“Looking for ah Indian Man”: Popular Culture and the Dilemmas of Indo-Trinidadian Masculinity

Pornographic Pedagogies?: The Risks of Teaching ‘Dirrty’ Popular Cultures

This article examines Mohandas Gandhi’s writing on Indian masculinity in early twentieth-century South Africa which was a period of his life that was seminal for his political career. The author explores how, in the context of being removed from many personal and professional constraints that he encountered in India, Gandhi fashioned prescriptions that would transform the emasculated, effete and cowardly Indian man constructed by colonial discourses in nineteenth-century British India. Building on the scholarly literature pertaining to Gandhian bodily ascesis, I argue that Gandhi held the belief that Indian men would be able to face the hazards of anticolonial satyagraha once their masculinity had been restored, for which various practices of military training were indispensable. I suggest that Gandhi attempted to catalyse somatic and moral reform by encouraging South African Indian men to serve in the British army during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) and the Zulu Rebellion (1906). I explain how Gandhi viewed military service as a transformative disciplinary experience that would afford Indian men with the ability to endure physical duress, bodily strength and, lastly, knowledge in the use of arms. I illustrate how military service ultimately generated a masculine Indian subject, according to Gandhi, one who possessed mastery over his bodily senses, moral fortitude and fearlessness.

Anthropometry of south Indian industrial workmen.

"I’m a Modern Bride": On the Relationship between Marital Hegemony, Bridal Fictions, and Postfeminism

In the contemporary globalized world, transnational (im)migrants’ lives are imbued with many complexities, largely due to their multiple affiliations and constant border-crossing (Appadurai 1991, 1996; Basch et al. 1994; Gupta and Ferguson 1994; Hu-Dehart 1999; Kearney 1995; Ong 1999; Xavier and Rosaldo 2002).1 Located “in-between,” they are “fully encapsulated neither in the host society nor in their native land” but “nonetheless remain active participants in the social settings of both locations” (Glick-Schiller and Fouron 1990: 330).2 Thus, they often build their niches in the interstices among various social, cultural and political communities. While not enough scholarly attention has been given to the lives of a segment of transnational (im)migrant populations – youths – their experiences can shed light on many critical aspects of global transformation, as they are major consumers of various kinds of popular culture, among the most active voices in cyberspace, and one of the most mobile groups who frequently cross real and virtual borders. Among other groups, Asian-American youths have played a critical role in the transnational circulation of products, information and people. Their interest in and easy access to diverse popular cultures, especially U.S. and Asian pop cultures, enable them to become core consumers of multiple national, regional and global pop cultures. Through their frequent transpacific contacts, they disseminate and mediate cultural information across borders, sometimes far more effectively than the mainstream media does. They also participate in the construction of popular culture through their work in the media or entertainment industries on both sides of the Pacific. The multiple roles of Asian-American youths in transpacific flows of popularculture indicate changes in the global cultural landscape. The boundary-collapsing power of globalization has subverted our long-held notion of culture, which is generally understood as shared meanings, values and customs of a group of people who live within bounded territories, and “hybridization” and “creolization” have become typical characteristics of contemporary culture (Gupta and Ferguson 1994; Hannerz 1992, 1996). Moreover, advancements in technology, which have widened the scope and accelerated the speed of the circulation of information and products to an unprecedented degree, haveinduced contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, they strengthen the West’s, especially Hollywood’s, cultural hegemony as the global media industries are mostly controlled and owned by Western capital and as the content of popular culture is still largely of Western origin. On the other hand, they have expedited the regionalization of cultural flows, such as intraAsian cultural circulation, which challenges the unidirectional cultural flows from the West to the rest, partly because global media industries divide the world into regional markets and tend to regionally distribute programs, many of which are produced locally (Morley and Robins 1995; Iwabuchi 2002). In addition, some Asian countries, with the development of their economy and media industries, have produced marketable popular cultural products such as film, music and animation, which first circulated at the local and regional levels and then gradually expanded to the global market (Iwabuchi 2002; Park 2006; Yau 2001). Cultural influences from the “periphery” to the “center” are not uncommon nowadays, as illustrated by the noticeable African, Latin or Asian influences on contemporary U.S. pop culture (Hannerz 1992). AsianAmerican youths’multiple roles signify their critical involvement in this transpacific “cross-fertilization of culture” (Iwabuchi 2002). In addition, the consumption of “homeland” popular culture reconnects them to their “homelands” through images mediated by “electronic capitalism” such as television and cinema (Appadurai 1996), which potentially provide a ground on which to construct a new kind of transnational community based on shared imagination and consumption (Anderson 1983; Park 2004). Drawing on ethnographic accounts of Korean American youths’ consump-tion of South Korean popular culture (whose popularity is called Hallyu, or the Korean Wave) in Los Angeles and Chicago, this chapter explores the role of (im)migrant youths in the transnational flows of popular culture and its ramifications. It discusses: (1) how young Korean Americans consume, disseminate and construct popular culture across the Pacific; (2) how Korean American youths’ consumption of South Korean culture is interrelated with their search for identity and community; (3) how the transpacific cultural flows are affected by the interplay of various structural forces including the market and the state and how they signify the changing global cultural landscape and power relationships.

