Mainstream Culture Research Articles

‘Different Strokes for Different Folks’: Segmenting Drag Cabaret Audiences in South Africa

In a competitive post-modern society, traditional theatre genres (e.g. satire, dance, drama, ballet, opera, classical music concerts and West End/Broadway hits) battle to attract audiences. This is especially the case considering the myriad of more popular entertainment- and leisure activities these offerings compete with. One such activity appears to be that of drag cabarets; which only became an accepted part of mainstream arts and culture during the last decade. Considering the nascent nature of drag cabarets, it is probable that its appeal among audiences has been empirically overlooked by researchers. To investigate the appeal of this increasingly popular leisure activity, a web-based electronic survey was completed by 670 drag cabaret audience members in three South African cities, namely Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. This study aimed to plug the gap in existing literature through sharing insights on the dynamics of human and social behaviour in a post-modern society through determining the motives of attending drag cabarets. Moreover, drag cabaret audience members were segmented through ‘benefit segmentation’ by applying a hierarchical cluster-analysis using Ward’s procedure with Euclidean distances. The findings revealed four distinct audience clusters, namely the avid drag fan, the comedy enthusiast, the brotherhood tribe and the sisterhood tribe. The identified audience clusters differed partially on some demographical- and consumption behavioural variables, but mostly on motivational factors. Moreover, this study found that drag cabaret audience members should not be regarded as homogeneous. To sustain interest in this developing leisure activity, recommendations were made on how to attract the right audience members, with the right message to ensure that products and services are specifically designed for and/or promoted to these audience members while meeting their particular needs.

“We just want the language tone”: when requests to use minority languages lead to interactional breakdown in multilingual classrooms

Abstract In this paper, we analyze two instances of interactional breakdown in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms in Copenhagen and Helsinki. Our focus is situations where teachers request the use of minority languages from pupils, and pupils react reluctantly and display embarrassment. These situations represent sociolinguistic spaces of upset understood as disruptions of prevailing language ideologies and sociolinguistic regimes. We argue that pupils’ reluctance to comply with teachers’ attempts to include minority languages exemplifies such a disruption, and meta-communicative exchanges represent a window into the language ideologies influencing such situations. We analyze the interactions sequentially through the theoretical lens of enregisterment, linguistic legitimacy, and raciolinguistic microaggressions. The Helsinki data are drawn from a sociolinguistically informed action research project in an elementary school. The Copenhagen data involve lower-secondary-level pupils and consist of observations and recordings collected as part of a long-term ethnographic study. Despite the differences in projects and field sites, we found a striking similarity both in the language ideologies displayed by teachers and in pupils’ reactional patterns. Consequently, we argue that both examples represent the same type of sociolinguistic space of upset characterized by an intrinsic dilemma in Nordic public schools, which are simultaneously expected to secure the continuation of mainstream culture and embrace linguistic diversity.

Emoticons production of Bing Dwen Dwen: Meme, online socialization and youth subculture

With new media technology growing leaps and bounds, the interaction between youth subculture and mainstream culture has taken on different characteristics than before. Since the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, youth groups have produced plentiful emoticons based on Bing Dwen Dwen through bricolage and homology. Our analysis classifies the current emoticons from two perspectives, content and function, and explore their meanings according to semiotics; our finding reveals that the youth uses them as social currency to achieve emotional catharsis, satisfy entertainment needs and gain a sense of community belonging; in addition, the symbolic transformation by youth also reflects the reconciliation between youth subculture and the sinking mainstream values

A long march on the mainstream: chronicle of Laibach’s artistic career

ABSTRACT Laibach is a music and cross-media group from Slovenia, which develops a multi-disciplinary art practice. While exploring the relationships between art and ideology as their major point of interest, Laibach has appropriated a symbolically charged language of communication, which encompasses an eclectic assemblage of provocative and ambivalent artistic, political, and religious references, often relying on their shock value. Since their beginning, the group has been associated and surrounded with controversy, provoking strong reactions from the political authorities of former Yugoslavia and in particular in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. Laibach’s international success commenced when the famed British label Mute Records signed them and released their 1987 album Opus Dei. In the over 40 years of Laibach’s existence, which coincided with the political, economic, and cultural transition in the European East, the group has crossed a wide path from being the harsh, ominous voice of the Slovene alternative cultural scene in socialist Yugoslavia to independent Slovenia’s major cultural export. This paper puts into an historical perspective the spectacular changes in Laibach’s uneasy co-habitation with the institutional framework and cultural mainstream of their home country, on the one hand, and the global contemporary art scene and music industry, on the other.

