Статті в журналах з теми "Civil marriage celebration"

In Cameroon we are dealing with three types of marriage: traditional, universally practiced marriage; civil marriage, required by state law before entering into a religious marriage; and, finally, sacramental marriage. Most widespread is the traditional form of contracting marriage. This article will present this particular form, referring to Gidar traditions and also showing its similarities to, and differences from, the Christian tradition brought by the missionaries. It will also propose solutions which combine the two traditions. A characteristic feature of marriage rites was their multi-stage nature. They were not single acts but events long prepared and celebrated with suitable gestures, symbols, words, and events. The individual, successive stages of “taking a wife” consisted of the choice of a spouse, accepted by both families; an engagement period; an act by both families of acknowledgement of the joining of the young persons as one in marriage; the conveying of the bride to her husband’s home; celebrating; and paying the matrimonial fee. The Church in northern Cameroon recognized traditional marriages contracted outside of baptism as valid and licit, provided that local principles, e.g., payment of a marriage fee, were taken into account. If either of the parties accepted baptism, the marriage became for him or her sacramental. If the other party also made the same decision later on, their union took on a sacramental character, without a need to renew the marriage vows. Controversy would however arise if attempts were made to contract a traditional marriage if one party was [already] baptized, or if both parties were baptized. These controversies mainly concerned the unity, indissolubility, and sacramentality of marriage.

Contracting A Marriage before a Consul (Some Legal Aspects)SummaryThe possibility of being married before a consul has been created both by the regulations of international public law, particularly by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, as well as by the Polish law, including especially art 26 of the Act of the 13th Feb. 1984 on the Functions of a Consul of the Republic of Poland and art 1 § 4 of the Family and Guardianship Code as well as art. 60 of The Law on the Certificates of a Civil Status. These regulations entitle Polish citizens staying abroad to get married before a Polish consul. Nevertheless, they do not impose such a form of contracting a marriage.A man and a woman, who are Polish citizens staying abroad, can get married before a Polish consul or the other person designated to perform the functions of a consul. Such an opinion can be confirmed on the basis of current legal regulations. N obody doubted that art. 2 of the Family and Guardianship Code in its previous form confirmed that Polish citizens staying abroad could get married in accordance with lex loci celebrationis matrimonii being valid in the state of stay or before a Polish consul.It is always possible to choose between contracting a marriage according to the regulations of the state of stay before a local civil officer or before a consul. The only im portant condition for contracting a marriage before a consul is that it is not contrary to the laws of the state of stay of the people getting married.

La ceremonia del matrimonio civil celebrada en los ayuntamientos ha sido considerada acto familiar o social. Sin embargo, debido al auge de estas celebraciones en dependencias municipales junto a su planificación, organización y ejecución por parte de los servicios oficiales correspondientes, se replantea la cuestión sobre su titularidad, abriendo la posibilidad de su transformación de acto privado a oficial.Con la finalidad de dar respuesta a este planteamiento se procedió a marcar los límites de los actos oficiales a través de la revisión explorativa de diferentes expertos en la materia. Y también se analizó desde el método descriptivo la realidad actual del matrimonio civil en los ayuntamientos.El resultado obtenido con el estudio de la clasificación de los actos oficiales delimitó que los actos oficiales generales son los organizados por la Corona, el Gobierno y la Administración que tienen como objetivo conmemoraciones y acontecimientos de proyección territorial. En cuanto a los actos oficiales especiales, estos son organizados por el poder ejecutivo, legislativo y judicial con la finalidad de conmemorar o celebrar actos propios del ámbito específico de sus servicios, funciones y actividades.Bajo esta consideración, se examinó la ceremonia de la boda civil como servicio municipal. Se determinó que el matrimonio civil celebrado en los consistorios se registra como acto privado y oficial según se produzcan unas circunstancias u otras.Con la base de los datos obtenidos, concluimos que la ceremonia del matrimonio civil en los ayuntamientos se cataloga como acto privado o como acto oficial especial._________________________The civil marriage ceremony performed through time in city halls has been considered as a social or familiar act. However, according to the growth of this kind of celebrations in public halls, along with their planning, organization and development by pertinent public authorities, makes necessary reconsidering the question about their ownership, letting the possibility of its transformation from a private to an official act.In order to give an answer to this point, bounds to official acts were marked through explorative reviews made by experts. Also, the reality of civil marriages in city halls has been analysed from descriptive methods.The obtained results by classifying official acts delimited that the general official acts were the ones organised by the Crown, the Government and the Administration, which target are commemorations and events in their territorial environments. As for the special official acts, those are the ones organised by the three powers (executive, legislative and judicial), in order to commemorate or celebrate their own acts in the specific sphere affecting their services, competencies and activities.Under that consideration, the civil wedding ceremony has been analysed as a municipal service. Civil marriages have been determined as private or public acts according to the circumstances.With the obtained data, we can conclude that civil marriage ceremonies carried out in city halls are catalogued as private acts or as special official acts.

As a secularising nation in Northern Europe, Scotland has, over the last few decades, experienced a steep decline in religious belonging, church attendance, and beliefs. Ritual participation, which is arguably an understudied dimension of secularisation, follows a similar pattern of decline, with a significant majority of Scottish marriage rituals now being conducted in secular ceremonies. Using data from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 17 married couples, this study examines the decisions that secular Scots make when planning their wedding. Moreover, it places a particular focus on humanist marriage ceremonies, which have seen a noteworthy increase in popularity since they became legally recognised in Scotland in 2005. The secular participants emphasised the role of personal convictions and family expectations in choosing a particular type of marriage ceremony. The narratives also revealed how positive attitudes toward humanist ceremonies, in contrast with civil ceremonies, are centred around their ability to create personalised, nonreligious, celebrations that nevertheless give attention to culture and heritage. Ultimately, the findings suggest that repeating history through cultural traditions are an important aspect of both secular and religious rites of passage.

A decade after celebrating Morocco's 2004 family law as a social revolution, women's groups became dismayed by the persistence of minor marriage, polygyny, and marriage guardianship. Conventional explanations for why statutory law reform often fails to produce intended outcomes depart from the concept of the homogeneous state, pointing to insufficient enforcement mechanisms and cultural resistance to the new law within society. Arguing against this conceptualization, this article adopts the state-in-society approach. It compares how two types of street-level bureaucrats and secular and Islamist women's groups have engaged with the 2004 law. It finds that different groups have emphasized and rejected different categories and norms of the law. Street-level bureaucrats' interpretations have sometimes overlapped with those of civil society actors. The state is therefore not enforcing one normative order against cultural resistance from society; instead, different state actors are themselves actively involved in the production and preservation of multiple normativities.

Abstract Chris Vargas's exhibition Consciousness Razing: The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion by smashing pervasive mythologies that erase transgender people from most retellings of the uprising and showcasing multiple artists' proposals for monuments that at least address if not remedy this absence. Stories of gay and lesbian civil rights victories that came out of Stonewall—like the dissolution of sodomy laws, the creation of employment nondiscrimination protections, and gay marriage—all tend to trace back to the rebellion, while the critical role that transgender women, many of color, played in these advances has slipped deep into unseen corners of historical memory. This forgetting is both a symptom and cause of the continued erasure of transgender people, especially transgender women of color, from contemporary LGBT activism, community, and discourse. As a gesture of amelioration, this monument implores us to reconstruct memories of Stonewall as a way of not merely supporting celebrating contemporary trans existence but ultimately shaping trans futurity.

Abstract In two recent cases, one in the USA and the other in the UK, courts have considered conscientious objection claims made by cake bakers who objected to providing a cake for the celebration/advocacy of same-sex marriage. I will argue that the issue in these cases is not the reasonable balance between the individual’s religious interests and the interests or rights of others in the community but is instead whether the individual’s religiously based objection should be viewed as an expression of personal religious conscience or as a (religiously grounded) civic position or action that falls outside the scope of religious freedom protection. In determining whether a conscientious objection should be viewed as a personal/spiritual matter or instead as a civic/political position, two factors are relevant. The first is whether the individual is being required to perform the particular act (to which she/he objects) because she/he holds a special position not held by others. The other factor is the relative remoteness/proximity of the act that the objector is required to perform from the act that she/he considers to be inherently immoral. The more remote the legally required action, the more likely we are to regard the objection as a political position.

Apresentamos, em linhas gerais, duas experiências urbanas conceitualmente diferentes, seja na maneira de criar e organizar o espaço ou no viver. Celebration uma cidade informacional com um projeto de oferecer ao consumidor-morador uma alternativa estética na união entre a tecnologia e a tradição. Empresas de grande porte oferecem e vendem o que de mais atual pode se esperar em produtos para a casa, modernos aparatos para facilitar a vida. A cidade asiática, por seu turno, oferece o conceito de Smartcity, onde a tecnologia não é oferecida em si-mesmo, mas, conectada à inteligência do morador.Palavras-chave: Geografias da Comunicação; Período Técnico Cientifico Informacional; Cidades Globais; Smartcity; comunicação urbana. ABSTRACTHere, in general, two conceptually different urban experiences, either in the way of creating and organizing the space or live. Celebration an informational city with a project to offer the consumer-dweller an aesthetic alternative to marriage between technology and tradition. Large companies offer and sell what more can be expected in current products for the home, modern devices to make life easier. The Asian city, in turn, offers the concept of Smartcity, where technology is not offered in self, but connected to the resident's intelligence. Keywords: Geographies of communication; Technical Scientific informational Period; Global Cities; Smartcity; Urban Communication. RESUMENEn línea general, presentamos dos experiencias urbanas conceptualmente diferentes, ya sea en la forma de crear y organizar el espacio o vivir. Celebration es una ciudad informacional con un proyecto para ofrecer al consumidor-habitante una alternativa estética en la unión de la tecnología con la tradición. Grandes empresas ofrecen y venden lo más actual se puede esperar de los productos para el hogar, aparatos modernos para hacer la vida más fácil. La ciudad asiática, a su vez, ofrece el concepto de Smartcity, donde la tecnología no se ofrece en si-misma, pero conectado a la inteligencia del residente.Palabras clave: Geografías de la comunicación; Periodo Técnico Científico Informacional; Ciudades Globales; Smartcity; Comunicación Urbana. ReferênciasCASTELLS, Manuel - A sociedade em Rede - A era da informação: Economia, Sociedade e Cultura. São Paulo: Paz e Terra,1999 English version CASTELLS, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell.CELEBRATION. Disponível em http://www.celebration.fl.us/town-info/community-profile/ . Acess in 14.10.2013.CELEBRATION COMPANY. The Official Website. 20. May 2005. http://www.celebrationfl.comCELEBRATION HEALTH. Disponível em http://www.celebrationhealth.com. Acesss in 09.10.2013.CELEBRATION NEWS. Disponível em http://www.celebration.fl.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/CELEBRATION-NEWS-OCT-2013-low.pdf Acesso em 20.10.2013.CENSUS 2010. Disponível em http://www.census.gov/2010census/ . Acesso em 15.10.2013.DISNEY'S UTOPIA. http://www.123helpme.com/disneys-utopia-view.asp?id=164640. Acesso em 20.10.2013.FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS, compiled by Kenny Cottrell Acesso em 05.03.2000. O site http://www.home.ptd.net/~glisman/cele2.htm está, atualmente, indisponível.FRANTZ, Douglas & COLLINS, Catherine (2000) Celebration, U.S.A.: living in Disney's brave new town. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2000.GRUEN ,Victor: The heart of our cities: The urban crisis: diagnosis and cure, Thames and Hudson, London, 1965.HARVEY, David. Condição Pós moderna. São Paulo: Loyola, 1989. English version HARVEY, David. Post modern conditions., Wiley-Blackwell, 1992.MITCHELL, William J. & CASALEGN, Federico. Connected Sustainable Cities. MIT Mobile Experience Lab PublishingOSCEOLA COUNTY PLANNING DEPARTAMENT. Disponível em http://www.osceola.org/. Acesso em 15.10.2013. E-mail Address: oscear@magicnet.net RAINIERI, G. Metrópoles Utópicas, mas possíveis. Entrevista com Jordi Pardo. IN Revista da cultura, Ed. 60 julho de 2012, São Paulo: Livraria Cultura.ROSS, Andrew.: The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town, New York: Ballantine, 1999.SERRES, Michel. A lenda dos Anjos. São Paulo: Aleph, 1995. English version SERRES, Michel. Angels, The modern Myth. Flammarion; First UK edition (October 3, 1995).SONGDOIBD. Disponível em http://www.songdo.com . Acesso em 15.10.2013.STETSON EDUCATION. Disponível em http://www.stetson.edu/celebration. Acesso em 15.10.2013STETSON LIFELONG. Disponível em http://www.stetson.edu/administration/lifelong-learning/media/lifelong-learning-catalog-celebration.pdf . Acesso em 15.10.2013TOWNSEND, Antony M. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition, 2013.WILLIAMSON , Lucy. Tomorrow's cities: Just how smart is Songdo? Disponível em http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23757738 Acesso em 15.10.2013.WILSON, Craig. Mickey Builds a Town: Celebration Puts Disney in Reality's Realm. USA Today. 18. October 1995: 01A, 5B. Também disponível em http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/usacelebration.html. Acesso em 15.10.2013.WORKING SONGDO . Disponível em http://www.songdo.com/songdo-international-business-district/the-city/working.aspx. Acessado em: 16.10.2013.YU, J. LIFE AND IDENTITY IN SONGDO. Interview at facebook. Message to paulo.celso@facebook.com, 26/01/2014. Disponível em:Url: http://opendepot.org/2725/ Abrir em (para melhor visualização em dispositivos móveis - Formato Flipbooks):Issuu / Calameo