This study explores relationships between cultural contact and value change. Surveys were conducted to compare students having cross-cultural contact (Chinese students in the US, N=107) with students without contact (Chinese students in China, N = 185) on value scores. The Chinese Value Survey (CCC, 1987) was used as the instrument for observing value differences between these two samples. Cross-cultural contact was found to be associated with value change among Chinese students. However. changes occurred in opposite directions. Students with contact thought the value of cultural conservation was less important than those without contact. Those staying in the U.S. over two years viewed cultural conservation as less important than those in the U.S. less than two years. Surprisingly, students with contact viewed the values of group integration and selfprotection as more important than students without contact. In-depth interviews (N=25) among Chinese students in the U.S. provided further interpretations, suggesting that cross-cultural contact can result in changes - some values decrease their significance among Chinese students for cultural adjustment while others increase their importance for cultural identity. The world has become a global village in which members of different cultures find themselves face-to-face. Consequently, diverse cultural value systems come into contact. Cultural values have been of lasting interest to scholars in multiple disciplines; however, it is the accelerated globalization that has turned such classic topics as value clash and cultural identity into timely issues. While most cross-cultural studies compared value differences with peoples from distinctive cultures (Chung, Walkey and Bemak 1997; Hofstede 1980; Hui 1990; Hus 1981; Stipek 1998; Ting-Toomey 1988; Triandis, Brislin and Hui 1988), the current study utilized samples from the same cultural tradition but with different interaction contexts; i.e., Chinese students in China and Chinese students in the U.S. There has been an increasing realization that cultural values of international students may experience change from their continuous interaction with the host culture and society (Brislin, 1981; Furnham, 1988; Hull, 1978; Kim and Ruben, 1988; Searle and Ward, 1990). According to these studies, those who have adapted their cultural values to new cultural environments may function better in the host society. Other researchers emphasize the aspect of cultural conflict. They have demonstrated that cultural value differences and conflicts broadly exist among immigrant groups (Adler, 1975; Casimir and Keats, 1996; Gudykunst and Kim, 1984; Triandis, 1977). The complexity of cross-cultural interaction has been especially discussed between eastern and western value systems (Bond 1988; Bond and Hwang, 1986; Church, 1982; Hui, 1990; Hall, 1976; Smith, 1994; Ting-Toomey, 1988; Triandis, Brislin and Hui, 1988). The significant impact of cultural contact on racial and ethnic relations has received continuing attention (Feagin, 1991; Kitano, 1974; Marger, 1994; Thomas and Hughes, 1986; Williams, 1977; Yetman, 1985). Yet many studies have focused on the effects of ethnocentrism and racial discrimination on cultural values and ethnic identity (Chen, 1981; Chen and Yang, 1986; De Vos, 1990; Paige, 1990; Triandis, 1990). The most recent research on acculturation processes contributes greatly to the understanding of Chinese students in western societies, such as Australia (Hird, 1997; Da, 1998), Canada (McCrea et al., 1998), and the U.S. (Ying and Liese, 1994; Zhang and Rentz, 1996). The current research investigates the process of cross-cultural contact and its effects on value change and cultural identity. In this regard, early literature states that an effective intercultural communication depends on the degree of information exchange and mutual understanding between guest and host cultures (Martin, 1984). Through the stress-adaptation-growth process of communication, individuals go beyond the cognitive, affective, and behavioral limits of their original culture and eventually become intercultural (Kim and Ruben, 1988). …

