Dominant Messages Research Articles

Beyond Price Comparisons: Towards a More Critical Consumer Education for Adults Through Informal Sites of Learning

Over decade ago, Oduran (1993) argued that was an emerging frontier of adult While the Adult Performance Level (APL) project in the 1970s sparked some interest in and within adult basic and English as second language (Lankshear, 1993; Levine, 1986; Sandlin, 2000), and while this push has been seen more recently in welfare-to-work and job preparation programs, the broader field of adult has been almost silent on this issue. A review of adult journals and conference proceedings over the past decade reveals very little interest in among adult researchers. In this article, I argue that in addition to the recognized practice of in formal classroom settings (including some adult literacy programs, county extension, and welfare- to -work programs), for adults is happening in wide variety of places outside the formal classroom. These informal sites of for adults mostly have gone unnoticed by the field of adult or are not recognized or named as consumer education. I believe adult educators should be aware of these informal sites of adult education, especially because some of these sites have the potential to move outside of its traditional technical focus, and into more critical realms where learners develop a different relationship to the marketplace in which they identify unquestioned assumptions and challenge the status of existing structures [such as capitalism] as natural (Ozanne & Murray, 1995, p. 522). Consumer is an important and exciting arena that adult educators in variety of settings could incorporate into their existing curricula. In addition, adult educators could become aware of and more involved in these more informal sites, thus bringing recognition to these sites as legitimate arenas of adult learning. In what follows, I briefly discuss traditional forms of and examine taking place in more informal arenas, focusing on sites of critical where consumers are learning and practicing ways to cut down on their overall consumption. This movement has several different trajectories, including the voluntary simplicity movement that urges consumers to cut back on consumption or to consume in more environmentally-friendly way, and the jammers movement that uses various acts of public and private resistance to challenge and undermine the culture in which we live. Just The Facts, Please! Traditional Consumer Education in Formal Settings The term consumer education conjures up images of learning how to perform price comparisons, make budgets, and balance checking account. These are often the types of taught in life skills segments of adult literacy, ESL, and employment preparation programs (Auerbach & Burgess, 1985; Griffith & Cervero, 1977; Lankshear, 1993; Sandlin, 2000). Consumer has been defined as the process of gaining knowledge and to manage personal resources and to participate in social, political, and decisions that affect individual well-being and the public good (Bannister, 1996, p. 1). Consumer has long history in the United States, beginning formally in the early 20th century, but having its roots in the 1700s, with Thomas Jefferson's advocacy of democracy and public (Bannister). Throughout this history, practitioners have been concerned with improving the economic level of living for all citizens (Bannister, p. 5), and have focused on three broad areas of education: choice and decision making, personal resource management, and citizen participation (Bannister & Monsma, 1980). The dominant message in traditional literature and practice stresses the positive benefits of education, and the majority of empirical research on has tried to determine how behaviors change after participating in programs. …

The representation of the professions in the cinema: the case of construction engineers and lawyers

This paper considers how popular culture, especially the cinema, depicts two professions; namely, engineering and the law. It argues that despite the large number of engineers working in the developed economies their lives and their work are seldom portrayed in cinema. In contrast, the legal profession is ubiquitous in its presence in film. The paper seeks to use different forms of analysis, such as culturalism, Marxism, structuralism, feminism and post‐modernism when applied to film theory in settings where engineers and lawyers are depicted. The paper makes a distinction between the presentation of the work of engineers and lawyers in ‘real life’ and cinematic form. The process of engineering in real life is visible yet in cinematic terms it is ignored. In contrast, the legal process is invisible in real life but has high dramatic content in the cinema. When considering the products of the two professions, engineering produces tangible products whilst law produces intangible yet highly cerebral discourses. Yet, in the cinema, the engineering product is a backcloth for other messages where in law the legal product provides a backcloth for a central and dominant message about the legal process. The conclusion is that engineers have to re‐engineer themselves to be more visible in society if they are to be regarded as cinematic heroes.

Romantic Love and ‘Getting Married’

In theories of mass popular culture, there remains a continuing assumption that the dominant messages encoded in media texts impact upon and influence their audiences. Thus, the question that is usually posed is one regarding the extent to which audiences are aware of and able to resist such domination by media messages. In this article, I use a comparison of narratives of romantic love in cinema texts and in the conversations of people ‘getting married’ to challenge such assumptions of unidirectional influence. I argue that both media texts and their audiences are part of a larger cultural logic, one that is not necessarily more dominating of audiences than of producers of texts, but which may nevertheless be used to reinforce prior unequal relations of social organization.