Purpose Equality of rights for individuals who identify as being lesbian or gay (LG) have emerged over recent years, and significant advancements have been made in recognition and support of LG rights in Ireland. Given the recent change in legal rights for the LG population, Civil Partnership 2010 and Marriage Equality 2015, this paper aims to explore the lived experience of daily occupations of LG adult’s in Ireland today, by applying an occupational justice lens. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative phenomenological research study, examined the concept of occupational justice as experienced by eight adults, who identified as being LG. Data was collected through face to face, semi-structured interviews. Findings Four themes capturing the complexity of each participant’s experience of daily occupations and occupational justice emerged, namely, transitions and personal journeys, celebrating differences, empowerment through occupation and inner conflict. Findings demonstrate how occupational justice is experienced as a complex, contextually embedded and dynamic process specific to each individual. Originality/value Future research in this area should aim to explore the experiences of both a younger and older LG population, along with those who identify as bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex to continue to raise awareness of the potential for occupational injustice within this minority population.

En el presente estudio analizamos la regulación de la promesa al amparo del CC portugués de 1966 y las implicaciones que comporta para los promitentes. El en texto nos detenemos en el estudio del vigente art. 1.591 CC fruto de la reforma practicada por Lei n. 9/2010, de 31 de maio de 2010 que, aunque se presenta en idénticos términos que el derogado art. 1.591 CC de 1966, lo cierto es que ha suprimido la expresión “de sexo diferente”, equiparando la promesa realizada por pareja heterosexual de la efectuada por pareja homosexual. A continuación, nos ocupamos de los preceptos introducidos por el legislador dedicados: a la regulación en materia de restitución de las donaciones efectuadas a causa de la promesa de matrimonio, en caso de imposibilidad de celebración del futuro vínculo matrimonial [arts. 1.592 y 1.593]. Asimismo, nos detenemos en la obligación de indemnizar [art. 1594 CC] que, aunque no se trata de una disposición innovadora, lo cierto es que se diferencia de los dos preceptos previos en que esta obligación únicamente recae sobre el promitente culpable, mientras que en aquellos otros la obligación de restituir recae indistintamente sobre ambas partes, medie o no “culpa”. También aludimos a las particularidades que presenta este precepto, destacándose: que el alcance de la obligación indemnizatoria sea extensible también a los padres del promitente inocente e, incluso a terceros; la medida del daño resarcible, limitada a los “gastos efectuados” y “obligaciones contraídas” a causa de la promesa y, que la indemnización sea fijada al arbitrio de la autoridad judicial. Para finalizar, analizamos el art. 1.595 CC. Precepto con el que se ha salvado lo concerniente al plazo de la caducidad de las acciones tanto para exigir la obligación de restitución [arts. 1.592 y 1.593 CC], como para la obligación de indemnización [art. 1.594 CC]._________________In the present study we analyze the regulation of the promise under the Portuguese CC of 1966 and the implications that it entails for the promising. In text we stop in the study of current art. 1.591 CC as a result of the reform practiced by Lei n. 9/2010, of May 31, 2010 which, although presented in identical terms as the repealed art. 1.591 CC of 1966, the truth is that it has suppressed the expression “of a different sex”, equating the promise made by a heterosexual couple to that made by a homosexual couple. Next, we take care of the precepts introduced by the legislator dedicated: to the regulation in the matter of restitution of the donations made because of the promise of marriage, in case of impossibility of celebrating the future matrimonial bond [arts. 1.592 and 1.593]. Likewise, we stop in the obligation to indemnify [art. 1.594 CC] that, although it is not an innovative provision, the truth is that it differs from the two previous precepts in that this obligation rests solely with the guilty party, while in those others the obligation to return falls interchangeably on both parties. , whether or not "fault". We also allude to the particularities presented in this precept, highlighting: that the scope of the indemnification obligation is also extensible to the parents of the innocent promiser and even to third parties; the extent of the compensable damage, limited to the “expenses incurred” and “obligations incurred” because of the promise and, that the compensation be set at the discretion of the judicial authority. Finally, we analyze art. 1,595 CC. Except with which it has been saved concerning the term of the expiration of the actions both to demand the obligation of restitution [arts. 1.592 and 1.593 CC], as for the indemnity obligation [art. 1.594 CC].

AbstractLegal separation is a crucial step in the dissolving of marriages in Italy. Marriage and legal separation data come from administrative data sources and have been part of the civil registration and vital statistics system for a long time. These data make it possible to constantly monitor evolution of marital unions formation and dissolution over time and space. This study highlights the potential of combining administrative data at a macro level, aggregated by selected characteristics of the marriage and of the spouses. Data collection on legal separations is a complex process that brings together records from different administrative sources that have different transmission procedures. The system has rapidly evolved in recent years because of important normative changes. Pooling the two exhaustive data sources on marriages and separations we calculate duration-specific separation rates by selected spouses’ and wedding characteristics and estimate survival curves for 1975 marriage cohorts onward. Although the propensity to separate is increasing across marriage cohorts, the most recent first-marriage cohorts—those celebrated since the beginning of the new millennium—show a decreasing tendency to separate after short marriage durations. The most fragile unions are those celebrated in a civil ceremony in the north of Italy and that choose the separation of property regime. Couples in which the bride is more educated than the groom show a higher risk of separating. Differences by geographical area and celebration rite tend to reduce over time. This study contributes to existing information about the propensity to separate in Italy and the role that some characteristics of weddings and spouses play. It shows the potential for integrating information from marriage and separation registers when dealing with a relatively rare phenomenon at the population level and with information not usually collected in social surveys.

Abstract What does it take for a couple to stand out as married to others? In Morocco, an ideal scenario to marry today involves families celebrating three stages: an engagement, a legal contract, and a wedding. Yet, as I will show, couples may also turn out to be married without such ceremonies. Other elements can make for evident marriages. Still, legal recognition has, over the past decades, become increasingly essential within people’s own creations of conjugal bonds. Moreover, family and penal code revisions, together with the civil registry’s expansion, have profoundly changed proceedings and possibilities to legally marry. These processes defy simple binaries of legal versus licit domains. Legal and licit understandings of marriage interlace both in people’s own evaluations and in state officials’ approaches. However, as I will argue, increased emphasis on legal registration also heightens state control over family ties and reduces people’s opportunities to leave marital definitions open-ended as this suits them over time.

Marriage can be accompanied by a previous promise to contract it referred to in articles 42 and 43 of the Civil Code, a promise that is less and less usual in practice given the times that run although, in spite of it there is numerous jurisprudence on the matter, so that it seems that it could not be spoken of an obsolete figure, but only less used. There are even authors who speak of a certain renaissance of the former, now inserted in the framework of a life in common already initiated as a de facto union, under promise of celebrating a future marriage. El matrimonio puede ir acompañado de una promesa previa de contraerlo a la que se refieren los artículos 42 y 43 del Código Civil, promesa cada vez es menos habitual en la práctica dados los tiempos que corren si bien, a pesar de ello existe numerosa jurisprudencia sobre la materia , por lo que parece que no podría hablarse de una figura obsoleta, sino únicamente menos utilizada. Incluso, existen autores que hablan de un cierto renacimiento de aquella, insertada ahora en el marco de una vida en común ya iniciada como unión de hecho, bajo promesa de celebrar un futuro matrimonio