Romance is the stumbling block of trans films, providing a quandary even as it proves a popular standard for mainstream access into the transgender experience. Too often narrative expectation is subverted and romantic contact stifled because the filmmaker fears the audience will read the trans character's gender identity as inauthentic and the romance as transgressive. Duncan Tucker's Transamerica (2005), the award-winning film about a male-to-female transsexual who reconnects with her family in the midst of her transition, recalls earlier transgender films The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), The Crying Game (1992), and Boys Don't Cry (1999), where romance undermines the otherwise positive portrayal of the trans experience and reaffirms the dominant viewpoint that authentic gender is dependent upon birth sex rather than upon gender identity. The trans/romance dilemma is the result of two connected, but distinct cultural associations between transgender identity and sexual transgression: the traditional medical conflation of transgenderism with sexual deviance and the overarching presumption that any identity category transgression, more commonly known as passing, is related to sexual transgression. The directors' attempts to resolve the anxiety inherent in these traditions with the gender casting of the trans character, shots of the trans body, and physical interaction between romantic partners end up only reinforcing the character's inauthenticity.In dominant discourse, sex, a biological category, is conflated with gender, the social category of identity exhibited through appearance, mannerisms, dress, and so on. Failure to differentiate between sex and gender exists even when people recognize that the masculine and feminine characteristics assigned to each gender are social constructs that differ across cultures and time periods. Individually or as a group, transpersons expose the workings of this gender system, revealing that the binary is neither natural nor invariant and that male and female are not mutually exclusive categories.Transgender is an umbrella term, which includes cross-dressers, drag queens and kings, transsexuals, and other genderqueer people who may identify outside of the two gender system. Organized transgender activism has existed since the 1960s, but has gained momentum and public attention since the early 1990s (Meyerowitz 20812, 227-41; Stryker 139-53). As a result of this work, as of early 2012, sixteen states have banned discrimination based on gender identity, as have almost 80% of Fortune 500 and other top companies in 2012 (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, State; Human Rights Campaign 9). Visibility has also exploded into popular culture, with new transgender narratives ranging from reality television shows like TransGeneration (2005), Transamerican Love Story (2008), and RuPaul's Drag Race (2009), major storylines on television series like The L Word, Ugly Betty, and Dirty Sexy Money, and documentaries like Transparent (2005), Boy I Am (2006), and She's A Boy I Knew (2007). However, traditional stereotypes of transpersons continue to shape mainstream depictions, most notably in the conflation of transgender romance and sexual transgression in film.The biased medical discourse that formulated this association between transgenderism and sexual deviance started in early twentieth-century sexology, when homosexuals were defined as gender inverts, so that cross-dressing was presumed to be a physical manifestation of this psychological state. Even though most male cross-dressers are heterosexual, this presumption lingers today in the common stereotype that men who crossdress do so to attract male partners and alleviate their shame and guilt over being homosexual (Boyd 25; see also Garber 207 and Serano 128). Midcentury sexologists who crafted the modern psychiatric category of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and its accompanying current clinical criteria for transsexuality, known as Standards of Care, obviously feared such connotations when they mandated heteronormative sexuality as a goal of treatment for transsexuals and defined homosexuality as an automatic contraindication for a diagnosis of GID until 1994 (Rosario 39; Fausto-Sterling 107; Rudacille 124-30; Stone 292). …

Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo. By Boaz Shoshan. Cambridge, UK andNew York Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1993.148 pp.Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. By Edmund Burke, III(ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993,400 pp.Living Islam: From Samarkand to Stornoway. By Akbar Ahmed. NewYork: Facts on File, Inc., 1994.224 pp.One of the many expressions of the postmodernist revolt against themodernist western establishment is said to be its popular culture. The theoreticalliterature produced across this cultural divide often characterizes itin terms of two extremes: as a supreme expression of the true aspirations ofthe heretofore underprivileged masses or as a weapon in the hands of thetraditionally powerful political, social, and economic elites. The latter useit as a tool with which to manipulate the masses for their own respectiveagendas. A constant refrain of Hitler invoking Nazi supremacy over allhumanity, as well as our own self-serving politicians doing their own thingin the name of the “intelligent and well-informed will of the American people,”are only two of many examples of this instrument’s ubiquitous use.The Multiple Uses of Popular CultureThe vast grey area between these two margins includes umpteen otherdescriptions of popular culture, such as real “texture of our environment”and “adjustive syndrome,” and Matthew Arnold’s “heedless democratization.”In addition, there are such definitions as “banality” (Elliot), “reductionof the individual to basic instincts,” “titillation of the superficial senses”(Whitman), and “an expression denied by persistent puritanism and bourgeoispower” (Marx). Leavis also joined Arnold and Elliot in resisting thepopular resistance to “authority” found in traditional culture ...

