Media and Sport: The Cultural Dynamics of Global Games

The institutions of media and sport have increasingly converged over the last century, forming a media sports cultural complex of global proportions. This development has raised concerns over whether sport has become 'mediatised' and, conversely, that the media are increasingly 'sportised'. The media sports cultural complex generates a vast array of representations of sport and the societies of which it is a part. It is important, therefore, to analyse the ways in which media sport texts reproduce or challenge prevailing ideologies of socio-cultural power in such key areas as gender, 'race', ethnicity, and sexuality. Media sport texts are especially instrumental in representing national identities and international relations in an era of intensified globalisation. In covering events of national cultural significance, they are also implicated in issues surrounding 'cultural citizenship' and in attempts by sport fan communities to exercise greater control over a fluid, dynamic and highly contested media sport environment.     

Mapping Global Consciousness: Portuguese Imperialism and the Forging of Modern Global Sensibilities

This article concerns the Portuguese forging of globalization, globality, and forms of global consciousness in the early modern period. In the now voluminous Anglophone literature on globalization, depiction of the Portuguese contribution to such matters is generally muted, if not ignored altogether, in favour of accounts of Columbus's famous voyage and the Spanish conquest of the Americas as the constitutive moments of early modern globalization. The article seeks to rectify the serious neglect of the Portuguese case. It does so by examining how the creation of trans-oceanic networks by the Portuguese made possible new forms of global consciousness. The central arguments forwarded by the article are: that the Portuguese experience is quite as important as the Spanish one in understanding early modern globalization; that early modern globalization was neither unidirectional or inevitable, but rather was shaped in important ways by local and contingent factors operative inside Portugal and within the often tentative expansive endeavours carried out by rival sectors within Portuguese society; that the Portuguese expansion was both made possible by, and further fostered, particular navigational, cartographical, and shipping techniques, which themselves embodied and allowed novel forms of global consciousness; that such forms of consciousness were not only the preserve of elites, but were disseminated throughout all social classes; and that it was through the twin endeavours of the Portuguese and Spanish that a radically new and distinctively ‘modern’ sense of the globe and global space was forged. The article thus seeks to contribute to the emerging literature on the history of globalization, connecting material factors with a cultural-sociological account of the development of new modes of perception and global consciousness.

Este artículo concierne a la creación portuguesa de la globalización, globalidad y formas de conciencia global a comienzos del período moderno. En la actual voluminosa literatura anglófona sobre la globalización, la descripción de la contribución portuguesa a tales asuntos, generalmente es silenciada, si no ignorada por completo, en favor de las cuentas del famoso viaje de Colón y la conquista española de las Américas, como momentos constitutivos de un comienzo de la globalización moderna. El artículo busca rectificar el serio olvido del caso portugués. Lo hace mediante el análisis de cómo la creación de las redes transoceánicas por los portugueses hicieron posibles nuevas formas de consciencia global. Los argumentos centrales propiciados por este artículo son: que la experiencia portuguesa es tan importante como la española para entender el principio de la globalización moderna; que el comienzo de la globalización moderna no era unidireccional o inevitable, pero estaba formada en formas importantes por factores locales y contingentes, que operaban dentro de Portugal y dentro de las frecuentes tentativas de iniciativas expansivas, llevadas a cabo por los sectores rivales dentro de la sociedad portuguesa; que la expansión portuguesa se hacía posible y luego fomentada por técnicas de navegación particular, cartográfica y de transporte marítimo, que por sí mismas incorporaron y permitieron nuevas formas de consciencia global; que tales formas de consciencia eran no sólo para preservar a las élites, pero que fueron diseminadas a todas las clases sociales; y que fue a través de los esfuerzos gemelos de los portugueses y españoles que se forjó un sentido radicalmente nuevo y característicamente ‘moderno’ del globo y del espacio global. Por lo tanto, el artículo busca contribuir a la literatura emergente sobre la historia de la globalización, conectando factores materiales con la cuenta sociológica cultural del desarrollo de nuevos modos de percepción y consciencia global.