IntroductionContemporary theorisations of family often present change in marriage as an icon of deinstitutionalisation (Cherlin). This idea, widely discussed in sociology, has been deepened and extended by Giddens, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, Beck-Gernsheim and Bauman, considered to be the main architects of the individualisation, detraditionalisation and risk theses (Brannen and Nielsen). According to these authors, contemporary family is an ephemeral, fluid, and fragilereality, and weakening as a traditional institution. At the same time, and partly as a result of the changes to this institution, there has been a rise in the individual’s capacity to reflect on and choose their own life, to the point that living a life of their own becomes the individual’s defining injunction. Based on an in-depth and detailed analysis of a number of young Portuguese people’s accounts of their entry into conjugality, this paper seeks to unveil some of the hidden constraints which persist despite this claim to individualisation. Whilst individuals incorporate a personalised narrative in their construction of that “special day” – stressing the performance of the wedding they wanted, in the way they chose – these data show the continuing influence of the family on individual decisions (e.g. to marry or not to marry, and how to marry). These empirical findings thus contribute to the recent body of literature complexifying the individualisation and detraditionalisation theses (Smart and Shipman, Gross, Smart, Eldén).Using Sociology to Unveil Individualisation’s Hidden ConstraintsThis discussion of contemporary marriages is driven by empirical data from a sociological qualitative study based on episodic interviews (Flick, An Introduction to Qualitative Research and The Episodic Interview). This research (Costa) was developed in 2009 and aimed at an in-depth understanding of family practices (Morgan, Risk and Family Practices, Family Connections and Rethinking Family Practices), specifically family rituals (Bossard and Boll, Imber-Black and Roberts, Wolin and Bennett). Using a theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss), accounts were collected from 30 middle-class individuals, both men and women, living in an urban medium-sized city (Évora) in the south of Portugal (southern Europe), and with at least one small child between the age of 3 and 14 years old. Confidentiality and anonymity were maintained, and all names used in this paper are pseudonyms. For the purposes of this paper, I focus only on the women’s accounts. On the one hand, particularly for them, socialisation and media culture helped to consolidate a social representation around the wedding (Gillis, Marriages of the Mind); on the other hand, their more exhaustive descriptions of the wedding day allow better for examining the hidden constraints to individualisation. Data were coded and analysed through a thematic and structural content analysis (Bardin). The analysis of emerging themes and issues regarding the diverse ways of entering into conjugality was primarily assisted by qualitative software (NVivo, QSR International) and then presented in the form of contextualised narratives. Using a sociological perspective, the themes presented below illustrate the major conclusions of this study. Big Decisions: To Marry or Not to Marry? How to Marry?At the core of the decision of whether “to marry or not to marry?” and “how to marry?,” one can find multiple and complex arguments, which go beyond simplistic justifications based exclusively on the couple’s decision (Chesser; Maillochnon and Castrén). Women in particular display an awareness of the ways in which their decisions regarding marriage are crossed by the will, desires or preferences of the parents or in-laws. This was the case of Maria dos Anjos, married at the age of 26:It was a choice of the two of us [to marry]. Not an imposition. I didn’t care whether we were married by church or not… and there were times when I even put forward the possibility of a simple civil marriage. However, my parents really liked that I got married by the church. I'm not sure if this is due to tradition, if… and... they talked about it… and I also thought it was beautiful... it was a beautiful party... the dress, all that fantasy... and I really loved marrying in the church... so it became a strong possibility when we began to think about it [to get marry]… The argument that two people might marry because of or also to please the parents or in-laws explains, at least partially, a certain pressure that the fiancées feel before marriage to marry “in a certain way.” Filipa, who dated for ten years, lived the wedding day like “the realisation of a childhood’s dream.” The satisfaction she obtained was shared with her parents and in-laws:To marry in the church, with the wedding dress, and everything else... My mother in-law is a religious person too, right? So we felt that we both like it, the two of us, my mother, my mother-in-law, they would also like it, so we decided to marry in the church. To do the parents’ will is to meet the expectations around a “beautiful” wedding, but sometimes also to fulfil the marriage that the parents did not have. Lurdes is an only daughter, married at the age of 29. She argues that “marriage should be primarily significant for those who actually marry, not the parents or in-laws”. Yet, that was not her case: For us, maybe it was not so important; the paper signed, the ceremony in the church… maybe the two of us made it for our parents. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t have fun [...] and I don’t mean by this that it was a sacrifice, or a hardship […] My mother had no more daughters, and had a great will to marry her only daughter in the church. My mother was not married by the church, but was only married by civil registry. She never managed to convince my dad to get married by the church. And perhaps it was a bit... to project on me what she had not done! Despite her having the will to do but did not achieve it. And maybe I made her wish come true; I realise that she had that desire, a great desire that her daughter would marry in the church. For me, it was not a problem. So, we finally did agree and married in the church. The family of origin thus clearly has a great influence over some of the big decisions associated with marriage, such as whether to get married at all, and whether to involve the church in the process.Small decisions: It Is All about Details! The intrusion of the family of origin is also felt on the apparently more individual decisions as the choice of the dress or several other details concerning the organisation of the ceremony and the party (Chesser, Leeds-Hurwitz). The wedding dress is a good example of how women in particular perceive a certain pressure for conformity and subjection to buy it or choose it “in a certain way.” Silvia, who married at age 23, remembers: I married with a traditional wedding dress, even though I did not want to. I took a long veil, yet I did not want it... because at the time... I wanted to take a short dress... my mum thought I should not... because my mother did not marry in a wedding dress, did not marry in the church, she was already pregnant at the time and so on [downgrade of the tone] so she made pressure so that I was dressed properly.Precisely in order to run away from these impositions, some women admit having bought the dress alone, almost secretly. Maria dos Anjos, for example, chose and bought the wedding dress alone so that she did not have to give in to pressure from anyone: I really enjoyed it! I took a wedding dress... I was the one who chose it; I went to buy it myself, with my own money. I said to myself ‘the wedding dress, I will choose it; I will not be constrained by... I will not take my godmother and then think’... oh... I knew that if I did it, I would have to submit a little to her likes and dislikes… no! So I went to choose the dress alone. The girl who was in the shop was an acquaintance of mine, I tried a lot of them, and when I tried that one, I said to myself ‘this is it!’ and so it was the one!The position of the spouses in the sibling group also has an effect on numerous decisions that fiancées must make in the lead-up to the wedding. Raquel, who felt this pressure before marriage, attributed it to a large extent to the fact that her husband is an only child: Pressure in the sense that João [her husband]... he is an only child, right? So… his parents were always very concerned with certain things. And... everybody... even little things that had no importance, they wanted to decide on that! […] There are a lot of things that have to be decided, a lot of detail and… what I really think is that it is a really unique day, and it's all very important and all that but... but... then each one gives his/her opinion... And ‘I want this,’ ‘I want that,’ ‘I want the other’… it's too much; it's a lot of pressure... to manage... on one side, on the other side… because to try not to hurt vulnerabilities ends up being... crazy. Completely! Those fifteen days before... I think they are... they are a little crazy!Seemingly unimportant details (such as the fact that the mother did not marry in a wedding dress) end up becoming major arguments behind the suggestions or impositions made by both parents and in-laws in relation to decisions surrounding their children’s weddings.(Un)important Decisions: The Guest List The parents of the couple are often heavily involved in the planning of the wedding partly because, although the day is officially about the bride and groom, it is also the way that the parents share this important milestone with their family and friends (Pleck, Kalmijn, Maillochnon and Castrén). Interviewees say it is “easy” to decide on the guest list, since, at first glance arguments behind the most significant family relatives and friends to be present on the wedding day have to do with proximity, relationality and pleasure or happiness in sharing the moment. Nevertheless, it can be a hard task for couples to implement the criteria of proximity in the selection of guests as initially planned. In cases where the family is larger and there are economic constraints, it is common for fiancées to feel some unpleasantness from those relatives who would like to have been invited and were not. In other cases, parents, closer to the extended family, are the ones who produce this tension. On the one hand, they feel the need to justify to some relatives the choices of their adult children who did not include them in the guest list; on the other hand, they are forced to accept the fact that that decision lies with the couple. When planning the marriage of Dora, her mother at one point said something like “[…] ‘but my aunt invited us to her wedding and now...’” Dora understood the suspension of the sentence as a subtle pressure from her mother, although, for her, the question was indeed a very simple one: I give a lot of importance to the people who are with me on a day-to-day basis and that really are with me in good and bad times. [...] It happened. It was easy. For me, it was [laughs]. To my way of thinking it was. It cost my parents. However, not to me [laughs]. It cost me nothing! When the family is larger – but when there are no economic constraints which limit the number of guests – it is more common that weddings are bigger. In these circumstances, it is also more common to have a certain meddling from the families of origin encouraging couples to include the guests of the parents. Teresa admits this is precisely what happened with her: It was not so difficult because we were not also so limited. […] We left everything to the satisfaction of all. […] there were many people who were distant relatives, whom I was not close to. It didn’t really matter to me whether those people were present or not. It had more to do with the will of my parents. And usually we were also invited to those people’s weddings, so maybe it was also because of that… In some other cases there is a kind of agreement between parents and adult children, which allows both to invite “whoever they want”. This is the case of Marina, who had 194 guests “on her side,” against around 70 invited by her husband: I invited more people than him. Why? Well... I could count on my parents, right? And what my parents told me was: ‘you invite whoever you want!’. So, I invited my friends, and some other people I was not as close to, but who my parents wanted me to invite, right? […] but ok, they made a point of inviting them, and since they did not impose any financial limits, instead, they said to me ‘invite whoever you want to’, and we invited... For me, it was a ‘deal.’ I was indifferent about it [laughs]. Marina admits that she made a “deal” with her parents. By letting them pay the costs, she gave tacit consent that they could invite those who they wanted, even if it was the case those guests “didn’t relate to [her] at all.” At the wedding of Raquel, the fact that “there is family that [only her] parents were keen on inviting” was one of the main points of contention between her parents and the couple. The indignation was greater since it was “your [their own, not the parent’s] wedding” and they were being pressed to include people who they “hardly knew,” and with whom they “had no connection”: There were people who came who I did not know even who they were! Never seen them anywhere... but ok, my parents were keen on inviting some people, because they know them and all that... and then... it went into widening, extending and then... it ended up with more than one hundred guests […] we wanted it to be more intimate, more... with closer people… but it was not! The engaged couple thus recognises the importance of the parents’ guests. As one of the interviewees points out, the question is not so much the imposition of the will of the parents, rather the recognition of the importance of certain guests because “they are important to the parents.” Thus, the importance of these guests is not directly measured by the couple, but indirectly by being part of the importance that parents give them.Counter-Decisions: Narratives from the Inside Out Joana, a first daughter, “felt in her skin” the “punishment” for not having succumbed to the pressure she felt over her decision to marry. She told us she had her teenage dreams; however, as she grew older she identified herself less and less with the wedding ceremony. Moreover, with the death of her grandmother, who was especially meaningful to her, “it no longer made sense” to arrange that kind of ceremony since it would always be “incomplete” without her presence. Her boyfriend also did not urge that they marry, instead preferring to live in a de facto union. Joana felt strongly the pressure to take on a role that her parents and in-laws wanted: on the one hand, because she was “a girl, and the oldest daughter;” on the other hand, because her mother-in-law insisted since she had not saw her other daughter to get marry in church, as she was only civilly married. In fact, Joana could marry in church because she had been educated in the Catholic religion and met all the formal requirements to perform a religious marriage: I was the person who was prepared to move forward with this. And I did not! I'm not sorry. I don’t regret it at all! Although not regretted, Joana felt “very deeply” the gap between the expectations of her parents and the direction that she decided to give to her life when she told her parents she did not wanted to marry. She had the same boyfriend since adolescence, whom she moved in with on a New Year's Day at the age of 27. On that evening she organised a small party in the house they had rented and furnished, and stayed there for good. The mother “never forgave her.” The following year, when her sister got married, Joana “had the punishment” of, in the eyes of the mother, “not having done the right thing”: one thing I would have loved to have was a nightshirt [old piece of clothing, handmade] of my grandmother [...] But my mother kept the nightshirt and gave it to my sister on the day she married! My sister also loved my grandmother..., but she didn’t have the same emotional bond that I had with her! So, I got hurt. Honestly, I got! And the day of my sister's wedding for me it was full of surprises... This episode is particularly revealing of how Joana experienced the disappointment that caused to her parents for not having married: I did not have the faintest idea that she [her mother] was going to do that... Yet she kept it [the nightshirt]! [...] She kept it, and then she gave it to my sister! [...] It was my grandmother’s! And then I said, ‘but I was the first to get married!’ And it was I who had a closer relationship with my grandmother. I found it very unfair! [...] Joana sees this wedding gift as “a prize”: It was... she [her sister] was awarded because ‘you did the right thing,’ ‘you got married,’ ‘you had done it with all the pomp ... so take this [the nightshirt], that was of your grandmother!’ The day of her sister's wedding would still hold another surprise for Joana, that one coming from her father. She remembers always seeing at home a bottle of aged whiskey that her father “kept for the first daughter who gets to marry.” I did not get married, right? And... and it was sad to see that day and get the bottle open, the bottle that was proudly kept untouched for many years until the first daughter to marry... Whilst most women admit to have given in to pressure from parents and in-laws, Joana’s example demonstrates another side – emotionally painful – of those who did not conform to marry or to marry in a certain way.Conclusion Based on empirical research on marriages as a family ritual, I have argued that behind representations and discourses of a wedding “of our own,” quite often individuals grant the importance, of, and sometimes they are even pressured by, their families of origin (e.g. parents and in-laws). At the crossroad of tradition and modernity, this pressure is pervasive from the most important to the most apparently trivial decisions or details concerning the mise en scène of the ritual elements chosen to give a symbolic meaning to the ceremony and party (Chesser, Leeds-Hurwitz).Empirical findings and data discussion thus confirm and reinforce the high symbolic value that, despite all the changes weddings, still assume in contemporary society (Berger and Kellner, Segalen and Gillis, A World of their Own Making, Our Virtual Families and Marriages of the Mind). The power and influence of the size and density of the families of origin is not a part of history left behind by the processes of individualization and detraditionalization; rather, families continue to play a central role in structuring the actual options behind the anticipation, planning, and organisation of the wedding. This demonstrates that the reality of contemporary relationality is vastly more textured (Smart) than the normative generalisations of the individualisation and detraditionalisation theses imply, and suggests that in contemplating contemporary marriage conventions, the overt claims to individual choice and autonomy should be be contextualised by the variety of relationships the bride and groom participate in. References Bardin, Laurence. L’Analyse de Contenu. Paris: PUF, 1977. Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Beck, Ulrich, and Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth. The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity, 1995. Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth. Reinventing the Family: In search of New Lifestyles. Cambridge: Polity, 2002. Berger, Peter, and Kellner, Hansfried. “Marriage and the constitution of reality.” Diogenes 46 (1964): 1–24. Bossard, James, and Boll, Eleanor. Ritual in Family Living – A Contemporary Study. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1950. Brannen, Julia, and Nielsen, Ann. “Individualisation, Choice and Structure: a Discussion of Current Trends in Sociological Analysis.” The Sociological Review 53.3 (2005): 412–28. Cherlin, Andrew. “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 848–861. Chesser, Barbara Jo. “Analysis of Wedding Rituals: An Attempt to Make Weddings More Meaningful.” Family Relations 29.2 1980): 204—09. Costa, Rosalina. Pequenos e Grandes Dias: os Rituais na Construção da Família Contemporânea [Small and Big Days. The Rituals Constructing Contemporay Families]. PhD Thesis in Social Sciences – specialization ‘General Sociology’. University of Lisbon: Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL), 2011 ‹http://hdl.handle.net/10451/4770›. Eldén, Sara. “Scripts for the ‘Good Couple’: Individualization and the Reproduction of Gender Inequality.” Acta Sociologica 55.1 (2012): 3–18. Flick, Uwe. An Introduction to Qualitative Research. Sage Publications: London, 1998. —. The Episodic Interview: Small-scale Narratives as Approach to Relevant Experiences (Series Paper) (1997). 29 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www2.lse.ac.uk/methodologyInstitute/pdf/QualPapers/Flick-episodic.pdf›. Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity, 1992. Gillis, John. “Marriages of the Mind.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66.4 (2004): 988–91. —. A World of their Own Making. Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for family Values. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. —. Our Virtual Families: Toward a Cultural Understanding of Modern Family Life, The Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life – Working Paper, 2. Rutgers U/Department of History (2000). 03 Nov. 2005 ‹http://www.marial.emory.edu/pdfs/Gillispaper.PDF›. Glaser, Barney, and Strauss, Anselm. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1967. Gross, Neil. “The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered.” Sociological Theory 23.3 (2005): 286–311. Imber-Black, Evan, and Roberts, Janine. Rituals for Our Times: Celebrating, Healing, and Changing our Lives and our Relationships. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Kalmijn, Matthijs. “Marriage Rituals as Reinforcers of Role Transitions: an Analysis of Wedding in the Netherlands.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 582–94. Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. “Making Marriage Visible: Wedding Anniversaries as the Public Component of Private Relationships.” Text 25.5 (2005): 595–631. Maillochnon, Florence, and Castrén, Anna-Maija. “Making Family at a Wedding: Bilateral Kinship and Equality.” Families and Kinship in Contemporary Europe. Ed. Ritta Jallinoja, and Eric D. Widmer. Hampshire: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2011. 31–44. Morgan, David. “Risk and Family Practices: Accounting for Change and Fluidity in Family Life.” The New Family?. Ed. Elisabeth B. Silva, and Carol Smart. London: Sage Publications, 1999. 13–30.—. Family Connections—an Introduction to Family Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. —. Rethinking Family Practices. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillam, 2011. Pleck, Elizabeth. Celebrating the Family. Ethnicity, Consumer Culture, and Family Rituals. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Segalen, Martine. Rites et Rituels Contemporains. Paris: Nathan, 1998. Smart, Carol. Personal Life – New Directions in Sociological Thinking. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. Smart, Carol, and Shipman, Beccy. “Visions in Monochrome: Families, Marriage and the Individualization Thesis.” The British Journal of Sociology 55.4 (2004): 491–509. Wolin, Steven, and Bennett, Linda. “Family Rituals.” Family Process 23 (1984): 401–20.

