Popular Imagination Research Articles

The British Royals in Australia

The British Royals in Australia

Historic British Royal Memes

Historic British Royal Memes

Meme-ing Malawi’s 2019 presidential election: Humour, hope and disillusionment

On 21 May 2019, Malawi went to the polls to elect leaders in what turned out to be highly contested presidential, parliamentary and local government elections. Compared to previous elections, the 2019 tripartite elections also featured highly on social media. Focusing on the presidential election, this article analyses how these elections were depicted in popular imagination particularly in internet memes. Our contention is that the internet memes, and by extension, other popular art forms of that period, constitute a humorous, but highly significant documentation, of the key events of that election. The memes reflect hopes, aspirations and disillusionment that characterized the 2019 polls. In terms of conceptual framework, we draw on the theory of visual rhetoric alongside scholarship on internet memes as both humour and political discourse.

Big Novels for Little Folks: Dickens Adapted, Abridged, and Excerpted for Young Readers

Abstract: Classic novels retold for children have received limited scholarly attention. Often cheaply printed, the interest they arouse is also transient: child readers become adults and either lose interest or move on to the unabridged text. Despite their transience and ephemerality, “classic” novels rewritten for children, especially retellings of Dickens, merit scholarly examination. These retellings appeal to child readers by centring the plots that revolve around child characters, shaping the popular imagination and reception history of these works. Since their initial publication, Dickens’s novels have been adapted, abridged, and anthologized for young readers by editors and publishers with various motives: to profit off Dickens’s fame, to promote literacy, and to support social change. Texts that rewrite “classic” authors like Dickens for young audiences reveal our cultural assumptions and anxieties about literacy.

Bishakh Important Hoi (Trust Is Important)

Men have never been absent from the arena of food preparation, although their participation has been primarily in the public sphere rather than the private domestic space. Men have also been involved in the preparation of traditional sweets and snacks in sweet shops and street stalls. On the other hand, women’s association with food preparation, especially traditional food preparation inside the household, still dominates the popular imagination in regions like South Asia. In Assam (India), pithas are an emblematic food item in the “Assamese” cultural landscape that is popularly perceived to be prepared by women. However, my ethnographic experience suggests that pitha preparation and sale can be studied in relation to performance of masculinities when it comes to the public urban space of Guwahati (Assam). As men have entered the public spaces as pitha sellers and to a large extent prepare it themselves, it was observed that bishakh (trust) is a crucial part of the diverse performance of masculinities and “Assameseness.” The perceptions, negotiations, and enactment with the concept of trust is a pivotal aspect of men entering an otherwise popularly imagined feminized zone of pitha preparation. It is important to attract buyers, wherein the ideal image remains that of a woman preparing traditional food using her manual labor. Further, this article argues that bishakh, which is significant in infusing “Assameseness” in buying and selling pithas, can also be understood at the cusp of contemporary regional politics in Assam, class markers, caste hierarchy, and religious indicators along with gender performance.

Accessorizing Quadrupedal Robots with Wearable Electronics

Robots epitomize one of the most popular human imaginations that are evolving to become reality in the most pervasive way. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence, it is more hopeful than ever that robots one day will be the interactive companions with some degree of emotion. A variety of robots in different forms with considerable mobility are available today. Among them, legged robots are the most attractive due to their dexterity, traversal versatility, functional modularity, and locomotive stability. Legged robots like robotic dogs can survey unchartered territories in uncertain environments. In this comprehensive review article, the status quo of this emerging and exciting field and how electronics of various form factors can functionalize them in an unbiased manner are surveyed and discussed. Different accessories currently available for quadrupedal robots, wearable devices potentially integratable with these robots, data management/integration strategies for reliable interfacing, and future outlook are discussed.

Fragile Ties: Spanish Themes in Soviet Porcelain

This article is devoted to the study of the so-called “Spanish theme” in Soviet porcelain. The author analyses the reflection of the stereotypical perception of Spain in small porcelain sculptures of the Soviet period produced by a variety of manufactures. Among the components of the Spanish theme, the author highlights the images of flamenco (Spanish dance), bullfighting, the most recognizable heroes of Cervantes (Don Quixote and Sancho Panza), and the fiery Carmen who was created by Prosper Mérimée and has become the stereotypical image of a nineteenth- century Spanish woman in the popular imagination thanks to the musical and dance pieces of the same name. These traditional components of the perception of Spain in the twentieth century were supplemented by the interpretation of a turning point in Spanish history – the Civil War of 1936–1939 – in propaganda porcelain. This article proposes another perspective on the Spanish theme in Soviet porcelain and considers the formation of the images of Spaniards, men and women. Such images are reflected in all the plots presented in this paper. Most of the sculptural works by different generations of Soviet porcelain masters are devoted to dance. The author concludes that dance scenes, including the ones that refer to Carmen, are fundamental for the Spanish theme in Soviet porcelain.