本文关注全球化、全球性以及近代早期全球意识形式在葡萄牙的打造。在当代关于全球化的繁多英文著述中,关于葡萄牙人对此贡献的描述默默无闻（如果不是全数忽略的话）,一般偏向于哥伦布的著名航行,以及近代早期全球化形成时期西班牙对美洲的征服。本文力图校正对葡萄牙的严重忽视。它将通过考察由葡萄牙人建立的跨洋网络如何让全球意识的形成变得可能来达到以上目的。文中提出的核心观点主要有：葡萄牙人的经历在理解近代早期全球化上同西班牙人一样相当重要;近代早期的全球化并非单向的或必然的,而是由葡萄牙内部的当地、偶然因素,以及由葡萄牙社会中的对立部门发动的经常是试探性的扩张努力,以重要方式塑造而成的;特定的精确导航、地图绘制、造船等技术既使葡萄牙人的扩张成为可能,也对其加以促进,它们自身就体现并催生了新形式的全球意识;此种新形式的全球意识并非只是精英们所独有,而是扩散到了所有社会阶层;正是通过葡萄牙人和西班牙人的共同努力,才打造成了一种全新而与众不同的关于地球和全球空间的“近代”意识。本文试图对全球化历史方面的新近文献有所贡献,将新认知方式和新全球意识发展的物质因素和文化社会因素结合了起来。     

Unequal and Unfair: Free Riding in One‐Shot Interactions

This study investigates the effect of status on perceptions of and reactions to free riders. Extrapolating from expectation states theory, I posit that higher status actors are granted a greater degree of social leniency than lower status actors when it comes to free riding. Specifically, I hypothesize that higher status actors are less likely to evoke the same negative emotional and behavioral responses elicited by lower status free riders. Using gender as an indicator of status, I employ a simple vignette to examine this relationship. Results validate previous findings related to the negative emotional and affective responses individuals have toward free riders. Furthermore, while findings fail to support the stated hypotheses, additional results demonstrate the subtle complexity of the relationship between gender, status, and free riding as well as its effect on the emotional and behavioral responses of individuals within small groups. As a result, I suggest that an outright rejection of the stated hypotheses may be premature and that further research in this area is warranted.     

Culture,Development, and Social Theory: On Cultural Studies and the Place of Culture in Development

Debates in development theory have recently swung back to taking seriously the relationship of culture to development, especially in the face of manifest failures of conventional approaches to economic growth and social transformation. This has happened at a moment when, especially within anthropology, the concept of culture itself is undergoing critical examination, and when cultural studies has emerged as a major challenge to anthropology's self-defined specialisation in the social-scientific analysis of culture. Few attempts have been made, however, to relate cultural studies and development studies, despite the fact that the relatively recent ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences has derived largely from the currently fashionable status of cultural studies and its multidisciplinary nature. This paper explores this relationship and suggests that a cultural studies approach, despite its weaknesses, potentially revitalises the significance of culture in relationship to development.     

From Makeover Media to Remaking Culture: Four Directions for the Critical Study of Self‐Help Culture

The popularity of self‐improvement literature has lead to an abundance of scholarly considerations of the self‐help literature and lifestyle media. This interdisciplinary review article considers the dominant trends in these discussions and suggests four new directions for fruitful inquiry: (1) investigating self‐help literature from the global South and the evolving Asian economies in cross‐cultural comparative analyses; (2) more thoroughly assessing the role of religious movements and discourses in these self‐help discourses and practices; (3) exploring more fully the impact of interactive media on self‐help practices; and (4) continued creative explorations of strategies to transform makeover culture into a broader movement to make over our culture.     

Effective Techniques: The Career‐in‐Culture Interview: A Semi‐Structured Protocol for the Cross‐Cultural Intake Interview

The authors introduce the Career‐in‐Culture Interview (CiCI), a flexible, semistructured interview protocol designed for the career counseling intake session. The contents of the CiCI are based on recent theoretical advances in multicultural counseling and on the social cognitive model of career development. The authors describe a pilot evaluation of the interview and present guidelines for using the CiCI in practice.     