“There is nothing more public than privacy.” (Berlant and Warner, Sex) How did it come to this? How did it happen that a one-off, two-hour event at a public swimming pool in a suburb of outer Melbourne ignited international hate mail and generated media-fanned political anguish and debate about the proper use of public spaces? In 2010, women who attend a women’s only swim session on Sunday evenings at the Dandenong Oasis public swimming pool asked the pool management and the local council for permission to celebrate the end of Ramadan at the pool during the time of their regular swim session. The request was supported by the pool managers and the council and promoted by both as an opportunity for family and friends to get together in a spirit of multicultural learning and understanding. Responding to criticisms of the event as an unreasonable claim on public facilities by one group, the Mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong, Jim Memeti, rejected claims that this event discriminates against non-Muslim residents of the suburb. But here’s the rub. The event, to be held after hours at the pool, requires all participants older than ten years of age to follow a dress code of knee-length shorts and T-shirts. This is a suburban moment that is borne of but exceeds the local. It reflects and responds to a contemporary global conundrum of great political and theoretical significance—how to negotiate and govern the relations between multiculturalism, religion, gender, sexual freedom, and democracy. Specifically this event speaks to how multicultural democracy in the public sphere negotiates the public presence and expression of different cultural and religious frameworks related to gender and sexuality. This is demanding political stuff. Situated in the messy political and theoretical terrains of the relation between public space and the public sphere, this local moment called for political judgement about how cultural differences should be allowed to manifest in and through public space, giving consideration to the potential effects of these decisions on an inclusive multicultural democracy. The local authorities in Dandenong engaged in an admirable process of democratic labour as they puzzled over how to make decisions that were responsible and equitable, in the absence of a rulebook or precedents for success. Ultimately however this mode of experimental decision-making, which will become increasingly necessary to manage such predicaments in the future, was foreclosed by unwarranted and unhelpful media outrage. "Foreclosed" here stresses the preemptive nature of the loss; a lost opportunity for trialing approaches to governing cultural diversity that may fail, but might then be modified. It was condemned in advance of either success or failure. The role of the media rather than the discomfort of the local publics has been decisive in this event.This Multicultural SuburbDandenong is approximately 30 kilometres southeast of central Melbourne. Originally home to the Bunorong People of the Kulin nation, it was settled by pastoralists by the 1800s, heavily industrialised during the twentieth century, and now combines cultural diversity with significant social disadvantage. The City of Greater Dandenong is proud of its reputation as the most culturally and linguistically diverse municipality in Australia. Its population of approximately 138,000 comprises residents from 156 different language groups. More than half (56%) of its population was born overseas, with 51% from nations where English is not the main spoken language. These include Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, China, Italy, Greece, Bosnia and Afghanistan. It is also a place of significant religious diversity with residents identifying as Buddhist (15 per cent) Muslim (8 per cent), Hindu (2 per cent) and Christian (52 per cent) [CGD]. Its city logo, “Great Place, Great People” evokes its twin pride in the placemaking power of its diverse population. It is also a brazen act of civic branding to counter its reputation as a derelict and dangerous suburb. In his recent book The Bogan Delusion, David Nichols cites a "bogan" website that names Dandenong as one of Victoria’s two most bogan areas. The other was Moe. (p72). The Sunday Age newspaper had already depicted Dandenong as one of two excessively dangerous suburbs “where locals fear to tread” (Elder and Pierik). The other suburb of peril was identified as Footscray.Central Dandenong is currently the site of Australia’s largest ever state sponsored Urban Revitalisation program with a budget of more than $290 million to upgrade infrastructure, that aims to attract $1billion in private investment to provide housing and future employment.The Cover UpIn September 2010, the Victorian and Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (VCAT) granted the YMCA an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to allow a dress code for the Ramadan event at the Oasis swimming pool that it manages. The "Y" sees the event as “an opportunity for the broader community to learn more about Ramadan and the Muslim faith, and encourages all members of Dandenong’s diverse community to participate” (YMCA Ramadan). While pool management and the municipal council refer to the event as an "opening up" of the closed swimming session, the media offer a different reading of the VCAT decision. The trope of the "the cover up" has framed most reports and commentaries (Murphy; Szego). The major focus of the commentaries has not been the event per se, but the call to dress "appropriately." Dress codes however are a cultural familiar. They exist for workplaces, schools, nightclubs, weddings, racing and sporting clubs and restaurants, to name but a few. While some of these codes or restrictions are normatively imposed rather than legally required, they are not alien to cultural life in Australia. Moreover, there are laws that prohibit people from being meagerly dressed or naked in public, including at beaches, swimming pools and so on. The dress code for this particular swimming pool event was, however, perceived to be unusual and, in a short space of time, "unusual" converted to "social threat."Responses to media polls about the dress code reveal concerns related to the symbolic dimensions of the code. The vast majority of those who opposed the Equal Opportunity exemption saw it as the thin edge of the multicultural wedge, a privatisation of public facilities, or a denial of the public’s right to choose how to dress. Tabloid newspapers reported on growing fears of Islamisation, while the more temperate opposition situated the decision as a crisis of human rights associated with tolerating illiberal cultural practices. Julie Szego reflects this view in an opinion piece in The Age newspaper:the Dandenong pool episode is neither trivial nor insignificant. It is but one example of human rights laws producing outcomes that restrict rights. It raises tough questions about how far public authorities ought to go in accommodating cultural practices that sit uneasily with mainstream Western values. (Szego)Without enquiring into the women’s request and in the absence of the women’s views about what meaning the event held for them, most media commentators and their electronically wired audiences treated the announcement as yet another alarming piece of evidence of multicultural failure and the potential Islamisation of Australia. The event raised specific concerns about the double intrusion of cultural difference and religion. While the Murdoch tabloid Herald Sun focused on the event as “a plan to force families to cover up to avoid offending Muslims at a public event” (Murphy) the liberal Age newspaper took a more circumspect approach, reporting on its small vox pop at the Dandenong pool. Some people here referred to the need to respect religions and seemed unfazed by the exemption and the event. Those who disagreed thought it was important not to enforce these (dress) practices on other people (Carey).It is, I believe, significant that several employees of the local council informed me that most of the opposition has come from the media, people outside of Dandenong and international groups who oppose the incursion of Islam into non-Islamic settings. Opposition to the event did not appear to derive from local concern or opposition.The overwhelming majority of Herald Sun comments expressed emphatic opposition to the dress code, citing it variously as unAustralian, segregationist, arrogant, intolerant and sexist. The Herald Sun polled readers (in a self-selecting and of course highly unrepresentative on-line poll) asking them to vote on whether or not they agreed with the VCAT exemption. While 5.52 per cent (512 voters) agreed with the ruling, 94.48 per cent (8,760) recorded disagreement. In addition, the local council has, for the first time in memory, received a stream of hate-mail from international anti-Islam groups. Muslim women’s groups, feminists, the Equal Opportunity Commissioner and academics have also weighed in. According to local reports, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Shahram Akbarzadeh, considered the exemption was “nonsense” and would “backfire and the people who will pay for it will be the Muslim community themselves” (Haberfield). He repudiated it as an example of inclusion and tolerance, labeling it “an effort of imposing a value system (sic)” (Haberfield). He went so far as to suggest that, “If Tony Abbott wanted to participate in his swimwear he wouldn’t be allowed in. That’s wrong.” Tasneem Chopra, chairwoman of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council and Sherene Hassan from the Islamic Council of Victoria, both expressed sensitivity to the group’s attempt to establish an inclusive event but would have preferred the dress code to be a matter of choice rather coercion (Haberfield, "Mayor Defends Dandenong Pool Cover Up Order"). Helen Szoke, the Commissioner of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, defended the pool’s exemption from the Law that she oversees. “Matters such as this are not easy to resolve and require a balance to be achieved between competing rights and obligations. Dress codes are not uncommon: e.g., singlets, jeans, thongs etc in pubs/hotels” (in Murphy). The civil liberties organisation, Liberty Victoria, supported the ban because the event was to be held after hours (Murphy). With astonishing speed this single event not only transformed the suburban swimming pool to a theatre of extra-local disputes about who and what is entitled to make claims on public space and publically funded facilities, but also fed into charged debates about the future of multiculturalism and the vulnerability of the nation to the corrosive effects of cultural and religious difference. In this sense suburbs like Dandenong are presented as sites that not only generate fear about physical safety but whose suburban sensitivities to its culturally diverse population represent a threat to the safety of the nation. Thus the event both reflects and produces an antipathy to cultural difference and to the place where difference resides. This aversion is triggered by and mediated in this case through the figure, rather than the (corpo)reality, of the Muslim woman. In this imagining, the figure of the Muslim woman is assigned the curious symbolic role of "cultural creep." The debates around the pool event is not about the wellbeing or interests of the Muslim women themselves, nor are broader debates about the perceived, culturally-derived restrictions imposed on Muslim women living in Australia or other western countries. The figure of the Muslim woman is, I would argue, simply the ground on which the debates are held. The first debate relates to social and public space, access to which is considered fundamental to freedom and participatory democracy, and in current times is addressed in terms of promoting inclusion, preventing exclusion and finding opportunities for cross cultural encounters. The second relates not to public space per se, but to the public sphere or the “sphere of private people coming together as a public” for political deliberation (Habermas 21). The literature and discussions dealing with these two terrains have remained relatively disconnected (Low and Smith) with public space referring largely to activities and opportunities in the socio-cultural domain and the public sphere addressing issues of politics, rights and democracy. This moment in Dandenong offers some modest leeway for situating "the suburb" as an ideal site for coalescing these disparate discussions. In this regard I consider Iveson’s provocative and productive question about whether some forms of exclusions from suburban public space may actually deepen the democratic ideals of the public sphere. Exclusions may in such cases be “consistent with visions of a democratically inclusive city” (216). He makes his case in relation to a dispute about the exclusion of men exclusion from a women’s only swimming pool in the Sydney suburb of Coogee. The Dandenong case is similarly exclusive with an added sense of exclusion generated by an "inclusion with restrictions."Diversity, Difference, Public Space and the Public SphereAs a prelude to this discussion of exclusion as democracy, I return to the question that opened this article: how did it come to this? How is it that Australia has moved from its renowned celebration and pride in its multiculturalism so much in evidence at the suburban level through what Ghassan Hage calls an “unproblematic” multiculturalism (233) and what others have termed “everyday multiculturalism” (Wise and Velayutham). Local cosmopolitanisms are often evinced through the daily rituals of people enjoying the ethnic cuisines of their co-residents’ pasts, and via moments of intercultural encounter. People uneventfully rub up against and greet each other or engage in everyday acts of kindness that typify life in multicultural suburbs, generating "reservoirs of hope" for democratic and cosmopolitan cities (Thrift 147). In today’s suburbs, however, the “Imperilled Muslim women” who need protection from “dangerous Muslim men” (Razack 129) have a higher discursive profile than ethnic cuisine as the exemplar of multiculturalism. Have we moved from pleasure to hostility or was the suburban pleasure in racial difference always about a kind of “eating the other” (bell hooks 378). That is to ask whether our capacity to experience diversity positively has been based on consumption, consuming the other for our own enrichment, whereas living with difference entails a commitment not to consumption but to democracy. This democratic multicultural commitment is a form of labour rather than pleasure, and its outcome is not enrichment but transformation (although this labour can be pleasurable and transformation might be enriching). Dandenong’s prized cultural precincts, "Little India" and the "Afghan bazaar" are showcases of food, artefacts and the diversity of the suburb. They are centres of pleasurable and exotic consumption. The pool session, however, requires one to confront difference. In simple terms we can think about ethnic food, festivals and handicrafts as cultural diversity, and the Muslim woman as cultural