over-diagnosis of the population has become common . 8 Depression, for example, is broadly defined to include moods ranging from the blues to suicidal ideation. Yet, the Sick Self script is ubiquitously embraced by NGO, industry, and State discourses, calling for consumer self-scrutiny and strongly promoting psychopharmaceuticals. These activities has been most successful; to wit: personality disorders were among the most common diagnoses of the 80's, and depression, which was a rare disorder thirty-five years ago, became the most common mental illness in the late 90's (Healy). Consumer Health Groups & Industry Promotions Health institutions and drug industries promote mood illness and market drug remedies as a means of profit maximisation. Broad spectrum diagnoses are, by definition, easy to sell to a wide population and create a vast market for recovery products. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies (each multibillion dollar industries), an expanding variety of self-help industries, consumer health web sites, and an array of psy-complex workers all have a stake in promoting the broad diagnosis of mood and behavioural disorders. 9 In so doing, consumer groups and the health and pharmaceutical industries not only encourage self-discipline (aligning themselves with State productivity goals), but create a vast, ongoing market for recovery products. Promoting Illness and Recovery So strong is the linkage between illness and recovery that pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly sells Prozac by promoting the broad notion of depression, rather than the drug itself. It does so through depression brochures (advertised on TV) and a web page that discusses depression symptoms and offers a depression quiz, instead of product information. Likewise, Psych Central, a typical informational health site, provides consumers standard DSM depression definitions and information (from the biopsychiatric-driven American Psychiatric Association (APA) or the NIMH, and liberal behavioural illness quizzes that typically over-diagnose consumers. 10The Psych Central site also lists a broad range of depression symptoms, while its FAQ link promotes the self-management of mood ailments. For example, the site directs those who believe that they are depressed and want help to contact a physician, obtain a diagnosis, and initiate antidepressant treatment. Such web sites, viewed as a whole, appear to deliver certified knowledge that a 'normal' mood exists, that mood disorders are common, and that abiding citizens should diagnosis and treat their mood ailment. Another essential component of the behavioural script is the suggestion that the modern self's mood is interminably sick. Because common mood distresses are fodder for diagnosis, the self is always at risk of illness, and requires vigilant self-scrutiny. The self is never a finished product. Moreover, mood sickness is insidious and quickly spirals from risk to full-blown disorder. 11 As such, behavioural illness requires on-going self-assessment. Finally, because mood sickness threatens social productivity and State financial solvency, a moral overtone is added to the mix -- good citizens are encouraged to treat their mood dysfunctions promptly, for the common good. The script thus constructs citizenship as a motive for behavioural self-scrutiny; as such, it can naturally recommend that individuals, rather than experts, take charge of the surveillance process. The recommendation of self-determined illness is also a sales feature of the script, appealing to the American ethic of individualism -- even, paradoxically, as the script proposes that science best directs us to our selves. Self-Managed Recovery Health institutions and industries that deploy this script recommend not only self-diagnosis, but also self-managed treatment as the ideal treatment. Health information web sites, for example, tend to displace the expert by encouraging consumers to pre-diagnose their selves (often via on-line quizzes) and to then consult an expert for formal diagnosis and to organise a treatment program. Like governmental heath organisation's web sites, these commonly link consumer-driven, broad-spectrum diagnosis to psycho-pharmaceutical treatment, primarily by listing drugs as the first line of treatment, and linking consumers to drug information. Unsurprisingly, pharmaceutical companies support or own many 'informational' sites. Depression-net.com, for example, is owned by Organon, maker of Remeron, an SSRI in competition with Prozac.12 Still, even sites that receive little or no funding tend to display drugs prominently; for example, Internet Mental Health, which accepts no drug funding lists drugs immediately after diagnosis on the sidebar. This trend illustrates the extent to which drugs are viewed by consumers as a first step in addressing all types of mood sicknesses. Consumer health sites, geared toward Internet users seeking health care information (estimated to be 43% of the 120 million users) promote the illness-recovery link more aggressively. Dr.koop.com, one of the most visited sites on the Internet, describes itself as 'consumer-focused' and 'interactive'. Yet, the homepage of this site tends to include 'news' stories that relay the success of drugs or report on new biopsychiatric studies in depression or mental health. Some consumer sites such as Consumer health sites, geared toward Internet users seeking health care information (estimated to be 43% of the 120 million users) promote the illness-recovery link more aggressively. Dr.koop.com, one of the most visited sites on the Internet, describes itself as 'consumer-focused' and 'interactive'. Yet, the homepage of this site tends to include 'news' stories that relay the success of drugs or report on new biopsychiatric studies in depression or mental health. Some consumer sites such as WebMD prominently display links to drugstores, (such as Drugstore.com), many of which are owned in part or entirely by pharmaceutical companies.13 Similar to the common practices of direct-to-consumer advertising, both informational and consumer sites by-pass the expert, promote recovery via drugs, and direct the consumer to a doctor in search of a prescription, rather than health care advice. State, informational and consumer web sites all help to construct certain populations as at-risk for behavioural sickness. The NIMH information page on depression -- uncanny in its likeness to consumer health and pharmaceutical sites -- utilises the DSM definition of depression and recommends the standard regime of diagnosis and biotechnical treatments (highlighting antidepressants) most appropriate for a diagnosis of major, rather than minor, depression. The site also elaborates the broad approach to mood illness, and recommends that women, children and seniors -- groups deemed at-risk by the broad criteria -- be especially scrutinised for depression. By articulating the broad DSM definition of depression, a generalisable 'self' -- anyone suffering common ailments including sadness, lethargy or weight change -- is deemed at risk of depression or other behavioural illness. At the same time, at-risk groups are constructed as populations in need of more urgent scrutiny, namely society's less powerful individuals, rather than middle-aged males. That is, society's decision-makers--psychiatric researchers, State policy-makers, pharmaceutical CEO's, (etc) are considered least at risk for having defunct selves and productivity functioning. Selling Mood Sickness These brief examples illustrate the standard presentation of behavioural illness information on the Web and from traditional resources such as mailings, brochures, and consumer manuals. Presenting the ideal self as knowable and achievable with the help of bio-psychiatric science, these discourses encourage citizens to self-scrutinise, self-define, and even self-manage the possibility of mood or behavioural dysfunction. Because the individual gathers information, determines her pre-diagnosis, and seeks out a recovery technology, the many choices involved in behavioural scrutiny make it appear to be a free and 'democratic' activity. Additionally, as individuals take on the role of the expert, self-diagnosing via questionnaires, the highly disciplinary nature of the behavioural diagnosis appears unthreatening to individual sovereignty. Thus, this technology of the self solves an age-old problem of capitalist democracy -- how to simultaneously instill citizen's faith in absolute individual liberty (as a source of good government), and, at the same time, the need to achieve the absolute governance of the individual (Miller). Foucault contended that citizens are brought into the social contract of citizenship not simply through social and governmental contracts but by processes of policing that become embedded in our notions of citizenship. The process of self-management recommended by the ubiquitous behavioural script functions smoothly as a technology of surveillance in this era, where the ideal self is known and repaired through biopsychiatric science, the democratic responsibility of a good citizen. The liberal contract has always entailed an exchange of rights for freedoms -- in Rousseau's terms 'making men free by making them subjects.' (Miller xviii) When we make ourselves subjects to ongoing behavioural scrutiny, the resulting Self is not freed, rather it is constrained by a perpetual sickness. Notes 1 This term is used in a Foucaultian sense, to refer to all those who work under and benefit or profit from the dominant biological model of psychiatry dominant since the 1950's in the U.S. 2 For more discussion, see Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul; Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory. (1995) 3 In his essay 'Technologies of the Self' (1988) Foucault outlines the four major types of technologies that function as practical reason and entice citizens to behave according to constructed social standards. Among these are technologies of production (that permit us to produce things), technologies of sign systems (permitting us to use symbols), and the technologies of power and self mentioned in the above text. Through these technologies, operations of individuals become highly regulated, some visible and some difficult to perceive. The less visible technologies of the self became essential to the smooth functioning of society in the modern era. 4 'Technologies' is used to refer to mechanisms and actions of institutions or simply social norms and habits, that work, ultimately, to govern the individual, or create behaviour that serves desires of the State and dominant social bodies. 5 Peter Kramer, author of the best-selling book Listening to Prozac (1995) contends that his patients using Prozac often credited the drug with helping their true personalities to surface. 6 The two revisions occurred in 1987 and 1994. 