Considering Meme-Based Non-Fungible Tokens’ Racial Implications

Considering Meme-Based Non-Fungible Tokens’ Racial Implications

Salvation on the Gridiron: Fundamentalism, Football, and Christian Manhood at Wheaton College, 1900–1949

From the turn of the twentieth century through World War II, the preeminent fundamentalist institution of higher education was Wheaton College. From its campus in suburban Chicago, Wheaton shaped the faith and minds of America’s fundamentalist youth from across the country. The college’s conservative stance on Christian doctrine trickled into its approach to athletics. Wheaton football reflected the shifting goals of the college. Investigation of how the football team became a site for the school’s gendered religious instruction expands the chronological constraints historians placed on muscular Christianity. While it certainly began as a mainstream-Protestant Progressive-Era movement, limiting it as such fails to grasp the depth and breadth of its appeal to American Christians. Conservative Christians used muscular Christianity’s intersection of sport, faith, and masculinity to navigate from fundamentalism to a brand of evangelical faith that sought to influence and help shape mainstream culture. Win or lose, Wheaton’s administrators, fans, and athletes believed that the football field presented a new, manly face of Christianity to the world around them. This new Christian man worked to shape his personality, body, and faith to attract others to Christ.

Shifting Identities of Kashmiri Women

Secularism and Islamic Law are two of the most important factors in understanding the socio-religious aspects of Muslim society in non-Muslim nations. When it comes to Muslim Personal Laws, in India, a Muslim may choose to follow state law, which is based on religious law, which demonstrates that the state is trying to go in a more liberal manner. Half-widow has been a significant cause of discomfort in Kashmiri society, state and federal authorities, human rights, activists, and religious ulama for a long time, ever since the war began there. A search for their identity, survival, and safety was unnecessary as long as their spouses were part of mainstream society or culture. They are neither a married lady nor a widowed woman. Zoon's (one of the Half-widows from Jammu and Kashmir's district Srinagar) struggle that changeover her from wife to Half-widow and subsequently from Half-widows to widow would help us understand the crises of changing identities. Though the Half-widow problem is not easily comprehended, it may be grasped by examining the different societal ramifications that impact economic and theological reality. The purpose of this study is to examine how Islamic and State Laws are intricately woven together to ensure the operation of the Indian Muslim society.

Religious Freedom in the City Pool: Gender Segregation, Partisanship, and the Construction of Symbolic Boundaries

AbstractLow political support for religious minority groups in the United States is often explained as a matter of social distance or unfamiliarity between religious traditions. Observable differences between beliefs and behaviors of religious minority groups and the cultural mainstream are thought to demarcate group boundaries. However, little scholarship has examined why some practices become symbolic boundaries that reduce support for religious accommodation in public policy, while nearly identical practices are tolerated. We hypothesize that politics is an important component of the process by which some religious practices are transformed into demarcations between “us” and “them.” We conduct an original survey experiment in which people are exposed to an identical policy demand—women-only swim times at a local public pool—attributed to three different religious denominations (Muslim, Jewish, and Pentecostal). We find that people are less supportive of women-only swim times when the requesting religion is not a part of their partisan coalition.

Behavioral intentions of rural farmers to recycle human excreta in agriculture

Considerable progress has been made in developing human excreta recovery pathways and processes for maximum nutrient recovery and contaminant elimination. The demand segment has often been ignored as an area for future research, especially during the technology development. The findings from the few published articles on social acceptance show missing and inconclusive influence of demographic, sociological, and economic farmer-characteristics. This study endeavours to close this gap by using the social psychological theories, technology adoption theories and the new ecological paradigm to investigate the factors that influence the behavioral intentions of rural farmers to recycle human excreta in agriculture. Study findings show that social acceptance was driven by awareness, religiosity, income, source of income, and environmental dispositions. Perceived behavioral control represents a potential barrier to human excreta reuse. The study recommends the demographic, cultural, sociological, and economic mainstreaming of dissemination strategies of circular bioeconomy approaches within the context of agricultural innovation systems.