difference.This distinction between diversity and difference is useful for thinking through the relation between multiculturalism in public space and multicultural democracy of the public sphere. According to the anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen, while a neoliberal sensibility supports cultural diversity in the public space, cultural difference is seen as a major cause of social problems associated with immigrants, and has a diminishing effect on the public sphere (14). According to Eriksen, diversity is understood as aesthetic, or politically and morally neutral expressions of culture that are enriching (Hage 118) or digestible. Difference, however, refers to morally objectionable cultural practices. In short, diversity is enriching. Difference is corrosive. Eriksen argues that differences that emerge from distinct cultural ideas and practices are deemed to create conflicts with majority cultures, weaken social solidarity and lead to unacceptable violations of human rights in minority groups. The suburban swimming pool exists here at the boundary of diversity and difference, where the "presence" of diverse bodies may enrich, but their different practices deplete and damage existing culture. The imperilled Muslim woman of the suburbs carries a heavy symbolic load. She stands for major global contests at the border of difference and diversity in three significant domains, multiculturalism, religion and feminism. These three areas are positioned simultaneously in public space and of the public sphere and she embodies a specific version of each in this suburban setting. First, there a global retreat from multiculturalism evidenced in contemporary narratives that describe multiculturalism (both as official policy and unofficial sensibility) as failed and increasingly ineffective at accommodating or otherwise dealing with religious, cultural and ethnic differences (Cantle; Goodhart; Joppke; Poynting and Mason). In the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, popular media sources and political discourses speak of "parallel lives,"immigrant enclaves, ghettoes, a lack of integration, the clash of values, and illiberal cultural practices. The covered body of the Muslim woman, and more particularly the Muslim veil, are now read as visual signs of this clash of values and of the refusal to integrate. Second, religion has re-emerged in the public domain, with religious groups and individuals making particular claims on public space both on the basis of their religious identity and in accord with secular society’s respect for religious freedom. This is most evident in controversies in France, Belgium and Netherlands associated with banning niqab in public and other religious symbols in schools, and in Australia in court. In this sense the covered Muslim woman raises concerns and indignation about the rightful place of religion in the public sphere and in social space. Third, feminism is increasingly invoked as the ground from which claims about the imperilled Muslim woman are made, particularly those about protecting women from their dangerous men. The infiltration of the Muslim presence into public space is seen as a threat to the hard won gains of women’s freedom enjoyed by the majority population. This newfound feminism of the public sphere, posited by those who might otherwise disavow feminism, requires some serious consideration. This public discourse rarely addresses the discrimination, violation and lack of freedom experienced systematically on an everyday basis by women of majority cultural backgrounds in western societies (such as Australia). However, the sexism of racially and religiously different men is readily identified and decried. This represents a significant shift to a dubious feminist register of the public sphere such that: “[w]omen of foreign origin, ...more specifically Muslim women…have replaced the traditional housewife as the symbol of female subservience” (Tissot 41–42).The three issues—multiculturalism, religion and feminism—are, in the Dandenong pool context, contests about human rights, democracy and the proper use of public space. Szego’s opinion piece sees the Dandenong pool "cover up" as an example of the conundrum of how human rights for some may curtail the human rights of others and lead us into a problematic entanglement of universal "rights," with claims of difference. In her view the combination of human rights and multiculturalism in the case of the Dandenong Pool accommodates illiberal practices that put the rights of "the general public" at risk, or as she puts it, on a “slippery slope” that results in a “watering down of our human rights.” Ideas that entail women making a claim for private time in public space are ultimately not good for "us."Such ideas run counter to the West's more than 500-year struggle for individual freedom—including both freedom of religion and freedom from religion—and for gender equality. Our public authorities ought to be pushing back hardest when these values are under threat. Yet this is precisely where they've been buckling under pressure (Szego)But a different reading of the relation between public and private space, human rights, democracy and gender freedom is readily identifiable in the Dandenong event—if one looks for it. Living with difference, I have already suggested, is a problem of democracy and the public sphere and does not so easily correspond to consuming diversity, as it demands engagement with cultural difference. In what remains, I explore how multicultural democracy in the public sphere and women’s rights in public and private realms relate, firstly, to the burgeoning promise of democracy and civility that might emerge in public space through encounter and exchange. I also point out how this moment in Dandenong might be read as a singular contribution to dealing with this global problematic of living with difference; of democracy in the public sphere. Public urban space has become a focus for speculation among geographers and sociologists in particular, about the prospects for an enhanced civic appreciation of living with difference through encountering strangers. Random and repetitious encounters with people from all cultures typify contemporary urban life. It remains an open question however as to whether these encounters open up or close down possibilities for conviviality and understanding, and whether they undo or harden peoples’ fears and prejudices. There is, however, at least in some academic and urban planning circles, some hope that the "throwntogetherness" (Massey) and the "doing" of togetherness (Laurier and Philo) found in the multicultural city may generate some lessons and opportunities for developing a civic culture and political commitment to living with difference. Alongside the optimism of those who celebrate the city, the suburb, and public spaces as forging new ways of living with difference, there are those such as Gill Valentine who wonder how this might be achieved in practice (324). Ash Amin similarly notes that city or suburban public spaces are not necessarily “the natural servants of multicultural engagement” (Ethnicity 967). Amin and Valentine point to the limited or fleeting opportunities for real engagement in these spaces. Moreover Valentine‘s research in the UK revealed that the spatial proximity found in multicultural spaces did not so much give rise to greater mutual respect and engagement, but to a frustrated “white self-segregation in the suburbs.” She suggests therefore that civility and polite exchange should not be mistaken for respect (324). Amin contends that it is the “micro-publics” of social encounters found in workplaces, schools, gardens, sports clubs [and perhaps swimming pools] rather than the fleeting encounters of the street or park, that offer better opportunities for meaningful intercultural exchange. The Ramadan celebration at the pool, with its dress code and all, might be seen more fruitfully as a purposeful event engaging a micro-public in which people are able to “break out of fixed relations and fixed notions” and “learn to become different” (Amin, Ethnicity 970) without that generating discord and resentment.Micropublics, Subaltern Publics and a Democracy of (Temporary) ExclusionsIs this as an opportunity to bring the global and local together in an experiment of forging new democratic spaces for gender, sexuality, culture and for living with difference? More provocatively, can we see exclusion and an invitation to share in this exclusion as a precursor to and measure of, actually existing democracy? Painter and Philo have argued that democratic citizenship is questionable if “people cannot be present in public spaces (streets, squares, parks, cinemas, churches, town halls) without feeling uncomfortable, victimized and basically ‘out of place’…" (Iveson 216). Feminists have long argued that distinctions between public and private space are neither straightforward nor gender neutral. For Nancy Fraser the terms are “cultural classifications and rhetorical labels” that are powerful because they are “frequently deployed to delegitimate some interests, views and topics and to valorize others” (73). In relation to women and other subordinated minorities, the "rhetoric of privacy" has been historically used to restrict the domain of legitimate public contestation. In fact the notion of what is public and particularly notions of the "public interest" and the "public good" solidify forms of subordination. Fraser suggests the concept of "subaltern counterpublics" as an alternative to notions of "the public." These are discursive spaces where groups articulate their needs, and demands are circulated formulating their own public sphere. This challenges the very meaning and foundational premises of ‘the public’ rather than simply positing strategies of inclusion or exclusion. The twinning of Amin’s notion of "micro-publics" and Fraser’s "counterpublics" is, I suggest, a fruitful approach to interpreting the Dandenong pool issue. It invites a reading of this singular suburban moment as an experiment, a trial of sorts, in newly imaginable ways of living democratically with difference. It enables us to imagine moments when a limited democratic right to exclude might create the sorts of cultural exchanges that give rise to a more authentic and workable recognition of cultural difference. I am drawn to think that this is precisely the kind of democratic experimentation that the YMCA and Dandenong Council embarked upon when they applied for the Equal Opportunity exemption. I suggest that by trialing, rather than fixing forever a "critically exclusive" access to the suburban swimming pool for two hours per year, they were in fact working on the practical problem of how to contribute in small but meaningful ways to a more profoundly free democracy and a reworked public sphere. In relation to the similar but distinct example of the McIver pool for women and children in Coogee, New South Wales, Kurt Iveson makes the point that such spaces of exclusion or withdrawal, “do not necessarily serve simply as spaces where people ‘can be themselves’, or as sites through which reified identities are recognised—in existing conditions of inequality, they can also serve as protected spaces where people can take the risk of exploring who they might become with relative safety from attack and abuse” (226). These are necessary risks to take if we are to avoid entrenching fear of difference in a world where difference is itself deeply, and permanently, entrenched.ReferencesAmin, Ash. “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity.” Environment and Planning A 34 (2002): 959–80.———. “The Good City.” Urban Studies 43 (2006): 1009–23.Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547–66.Cantle, Ted. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team. London, UK Home Office, 2001.Carey, Adam. “Backing for Pool Cover Up Directive.” The Age 17 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/backing-for-pool-coverup-directive-20100916-15enz.html›.Elder, John, and Jon Pierick. “The Mean Streets: Where the Locals Fear to Tread.” The Sunday Age 10 Jan. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-mean-streets-where-the-locals-fear-to-tread-20100109-m00l.html?skin=text-only›.Eriksen, Thomas Hyland. “Diversity versus Difference: Neoliberalism in the Minority Debate." The Making and Unmaking of Difference. Ed. Richard Rottenburg, Burkhard Schnepel, and Shingo Shimada. Bielefeld: Transaction, 2006. 13–36.Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80.Goodhart, David. “Too Diverse.” Prospect 95 (2004): 30-37.Haberfield, Georgie, and Gilbert Gardner. “Mayor Defends Pool Cover-up Order.” Dandenong Leader 16 Sep. 2010 ‹http://dandenong-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dandenong-oasis-tells-swimmers-to-cover-up/›.Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2001.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto, 1998.hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance." Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi and Douglas Kellner. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 366-380.Iveson, Kurt. "Justifying Exclusion: The Politics of Public Space and the Dispute over Access to McIvers Ladies' Baths, Sydney.” Gender, Place and Culture 10.3 (2003): 215–28.Joppke, Christian. “The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy.” The British Journal of Sociology 55.2 (2004): 237–57.Laurier, Chris, and Eric Philo. “Cold Shoulders and Napkins Handed: Gestures of Responsibility.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31 (2006): 193–207.Low, Setha, and Neil Smith, eds. The Politics of Public Space. London: Routledge, 2006.Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005.Murphy, Padraic. "Cover Up for Pool Even at Next Year's Ramadan.” Herald Sun 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/cover-up-for-pool-event-during-next-years-ramadan/story-e6frf7kx-1225924291675›.Nichols, David. The Bogan Delusion. Melbourne: Affirm Press, 2011.Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. "The New Integrationism, the State and Islamophobia: Retreat from Multiculturalism in Australia." International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 36 (2008): 230–46.Razack, Sherene H. “Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages.” Feminist Legal Studies 12.2 (2004): 129–74.Szego, Julie. “Under the Cover Up." The Age 9 Oct. 2010. < http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/under-the-coverup-20101008-16c1v.html >.Thrift, Nigel. “But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (2005): 133–50.Tissot, Sylvie. “Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space." Public Culture 23.1 (2011): 39–46.Valentine, Gill. “Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter.” Progress in Human Geography 32.3 (2008): 323–37.Wise, Amanda, and Selveraj Velayutham, eds. Everyday Multiculturalism. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.YMCA. “VCAT Ruling on Swim Sessions at Dandenong Oasis to Open Up to Community During Ramadan Next Year.” 16 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.victoria.ymca.org.au/cpa/htm/htm_news_detail.asp?page_id=13&news_id=360›.

