'Samuel Bronston's Latest Epic': Spectacle,Heterogeneity and Nation in the Critical Reception of El Cid (1961)

Abstract

Although El Cid is now regarded by many as a classic, the New York Times was heavily critical of the film on its initial release in the US. This essay examines the contexts that shaped the film's reception in the early 1960s, and demonstrates that, although the New York Times was often explicitly critical of the spectacle associated with historical epics such as El Cid, its film critics were actually more concerned with the ways in which these films threatened cultural distinctions between popular and legitimate culture. Furthermore, it demonstrates that, although the New York Times was critical of historical epics during the late 1940s and the 1950s, it became far more hostile in the early 1960s, when El Cid was released, a period in which Hollywood was facing competition from film-makers working overseas such as Dino De Laurentiis and Samuel Bronston. The essay will therefore illustrate that, while the stated objection of the New York Times critics was to the spectacle of these historical epics, the vitriol that these films received from these critics was due to the way in which they not only threatened distinctions between high and low culture but also between Hollywood and European national cinemas.     

Home of the Brave,Frantz Fanon and cultural pluralism

Abstract

This article examines Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949, USA), a Hollywood social problem drama about anti-black racism, and the brief but vivid response to the film presented in Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952). Fanon enables a rethinking of some of the film's most central assumptions and the discourses upon which the story relies. At the same time, Fanon's response conveys information about his own biography and his perspectives on cultural representation generally. The article examines the film as a document that reveals competing claims about anti-black racism and, through Fanon's commentary, revisits the relationship between cultural pluralism and racial ideologies in the mid-20th century USA. The article explores the nature of Fanon's anti-racist commentary on the film as a form of 'cultural studies' that offers transnational historical insight and simultaneously provides ways of re-examining the national specificity of race thinking.     

PROGRESS IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

In this issue, Robert Hayes has written provocatively about the implications of the digital economy for Operations Management (om). Here I examine and illustrate a simple four‐stage framework for thinking about these implications: advances in digital technology (stage 1) lead to business developments (stage 2), which impact the views of OM‐relevant thought leaders (stage 3), which influence the conduct of OM activities (stage 4). This framework provides a perspective for viewing the evolution of OM and indicates how educators, researchers, and practitioners can steal the march on mainstream thinking.     

Conflicts over knowledge transfer across the border: Korean international students and the conversion of cultural capital

It is common knowledge that international students are a major conduit of international knowledge transfer and that they become transnational managerial elites and highly skilled migrants. However, few studies show how this transfer occurs. Moreover, people often assume that knowledge transfer is a smooth process. Drawing on in‐depth interviews of former and current Korean international students and non‐migrant Koreans in the United States and South Korea, my study shows that knowledge transfer can, in fact, be highly conflictual. I argue that conflicts in the country of origin between international students (the transferors) and non‐migrants (the recipients) mediate knowledge transfer. I see the conflicts as struggles over the conversion of cultural capital from the Global North into local power and wealth, which reworks Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital for transnational social fields. In so doing, I develop a framework that links knowledge transfer and transnational social reproduction.     

Post/past-'Orientalism' Orientalism and its dis/re-orientation

Abstract

In Orientalism (1978) Edward Said articulated more a cultural filter than a cultural divide, through a catalog of historical documents on the west's representation of the east, enabling readers to share a vocabulary that has now become a part of American intellectual history. In the last quarter century Orientalism has acquired a 'symbolic value' that was at best present as a 'potential value', thus realizing itself; from its initial position as an object of cultural study it has now become a subject imbued with the agency to change perception and understanding. It has problematized Orientalism itself and associated issues of the new globalism, such as immigration, diaspora, boundary crossings, cross-border terrorism, mixed ethnicities, international and inter-racial adoptions, and travel. The article focuses on the new social, political and economic faces of the old Orientalist attitudes, and calls for a radical revision of history.     

Edward Gibbon Wakefield,England and 'ignorant,dirty, unsocial, . . . restless,more than half-savage' America

Abstract

Edward Gibbon Wakefield is usually credited with devising a new, 'rational' system of colonization, propounded in a series of books and articles between 1829 and 1837. Certainly, this is what his contemporary champions would have us believe but, rather than identifying what he propounds as an entirely new way of understanding colonization, it is more correct to characterize Wakefield's system as a careful decoction of existing ideas, practices and proposals trailed in earlier 19th-century British writings on the Cape, Australia, Canada and America. Published in London in 1833 and New York in 1834, England and America consequently represented a particularly selective reading of contemporary British writings on America, a highly-coloured portrayal of the country designed to demonstrate how emigration and settlement was better not conducted, and a striking contrast to his own, idealized vision of how colonies should be peopled.     

Special theme introduction: methodological cosmopolitanism across the socio‐cultural sciences

The cosmopolitan sociology of Ulrich Beck has been widely recognized as making vital contributions to crosscutting conversations on globalization and transnational studies, including these debates that are being played out on the pages of Global Networks. Beck's impassioned critique of ‘methodological nationalism’ in his own discipline of sociology, in particular, has often served as a springboard for programmatic calls to attend more closely to transnational actors, issues, and processes. However, beyond the occasional acknowledgement, comparatively less attention has been paid so far to the potentialities, specificities, and practicalities of Beck's affirmative alternative vision for the socio‐cultural sciences, that of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’. Building on and extending out from research experiences obtained in Beck's East Asia and Europe‐focused Cosmopolitan Climate Change (Cosmo‐Climate) project, this special theme brings together experts from across a range of socio‐cultural research fields to discuss and critically interrogate the challenges and capacities of doing methodological cosmopolitanism.     

Entrepreneurial gain,cultural similarity and transnational entrepreneurship

The aim of this article is to analyse the factors affecting the motivations of immigrant entrepreneurs to generate an entrepreneurial gain (positive impact on home and host countries). We consider that positive reasons for emigrating can increase transnational entrepreneurship and mutual benefits for both societies. To test this hypothesis we present a model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). This model explains the relations between motivations, cultural similarities, institutions and transnational linkage potentials. We designed an ad hoc search of Argentinean entrepreneurs established in Spain, both as EU citizens and without legal EU status, using online social networks. We applied an online questionnaire to 214 such entrepreneurs. We conclude that institutional rules (formal and informal) greatly influence the location decisions of firms and immigrant entrepreneurs’ motivations for starting transnational business because they provide the frame for the development of profitable opportunities.     

Exploring cultural economies of internationalization: the role of ‘iconic individuals’ and ‘brand leaders’ in the globalization of headhunting

Understanding the internationalization of professional services like advertising, architecture, accounting, consulting and legal services continues to attract considerable attention in academic and policy circles. Research in geography and management studies has emphasized the different organizational strategies adopted by firms as they seek to develop and maintain a competitive position within an increasingly global economy. In this article we develop a new strand in this literature by adopting a cultural economy approach to argue that an important, yet comparatively neglected, aspect of the internationalization strategies of transnational professional service firms is the role of certain ‘iconic individuals’ and ‘brand leaders’ in influencing the practice of internationalization. Drawing on empirical research into the burgeoning European executive search (headhunting) industry we identify a cadre of such individuals and brand leaders that act as resources other firms leverage when internationalizing. This highlights the importance of a cultural economy perspective in theories of the internationalization of professional services and its value in moving discussions beyond purely economic analyses of competitive advantage.