"Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France,
...
Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research." (Publisher description)
more
"Films about refugees have been embraced by accented cinema. Indeed, exilic filmmakers continue to test the boundaries of cinema, and specifically its strong bonds with nation and land. But not all exiles are refugees. This article offers that for Arab refugees the journeys across the sea define the
...
ir filmmaking and thus also the refugee film. If we acknowledge the sea as a central theme, motif and stylistic element in (some) refugee cinema, spectators may be able to experience refugee cinema more ethically. Using the concept of “Mediterranean thinking” as a central analytical tool, this article focuses on the visual representations of refugees in films made on and in the Mediterranean Sea, problematising the injustices in the representation of refugees since the so-called “refugee crisis”. With a film-philosophical approach to four films from North Africa and Syria, I emphasise how filmmakers directly or indirectly address the senses of their spectators with a cinema that highlights the instability of knowledge and power through movement and fluidity. An in-depth analysis of the visual qualities of water places fluid space and time at the centre of these refugee films. In Mediterranean refugee filmmaking, water enables an embodied experience that leads to allegiance and sympathy, in order to achieve solidarity. This approach is based on a desire to contribute to a new historiography in the service of a more just world. Transnational journeys shape the representations of refugees travelling, transforming and transcending the Mediterranean. Ultimately, this article examines how the migrant and the sea itself develop with the “refugee crisis”, visualised in a cinema adrift on the Mediterranean Sea." (Abstract)
more
"Drawing on social theory, political economy and cultural studies, 'Media Solidarities' explores the way in which media can both enable and obstruct meaningful bonds of solidarity and positive social change. Written in a highly approachable style, it ties theory to contemporary world events and medi
...
a discourses through a series of examples and case studies. The book offers an analytical toolkit to critically understand media narratives of representation, participation and production." (Back cover)
more
"The informal practices revealed in this book include emotion-driven exchanges (from gifts or favours to tribute for services), values-based practices of solidarity and belonging enacting multiple identities, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship
...
, often not seen or appreciated as expertise), and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox – or not – of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsiders, informal practices are, as this book shows, deeply rooted all over the world. Fostering informal ties with ‘godfathers’ in Montenegro, ‘dear brothers’ in Finland and ‘little cousins’ in Switzerland – known locally as kumstvo, Hyvä veli, and Vetterliwirtschaft – as well as Klüngel (solidarity) in Cologne, Germany, compadrazgo (reciprocity) in Chile, or blat (networks of favours) in Russia, can make a world of difference to your well-being. Yet just like family relations, social ties not only enable but also limit individual decisions, behaviour and rights, as is revealed in the entries on janteloven (aversion to individuality) in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, or krugovaia poruka (joint responsibility) in Russia and Europe. The Global Informality Project (GIP) assembles pioneering research into the grey areas of informality, known yet unarticulated, enabling yet constraining, moral to ‘us’ yet immoral to ‘them’, divisive and hard to measure or integrate into policy. While typically unmentioned in official discourse, these practices are deeply woven into the fabric of society and are as pervasive as the usage of the terms, or language games, associated with them: pulling strings in the UK, red envelopes in China, pot du vin in France, l’argent du carburant paid to customs officials in sub-Saharan Africa, coffee money (duit kopi) paid to traffic policemen in Malaysia, and many others (Blundo, Olivier de Sardan, 2007: 132). While they may be taken for granted and familiar, such practices can also be uncomfortable to discuss and difficult to study." (Preface, page vii-viii)
more
"The book develops the analytics of grievability as an analytical framework that unpacks the ways in which news about death constructs grievable death and articulates relational ties between spectators and sufferers. The book employs the analytics of grievability in a comparative manner and analyses
...
the coverage of three different case studies (terror attack, war and natural disaster) by two transnational news networks (BBC World News and Al-Jazeera English). This comparative analysis showcases the centrality of news media in selectively cultivating a sense of cosmopolitan solidarity in a global age." (Publisher description)
more
"Through a case study of Kiva.org, the world's first person-to-person microlending website, and other microfinance organizations, the book argues that international development efforts have an affective dimension. This is fostered through narrative and visual representations, through the performance
...