Introduction This paper offers a survey of familiar popular music performers and songwriters who reference coffee in their work. It examines three areas of discourse: the psychoactive effects of caffeine, coffee and courtship rituals, and the politics of coffee consumption. I claim that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of the chemical stimulants and consumer goods more readily associated with popular music. Songs about coffee may not be as potent as those featuring drugs and alcohol (Primack; Schapiro), or as common as those referencing commodities like clothes and cars (Englis; McCracken), but they do feature across a wide range of genres, some of which enjoy archetypal associations with this beverage. m.o.m.m.y. Needs c.o.f.f.e.e.: The Psychoactive Effect of Coffee The act of performing and listening to popular music involves psychological elements comparable to the overwhelming sensory experience of drug taking: altered perceptions, repetitive grooves, improvisation, self-expression, and psychological empathy—such as that between musician and audience (Curry). Most popular music genres are, as a result, culturally and sociologically identified with the consumption of at least one mind-altering substance (Lyttle; Primack; Schapiro). While the analysis of lyrics referring to this theme has hitherto focused on illegal drugs and alcoholic beverages (Cooper), coffee and its psychoactive ingredient caffeine have been almost entirely overlooked (Summer). The most recent study of drugs in popular music, for example, defined substance use as “tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and other stimulants, heroin and other opiates, hallucinogens, inhalants, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, and nonspecific substances” (Primack 172), thereby ignoring a chemical stimulant consumed by 90 per cent of adult Americans every day (Lovett). The wide availability of coffee and the comparatively mild effect of caffeine means that its consumption rarely causes harm. One researcher has described it as a ubiquitous and unobtrusive “generalised public activity […] ‘invisible’ to analysts seeking distinctive social events” (Cooper 92). Coffee may provide only a relatively mild “buzz”—but it is now accepted that caffeine is an addictive substance (Juliano) and, due to its universal legality, coffee is also the world’s most extensively traded and enthusiastically consumed psychoactive consumer product (Juliano 1). The musical genre of jazz has a longstanding relationship with marijuana and narcotics (Curry; Singer; Tolson; Winick). Unsurprisingly, given its Round Midnight connotations, jazz standards also celebrate the restorative impact of coffee. Exemplary compositions include Burke/Webster’s insomniac torch song Black Coffee, which provided hits for Sarah Vaughan (1949), Ella Fitzgerald (1953), and Peggy Lee (1960); and Frank Sinatra’s recordings of Hilliard/Dick’s The Coffee Song (1946, 1960), which satirised the coffee surplus in Brazil at a time when this nation enjoyed a near monopoly on production. Sinatra joked that this ubiquitous drink was that country’s only means of liquid refreshment, in a refrain that has since become a headline writer’s phrasal template: “There’s an Awful Lot of Coffee in Vietnam,” “An Awful Lot of Coffee in the Bin,” and “There’s an Awful Lot of Taxes in Brazil.” Ethnographer Aaron Fox has shown how country music gives expression to the lived social experience of blue-collar and agrarian workers (Real 29). Coffee’s role in energising working class America (Cooper) is featured in such recordings as Dolly Parton’s Nine To Five (1980), which describes her morning routine using a memorable “kitchen/cup of ambition” rhyme, and Don't Forget the Coffee Billy Joe (1973) by Tom T. Hall which laments the hardship of unemployment, hunger, cold, and lack of healthcare. Country music’s “tired truck driver” is the most enduring blue-collar trope celebrating coffee’s analeptic powers. Versions include Truck Drivin' Man by Buck Owens (1964), host of the country TV show Hee Haw and pioneer of the Bakersfield sound, and Driving My Life Away from pop-country crossover star Eddie Rabbitt (1980). Both feature characteristically gendered stereotypes of male truck drivers pushing on through the night with the help of a truck stop waitress who has fuelled them with caffeine. Johnny Cash’s A Cup of Coffee (1966), recorded at the nadir of his addiction to pills and alcohol, has an incoherent improvised lyric on this subject; while Jerry Reed even prescribed amphetamines to keep drivers awake in Caffein [sic], Nicotine, Benzedrine (And Wish Me Luck) (1980). Doye O’Dell’s Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves (1952) is the archetypal “truck drivin’ country” song and the most exciting track of its type. It subsequently became a hit for the doyen of the subgenre, Red Simpson (1966). An exhausted driver, having spent the night with a woman whose name he cannot now recall, is fighting fatigue and wrestling his hot-rod low-loader around hairpin mountain curves in an attempt to rendezvous with a pretty truck stop waitress. The song’s palpable energy comes from its frenetic guitar picking and the danger implicit in trailing a heavy load downhill while falling asleep at the wheel. Tommy Faile’s Phantom 309, a hit for Red Sovine (1967) that was later covered by Tom Waits (Big Joe and the Phantom 309, 1975), elevates the “tired truck driver” narrative to gothic literary form. Reflecting country music’s moral code of citizenship and its culture of performative storytelling (Fox, Real 23), it tells of a drenched and exhausted young hitchhiker picked up by Big Joe—the driver of a handsome eighteen-wheeler. On arriving at a truck stop, Joe drops the traveller off, giving him money for a restorative coffee. The diner falls silent as the hitchhiker orders up his “cup of mud”. Big Joe, it transpires, is a phantom trucker. After running off the road to avoid a school bus, his distinctive ghost rig now only reappears to rescue stranded travellers. Punk rock, a genre closely associated with recreational amphetamines (McNeil 76, 87), also features a number of caffeine-as-stimulant songs. Californian punk band, Descendents, identified caffeine as their drug of choice in two 1996 releases, Coffee Mug and Kids on Coffee. These songs describe chugging the drink with much the same relish and energy that others might pull at the neck of a beer bottle, and vividly compare the effects of the drug to the intense rush of speed. The host of “New Music News” (a segment of MTV’s 120 Minutes) references this correlation in 1986 while introducing the band’s video—in which they literally bounce off the walls: “You know, while everybody is cracking down on crack, what about that most respectable of toxic substances or stimulants, the good old cup of coffee? That is the preferred high, actually, of California’s own Descendents—it is also the subject of their brand new video” (“New Music News”). Descendents’s Sessions EP (1997) featured an overflowing cup of coffee on the sleeve, while punk’s caffeine-as-amphetamine trope is also promulgated by Hellbender (Caffeinated 1996), Lagwagon (Mr. Coffee 1997), and Regatta 69 (Addicted to Coffee 2005). Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night: Coffee and Courtship Coffee as romantic metaphor in song corroborates the findings of early researchers who examined courtship rituals in popular music. Donald Horton’s 1957 study found that hit songs codified the socially constructed self-image and limited life expectations of young people during the 1950s by depicting conservative, idealised, and traditional relationship scenarios. He summarised these as initial courtship, honeymoon period, uncertainty, and parting (570-4). Eleven years after this landmark analysis, James Carey replicated Horton’s method. His results revealed that pop lyrics had become more realistic and less bound by convention during the 1960s. They incorporated a wider variety of discourse including the temporariness of romantic commitment, the importance of individual autonomy in relationships, more liberal attitudes, and increasingly unconventional courtship behaviours (725). Socially conservative coffee songs include Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night by The Boswell Sisters (1933) in which the protagonist swears fidelity to her partner on condition that this desire is expressed strictly in the appropriate social context of marriage. It encapsulates the restrictions Horton identified on courtship discourse in popular song prior to the arrival of rock and roll. The Henderson/DeSylva/Brown composition You're the Cream in My Coffee, recorded by Annette Hanshaw (1928) and by Nat King Cole (1946), also celebrates the social ideal of monogamous devotion. The persistence of such idealised traditional themes continued into the 1960s. American pop singer Don Cherry had a hit with Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye (1962) that used coffee as a metaphor for undying and everlasting love. Otis Redding’s version of Butler/Thomas/Walker’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1966)—arguably soul music’s exemplary romantic coffee song—carries a similar message as a couple proclaim their devotion in a late night conversation over coffee. Like much of the Stax catalogue, Cigarettes and Coffee, has a distinctly “down home” feel and timbre. The lovers are simply content with each other; they don’t need “cream” or “sugar.” Horton found 1950s blues and R&B lyrics much more sexually explicit than pop songs (567). Dawson (1994) subsequently characterised black popular music as a distinct public sphere, and Squires (2002) argued that it displayed elements of what she defined as “enclave” and “counterpublic” traits. Lawson (2010) has argued that marginalised and/or subversive blues artists offered a form of countercultural resistance against prevailing social norms. Indeed, several blues and R&B coffee songs disregard established courtship ideals and associate the product with non-normative and even transgressive relationship circumstances—including infidelity, divorce, and domestic violence. Lightnin’ Hopkins’s Coffee Blues (1950) references child neglect and spousal abuse, while the narrative of Muddy Waters’s scorching Iodine in my Coffee (1952) tells of an attempted poisoning by his Waters’s partner. In 40 Cups of Coffee (1953) Ella Mae Morse is waiting for her husband to return home, fuelling her anger and anxiety with caffeine. This song does eventually comply with traditional courtship ideals: when her lover eventually returns home at five in the morning, he is greeted with a relieved kiss. In Keep That Coffee Hot (1955), Scatman Crothers supplies a counterpoint to Morse’s late-night-abandonment narrative, asking his partner to keep his favourite drink warm during his adulterous absence. Brook Benton’s Another Cup of Coffee (1964) expresses acute feelings of regret and loneliness after a failed relationship. More obliquely, in Coffee Blues (1966) Mississippi John Hurt sings affectionately about his favourite brand, a “lovin’ spoonful” of Maxwell House. In this, he bequeathed the moniker of folk-rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful, whose hits included Do You Believe in Magic (1965) and Summer in the City (1966). However, an alternative reading of Hurt’s lyric suggests that this particular phrase is a metaphorical device proclaiming the author’s sexual potency. Hurt’s “lovin’ spoonful” may actually be a portion of his seminal emission. In the 1950s, Horton identified country as particularly “doleful” (570), and coffee provides a common metaphor for failed romance in a genre dominated by “metanarratives of loss and desire” (Fox, Jukebox 54). Claude Gray’s I'll Have Another Cup of Coffee (Then I’ll Go) (1961) tells of a protagonist delivering child support payments according to his divorce lawyer’s instructions. The couple share late night coffee as their children sleep through the conversation. This song was subsequently recorded by seventeen-year-old Bob Marley (One Cup of Coffee, 1962) under the pseudonym Bobby Martell, a decade prior to his breakthrough as an international reggae star. Marley’s youngest son Damian has also performed the track while, interestingly in the context of this discussion, his older sibling Rohan co-founded Marley Coffee, an organic farm in the Jamaican Blue Mountains. Following Carey’s demonstration of mainstream pop’s increasingly realistic depiction of courtship behaviours during the 1960s, songwriters continued to draw on coffee as a metaphor for failed romance. In Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (1972), she dreams of clouds in her coffee while contemplating an ostentatious ex-lover. Squeeze’s Black Coffee In Bed (1982) uses a coffee stain metaphor to describe the end of what appears to be yet another dead-end relationship for the protagonist. Sarah Harmer’s Coffee Stain (1998) expands on this device by reworking the familiar “lipstick on your collar” trope, while Sexsmith & Kerr’s duet Raindrops in my Coffee (2005) superimposes teardrops in coffee and raindrops on the pavement with compelling effect. Kate Bush’s Coffee Homeground (1978) provides the most extreme narrative of relationship breakdown: the true story of Cora Henrietta Crippin’s poisoning. Researchers who replicated Horton’s and Carey’s methodology in the late 1970s (Bridges; Denisoff) were surprised to find their results dominated by traditional courtship ideals. The new liberal values unearthed by Carey in the late 1960s simply failed to materialise in subsequent decades. In this context, it is interesting to observe how romantic coffee songs in contemporary soul and jazz continue to disavow the post-1960s trend towards realistic social narratives, adopting instead a conspicuously consumerist outlook accompanied by smooth musical timbres. This phenomenon possibly betrays the influence of contemporary coffee advertising. From the 1980s, television commercials have sought to establish coffee as a desirable high end product, enjoyed by bohemian lovers in a conspicuously up-market environment (Werder). All Saints’s Black Coffee (2000) and Lebrado’s Coffee (2006) identify strongly with the culture industry’s image of coffee as a luxurious beverage whose consumption signifies prominent social status. All Saints’s promotional video is set in a opulent location (although its visuals emphasise the lyric’s romantic disharmony), while Natalie Cole’s Coffee Time (2008) might have been itself written as a commercial. Busting Up a Starbucks: The Politics of Coffee Politics and coffee meet most palpably at the coffee shop. This conjunction has a well-documented history beginning with the establishment of coffee houses in Europe and the birth of the public sphere (Habermas; Love; Pincus). The first popular songs to reference coffee shops include Jaybird Coleman’s Coffee Grinder Blues (1930), which boasts of skills that precede the contemporary notion of a barista by four decades; and Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee (1932) from Irving Berlin’s depression-era musical Face The Music, where the protagonists decide to stay in a restaurant drinking coffee and eating pie until the economy improves. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup (1971) from the Broadway musical 70 Girls 70 is an unambiguous condemnation of consumerism, however, it was written, recorded and produced a generation before Starbucks’ aggressive expansion and rapid dominance of the coffee house market during the 1990s. The growth of this company caused significant criticism and protest against what seemed to be a ruthless homogenising force that sought to overwhelm local competition (Holt; Thomson). In response, Starbucks has sought to be defined as a more responsive and interactive brand that encourages “glocalisation” (de Larios; Thompson). Koller, however, has characterised glocalisation as the manipulative fabrication of an “imagined community”—whose heterogeneity is in fact maintained by the aesthetics and purchasing choices of consumers who make distinctive and conscious anti-brand statements (114). Neat Capitalism is a more useful concept here, one that intercedes between corporate ideology and postmodern cultural logic, where such notions as community relations and customer satisfaction are deliberately and perhaps somewhat cynically conflated with the goal of profit maximisation (Rojek). As the world’s largest chain of coffee houses with over 19,400 stores in March 2012 (Loxcel), Starbucks is an exemplar of this phenomenon. Their apparent commitment to environmental stewardship, community relations, and ethical sourcing is outlined in the company’s annual “Global Responsibility Report” (Vimac). It is also demonstrated in their engagement with charitable and environmental non-governmental organisations such as Fairtrade and Co-operative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE). By emphasising this, Starbucks are able to interpellate (that is, “call forth”, “summon”, or “hail” in Althusserian terms) those consumers who value environmental protection, social justice and ethical business practices (Rojek 117). Bob Dylan and Sheryl Crow provide interesting case studies of the persuasive cultural influence evoked by Neat Capitalism. Dylan’s 1962 song Talkin’ New York satirised his formative experiences as an impoverished performer in Greenwich Village’s coffee houses. In 1995, however, his decision to distribute the Bob Dylan: Live At The Gaslight 1962 CD exclusively via Starbucks generated significant media controversy. Prominent commentators expressed their disapproval (Wilson Harris) and HMV Canada withdrew Dylan’s product from their shelves (Lynskey). Despite this, the success of this and other projects resulted in the launch of Starbucks’s in-house record company, Hear Music, which released entirely new recordings from major artists such as Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Elvis Costello—although the company has recently announced a restructuring of their involvement in this venture (O’Neil). Sheryl Crow disparaged her former life as a waitress in Coffee Shop (1995), a song recorded for her second album. “Yes, I was a waitress. I was a waitress not so long ago; then I won a Grammy” she affirmed in a YouTube clip of a live performance from the same year. More recently, however, Crow has become an avowed self-proclaimed “Starbucks groupie” (Tickle), releasing an Artist’s Choice (2003) compilation album exclusively via Hear Music and performing at the company’s 2010 Annual Shareholders’s Meeting. Songs voicing more unequivocal dissatisfaction with Starbucks’s particular variant of Neat Capitalism include Busting Up a Starbucks (Mike Doughty, 2005), and Starbucks Takes All My Money (KJ-52, 2008). The most successful of these is undoubtedly Ron Sexsmith’s Jazz at the Bookstore (2006). Sexsmith bemoans the irony of intense original blues artists such as Leadbelly being drowned out by the cacophony of coffee grinding machines while customers queue up to purchase expensive coffees whose names they can’t pronounce. In this, he juxtaposes the progressive patina of corporate culture against the circumstances of African-American labour conditions in the deep South, the shocking incongruity of which eventually cause the old bluesman to turn in his grave. Fredric Jameson may have good reason to lament the depthless a-historical pastiche of postmodern popular culture, but this is no “nostalgia film”: Sexsmith articulates an artfully framed set of subtle, sensitive, and carefully contextualised observations. Songs about coffee also intersect with politics via lyrics that play on the mid-brown colour of the beverage, by employing it as a metaphor for the sociological meta-narratives of acculturation and assimilation. First popularised in Israel Zangwill’s 1905 stage play, The Melting Pot, this term is more commonly associated with Americanisation rather than miscegenation in the United States—a nuanced distinction that British band Blue Mink failed to grasp with their memorable invocation of “coffee-coloured people” in Melting Pot (1969). Re-titled in the US as People Are Together (Mickey Murray, 1970) the song was considered too extreme for mainstream radio airplay (Thompson). Ike and Tina Turner’s Black Coffee (1972) provided a more accomplished articulation of coffee as a signifier of racial identity; first by associating it with the history of slavery and the post-Civil Rights discourse of African-American autonomy, then by celebrating its role as an energising force for African-American workers seeking economic self-determination. Anyone familiar with the re-casting of black popular music in an industry dominated by Caucasian interests and aesthetics (Cashmore; Garofalo) will be unsurprised to find British super-group Humble Pie’s (1973) version of this song more recognisable. Conclusion Coffee-flavoured popular songs celebrate the stimulant effects of caffeine, provide metaphors for courtship rituals, and offer critiques of Neat Capitalism. Harold Love and Guthrie Ramsey have each argued (from different perspectives) that the cultural micro-narratives of small social groups allow us to identify important “ethnographic truths” (Ramsey 22). Aesthetically satisfying and intellectually stimulating coffee songs are found where these micro-narratives intersect with the ethnographic truths of coffee culture. 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Stand-up is a global phenomenon. It is Australia’s most significant form of advocatorial theatre and a major platform for challenging stigma and prejudice. In the twenty-first century, Australian stand-up is transforming into a more culturally diverse form and extending the spectrum of material addressing human rights. Since the 1980s Australian stand-up routines have moved beyond the old colonial targets of England and America, and Indigenous comics such as Kevin Kopinyeri, Andy Saunders, and Shiralee Hood have gained an established following. Additionally, the turn to Asia is evident not just in trade agreements and the higher education market but also in cultural exchange and in the billing of emerging Asian stand-ups at mainstream events. The major cultural driver for stand-up is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), Australia’s largest cultural event, now over 30 years old, and an important site for dissecting constructs of democracy and nationhood. As John McCallum has observed, popular humour in post-World War II Australia drew on widespread feelings of “displacement, migration and otherness—resonant topics in a country of transplanted people and a dispossessed indigenous population arguing over a distinct Australian identity” (205–06). This essay considers the traditional comic strategies of first and second generation immigrant stand-ups in Australia and compares them with the new wave of post 9/11 Asian-Australian and Middle-Eastern-Australian stand-ups whose personas and interrogations are shifting the paradigm. Self-identifying Muslim stand-ups challenge myths of dominant Australian identity in ways which many still find confronting. Furthermore, the theories of incongruity, superiority, and psychological release re-rehearsed in traditional humour studies, by figures such as Palmer (1994) and Morreall (2009), are predicated on models of humour which do not always serve live performance, especially stand-up with its relational dependence on audience interaction.Stand-ups who immigrated to Australia as children or whose parents immigrated and struggled against adversity are important symbols both of the Australian comedy industry and of a national self-understanding of migrant resilience and making good. Szubanski and Berger hail from earlier waves of European migrants in the 1950s and 1960s. Szubanski has written eloquently of her complex Irish-Polish heritage and documented how the “hand-me-down trinkets of family and trauma” and “the culture clash of competing responses to calamity” have been integral to the development of her comic success and the making of her Aussie characters (347). Rachel Berger, the child of Polish holocaust survivors, advertises and connects both identities on her LinkedIn page: “After 23 years as a stand-up comedian, growing up with Jewish guilt and refugee parents, Rachel Berger knows more about survival than any idiot attending tribal council on reality TV.”Anh Do, among Australia’s most famous immigrant stand-ups, identifies as one of the Vietnamese “boat people” and arrived as a toddler in 1976. Do’s tale of his family’s survival against the odds and his creation of a persona which constructs the grateful, happy immigrant clown is the staple of his very successful routine and increasingly problematic. It is a testament to the power of Do’s stand-up that many did not perceive the toll of the loss of his birth country; the grinding poverty; and the pain of his father’s alcoholism, violence, and survivor guilt until the publication of Do’s ironically titled memoir The Happiest Refugee. In fact, the memoir draws on many of the trauma narratives that are still part of his set. One of Do’s most legendary routines is the story of his family’s sea journey to Australia, told here on ABC1’s Talking Heads:There were forty of us on a nine metre fishing boat. On day four of the journey we spot another boat. As the boat gets closer we realise it’s a boatload of Thai pirates. Seven men with knives, machetes and guns get on our boat and they take everything. One of the pirates picks up the smallest child, he lifts up the baby and rips open the baby’s nappy and dollars fall out. And the pirate decides to spare the kid’s life. And that’s a good thing cos that’s my little brother Khoa Do who in 2005 became Young Australian of the Year. And we were saved on the fifth day by a big German merchant ship which took us to a refugee camp in Malaysia and we were there for around three months before Australia says, come to Australia. And we’re very glad that happened. So often we heard Mum and Dad say—what a great country. How good is this place? And the other thing—kids, as you grow up, do as much as you can to give back to this great country and to give back to others less fortunate.Do’s strategy is apparently one of genuflection and gratitude, an adoption of what McCallum refers to as an Australian post-war tradition of the comedy of inadequacy and embarrassment (210–14). Journalists certainly like to bill Do as the happy clown, framing articles about him with headlines like Rosemary Neill’s “Laughing through Adversity.” In fact, Do is direct about his gallows humour and his propensity to darkness: his humour, he says, is a means of countering racism, of “being able to win people over who might have been averse to being friends with an Asian bloke,” but Neill does not linger on this, nor on the revelation that Do felt stigmatised by his refugee origins and terrified and shamed by the crippling poverty of his childhood in Australia. In The Happiest