"You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin": Popular and Consumer Culture and the Americanization of Asian American Girls and Young Women

First- and second-generation youth of color are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and sexuality as reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. These popular images inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for first- and second-generation Americans. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation Asian girls and young women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their positions in the United States. Data from two qualitative studies on Asian young women will be presented. Scholars from various fields have written about the powerful impact of popular and consumer cultures on youth identities and cultures (Appadurai, 1990; Giroux, 1992, 1994; Pyke, 2000; Silverstone, 1994). For youth from immigrant families, popular and consumer cultures are significant sources of information about America and being American (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). First- and second-generation youth of color, in general, are affected by the dominant messages of Whiteness, which pervade popular and consumer culture (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). Young women, in particular, are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and sexuality as reflected in and promoted by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. Gender, race, and class inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for first- and second-generation Asian young women. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation Asian women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their positions in the United States. includes a review of the literature, a brief description of two qualitative studies, data from a sample of Asian high school girls and a sample of college students, and discussion of the implications of the findings. POPULAR AND CONSUMER CULTURE AND THE GENDERED RACIALIZATION OF ASIAN AMERICANS Research on immigrant students of color (Lee, 2001b; Lei, 2001; Olsen, 1997) reveals that students undergo a process of racialization as they are incorporated into the existing racial hierarchy of the United States-one that places White people at the top and defines them as the only true Americans. While the formal curriculum and organization of schooling are implicated in this process, popular and consumer cultures, operating both within and outside of schools, leverage considerable power in the creation and re-creation of this racialized notion of identity (Hall, 1995). As cultural studies theorists like Thomas Nakayama (1994) have observed, It is as if there is a natural-as opposed to cultural, social, historical-relation between whiteness and (pp. 168-69). Whiteness, in consumer culture, is both pervasive and invisible as the unmarked norm. Significantly, unmarked Whiteness is a classed racial category, determined by an equally unmarked middle class status, such that the norm for Americanness is both middle class and White (Kenny, 2000; Ong, 2000). Of equal significance is the multiple ways in which Blackness is constructed in popular cultures and by students as the readers or consumers of those cultures. While Whiteness is constructed in dominant popular culture as all that is quintessentially good and right with Americanness, Blackness is constructed as the Other which defines that goodness-it functions to maintain the dichotomy of good and bad in culture and society (hooks, 1989, 1992). As julia Koza (1994) points out, Black rap music is discursively characterized in mainstream media as rejecting what is right and legitimate about dominant (read: White) values. is portrayed as violent, resistant, sexist, and dangerous. Simultaneously, White families are portrayed as the normal family; while Black families, with few notable exceptions, are portrayed as either absent or dysfunctional and deficient. This elaborates Nakayama's point that the collapsing of Whiteness and Americanness is achieved through the construction of a Black-White binary. …

“We Don’t Want No Haole Buttholes in Our Stories”: Local Girls Reading the Baby-Sitters Club Books in Hawai‘i

This study investigates the place of popular cultural texts in the construction of the gendered and cultural subjectivities of seven eight-year-old girls growing up in Hawai‘i. Within the context of weekly literature circles held over a period of four months, Grace and Lum sought to understand how these young “local” girls engaged with a book series privileging white, middle-class, mainland values, and how they located themselves within dominant ideologies related to race, culture, and gender. Using qualitative methods, the following questions were addressed: (1) In what ways did the girls identify with particular storylines, subject positions, and views of the world? (2) Were dominant messages accommodated, negotiated, or resisted? (3) What pleasures were produced and experienced in the reading? (4) How were meanings shaped and mediated by “local” culture and the reader’s personal histories? The findings suggest that rather than being manipulated by the textual images of femininity, suburban living, and western notions of beauty, the girls had alternative social and cultural discourses with which to negotiate and resist them. These discourses related to notions of the family; gender relations; peer friendships and rivalry; perceptions of beauty; and cultural identity. The findings suggest the importance of local context in understanding textual readings and interpretations.

Applying environmental product design to biomedical products research.

