A phenomenological account of the forms of life characteristic of late capitalism--including television, celebrity culture, and personal electronics--culminating in an ontology of the gadget-commodity that brings together Marxist theories of commodity fetishism and ideology with Heidegger's attempt to think truth as unconcealment.

Scandals involving celebrities’ moral transgressions are common in both Western and Eastern cultures. Existing literature, however, has been primarily based on Western cultures. We examine differences between South Korea and the United States in consumers’ support for celebrities engaged in moral transgressions and for the brands they endorse. Across six studies, we find that Korean consumers show lower support for celebrities who engaged in moral transgressions. This effect occurs because Korean consumers have a stronger belief that an (...) individual’s competence and morality are interconnected. Thus, Korean consumers are less likely to separate their judgments of celebrities’ morality and competence in professional performance, thereby lowering support for the celebrities. Building on the proposed mechanism, we identify the moderating role of transgression relevance. When a moral transgression is relevant to the domain of the celebrity’s professional competence, the difference in celebrity support between the two countries is attenuated. This difference extends to the support for a brand endorsed by the celebrity transgressor when the brand retains the celebrity endorser, but not when the brand dismisses the endorser. (shrink)

The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity and profitability; dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry; and funerals have become less traditional. "Corpse chic" and "skull style" have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, (...) and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book considers, for the first time, these phenomena as aspects of a single movement, documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. Previous considerations of our fixation on death have not developed a convincing theory linking the mounting demand for images of violent death and the dramatic changes in death-related social rituals and practices. This book offers a conceptual framework that connects the observations of the simulated world of fiction and movies--including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, Night Watch, Hannibal, and the Harry Potter series--to social and cultural practices, providing an analysis of the specific aesthetics and the intellectual and historical conditions that triggered the cult of death. It also considers the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, as well as by posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement, in the formation of the current antihumanist atmosphere. With its critique of movie and book blockbusters and the death-related social rituals, festivals, and fashions that have coalesced into the cult of death, this timely volume will appeal to anyone hoping to better understand a defining phenomenon of our age. Scholars and general readers of cultural studies, film and literary studies, anthropology, and American and Russian studies will find this book thought-provoking. (shrink)

Celebrity Manufacture Theory postulates that both the emergence of celebrities and our fascination with them are shaped by the media. Another premise of the theory is that a person’s fame does not necessarily correlate with the talent or achievements of that person. Rather, it often depends on the way the media manufacture that person as a celebrity. Today’s celebrity culture extols a particular type of fame ‐ one created and sustained by media production. Hence, there is a painstaking method (...) of personification and commodification at work. The pursuit for authenticity is not the objective of Celebrity Manufacture Theory. For this reason, the theory is an example of a ‘manipulation theory’. It describes how media industries manipulate audiences through mass-mediated celebrity production. To best understand Celebrity Manufacture Theory, four major tenets are thoroughly described in this article: media mirage, democratization of spotlight, commodity and cultural mutation. (shrink)

This book brings key authors in anthropology together to debate and transgress anthropological expectations.

Christian Religious Education (CRE) studies are often known to neglect the incorporation of local culture, as regulations primarily mandate the inclusion of Christian dogmatics and social issues. In fact, Christian ethics and biblical doctrine receive massive exploration compared to social and cultural discussions. Therefore, this study explored Minahasan celebration practice as an alternative dimension that can be integrated into the CRE curriculum, thereby bridging the gap between social and religious features. A sensitive analysis was used to delve into Minahasan (...) cultural expression, which potentially contributed to the tension. The study used literature, references, articles and books to construct the practice and philosophy of each ritual. In essence, practices such as mapalus, kampetan, mu’kur and foso rummages are alternative values for the CRE curriculum.Contribution: The findings contribute to developing the Christian Religious Education curriculum in Indonesia, specifically Minahasa. Local cultures share values relating to social, religious and educational values, potentially enriching and developing the curriculum. Ritual practices could contribute significantly to the Christian Religious Education that provides local cultural elements. (shrink)