Navigating nuclear narratives in contemporary television: The BBC’s Vigil

Abstract This article explores the BBC television drama Vigil (2021) as a significant site for the construction of public knowledge about nuclear weapons. In doing so, it extends beyond discourse-oriented approaches to explore how nuclear discourses manifest in visual communication, everyday encounters, and popular imagination. In a close reading of Vigil, this article questions concepts of security, peace, and deterrence, revealing how the series (occasionally) challenges conventional discourses while reproducing gendered and racialised representations of nuclear weapons politics. The exploration asks questions of responsibility for nuclear decision-making, the portrayal of anti-nuclear activists, and the depiction of nuclear weapons as agents of both peace and destruction. While the BBC series reproduces existing (and problematic) discourses, it also provides a ‘thinking space’ for critical engagement. Amid the current geopolitical landscape, this article emphasises the urgency of studying contemporary representations of nuclear weapons and the need for scholarship that challenges traditional Cold War perspectives.

Drawing the lines: Studying the Common Man caricatures by R.K. Laxman to understand dominant political discourse around legitimate political contestations in postcolonial India

ABSTRACT The paper studies the Common Man political caricatures by R.K. Laxman, a staff cartoonist at the Times of India, to understand dominant political discourses in postcolonial India. It argues that constructs like the ‘common man’ and ‘vote bank’ through popular cultural discourse like caricatures have a critical impact on the political landscape of the country. While the former is associated with an urban English-educated middle class, the latter is used to denote the socially marginalised sections of the electorate voting en masse as a form of political assertion. The latter is perceived as an aberration in the modern secular democracy and its political voice is often delegitimised. Further, the former is associated with economic liberalisation, development and anti-corruption. The paper demonstrates how Laxman’s Common Man is a proponent and mascot of these in the popular imagination. Thereby indicating that the popular cultural archive has indeed had a visible impact on the political, economic and sociological cartography of the nation.

Community Smarts in Grassroots Initiatives to Support Cycling and Walking in Large Urban Areas

ABSTRACT In the popular imagination, smart mobility, much like the smart city, is a high-tech utopia of mobility efficiency and environmental sustainability. However, a growing body of literature is questioning the promises associated with “digital solutions,” particularly with respect to the neoliberal rationales behind their deployment. On the other hand, relatively few scholars have taken the same critical analysis to smart mobility. In this article we draw on interviews with leaders of grassroots organizations that support walking and cycling among marginalized communities in São Paulo and London to argue that “smart” interventions in active transportation do not have to be top-down, technocratic, or necessarily digital, though they may be so, when informed by community input. We suggest that the locally sensitive knowledge behind grassroots initiatives may demonstrate a form of “community smarts” that enhances capabilities and itself informs whether or not, and if so how, to use digital technologies to advance social and environmental missions.

Organised loneliness and its discontents

AbstractThis review paper offers a critique of the discourse of loneliness both in the popular and academic imagination. It questions the stance and approach of much loneliness research and the headlines that have been extracted from it. These position loneliness as an epidemic, framing it as a global public health problem, its aetiology and management located in the individual. The paper draws attention to overlooked alternative framings of loneliness as well as to the risks of maintaining our current levels of alarm regarding it. Finally, the work of Hannah Arendt is turned to, as part of a wider academic reappreciation of her work on loneliness. The paper ends by suggesting what can be learned by loneliness researchers in the medical humanities from such political analyses.

Meritocracy Disguised as Equity: The Relationship between Teacher Professional Organizations and Teacher Ideology

The institution of public schooling in the United States exists in the popular imagination as a primary means of achieving social mobility. It is believed that schools provide students with unbiased opportunities to earn credentials that translate into real, economic benefits. This myth of equality of opportunity in the contexts of schooling, while idyllic, does more harm than good when it comes to addressing historical inequities and serving as a means for the realization of social justice. Through a window into a larger qualitative study with practicing secondary school teachers at a large, district high school in the southwest United States, I show how discourses of meritocracy at a micro level are reflected in the language of influential teacher professional organizations. I call on these organizations to examine how their use of language promotes meritocratic myths that homogenize diverse student populations and eclipse historical, Generational inequities that persist to this day.

CCTVs and the Criminal City

This paper investigates how surveillance technologies used by the police, such as close circuit cameras (CCTVs) along with facial recognition, further solidify the perception of poor areas of the city as criminal, thus limiting the opportunities of the residents of these areas culturally, socially, and economically. Slums, immigrant colonies, and shanty towns have long been considered hotbeds of crime and illegal activities. These areas are generally marked as unsafe in the popular imagination. I am interested to see how (and if) communities in these spaces modify their behaviour in order to escape the extra watchful presence of the state in the form of CCTV cameras. I also want to see how these spaces evolve in terms of their interaction with other parts of the city as a result of the use of such exacerbated surveillance technologies. This paper is based on ongoing ethnographic work in one such marked area in the North East part of Delhi where video footage from CCTV cameras, along with mobile phone cameras, was extensively used for police investigations (with additional use of a standalone facial recognition program) following deadly riots that killed a record number of people in the area and destroyed many businesses in February 2020.