Popular Music Cultures, Media and Youth Consumption: Towards an Integration of Structure, Culture and Agency

Youth, media and popular music studies have developed in separate fields of research, resulting in a lack of integration of key areas of enquiry, such as the relationship between the cultural and structural in youth music consumption and the role of media industries in 'framing' such a process. A more recent focus on popular music as a media culture suggest a way forward in exploring links between production, mediation and consumption of music and youth consumer practices. This article reviews three such frameworks: (i) the production of consumption, (ii) production of culture/cultures of production and (iii) cultures of consumption, evaluating their contribution to a more integrated understanding of how youth consume music as a structurally and culturally mediated process. Controversies over youth 'download culture' and evidence of regulatory changes in the global music industry and its impact on how youth consumers can access music media, underlines the need to pursue a research integration agenda, drawing popular music and youth consumption research closer together. Yet it remains the case that both approaches exhibit a structural vs. cultural divide over youth consumption and its relationship to the global music industry, offering optimism and pessimism in equal measure.     

Perceived Parental Acceptance‐Rejection and Psychological Adjustment: A Meta‐Analysis of Cross‐Cultural and Intracultural Studies

Meta‐analytic procedures were used to pool information from 43 studies worldwide to test one of the major postulates of parental acceptance‐rejection theory (PARTheory). Specifically, using child and adult versions of the Parental Acceptance‐Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) and the Personality Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ), these studies allowed us to assess the claim within PARTheory's personality subtheory that perceived parental acceptance‐rejection is associated universally with a specific form of psychological (mal)adjustment among children and adults, regardless of differences in gender, race, geography, language, or culture. Results of the analysis showed that the predicted relation emerged without exception in all studies. The mean weighted effect sizes across the full range of sociocultural and ethnic groups studied were r= .51 for children and r= .46 for adults. Analysis of fail safe N showed that 3,433 additional studies, all with nonsignificant results, would be required to disconfirm the pancultural association between the PARQ and PAQ among children; 941 such studies would be required to disconfirm this relation among adults.     

Towards a Communication Dialectic: Embedded Technology and the Enhancement of Place*

Communication literature traditionally divides interaction into two forms: mass media and interpersonal communication. These ideal types are unquestionably useful heuristic tools. Yet their conceptual utility is often undermined when researchers place them at opposite ends of a linear, historical transformation in which mass media technology is believed to supplant interpersonal communication and the locations in which it occurs. This article abandons the polar, historical relationship in favor of a communication dialectic that recognizes the synthesis of ideal types into composite forms of interaction. Embedded technology demonstrates the dialectic by exploring how electronic media fixed within a physical location can combine with the interpersonal communication taking place there to enhance group interaction. The resulting hybrid defies the assumption that mass media simply displace interpersonal interaction, pointing instead to a dialectic relationship in which ideal types continually challenge and transform one another.     

Dialectic of Unity and Fragmentation in Feeding the Homeless: Promoting Social Justice Through Communication

This article examines the dialectic between unity and fragmentation in community suppers that attempt to promote social justice through communication. In these suppers there were powerful examples of unity as people participated in casual conversations, shared their personal stories, and engaged in coordinated actions to prepare the meal, eat together, and clean up afterward. Through connecting with one another and talking about personal problems, formerly isolated people are offered hope. There are also instances of fragmentation, however. For example, people experience both forces of the dialectic in dynamic tension by feeling connected at the supper but feeling disconnected on realizing they will return home to an isolated environment. The central argument advanced in this article is that unity (thesis) and fragmentation (antithesis) yield community (synthesis). Transcending the dialectic of unity and fragmentation is a great challenge and may not be possible. However, social justice may be promoted through communication when we build communities that both unify and fragment.     