Resumen: En nuestros días el término arte ha ampliado su horizonte hasta incluir prácticas y objetos que tradicionalmente habían sido negados. Este cambio de perspectiva se introduce a partir del siglo XX cuando la noción de arte comienza a ser cuestionada desde diferentes vertientes teóricas y prácticas. En este artículo se analiza la definición que el filósofo estadounidense John Dewey propuso en los años treinta, la cual trataba de devolver el arte al contexto cultural en el que se originó. (...) Para ello, en primer lugar se examinará la dimensión cultural del arte: tanto el contexto sociocultural de la obra, como el propio papel del arte para transmitir los significados de una cultura. En segundo lugar, serán consideradas las posibilidades que ofrece esta noción de arte como vía para establecer un diálogo intercultural entre iguales. A través de un estudio sobre su fundamentación teórica, así como su alcance y limitaciones, el objetivo de este artículo es mostrar, pese a sus dificultades, que la definición deweyana de arte alberga un gran potencial para la estética contemporánea.: In present days, the term art has broadened its horizon to include practices and objects that traditionally had been rejected. This change of view was introduced in the twentieth century when this notion begins to be questioned from different theoretical and practical approaches. This article analyzes the definition proposed in the thirties by the American philosopher John Dewey, which tried to return art to the cultural context in which it was created. For this purpose, first, the text examines the cultural dimension of art: the sociocultural context of the work of art; and the role of art in transmitting the meanings of a culture. Second, the text considers the possibilities offered by this notion of art to establish an intercultural dialogue between equals. Through a study of its theoretical fundamentals, its scope and limitations, the aim of this article is to show that, despite its difficulties, the Deweyan definition of art harbors great potential for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

Many cultural commentators and philosophers are highly critical of the pursuit of fame. We argue that pursuing fame does not always deserve this negative appraisal, and can in some circumstances be virtuous. We begin our argument by outlining three positive functions that fame can serve, providing role models, spokespersons, and hermeneutic resources. These functions are particularly valuable for those from marginalized groups, providing empowering ways to respond to and subvert social discrimination. marginalized groups, providing empowering ways to respond to (...) and subvert social discrimination. Next, we explain the ways in which certain groups are under-represented in the public eye, resulting in a lack of recognition and respect. We argue that this under-representation ought to be mitigated. The pursuit of fame is valuable insofar as it acts a corrective to the injustice that arises because of the marginalization of certain groups from the public eye and celebrity culture. We then discuss four problems with the idea that the pursuit of fame and celebrity by members of marginalized groups may function to combat social injustice. First, celebrities from marginalized groups who are viewed as role models, spokespersons or hermeneutic resources, are especially likely to find themselves subject to judgmental and moralistic criticism from the public. Second, the pursuit of fame from members of marginalized groups runs significant risks of elite capture. Third, they are also likely to be subjected to demeaning forms of representation. Fourth, and more generally, the role of being famous can be severely psychologically damaging, causing significant personal burdens for those who pursue fame and ultimately achieve celebrity status. Taking these points together shows that while the pursuit of fame may be useful in mitigating certain forms of social injustice, there are also important reasons to worry about how effective a tool it is, and the costs that arise for those who pursue fame and become celebrities. We conclude our argument in by noting how the domain of fame and intersectionality influences the extent to which the pursuit of fame is valuable and burdensome. -/- . (shrink)

Fan culture has grown immensely over the past few years. People are constantly looking up to celebrities and personalities as role models for their fashion, identity, and success. During the stage of adolescence, it is normal for teenagers to admire well- known people and form fan attachments as part of their identity formation. However, this admiration of a specific media figure can be associated with one's personality, cognitive processes, and psychological well-being. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the (...) correlation between celebrity admiration and the self-esteem of 238 Filipino male teenagers. The research instruments, namely Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were both utilized through google forms. Results have shown high scores on celebrity admiration and the normal range of self-esteem of the participants. Using Pearson’s r correlation coefficient, it was found that celebrity admiration and self-esteem of Filipino male teenagers have a significant relationship that exists in a negative direction. (shrink)

The article focuses on the Baltic Song and Dance Celebration, which is analysed in the context of the nation branding concept. It is possible to conditionally distinguish between two kinds of methods how to increase international recognition – special strategies created by professionals, and spontaneous or natural branding, based on marking of significant cultural and symbolic aspects of a particular nation. A strategic process of nation branding in the Baltics became particularly active in the beginning of the 21st century, (...) when the governments of all three nations started a purposeful, state-financed development of nation brands, but generally neglecting the informal brand of the Baltic states as the “singing nations”. Nevertheless, the latter, having been developed alongside with the statehood ideas and particularly manifesting itself in the Song and Dance Celebration phenomena, is still very strong in the Baltic states. Based on the sociological survey data, the authors compare the attitude of the residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania towards the Song and Dance Celebrations and discuss their role in the nation brand development. (shrink)

This work focuses on Latin Judaica and Biblical interpretation with a primary emphasis on texts that were found in the library of Archbishop Narcissus Marsh of Dublin. This remarkable collection of Latin Judaica, Polyglot Bibles, and other works sheds light on the way in which the Protestant Reformation dealt both with Jews, and the Bible, the Jewish Kabbalah and religious toleration or intolerance. The articles contained herein will be of especial interest to historians of religion and philosophy, and those dealing (...) with Jewish-Christian relations and the manner in which Biblical interpretation was changed as a result of seventeenth-century influences. The articles also weave a new approach to the broad history of religious toleration. Philosophers, political thinkers, religious clerics, and budding anthropologists look at Judaism, Christianity, Kabbalah, and the Bible under a new and vastly more modern lens. (shrink)