The principal themes for the Biomedical Research and the Environment Conference Committee on Environmental Economics in Biomedical Research include the following: healthcare delivery companies and biomedical research organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, need to improve their environmental performance; suppliers of healthcare products will be called upon to support this need; and improving the environmental profile of healthcare products begins in research and development (R&D). The committee report begins with requirements from regulatory authorities (e.g., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], the U.S. Food and Drug Administration), and the healthcare delivery sector). The 1998 American Hospital Association and EPA Memorandum of Understanding to reduce solid waste and mercury from healthcare facilities is emblematic of these requirements. The dominant message from the requirements discussion is to ensure that R&D organizations do not ignore customer, environmental, and regulatory requirements in the early stages of product development. Several representatives from healthcare products manufacturers presented their companies' approaches to meeting these requirements. They reported on efforts to ensure that their R&D processes are sensitive to the environmental consequences from manufacturing, distributing, using, and disposing of healthcare products. These reports describe representatives' awareness of requirements and the unique approaches their R&D organizations have taken to meet these requirements. All representatives reported that their R&D organizations have embraced environmental product design because it avoids the potential of returning products to R&D to improve the environmental profile. Additionally, several reports detailed cost savings, sustainability benefits, and improvements in environmental manufacturing or redesign, and increased customer satisfaction. Many companies in healthcare delivery are working to improve environmental performance. Fundamental to these efforts is the necessity of motivating suppliers to improve the environmental profile of new products used in the healthcare delivery sector.

The Animal Text: Message and Meaning in Television Advertisements

We studied the dominant messages about animals in television commercials and the ways these messages might be subject to alternative readings. Six primary themes captured the portrayal of animals in the advertisements: animals as loved ones (e.g., a member of a family), as symbols (representation of logos or ideas), as tools (using animals for human use or consumption), as allegories, as nuisances, and animals in nature. Many of the commercials had multiple themes, indicating the varied, multilayered messages about animals in advertising and the different value and use categories that humans assign to different nonhuman animal species, upholding the ideology of the U.S. political economy. Finally, most of the animal portrayals were not anthropomorphized; those that were given human characteristics were typically part of a multithemed message that portrayed animals as allegories. Many of the animal images reinforced human gender and racial boundaries. This research establishes the importance of incorporating the study of nonhuman animals in sociological theory and research, particularly the animal image in popular culture and its connection to the portrayal of other outgroups, such as women and racial minorities.

‘We Know Why We're Here’: the experience of African children in a ‘coloured’ school in Cape Town, South Africa[1

With the abolition of formal apartheid in education in South Africa there has been a movement of children classified African into schools which were previously reserved for Indians, ‘coloureds’ and whites. While this development has yielded a number of highly positive outcomes, of concern, has been the difficulty host schools have encountered in dealing with the social, cultural and economic backgrounds which entering children have brought with them. Significantly, host schools previously classified ‘coloured’ have had as much difficulty as white schools in dealing with social and cultural difference. This article is based on research conducted in a working‐class community in Cape Town which has admitted a large number of children classified African. Drawing on extensive interviews with African boys and girls, it looks at the problems which they have encountered and how they have dealt with these problems in giving voice to their identity. The argument which the article seeks to make is that young people develop complex identities in the process of attending schools which seek to pull them into the dominant discourse of apartheid. They recognise the exclusionary strategies in school which seek them to sublimate their Africanness and work with these strategies in the classroom and the playground. While they accede to the dominant messages of school, at the same time they reject the representational structures within those messages. [1] The terms ‘coloured’, African, white and Indian are part of the nomenclature and vocabulary of apartheid. While I recognise that they have been assimilated and are used in everyday speech, I reject the racism and the racial essentialism embedded in their use.

Selling the Sex That Sells: Mapping the Evolution of Gender Advertising Research Across Three Decades

Advertising images pervade our everyday lives, bombarding us with snapshots of what we supposedly lack and what we need to fill the void. Images of idealized bodies, particularly female bodies, are some of the most dominant and pervasive messages produced by advertisers. Their pervasiveness has called forth popular and academic discourses foregrounding the crucial issue of how these images are implicated in the ongoing construction, negotiation, and maintenance of gender identities and social relationships between women and men. This chapter provides an intellectual history of gender advertising research across the past three decades by reviewing empirical and theoretical advances in the depiction, representation, and decoding of gender images in advertising. This evolution in intellectual work on gender and advertising reflects not only the historical location of academic research at different times and geographic locations, but also its often uneasy relationship to feminist politics. Finally, the current ferment in gender advertising research is discussed.

Message strategy by product-class type: A matching model

An ELM (Elaboration Likelihood Model) based matching model is developed that relates alternative emotional /rational message appeals to a product type (goods or services) classification scheme. An empirical ad content analysis establishes that in practice emotionally dominant message appeals fit most appropriately search goods and credence services as opposed to experience goods and experience services.