Asian Indians show an increased risk of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and coronary heart disease, together with adverse fat distribution and hyperinsulinaemia relative to other ethnic groups. Using population-based data, we investigated the question of whether the adverse fat distribution observed in Indians can be explained by differences in behavioural risk factor levels. We have examined the question of whether ethnic differences in fat distribution are responsible for the unfavourable risk factor profile of Indians. Fat distribution (waist: hip ratio) was compared in population-based samples of Asian Indian (n = 4394), Creole (n = 1746), and Chinese (n = 425) Mauritians, after controlling for body mass index and other factors. The contribution of this ratio to ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease risk factors and the role of fasting insulin concentrations were also determined. Indian men had the highest mean waist: hip ratio, despite having the lowest body mass index. In Indian women the mean waist: hip ratio and body mass index were intermediate between those of Chinese and Creole women. Indians of both sexes had low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and HDL: total cholesterol compared with Creoles or Chinese, whereas triglycerides levels were highest in Indian men but intermediate in Indian women. Mean fasting and 2 h insulin concentrations were not consistently highest in the Indian subgroups. Blood pressure and serum urate levels were lowest in Indians of both sexes and Indian women also had lower total cholesterol concentrations than either Creoles or Chinese. The elevated waist: hip ratio in Indians was not explained by differences in physical activity, cigarette smoking, or alcohol consumption and the differences in this ratio (and insulin levels) did not explain the observed ethnic differences in metabolic parameters. The susceptibility of Indians to abdominal obesity contributed to the less desirable levels of some, but not all, cardiovascular risk factors. Ethnic differences in cardiovascular risk factors in Mauritians were not explained by differences in abdominal obesity, serum insulin or behavioural risk factors. These data suggest that it is over-simplistic to ascribe the adverse cardiovascular risk factor profile commonly observed in Asian Indians to a tendency to abdominal obesity.

Serum uric acid and incident diabetes in Mauritian Indian and Creole populations

Hindi, Hinglish: Head to Head

A S WE APPROACHED THE Natural Bridge, I was touched but also apprehensive of the moment. At last, we would see this natural rock formation that had become associated with the historical accounts of a brutal massacre of one hundred and fifty-three Wintun Indian men, women, and children. Where was the precise spot? I wondered. Would the anguished screams of the victims still echo between the tall fir trees and the delicate white trillium flowers that grew along the trail? I glanced furtively at a small open area among the trees and imagined bleached human bones protruding through the brown earth. This image was particularly strong because John Carr had written in his book, Pioneer Days in California, that years after [the massacre], I hunted cattle over the battleground. Part of the bones still bleaching on the plains: skulls and arm and leg bones were scattered over the ground in all directions.' I stood silent but my thoughts leaped back to that brutal time, that time in Northern California when miners had come to rape the land of its gold and had stayed to rape the earth of all its resources. The results of the massacre that John Carr had noted had occurred in the Spring of 1852 near the Trinity mining center of Weaverville where hundreds upon hundreds of aggressive, often bitter, men inundated the small pocket valleys and numerous streams and rivers of Northern California in the previous years. Within months they had turned clear streams into sickening red sludge that oozed into the Trinity River. Fish died by the millions, particularly the salmon. Soon their four-year cycle was interrupted and this vital source of food was lost to the Native people. The miners shot deer by the hundreds, and imported hogs and cattle that roamed the hills and ravaged the vegetation. The California acorns that had provided food for many, now fed only the newcomers' livestock. In addition to the destruction of their food sources, the Indians themselves were savaged. They were often shot on sight, particularly if an Indian man was sighted while fishing or hunting alone. In fact, one hardy pioneer was quoted as taking no more notice of killing them than if he were killing a stray dog.2 Another indicated that he had murdered Indians, just to try out his rifle. Indian women were raped and forced into concubinage. The children, especially young girls of twelve and thirteen, were sold into slavery for amounts of one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars.4 A good buy for a lonely miner.