7 Of that group, only five percent of that group suffers a 'severe' form of mental illness (such as schizophrenia, or extreme form of bipolar or obsessive compulsive disorder), while the rest suffer less severe behavioural and mood disorders. Similar research (also based on broad criteria) was published throughout the 90's suggesting an American epidemic of behavioural illness; it was claimed that 17% of the population is neurotic, while 10-15% of the population (and 30-50% of those seeking care) was said to possess a personality disorder. (Hales and Hales, 1995) 8 The most widely assigned diagnoses in this category today are: depression, multiple personality, adjustment disorder, eating disorders and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which have extremely broad criteria, and are easily assigned to a wide segment of the population. 9The quizzes offered at these sites are standard in psychiatry; the difference here is that these are consumer-conducted. Lilly uses the Zung Self-Assessment Tool, which asks 20 broad questions regarding mood, and overdiagnoses individuals with potential depression. By responding to vague questions such as 'Morning is when I feel the best', 'I notice that I am losing weight', and 'I feel downhearted, blue and sad' with the choice of 'sometimes', individuals are thereby pre-diagnosed with potential depression. (https://secure.prozac.com/Main/zung.jsp) Psych central uses the Goldberg Inventory that is similarly broad, consumer-operated, and also tends to overdiagnose. 10 The DSM and other psychiatric texts and consumer manuals commonly suggest that undiagnosed depression will lead, eventually, to full-blown major depression. While a minority of individuals who suffer ongoing episodes of major depression will eventually suffer chronic major depression, it has not been found that minor depression will snowball into major depression or chronic major depression. This in fact, is one of the many suspicions among researchers that is referred to as fact in psychiatric literature and consumer manuals. A similar case in point is the suggestion that depression is a brain disorder, when in fact, research has not determined biochemistry or genetics to be the 'cause' of major depression. 11 Increasingly, Pharmaceutical sites are indistinguishable from consumer sites, as in the case of Bristol-Meyers Squibb's depression page, (http://www.livinglifebetter.com/src/htdo...) offering a layperson's depression definition and, immediately thereafter, information on its antidepressant Serzone. 12 Like the informational and State sites, these also link consumers to depression information (generally NIMH, FDA or APA research), as well as questionnaires. References American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, D.C: American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1994. Cruikshank, Barbara. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization; A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Vintage, 1961. - - - . The Order of Things; An Archaeology of the Human Science., New York: Vintage, 1966. - - - . The History of Sexuality; An Introduction, Volume I. New York: Vintage, 1976. - - - . 'Technologies of the Self', Technologies of the Self; A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Ed. Luther Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton. Amherst: University of Amherst Press, 1988. 16-49. Funicello, Theresa. The Tyranny of Kindness; Dismantling the Welfare System to End Poverty in America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993. Hales, Dianne R. and Robert E. Hales. Caring For the Mind: The Comprehensive Guide to Mental Health. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. Healy, David. The Anti-Depressant Era. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997. Kramer, Peter D. Listening to Prozac; A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self. New York: Viking, 1993. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self; Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993. - - - . Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Office of the Surgeon General. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. 1999. <http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/me...> Rose, Nickolas. Governing the Soul; The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge, 1990. Links http://www.drugstore.com http://psychcentral.com/library/depression_faq.htm http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/DSM-IV http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/depression.cfm http://www.livinglifebetter.com/src/htdocs/index.asp?keyword=depression_index http://my.webmd.com http://www.mentalhealth.com http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html http://www.prozac.com http://my.webmd.com/ http://www.a-silver-lining.org/BPNDepth/criteria_d.html#MDD http://psychcentral.com/depquiz.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Gardner, Paula. "The Perpetually Sick Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Gardner.html &gt. Chicago Style Gardner, Paula, "The Perpetually Sick Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Gardner.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Gardner, Paula. (2002) The Perpetually Sick Self. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Gardner.html &gt ([your date of access]).
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