The Politics of the Body and the Body Politic: Magic Johnson and the Ideology of AIDS

This paper analyzes the discourse surrounding AIDS and HIV in the light of Magic Johnson’s public announcement that he was HIV positive. In the context of the New Right backlash of the 1980s, the bodies of Johnson and others have been used to (re)produce specific, narrowly defined messages about the meaning of AIDS and the HIV virus. Commercial and professional sports interests have used this event to enter into a well-established discourse that reproduces and reinforces the dominant messages of homophobia and misogyny surrounding the syndrome.

Rhetorical contexts and hedges

(1990). Rhetorical contexts and hedges. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 49-59.

New Sources for Jacques Callot's Map of the Siege of Breda

Callot's Map of the Siege of Breda is one of the richest images produced during the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. It has been examined, however, only within catalogues and general books on the artist's work. The present analysis publishes the earliest documents on the map, which re-date the project to the months immediately following the capitulation of Breda to Spain. It is also demonstrated that much of Callot's imagery was based on a journal written by Hermannus Hugo, who was field chaplain to the Spanish commander Spinola. Hugo's chronicle provided Callot with invaluable information on the siege, and served as a useful guide for the order of the army of Flanders. The celebration of victory, achieved through Spinola's humane management of his army, is the dominant message of Callot's map.

The Family Farm, Land Use and Accumulation in Agriculture

The reintroduction of family farming into Chinese agriculture must be seen against the background of an agricultural system which was dominated by collective farming for over twenty years. The formation of the communes in 1958 was based on the premise that collective farming provided a mechanism for both economic development and social change. As in socialist states elsewhere,' it was believed that they enabled faster rates of accumulation and investment, better management of land and labour, greater responsiveness to state planning, and a structure for promoting technical improvement. At the same time, they were seen to be more socialist because they replaced private ownership of land and other resources, aimed at more egalitarian forms of income distribution, and, in theory at least, provided a framework for integrated social and economic development whereby agriculture, industry, services and government were combined in one managerial structure and the peasants had the right to participate in all aspects without any form of economic and political alienation. Seen from the top down, therefore, the communes embodied both the economic and the ideological goals of the state. They served the state's interests by supplying the crops required at state-determined prices. They invested in land management, irrigation, machinery and technological development. They helped provide accumulation for the state to invest in urban development. They restricted the movement of population into urban centres by providing employment for all their members. And the image of an egalitarian, democratic and integrated social structure was the dominant message in the publicity given to many model communes.

Uzbek feelings of ethnicity [A study of attitudes expressed in recent Uzbek literature

William Fierman, Uzbek feelings of ethnicity. A study of attitudes expressed in recent Uzbek literature. Recent works of fiction, literary criticism and articles on other cultural matters by Soviet Uzbek authors offer an almost untapped source of information about feelings of ethnicity. Evidence in the literature surveyed for this study indicates that Uzbeks are exhibiting renewed pride in their own land, history, customs, language, literature, music and art. During the Stalin period a dominant message to Uzbek readers was that to be modern was to be Russian; today, in contrast, Uzbek readers are also frequently reminded that they are heirs to a tradition (in no way inferior to the European one) which is relevant to the modern world. Uzbeks who have turned their backs on their own culture are portrayed as fools and opportunists. Although no Uzbek authors deny that a multinational Soviet culture is being created, some are particularly insistent that their own contribution to it not be underestimated; moreover, they maintain that Soviet culture's Asian elements are as "international" as the European ones are.