A Broader Understanding of the Ethics of Listening: Philosophy,Cultural Studies,Media Studies and the Ethical Listening Subject

This study investigated the effects of Mozart's high-frequency-rich music and structured oral directions on third graders' auding and reading comprehension performance. The design was pre-post, with a control group and two experimental treatment groups. Mozart Symphonies Nos. 35, 38, 40, and 41, and four Frank Schaffer listening skills books were used with one experimental group. The second experimental group received the listening instruction without music. The control group worked assorted word searches. The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (Forms 1 and 2, Primary C) and the Addison-Wesley Sequential Test of Educational Progress (STEP) III (D) Listening Test (Form X) were used to measure reading comprehension and auding respectively. Instruction was administered by regular classroom teachers to intact classes for 30 minute morning periods, three times per week for eight weeks. Analysis of pretest and posttest scores from 63 students reveal that an organized instructional method using Mozart's music and oral directions significantly increases auding and reading comprehension, with music being the key independent variable.     

青年、文化与阶级:试论新生代农民工研究的文化维度

英国文化研究的伯明翰学派关注第二次世界大战后兴起的青年亚文化,成为影响深远的理论流派。伴随着网络社会与消费社会在中国的崛起,新生代农民工群体日益成为文化生产的主体。在当代中国新生代农民工研究中主要有两种范式:"阶级形成"范式强调这一群体的苦难、集体抗争与阶级的形成,"市民化"范式强调在城乡二元文化对立中,新生代农民工群体对城市文化的融入。这两种范式都忽略了新生代农民工作为青年的文化生产。杀马特和庞麦郎这两个个案的出现彰显了已有研究的不足和突破既定范式的需要。借鉴伯明翰学派文化研究理论,以一种"亚文化范式"切入新生代农民工考察具有可能性。     

The Cultural Agency of Elites: Awolowo and the Re-making of the Yoruba

The mystique of eliteness is a quality that is cultivated or constructed overtime. Here, I examine agency – a culturally-specific, consolidated stream of composite actions and interactions that are geared towards specific social endeavours, and structure -representing conventions and social parameters through which agency and social practices are performed and become performative, by tracing the historical-political context in which Chief Obáfémi Awólówò, the acknowledged leader of the Yorùbá of Nigeria, rose to politico-cultural prominence and succeeded to the "throne" of the Yorùbá progenitor, Odùduwà. I argue that through this succession, Awólówò became the "modern Odùduwà" and the central signifier of Yorubaness in 20^th Century Nigeria and beyond.     

Post‐3/11 Japan and the Radical Recontextualization of Value: Music,Social Media,and End‐Around Strategies for Cultural Action

The disasters of 3/11 provoked a global outpouring of emotion towards the suffering in Japan. In many ways, this singular event seemed to refigure the meanings of community and technology by drawing attention to the fragility of human control in times of disaster. Although the long‐term consequences remain uncertain, this radical recontextualization of value points to a way of thinking about broader processes of change, a contrast to cultural analysis that proceeds by directly critiquing structures of power on their own terms. If we look to processes whereby a new context can be the impetus that undermines seemingly entrenched interests, we might find inspiration for alternative forms of critique and action. Music provides a model for cultural movements that do not attack power directly, but rather operate through this kind of slippery, insidious, “end‐around” strategy of change that gains its force from recontextualizing social logics. These features of music foreshadow some of the contemporary developments in social media, and may point to untapped potentials for subverting, and possibly transforming, enduring structures of power and inequality.     

When the University Went 'Pop': Exploring Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture, and the Rising Interest in the Study of Popular Culture

This article examines why the study of popular culture has taken off as a subject of university course offerings and as a topic of scholarly inquiry since the 1980s. Placing the current explorations of popular culture in historical context, the article argues that popular culture's study and studies in the sociology of culture can illuminate many of the classic concerns that animate sociology and related fields, such as the social organization and power of institutions, debates about public life and the formation of public opinion, concerns about the relationship between consumption, social status, and politics of the privileged elite, and the role of media in the development of social movements and in individual and subcultural understandings. The article considers how popular cultural studies are currently shaping the study of social life, and concludes by considering trends that might be encouraged among students and emergent scholars seeking to study in this area.