Sex

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-112
Author(s):  
Leslie Dorrough Smith
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Advice Literature

Evangelicalism has long provided American culture with the vocabulary through which to talk about sex and who can appropriately engage in it. This chapter briefly discusses six general presumptions of evangelical thinking about sex, gender, and race inspired by feminist theorist Gayle Rubin; these elements help frame specific excerpts of evangelical marriage and sexual advice literature, which naturalize hypersexual men and their passively sexual women. The chapter discusses the substantial racial subtexts at work in these excerpts that tacitly connect whiteness (and white sexuality, in particular) with moral virtue, and describes how these have become American ideals. To see these ideals at work, a case study compares the scandals of Anita Hill (versus Clarence Thomas) and Paula Jones (versus Bill Clinton). Both Hill and Jones were deemed sexual failures by the American public according to the evangelical standards for female sexuality that were used to define their credibility.

Is Gay Tourism More Than Tourism? A Case Study of Puerto Vallarta, MX

2021 ◽  
pp. 016059762110140
Author(s):  
Emma G. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Gay Men ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Tourist Destinations ◽  
Gay Community ◽  
Men I ◽  
Oppressed Group ◽  
Normative Standard

The reasons gay men seek out gay travel destinations has been well established in the literature. However, less research has been published on the consequences of that travel on the destinations themselves and the effect of gay tourism on the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. I use ethnographic research in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a popular international gay tourist destinations for American and Canadian gay men. I focus on how gay destinations are constructed as sites where members of the gay community can experience acceptance and inclusion and I ask the following questions, is this acceptance and inclusion dependent upon consumption? Are the tourist site and expectations for behavior in those sites oppressively normal? That is, does the site create a normative standard of behavior for gay tourists? Furthermore, while gay tourists may experience inclusion and a level of acceptance, how does gay tourism affect the destination site itself? Is this acceptance and inclusion problematized by larger systems of inequality such as class, gender, and race? Lastly, as members of a historically oppressed group, does and should gay tourism rise above its commodification to produce just, equitable relationships within and beyond the LGBTQ+ community including the environment?

Anthropocene nostalgia for the 1980s in Netflix’s Stranger Things

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicja Relidzyńska
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Significant Alteration ◽  
Reconstructed Image ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The Past ◽  
Distinctive Type

Expressions of nostalgia for the 1980s in contemporary American culture are diverse. The most interesting of them go beyond a wistful longing for the past. A complex ‘nostalgia trip’ offered by Netflix’s Stranger Things serves as a notable case study of a distinctive type of this sentiment. Instead of yearning for the restoration of previous times, it plays with past aesthetics in a critically articulate manner, effectively demythologizing the depicted decade. I argue that this significant alteration of the traditional sentiment stems largely from the recent acknowledgment of the Anthropocene and its irreversibility. This article aims to examine the peculiar, self-aware, paradoxical nostalgia, which is coloured by the current, Anthropocene-induced fears for the environment and, thus, our future. The analysis of Stranger Things – its thematics, genre, visuals and the meticulously reconstructed image of the presented era – draws parallels to the techniques employed by the ‘novel nostalgia’: bitter, ironic depiction of the past and references to natural phenomena. The study thus investigates the show at the intersection of contemporary nostalgia for the 1980s and the cultural repercussions of the Anthropocene. In so doing, it will unravel the innovation in the programme’s discourse on the 1980s decade in American culture.

scholarly journals “A point that escapes Darwin”: Crises of colonial self in the nature essays of Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson

2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942110328
Author(s):  
Jason Sandhar
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
Psychic Life ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Everyday

This article shows how the colonial nature essay both spoofs and affirms crises of the European self in British India’s post-Rebellion era (1857–1947). Authored by English civil servants who took to naturalism as a hobby, the nature essay’s exaggerated misadventures with quotidian animals such as ants, beetles, and mosquitos parody British accounts of the 1857 Rebellion, while dehumanizing caricatures of uncooperative servants reduce Indian society’s complex hierarchies of class, caste, gender, and race to buffoonery. Taking as a case study two of the genre’s exemplars, Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson, I read the colonized animals and people in these texts as agents who destabilize the material and psychic life of empire. Historians and postcolonialists agree that censorship, paranoia, and violence defined British rule over India between 1857 and 1947, yet they overlook the everyday life of empire. The nature essay’s peculiar synthesis of humour and science grants surprising insights into how colonial agents understood themselves as Raj hegemony shifted into its final stages. As the nature essay’s colonized people and animals thwart the daily work of empire, they also reveal the colonial class’ failure to confront its anxieties about the sahib’s political and epistemic stability as a rational, post-Enlightenment agent destined to master the colony.