The Slade Film History Register

What 80 Million Women Want (1913) 65 min. b&w What 80 million women want in 1913 is the right to vote, and this film was produced as a campaign movie for the women's suffrage movement. It combines documentary footage of the movement with a fictional account of an office romance. Unfortunately, despite an occasional glimpse ofEmeline Pankhurst, the dominant message is thoroughly garbled in a confusing, paternalistic script. The film focuses on Mabel West who temporarily is forced to forego the love of her ardent admirer, Will Travers, for the sake of "the cause". But love, justice and women's suffrage are ultimately vindicated when the urban political machine is overthrown, the corrupt party bosses (including a black manager) are heaved intojail, and Mabel accepts Will's offer of holy matrimony. Beyond the weak plot, the film remains an interesting and informative document ofthe change in the women's movement from an inclusive radical protest for equal rights to an exclusive preoccupation with the right to vote as a categorical panacea for world evil. The film is available from the Film Classic Exchange. Its immediate historical relevance is self-evident. (Course, America in the 20th Century) Richard D. Schubart, State University of New York at Binghamton SOURCE NOTES This regular department ofFilm & History seeks to pass along suggestionsfor sources offilm and ideasfor using it effectively. THE SLADE FILM HISTORY REGISTER By Frances Thorpe Project Director It would be interesting to know when and where film was first used as a serious part of a History course in a British university. Film curators and librarians seem to have realized the value and potential oftheir medium some time ago, vice articles by ARBAUGH and BARRY (Film & History Bibliography p. 1) and a quotation from Ernest Lindgren's letter to 'The Times' 14.4.1969 "The National Film Archive also has a large collection of historical film reaching back to 1895 which we should like to see more wide] y used, and where greater demand would help us to press for more viewing and study facilities". Historians, together with their fellow academics in the humanities, seem to have neglected this valuable research and teaching resource until very recently for a number of complex reasons. References to the cinema or to specific films are rarely to be found in twentieth century history books and one wonders, in 1972, what percentage of the 100+ History courses now being taught in Britain include screenings as an integral part of the educational process. David Adams, writing in University Vision (no. 1 Feb .1968 p. 15) admits that "when the American Studies programme at Keele began we did not use film". He also quotes from an essay in American Studies in Transition (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1964, ed. M.W. Fishwick) "the motion 97 picture is a diabolical last resort of the teacher too lazy to prepare for class". Once the idea of using film has been given credence, other (some would say even more diabolical ) problems arise, new areas ofresearch open and the historian faces two major problems: 1 . A need to be able to assess the films himselfbefore presenting them to his students 2.Access to the film collections The first will involve research in the area ofpropaganda methodology motivation, the film industry and basic film 'appreciation' . In University Vison (no. 8 Jan. 1972 p. 9-18) William Hughes outlines a course which goes some way to covering these areas. Liaison with those involved in film production and film historians is also extremely important. The second problem has been complicated because ofthe inherent nature offilm. Most film libraries were not organized by librarians or archivists as might be expected with a collection ofbooks or manuscripts. Even today only three of the seven major film collections in this country (Great Britain) employ professional librarians or information scientists. Thus much ofthe indexing and documentation has not been undertaken professionally, and in some cases, does not exist at all. The rivalry between the collections for profit and prestige has also precluded any liaison on such problems as preservation or acquisition, or the creation of a central register. During the search for films to use in history programmes at the...

The Theological Significance of Genesis

To be sure, like many monuments of ancient literature in general and most of the Old Testament books in particular, Genesis is the result of collective writing. Literary critics have described the composite character of its authorship and the long process of its compilation. They have isolated, analyzed, dated, and characterized as its literary sources, various sequences of narratives and cycles of traditions. They have even recognized that each of these sources was in turn the result of editorial work, either written or oral, done by individuals or schools of storytellers and poets who represented specific and sometimes contradictory points of view concerning history, psychology, sociology, ethics, and religious beliefs or practices. Likewise, more recent students have observed that the materials used by these various authors or editors offer a remarkably wide range of literary forms, such as myths, legends, fragments of individual, tribal, and national biography or lore, excerpts from genealogies, quotations of ancient falk songs, ditties, proverbs, oracles, and local sayings of aetiological interest. This analytical work is most valuable, for it enables the historian to reconstruct with a relative degree of certainty the chronological development of the religion of Israel over a period of a thousand years or more. In many ways, Genesis resembles a mediaeval church which was built on the foundations of a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Isis: the stones of its crypt reveal the signs of Byzantine art, the columns of its apse are in pure Romanesque, the vaulting of its transept and nave show the grace of middle Gothic, its Western rose window displays the wealth of the Flamboyant, and even one of its portals, which fell during the XVIIIth century, has been rebuilt in the Baroque style. In spite of its composite origin, this edifice is not an architectural monstrosity. It possesses a distinctive personality, it offers an esthetic message which is wholly its own, and it must be interpreted and understood as a single work of art. Mutatis mutandis, the book of Genesis as it exists today may represent several schools of widely different or conflicting conceptions of ethics and religion. Nevertheless, its final editor has succeeded in presenting a relatively homogeneous document, with a singleness of purpose, and a dominant message which overshadows the discrepancies of details. Whatever sources may have been incorporated within its frame, whatever traditions may have been preserved in its chapters, whatever historical, psychological, sociological, moral, and religious points of view may still appear in its pages, Genesis exists as a completed masterpiece, polished and rounded, whose unity of theme and plan offers a striking contrast with the loosely connected, ill-digested, and sometimes chaotic agglutination of literary deposits which are found in other sections of the Hexateuch.