of development rituals and through bonds of fellowship between Northern donors and Southern recipients. These practices constitute people in the global North as everyday humanitarians and mobilize their affective investments, which are financial, social and emotional investments in distant others to alleviate their poverty. This book draws on ethnographic material from the US, India and Indonesia and the anthropological and development studies literature on humanitarianism, affect and the public faces of development. It opens up novel avenues of research into the formation of new development subjects in the global North." (Publisher description)
more
"On the basis of a thorough review of the growing literature on the mobile phone and the cultures it inspires, Goliama highlights the ambivalent nature of mobile cultures for the Roman Catholic Church's evangelization mission in Africa. He argues not only for the continued merits of face-to-face com
...
munication for the Church's pastoral approach in the African context. He points to how this could be enriched by a creative appropriation of the mobile phone as a tool for theological engagement, in its capacity to shape cultures in ways amenable to the construction of a Cell phone Ecclesiology. Such emergent mobile cultural values include the tendency of mobile users to transcend social divides, to promote social interconnectedness, and to privilege the question 'where are you?" (Publisher description)
more
"Al socializar las ponencias y conclusiones de nuestro II Congreso Latinoamericano de Comunicación: "Comunicación Solidaria en la Sociedad de la Información", queremos contribuir al debate y a la búsqueda de respuestas a los nuevos desafíos que hoy vive la humanidad. Esperamos que en las univer
...
sidades, gremios de profesionales, medios de comunicación, iglesias y en general en todas las instancias de la sociedad civil este debate continúe y seamos capaces también de alentar, apoyar y promover la apropiación de las nuevas tecnologías al servicio de nuestra gente, de nuestros pueblos, de nuestras culturas." (Prólogo, página 7)
more
"Der Sammelband dokumentiert die Beiträge und die Diskussion eines Symposions des Forschungs- und Studienprojekts der Rottendorf-Stiftung. Jörg Becker analysiert in seinem Beitrag die globalen Kommunikationsstrukturen aus kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Sicht und charakterisiert die globale Medie
...
nlandschaft als neue Form des Imperialismus. Dieter Kramer untersucht die kulturellen Implikationen der weltweiten Kommunikation am Beispiel der Weltliteratur, der interkulturellen Philosophie, der Kunst, der Musik und der Konsumgüter. Kulturelle Vielfalt, so Kramer, erlaubt eine Vernetzung, aus der heraus ein Dialog der Kulturen entstehen kann. Dies setzt aber eine neue Form des Dialogs im Kommunikations- und Informationsbereich voraus. Rüdiger Frank analysiert in seinem Beitrag, ob und gegebenenfalls wie globale Solidarität in der Kommunikation und den Medien von Bedeutung ist. Er fordert eine berufsethische Reflexion für Medienschaffende und eine Publikumsethik für Konsumenten. Konkret erläutert er seine Vorstellungen am Beispiel des "Public Journalist" und des Mitleidsmotivs in der Werbung. Hans J. Kleinsteuber liefert den politikwissenschaftlichen Beitrag zum Thema. Er unterscheidet interkulturelle und transkulturelle Kommunikation. Erstere will den transnationalen Markt erschließen. Die interkulturelle Kommunikation thematisiert Anknüpfungspunkte und Missverständnisse im Dialog der Kulturen, während die transkulturelle Kommunikation außerhalb staatlicher Grenzen vor allem im Internet verläuft. Kleinsteuber zeigt am Beispiel der Deutschen Welle die Konsequenzen aus dieser Entwicklung. In einem abschließenden Beitrag stellen Stefanie Landgraf und Johannes Gulde einen Film über die Partnerschaft zwischen einer deutschen und einer ruandischen Schulklasse vor, die miteinander Videobriefe austauschen." (Website Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen,10.3.2003)
more