Ethos is not enough

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jen Plants
Keyword(s):  
Gender And Race ◽  
The Arts

Strictly applied Aristotelian models of rhetoric limit possibilities of communication to the binary roles of speaker and hearer, and as such reinforce binary notions of power across lines of gender and race. A brief case study of a cancelled conversation about the white-centred storytelling and harmful stereotypes in the musical Miss Saigon at the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, Wisconsin, reveals the harm that can be inflicted by the rigidity of ancient rhetorical models. Feminist rhetorical models offer an alternative, and unless institutions recognize that there is ethos in our audiences and value the labour that produces ‘organic dramaturgy’ in our communities, the contemporary call for new collective forms of storytelling will be left unanswered.

scholarly journals Becoming-Black: Patterns and Politics of West-German ‘Afro-Americanophilia’ in the Late 1960s

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Ege
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Political Action ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Soul Music

In the late 1960s, African American culture and politics provided ‘lines of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari) from outdated modes of subjectivity for many ‘white’ Germans; appropriating culture politics, and experimenting with forms of symbolically ‘becoming black’ represented a major cultural theme of the time. These tendencies resonated with: radical, anti-imperialist politics; countercultural sensibilities, where African American culture provided a radically contemporary critique of European modernity; the racialized, erotically charged logics of primitivism and romanticism in which ‘the repressed’ was to be brought back to the surface; and with a consumer-based economy and pop culture that supported the incorporation, domestication and aestheticisation of difference, desire and conflict.  This article sketches the patterns, forms and politics of the cultural theme of Afro-Americanophilia in Germany at the time, stressing the links between politics and corporeality.  In doing so, it illustrates that questions of race and racism were crucial for the 1968 conjuncture in Germany and it critically reviews the assumptions and implications of a specific form of hedonistic anti-racism in which ‘white’ European protagonists claimed ‘chains of equivalence’ (Laclau and Mouffe) between their position and that of people oppressed by racism and white supremacy.  Two case studies illustrate different forms and common patterns.  The first concerns a West Berlin network of radical-left groups that called itself ‘The Blues’ and combined militant political action (partly modelled on the activities of the Black Panther Party, according to some of its participants) with a countercultural sensibility. This included a felt connection to African American culture and stylistic practices. The second case study reviews the reception of soul music in the German music press and in countercultural circles, contrasting different readings of the supposedly ‘authentic.’  Overall, the article reconstructs practices of Afro-Americanophilia as ambiguous phenomena that foreshadow later forms of fetishistic cultural appropriation, but where, in some cases, the selective, erotically charged exoticism also led to tangible solidarity and strong connections. 

A Case Study of Mainstream Protestantism: The Disciple's Relation to American Culture, 1880-1989.

1992 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 1198
Author(s):  
David Edwin Harrell ◽  
D. Newell Williams
Keyword(s):  
American Culture

Exposing Negative Chinese Terminology and Stereotypes

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Priscilla Wegars
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oral Histories

By evaluating unacceptable terminology, as well as by exposing several negative Chinese stereotypes, this essay seeks to prevent the perpetuation of legends, myths, rumors, and stereotypes about the Chinese in the United States, and to provide readers with a deeper, more empathetic, understanding of Chinese American culture. Some of the derogatory terms discussed include “Chinaman,” “coolie,” and “joss house.” Anti-Chinese stereotypes in common use today include “Chinese ovens” for Italian bread-baking ovens and “Chinese tunnels” for sidewalk vaults. A lengthy case study of the latter term examines related architectural evidence, documentary research, oral histories, and archaeological investigations to confirm that “Chinese tunnels” are a myth.

The ‘infernal jitterbug’ and the transformation of popular dance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Abra
Keyword(s):  
Racial Difference ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Ballroom Dancing ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Second World

This chapter provides a case study of the jitterbug, an American import which became the great dance sensation of the Second World War. Questions about Americananisation took on a new valence in wartime, owing to the physical presence in Britain of large numbers of American GIs. The dance profession and dance hall industry thus shifted tactics with respect to American culture, choosing to embrace the jitterbug – in a toned down Anglicised form. However, as part of ongoing negotiations with producers, the dancing public expressed greater interest in the ‘authentic’, American jitterbug than the Anglicised versions presented to them by the profession and industry, in ways that reflected contemporary deliberations over racial difference. As a dance, the jitterbug also heralded a critical shift away from modern ballroom dancing as the nation’s favoured style.

Inequalities in Europe's SMEs: the challenges for a trade union agenda

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Gill Kirton ◽  
Ian Read
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Study Material ◽  
Ethnic Inequalities ◽  
The Status ◽  
Contingent Approach ◽  
Policies And Practices

In the context of continuing gender and race/ethnic inequalities in labour markets throughout Europe, this article uses case study material gathered in eight countries to explore equality policies and practices in SMEs. Overall the findings indicate a limited and contingent approach to equality issues on the part of SME owners and managers and an ineffective trade union challenge to the status quo. The article offers some thoughts on possible ways forward, concluding that unions have a long way to go before their rhetorical commitment to representing SME workers effectively and to pursuing an equality agenda is translated into action and practices at workplace level.

scholarly journals Normative Interfaces: Affordances, Gender, and Race in Facebook

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511771790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela M. Cirucci
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
User Interface ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Network Site ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Made In

This study investigates social network site affordances and their implications for perceptions of marginalized communities. I employ Facebook as a case study and speak with young adult users to comprehend how socially marginalized groups are perceived through Facebook’s affordances. In particular, I consider: How familiar are users with Facebook’s tools and functionalities? How are issues of gender and race represented through the site’s interface? How do users conceive of gender and race? The findings suggest that gender is perceived as a more important identifier than race and that Facebook is post-racial, because of the user interface choices made. In addition, my participants view Facebook as an official social space that should include “authentic” identities; although Facebook has shaped authentic to mean accurate. I conclude that while the construction of affordances is a negotiation between user, interface, and designer, the designers have the most power because they have created the spaces in ways that will most benefit Facebook. In addition, users who are more situated in the socio-cultural majority have no desire to enact agency within Facebook’s structure because they are accustomed to forms and official documents that are well suited to fit their identification needs.

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