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

Immigrant hospitality workers: Familism, acculturation experiences, and perception of workplace

This study offers an in-depth investigation of acculturation and familism among immigrant hospitality workers as well as their job satisfaction and organizational attachment. A qualitative approach consisting of semi-structured interviews with hospitality employees was adopted. The transcripts from these interviews were analyzed using both inductive and deductive approaches. The study findings suggest that workplace environment and relationships with others have a direct influence on immigrant workers’ job satisfaction and organization attachment. Acculturation of individuals in this study was illustrated through their attempt to learn the language and adjust to the mainstream culture of the hosting country. In addition, family and ethnic community are an important support system for maintaining their heritage identity. This study provides several theoretical and practical implications regarding the significant influence of acculturation and familism in the lives of immigrant workers and their role in improving their job satisfaction and organization attachment.

Where We Go One, We Go All: QAnon, Networked Individualism, and the Dark Side of Participatory (Fan) Culture

Abstract Participation in online spaces has afforded new fan cultures (Baym, Burnett 2009; Jenkins 2018) and enabled new communities of networked individuals (Rainie, Wellman 2012; Burgess, Jones 2020). Online participation also generates participatory cultures, which allow audiences unprecedented opportunity to connect with each other and with the media they share. However, it has also generated some decidedly anti-social and anti-democratic movements, such as QAnon (Amarasingam, Argentino 2020). In this commentary, we argue that QAnon can be thought of as a participatory fan culture gone awry. Using QAnon’s entry into mainstream culture in 2020 as a case study, we explore the darker implications of online participatory culture, including misinformation, conspiratorial- thinking, and an undermining of shared realities. Lastly, we propose that these issues are made more explicit and difficult to attend to in a media sphere characterized by dominant neo-liberal corporate control of participatory media, and digital dualism.

Picturing Opaque Power: How Conspiracy Theorists Construct Oppositional Videos on YouTube

Conspiracy theories were once perceived as delusions of individuals on the fringes of society, but have become commonplace in mainstream culture. Today, they are produced, consumed, and circulated on various online media environments. From memes on 4chan, QAnon influencers on Instagram, to flat earth or antivaxx videos on YouTube, modern-day conspiracy culture embodies compelling mediated images and narratives that are composed of various audiovisual materials. Building on Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model, and Henry Jenkins’ notion of “participatory culture,” we analyze these audiovisual conspiracy theories as “oppositional readings” of hegemonic truths. More concretely, we analyze how conspiracy theorists reconstruct various audiovisual (mass-media) materials into streamlined narratives on YouTube videos to picture opaque power. Based on an in-depth qualitative analysis of 24 conspiracy theory videos, strategically selected from a larger sample of 200, we present three major categories of audiovisual narrative construction in conspiracy videos on YouTube: (1) Simulating: using fiction, religious and cultural images and narratives to render images of events otherwise invisible; (2) Deciphering: decoding hidden messages by “closely reading” images and looking for hidden symbolism; (3) Exhibiting: exposing information, research, and images that are “hidden in plain sight” but point to conspiracy. This article contributes to the growing body of literature on conspiracy theories by showing how they are not just texts, but should better be seen as media practices involving the recontextualizing of (mass)media material into new audiovisual conspiracy theory narratives. This shapes not just their content and form, but also their place in public discourse.

