"This new issue of Westminster Papers of Communication and Culture is dedicated for the first time to Latin America, and by re-visiting the cultural and communication standpoints undertaken in the region, it will help to address the ongoing questions on globalisation, and cultural hybridisation from
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the local and regional cultures. The papers explore a range of important issues including media democracy, hybrid identity, media and migration, structure and agency, social change, technology, and resistance." (Editorial)
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"Based on a year's research from within a Brazilian slum, this study follows a series of unemployed women who watch up to six hours of telenovelas a day, often in the midst of arduous physical labour in the home. The women suffer in relation to their bodies, but simultaneously invest in a masochisti
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c glorification of suffering that links their lives to the soap operas, revealing disturbing valuations of the female body that traverse reality and fiction. Through its exploration of this daily integration of real suffering and fictional glamour and wealth, 'Body Parts on Planet Slum' reveals how fantasy and social exclusion can together induce a form of psychological survivalism, enabling these women to reconfigure the central features of their existence – their suffering, pleasure, sexuality and embodiment." (Publisher description)
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"Internet activism is playing a crucial role in the democratic reform happening across many parts of Southeast Asia. Focusing on Subang Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, this study offers an in-depth examination of the workings of the Internet at the local level. In fact, Subang Jaya is regarded as Ma
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laysia’s electronic governance laboratory. The author explores its field of residential affairs, a digitally mediated social field in which residents, civil servants, politicians, online journalists and other social agents struggle over how the locality is to be governed at the dawn of the ‘Information Era’. Drawing on the field theories of both Pierre Bourdieu and the Manchester School of political anthropology, this study challenges the unquestioned predominance of ‘network’ and ‘community’ as the two key sociation concepts in contemporary Internet studies. The analysis extends field theory in four new directions, namely the complex articulations between personal networking and social fields, the uneven diffusion and circulation of new field technologies and contents, intra- and inter-field political crises, and the emergence of new forms of residential sociality." (Publisher description)
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"This study provides a summary of the state of implementation of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of 2005. Focusing on fields in which the EU is expected to provide leadership or coordination, it is intended to provide ideas and long-term
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guidance on implementing the Convention. For that purpose, it analyses the obligations set out by this treaty. It assesses various practices in implementing the UNESCO Convention from a legal and practical viewpoint, and identifies challenges and measures to help achieve the objectives of this instrument." (Abstract)
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"This report created by Justin O'Connor, Professor of the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, gives a thorough overview of literature that deals with the relationship between culture and economics that lie at the heart of this terminology. This acco
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unt takes a sixty-year trip, starting from the culture industry, leading through the cultural industries, and ending at the creative industries. It explores the history of the idea of the cultural industries, and how it has changed and developed the current interest in the creative economy. The work focuses on the conceptual ideas behind thinking in this area, and lays out the reasons behind the shifts in terminology and policy. The second edition of the report presents some additional reflections on the implications of the internet and the mobile communication technologies on the creative industries." (www.culturelink.org, September 27, 2011)
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"Die Herausgeber Stephan Moebius und Dirk Quadflieg bieten in Zusammenarbeit mit den Autorinnen und Autoren einen systematischen und – in seiner angelegten Breite – erstmaligen Überblick über aktuelle kultursoziologische und -wissenschaftliche Theorien. Die gegenwärtig wichtigsten Kulturtheor
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ien werden nach dem Kriterium ihrer interdisziplinären Relevanz für die zeitgenössischen Diskurse in der Soziologie, den Kulturwissenschaften, der Philosophie sowie den Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften einheitlich und verständlich vorgestellt." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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