Geographies of otherness: films and interstate migrants of Kerala

ABSTRACT This article analyses three popular films from Kerala released post-2000, viz. Masala Republic (2014), Acha Din (2015), and Amar Akbar Anthony (2015) that depict the life of interstate migrant labourers. The attempt is to critically engage with the complex processes of narrativisation and characterisation, such as region, ethnicity, culture, body, etc. in Malayalam cinema to make sense of their effect on regional identity and othering processes. The construction of a regional or sub-national identity is explored from the spatial and social configurations of the ‘outside’ and the ‘other’ within the region as imagined by the Malayali public. This article also focuses on the popular imaginings of the assemblage of ‘Bengali migrants’ in these films and their significance in the larger societal spectrum. We argue that Malayalam films reinforce its region by othering migrants and their markers in contemporary cinema.

In-NOvation in protected and touristic territories

Protected areas are tourist destinations where, contrary to popular imaginaries, communities live. In and around those territories, actors implement solutions that meet the needs of their community (Soubirou & Jacob, 2019); they demonstrate social innovation. In doing so, they contribute to new compromises and new forms of regulation or governance (Klein et al., 2014). Sometimes, out of attachment to the territory, they choose alternative paths (Crosetti & Joye, 2021) such as NOvation (Godin & Vinck, 2017). The objective of this study is to analyze how mountain touristic territories articulated around protected areas generate innovation in order to face the challenges they encounter. In the form of a multiple case study, three territories are studied: Mont-Orford (Canada), Banff (Canada) and Aspen (United States). Contemporary issues are discussed in the continuity of their historical roots (see Crosetti & Joye, 2021). The results highlight the specificity of mountain tourism territories where protected areas are found, and the resulting double valuation they are subjected to (by tourism and conservation), that sometimes constrain but also foster (social) in-NOvation (in-NOvation [sociale] in French), a term introduced to name a broadened conception of innovation. It manifests itself in unsuspected spheres: the past, nature, within government institutions, through governance and dynamics of the territories. Touristic and protected mountain territories are not “on the fringes” of innovation, rather, their characteristics (rugged relief, relative eccentricity, exceptional character) make them the breeding ground for a distinction between (social) in-NOvation and the leitmotif of innovation “at any cost” (Everett Rogers, 1963 in Godin & Vinck, 2017). Considering recurring or acute issues, this study contributes to the scientific study of innovation, which is imbued with the prevailing pro-innovation bias (Boutroy et al., 2015; Godin & Vinck, 2017).

Ghost-Stitching American Politics

Ghost-Stitching American Politics

Twenty-First-Century Avengers: Exploration of War, Globalization, and Identity Politics

The economic and cultural impact of the four films forming the saga of The Avengers from 2012 to 2019 stands for the impressive accumulation of superhero fiction in the 21st century, with a remarkable resituation of the topic of war conflict into the popular imagination quite affected by the traumatic beginning of the era in the New York scenario on 9/11. This article intends to analyze the different plot elements in The Avengers (2012), The Avengers. Age of Ultron (2015), The Avengers. Infinity War (2018), and The Avengers. Endgame (2019) to find clues to explain how the Marvel Cinematic Universe accomplishes a complex exploration of the nature of war, and how the films offer new ways of deconstructing simplistic Manichean polarization between good vs. evil. With this objective in mind, the study pays attention to how this deconstruction also needs to concentrate on the decomposition of stereotypes related to identity politics.

Ethnic segregation of consumption in Estonia: mythologies and practices

ABSTRACT The segregation of consumption between the Russian- and Estonian-speaking populations residing in Estonia has been common knowledge in the popular imagination, mass media publications, and academic papers. Rather than undertaking an impossible mission to identify whether these narratives are true, in this article, I show how this repertoire of stories has fostered special marketing strategies and document the emergence of a special marketing niche of companies promising to teach how to market products to mainstream or minority consumers based on their presumed mental differences. Deriving from ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate how mythologies about ethnic segregation in consumption paradoxically result in integration.

Popular Imaginings, Political Space and Performative Arts in Swadeshi Bengal

Popular Imaginings, Political Space and Performative Arts in Swadeshi Bengal

The Spiritual Teachings of Zakariyyā Kāndhlavī (d. 1982) in Fażāʾil-i Durūd Sharīf

Abstract Although the influential transnational Deobandi missionary organisation Tablīghī Jamāʿat is scarcely portrayed in contemporary popular media as a “Sufi movement,” the elders of the trend – such as the late Zakariyyā Kāndhlavī (d. 1402/1982) – were staunch Sufi shaykhs. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that one of the core texts of the Tablīghī Jamāʿat – Kāndhlavī’s Fażāʾil-i ʿAmāl – is full of many distinctly Sufi concepts. In the following essay, I look into the spiritual themes found in that particular volume of Kāndhlavī’s aforementioned work which deals specifically with the virtuous act of sending blessings upon the Prophet. In doing so, we will see that the Tablīghī Jamāʿat – deeply rooted in Sufi thought as it is – is very far removed from the Wahhabism with which it is occasionally associated in popular Western imagination.