The Witch in the Closet: Disney's Frozen as Adaptation and Its Potential for Queer and Feminist Readings

The Witch in the Closet: Disney's <i>Frozen</i> as Adaptation and Its Potential for Queer and Feminist Readings

African American Gay Men

African American Gay Men

WHY NAGA NATIONALISM THRIVED FOR DECADES: AN ASSESSMENT

The younger generation after August 25, 1997 Bangkok declaration between the NSCN-IM and Government of India, have seen less bloodshed and known more of the benign side of India. Today, the Naga youths are integrating and socializing into the mainstream culture by venturing out to major cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata etc. for education, work, better opportunities and economic investments. This is happening alongside the unsettled political Indo-Naga issue. Here we try to understand the causes or reasons behind the rise and sustenance of Naga national movement that has dragged on for more than seven decades, how its social structure, communitarian landholding system, headhunting past, christian proselytization, porous international borders, rugged topography, firm leadership, effective management of dissent and elaborate mechanisms of taxation, all coalesced to give the Naga national movement a firm setting. Taken in right spirit, this assessment can produce a double-edged sword; on the one hand, we can identify how a certain problem is thriving or drawing its sustenance and therefore strategize toward its end. While on the other hand, it can embolden and encourage the other party to build on its strength. Understanding the nuances of Naga political movement becomes an indelible requirement in pursuit of peace and honorable settlement.

Criticism of mainstream culture and multicultural education centered on others – Focusing on Levinas’philosophy of otherness -

다문화사회가 보편화되고 있는 상황 속에서 다문화교육의 본질을 이해하기 위한 철학적 접근이 요구되고 있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 먼저 주류 문화중심의 동화주의적 시각, 포스트 식민주의 성격의 문제, 신자유주의적 세계시민주의의 한계에 대한 비판적 문제제기를 국내외 연구들을 통해 살펴보았다. 두 번째는 주류문화로부터 배제되고 소외되고 있는 소수문화에 대한 존중과 배려를 주창하는 레비나스의 타자성의 철학을 통해 타자존중의 교육원리를 제시하고 그것의 다문화 교육의 철학적 가능성을 탐색하였다. 그리고 마지막으로 타자존중의 다문화교육의 구체적인 실천방안으로 대화적 교육방식과 책임의 교육원리, 그리고 타자 지향적 다문화교사상을 제시하였다. 이 연구는 다문화교육에 대한 철학적 접근을 통해 그동안 축적되어 온 다문화교육의 내용과 방법을 새롭게 검토하는 계기가 될 것이다.

The Challenge of the Commons in the Post-socialist Cluj

"Since the neo-liberal turn of the 1970s and the consequent failure of the state socialist experiment, the functioning of the Eastern European states has increasingly been governed by the rationale of markets. This logic has led to an erosion of the concept of the commons and, by extension, universality. The notion of then alternative but now mainstream culture creates and serves particular class interests under the banner of ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’, which aims not to transcend the status quo but to preserve it and the property relations on which it is based. My thesis is written as a first step to reclaim the idea of the commons, pointing to the capitalist genesis of the forms in our contemporary culture. Keywords: commons, art, Cluj, post-socialism, Eastern Europe, class relations, neoliberalism, privatisation of art "

Colonial Regimes of Mental Health, Substance Use, Drug Treatment, and Recovery: A Locally Contextualized, Anticolonial Response

Documented in this article is the anticolonial treatment modality developed by a community-based behavioral health center on the island of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i—situated in a predominately Native Hawaiian community reacting to and affected by American colonial control of the Hawaiian Islands since 1893. We tie Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges” to the methodology of Clarke’s “situational analysis” as a conceptual framing and a methodological approach in engaging the work of decolonizing health concepts and treatment regimens commonly taken for granted. Enfolding within that process the conceptual mapping for an indigenously informed way of thinking that emphasizes the relationship between colonizing “systems of care”—which emerge out of a sociocultural context of cultural domination that has broken down communally embedded Indigenous identities through individualism and exclusion or othering (i.e., hereafter abbreviated DIE)—and the need for decolonizing social processes that are in greater harmony with the rise of Hawaiian national consciousness (‘Olu‘olu) through communalistic notions of care (Lokahi) and nurturing cultural identities in balance with secular and non-secular relations anchored in historical and contemporary contexts (Aloha; i.e., hereafter abbreviated OLA). By increasing the convergence of OLA with the cultural mainstream of DIE as a unifying reference point applied to other Hawaiian and indigenous groups in both theory and praxis, this article is both a contribution to the social science of treatment, and to the literature on decolonizing drugs and alcohol.

Conspiracy

Conspiracy