Source attribution of nitrogen dioxide over the Indian subcontinent using WRF-chem

Reviewed by: Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life by Viviane Mahieux Thomas Genova Mahieux, Viviane. Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life. Austin: U of Texas P, 2011. Pp. 234. ISBN 978-0-292-70945-4. The crónica urbana, a Latin American literary-journalistic genre consisting of short reflections on city life, has garnered critical attention in recent years as scholars examine the form’s place in the region’s literary and cultural modernity. While most studies have concentrated either on the turn-of-the-nineteenth century or the postmodern era, Viviane Mahieux’s Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life makes an important contribution to crónica studies by exploring how the genre mobilized modern class and gender identities to intervene in larger cultural debates in the 1920s and 30s, a period marked by the growth of the urban middle classes and the rise of the literary avant-gardes. Drawing on the work of Susan Rotker and Vicky Unruh, Mahieux explores the ways in which the chronicle in the 1920s and 30s worked to shape modern class and gender subjectivities by mediating between elite and popular cultures in the mass-media space of the newspaper. Urban chroniclers of the period combined avant-garde literary innovations with Latin America’s incipient mass culture in order to fashion a place for themselves in the region’s shifting cultural landscape during the early twentieth century. In chapter 1, “Cities, Publics, and Urban Chroniclers in Latin America: 1920s–1930s,” Mahieux explains how the period’s economic and technological modernization made it possible for chroniclers to reach a wider audience than they had a generation earlier. As a result, the chroniclers of the 1920s, unlike the letrados of the traditional Latin American literary and cultural establishment that Ángel Rama and Julio Ramos study, were “accessible intellectuals” who targeted their penetrating social commentaries to a broad audience comprised of readers from the same physical and economic location as themselves. Yet, according to Mahieux, even as the chroniclers of the 20s and 30s participate in mass culture—following the high cultural trends of the period described in Peter Burger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde—, they break with older bourgeois conceptions that view art and the artist as autonomous from the everyday social [End Page 176] and economic life of the community. These changes result in a “democratizing” of lettered culture to include popular and middlebrow, as well as elite elements (30). In chapter 2, “A Common Citizen Writes Buenos Aires: Roberto Arlt’s Aguasfuertes porteñas,” Mahieux explores how the chronicle registers the new class subjectivities that were emerging as a result of Argentina’s rapid development and heavy rates of immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century. Stressing working-class Arlt’s difference from elite Argentine avant-gardists such as Jorge Luis Borges and Oliverio Girondo, Mahieux examines the ways in which the chronicler uses the market and the notion of circulation (of people, goods, and texts) to fashion an identity for himself as a being simultaneously like and unlike his readers. Chapter 3, “Taking Readers for a Ride: Mário de Andrade’s Táxi,” focuses on de Andrade’s conversational style in the context of modernist São Paulo, where lifeways differed sharply from the traditionalism that still existed in some other regions of Brazil. Mahieux argues that, a reflection of Brazilian modernism’s interest in the vernacular, the dialogical nature of de Andrade’s chronicles helps bridge the gap between art and criticism while, at the same time, representing the country’s cultural heterogeneity. Chapter 4, “The Chronicler as Streetwalker: Salvador Novo Performs Gender,” explains how Novo in his chronicles subverts gender binaries not only through his transgressive sexuality, but through his willingness to engage middlebrow culture as a means of disrupting the dominant hierarchies of post-revolutionary Mexico. If high cultural canons of the time scripted official nationalism as “masculine,” Novo playfully registers the apolitical “feminine” culture of the cosmopolitan urban middle classes in his chronicles. This chapter, perhaps the strongest in Mahieux’s compelling book, serves as a transition from the...

This book examines the iconic presence of second chances in everyday life. David Newman explores its various iterations in popular culture, commercial marketplaces, religion, intimate relationships, education, criminal justice, and human bodies. He analyzes how this concept—as a cultural aspiration, driver of policy, and lived personal experience—has become part and parcel of our individual sense of self and our collective national identity. While the rhetoric of redemption is familiar and ubiquitous, Newman uncovers the costs and constraints of second chances, paying particular attention to the factors that affect judgments of deservedness. Informed by an array of data sources including personal interviews, mission statements of nonprofit recovery agencies, images in popular culture, stories from the news, plot summaries of novels, and scriptural texts, Newman frames the second chance experience as the quintessential cultural paradox: a concept that simultaneously represents the pinnacle of our shared hopes for renewal and our deepest suspicions about the intransigence of human nature.