Refugee, Do reveals that, for him, the credibility of his routines with predominantly white Australian audiences lies in the crafting of himself as an “Aussie comedian up there talking about his working-class childhood” (182). This is not the official narrative that is retold even if it is how Do has endeared himself to Australians, and ridding himself of the happy refugee label may yet prove difficult. Suren Jayemanne is well known for his subtle mockery of multiculturalist rhetoric. In his 2016 MICF show, Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator, Jayemanne played on the supposed contradiction of his Sri Lankan-Malaysian heritage against his teenage years in the wealthy suburb of Malvern in Melbourne, his private schooling, and his obsession with hip hop and black American culture. Jayemanne’s strategy is to gently confound his audiences, leading them slowly up a blind alley. He builds up a picture of how to identify Sri Lankan parents, supposedly Sri Lankan qualities such as an exceptional ability at maths, and Sri Lankan employment ambitions which he argues he fulfilled in becoming an accountant. He then undercuts his story by saying he has recently realised that his suburban background, his numerical abilities, his love of black music, and his rejection of accountancy in favour of comedy, in fact prove conclusively that he has, all along, been white. He also confesses that this is a bruising disappointment. Jayemanne exposes the emptiness of the conceits of white, brown, and black and of invented identity markers and plays on his audiences’ preconceptions through an old storyteller’s device, the shaggy dog story. The different constituencies in his audiences enjoy his trick equally, from quite different perspectives.Diana Nguyen, a second generation Vietnamese stand-up, was both traumatised and politicised by Pauline Hanson when she was a teenager. Hanson described Nguyen’s community in Dandenong as “yellow Asian people” (Filmer). Nguyen’s career as a community development worker combating racism relates directly to her activity as a stand-up: migrant stories are integral to Australian history and Nguyen hypothesises that the “Australian psyche of being invaded or taken over” has reignited over the question of Islamic fundamentalism and expresses her concern to Filmer about the Muslim youths under her care.Nguyen’s alarm about the elision of Islamic radicalism with Muslim culture drives an agenda that has led the new generation of self-identified Muslim stand-ups since 9/11. This post 9/11 world is described by Wajahat as gorged with “exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslim [. . . ] and perpetuated by negative discrimination and the marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life in western societies.” In Australia, Aamer Rahman, Muhamed Elleissi, Khaled Khalafalla, and Nazeem Hussain typify this newer, more assertive form of second generation immigrant stand-up—they identify as Muslim (whether religious or not), as brown, and as Australian. They might be said to symbolise a logical response to Ghassan Hage’s famous White Nation (1998), which argues that a white supremacism underlies the mindset of the white elite in Australia. Their positioning is more nuanced than previous generations of stand-up. Nazeem Hussain’s routines mark a transformation in Australian stand-up, as Waleed Aly has argued: “ethnic comedy” has hitherto been about the parading of stereotypes for comfortable, mainstream consumption, about “minstrel characters” [. . .] but Hussain interrogates his audiences in every direction—and aggravates Muslims too. Hussain’s is the world of post 9/11 Australian Muslims. It’s about more than ethnic stereotyping. It’s about being a consistent target of political opportunism, where everyone from the Prime Minister to the Foreign Minister to an otherwise washed-up backbencher with a view on burqas has you in their sights, where bombs detonate in Western capitals and unrelated nations are invaded.Understandably, a prevalent theme among the new wave of Muslim comics, and not just in Australia, is the focus on the reading of Muslims as manifestly linked with Islamic State (IS). Jokes about mistaken identity, plane crashes, suicide bombing, and the Koran feature prominently. English-Pakistani Muslim, Shazia Mirza, gained comedy notoriety in the UK in the wake of 9/11 by introducing her routine with the words: “My name’s Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence” (Bedell). Stand-ups Negin Farsad, Ahmed Ahmed, and Dean Obeidalla are all also activists challenging prevailing myths about Islam, skin colour and terrorism in America. Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed acquired prominence for telling audiences in the infamous Axis of Evil Comedy Tour about how his life had changed much for the worse since 9/11. Ahmed Ahmed was the alias used by one of Osama Bin Laden’s devotees and his life became on ongoing struggle with anti-terrorism officials doing security checks (he was once incarcerated) and with the FBI who were certain that the comedian was among their most wanted terrorists. Similarly, Obeidalla, an Italian-Palestinian-Muslim, notes in his TEDx talk that “If you have a Muslim name, you are probably immune to identity theft.” His narration of a very sudden experience of becoming an object of persecution and of others’ paranoia is symptomatic of a shared understanding of a post 9/11 world among many Muslim comics: “On September 10th 2001 I went to bed as a white American and I woke up an Arab,” says Obeidalla, still dazed from the seismic shift in his life.Hussain and Khalafalla demonstrate a new sophistication and directness in their stand-up, and tackle their majority white audiences head-on. There is no hint of the apologetic or deferential stance performed by Anh Do. Many of the jokes in their routines target controversial or taboo issues, which up until recently were shunned in Australian political debate, or are absent or misrepresented in mainstream media. An Egyptian-Australian born in Saudi Arabia, Khaled Khalafalla arrived on the comedy scene in 2011, was runner-up in RAW, Australia’s most prestigious open mic competition, and in 2013 won the best of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for Devious. Khalafalla’s shows focus on racist stereotypes and identity and he uses a range of Middle Eastern and Indian accents to broach IS recruitment, Muslim cousin marriages, and plane crashes. His 2016 MICF show, Jerk, was a confident and abrasive routine exploring relationships, drug use, the extreme racism of Reclaim Australia rallies, controversial visa checks by Border Force’s Operation Fortitude, and Islamophobia. Within the first minute of his routine, he criticises white people in the audience for their woeful refusal to master Middle Eastern names, calling out to the “brown woman” in the audience for support, before lining up a series of jokes about the (mis)pronunciation of his name. Khalafalla derives his power on stage by what Oliver Double calls “uncovering.” Double contends that “one of the most subversive things stand-up can do is to uncover the unmentionable,” subjects which are difficult or impossible to discuss in everyday conversation or the broadcast media (292). For instance, in Jerk Khalafalla discusses the “whole hating halal movement” in Australia as a metaphor for exposing brutal prejudice: Let me break it down for you. Halal is not voodoo. It’s just a blessing that Muslims do for some things, food amongst other things. But, it’s also a magical spell that turns some people into fuckwits when they see it. Sometimes people think it’s a thing that can get stuck to your t-shirt . . . like ‘Oh fuck, I got halal on me’ [Australian accent]. I saw a guy the other day and he was like Fuck halal, it funds terrorism. And I was like, let me show you the true meaning of Islam. I took a lamb chop out of my pocket and threw it in his face. And, he was like Ah, what was that? A lamb chop. Oh, I fucking love lamb chops. And, I say you fool, it’s halal and he burst into flames.In effect, Khalafalla delivers a contemptuous attack on the white members of his audience, but at the same time his joke relies on those same audience members presuming that they are morally and intellectually superior to the individual who is the butt of the joke. Khalafalla’s considerable charm is a help in this tricky send-up. In 2015 the Australian Department of Defence recognised his symbolic power and invited him to join the Afghanistan Task Force to entertain the troops by providing what Doran describes as “home-grown Australian laughs” (7). On stage in Australia, Khalafalla constructs a persona which is an outsider to the dominant majority and challenges the persecution of Muslim communities. Ironically, on the NATO base, Khalafalla’s act was perceived as representing a diverse but united Australia. McCallum has pointed to such contradictions, moments where white Australia has shown itself to be a “culture which at first authenticates emigrant experience and later abrogates it in times of defiant nationalism” (207). Nazeem Hussain, born in Australia to Sri Lankan parents, is even more confrontational. His stand-up is born of his belief that “comedy protects us from the world around us” and is “an evolutionary defence mechanism” (8–9). His ground-breaking comedy career is embedded in his work as an anti-racism activist and asylum seeker supporter and shaped by his second-generation migrant experiences, law studies, community youth work, and early mentorship by American Muslim comic trio Allah Made Me Funny. He is well-known for his pioneering television successes Legally Brown and Salam Café. In his stand-up, Hussain often dwells witheringly on the failings and peculiarities of white people’s attempts to interact with him. Like all his routines, his sell-out show Fear of the Brown Planet, performed with Aamer Rahman from 2004–2008, explored casual, pathologised racism. Hussain deliberately over-uses the term “white people” in his routines as a provocation and deploys a reverse racism against his majority white audiences, knowing that many will be squirming. “White people ask me how can Muslims have fun if they don’t drink? Muslims have fun! Of course we have fun! You’ve seen us on the news.” For Hussain stand-up is “fundamentally an art of protest,” to be used as “a tool by communities and people with ideas that challenge and provoke the status quo with a spirit of counterculture” (Low 1–3). His larger project is to humanise Muslims to white Australians so that “they see us firstly as human beings” (1–3). Hussain’s 2016 MICF show, Hussain in the Membrane, both satirised media hype and hysterical racism and pushed for a better understanding of the complex problems Muslim communities face in Australia. His show also connected issues to older colonial traditions of racism. In a memorable and beautifully crafted tirade, Hussain inveighed against the 2015 Bendigo riots which occurred after local Muslims lodged an application to Bendigo council to build a mosque in the sleepy Victorian town. [YELLING in an exaggerated Australian accent] No we don’t want Muslims! NO we don’t want Muslims—to come invade Bendigo by application to the local council! That is the most bureaucratic invasion of all times. No place in history has been invaded by lodging an application to a local council. Can you see ISIS running around chasing town planners? Of course not, Muslims like to wait 6–8 months to invade! That’s a polite way to invade. What if white people invaded that way? What a better world we’d be living in. If white people invaded Australia that way, we’d be able to celebrate Australia Day on the same day without so much blood on our hands. What if Captain Cook came to Australia and said [in a British accent] Awe we would like to apply to invade this great land and here is our application. [In an Australian accent] Awe sorry, mate, rejected, but we’ll give you Bendigo.As Waleed Aly sees it, the Australian cultural majority is still “unused to hearing minorities speak with such assertiveness.” Hussain exposes “a binary world where there’s whiteness, and then otherness. Where white people are individuals and non-white people (a singular group) are not” (Aly). Hussain certainly speaks as an insider and goes so far as recognising his coloniser’s guilt in relation to indigenous Australians (Tan). Aly well remembers the hate mail he and Hussain received when they worked on Salam Café: “The message was clear. We were outsiders and should behave as such. We were not real Australians. We should know our place, as supplicants, celebrating the nation’s unblemished virtue.” Khalafalla, Rahman, Elleissi, and Hussain make clear that the new wave of comics identify as Muslim and Australian (which they would argue many in the audiences receive as a provocation). They have zero tolerance of racism, their comedy is intimately connected with their political activism, and they have an unapologetically Australian identity. No longer is it a question of whether the white cultural majority in Australia will anoint them as worthy and acceptable citizens, it is a question of whether the audiences can rise to the moral standards of the stand-ups. The power has been switched. For Hussain laughter is about connection: “that person laughs because they appreciate the point and whether or not they accept what was said was valid isn’t important. What matters is, they’ve understood” (Low 5). 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