The celebrity effect is the well-documented phenomenon in which people ascribe an enhanced worth to artefacts owned by famous individuals. This effect has been attributed to a belief in psychological contagion, the transmission of a person’s essence to an object via contact. We examined people’s judgments of the persisting worth of celebrity-owned artefacts following transformations of their parts/material and found that the celebrity effect was evident only for post-transformation artefacts that were composed of parts/material that had direct physical contact with (...) the celebrity. Insofar as the celebrity effect arises from psychological contagion, the findings suggest that the essence imparted to a celebrity-owned artefact is conceived as akin to a residue deposited in/on the object rather than a germ capable of spreading in an indirect manner to new parts/material added to the object. The results illuminate the nature of psychological contagion and offer insight into how best to preserve the value of historically important artefacts. (shrink)

The experience of being famous was investigated through interviews with 15 well-known American celebrities. The interviews detail the existential parameters of being famous in contemporary culture. Research participants were celebrities in various societal categories: government, law, business, publishing, sports, music, film, television news and entertainment. Phenomenological analysis was used to examine textural and structural relationship-to-world themes of fame and celebrity. The study found that in relation to self, being famous leads to loss of privacy, entitization, demanding expectations, gratification (...) of ego needs, and symbolic immortality. In relation to other, or world, being famous leads to wealth, access, temptations, and concerns about family impact. Areas of psychological concern for celebrity mental health include character-splitting, mistrust, isolation, and an unwillingness to give up fame. Being-in-the-world of celebrity is a process involving four temporal phases: love/hate, addiction, acceptance, and adaptation. Findings are presented in the form of a Composite Textural Description and two Individual Structural Descriptions. (shrink)

This article examines specific celebration rituals of two groups of Russian émigrés during the period of the mid-1950s to early 1960s. The groups, comprised of former officers of the Russian imperial army and of graduates of schools for noble girls, often situated their festivities within a Russian Orthodox Church building located at Madison Avenue and 121st Street in Manhattan. The celebrations, spatially enclosed and separated from the outside world within this structure,suggest their privileged and exclusive nature. The staging and performance (...) of the celebration, while acknowledging displacement and exile, re-inscribed the spatial enclosure with the Russian past through the reenactment of Russian cultural traditions and social hierarchies, thereby validating the lives and identities of the celebrants. (shrink)

Tilda Swinton’s status as a fashion icon exemplifies the contradictory functions that Walter Benjamin attributes to fashion as both exemplifying commodity fetishism and expressing a utopian ‘image wish’. This vexed relationship with fashion inflects Swinton’s cinematic performances, enhanced by her emphasis on disguise and transformation that calls into question the nature of identity and its authenticity. Her persona speaks to the fluid and fragmented dimensions of contemporary European identities, which are rooted, but also cross borders, national and otherwise; similarly, her (...) public presence testifies to the way that contemporary culture has generated new forms of celebrity as a means of representing identities in which the negotiation of gender is a significant component. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, celebrations of historical anniversaries abounded. There was the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the 150th anniversary of photography, Bach's 300th anniversary, and the 200th anniversary of the American Constitution, to name just a few. Every year hundreds of anniversaries still attract media attention and government investment in ever greater degrees. Deploying an astonishing array of insights, Celebrations explores the causes and consequences of this major phenomenon of our time. As Johnston shows, anniversaries fulfill a number of (...) needs. They provide the kind of experience of regularity across a lifetime that the weekly cycle supplies in daily life. The use of anniversaries for political ends emerged during the French Revolution and expanded to promote nationalism during the nineteenth century, although there are differences in how they are used. Europeans tend to celebrate cultural heroes, while Americans tend to celebrate events. Entire nations exploit anniversaries of founding events in order to promote national identity. Commercially, there are whole industries built around commemoration, and they provide intellectuals an opportunity to take center stage. Using methods of cultural history, sociology, and religious studies, Johnston shows how the cult of anniversaries reflects postmodern concerns. It fills a void left by the disappearance of ideologies and avant-gardes. In an era when there is little consensus about styles or methods, anniversaries allow intellectuals, businesses, and governments to acknowledge and celebrate every nuance of opinion. By suggesting ways to use anniversaries more creatively, this book offers a broad range of insights. (shrink)

The issue of climate change poses an important problem that requires immediate collaboration from everyone, including individuals, governments, and businesses. While consumption culture constitutes a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions, most of these emissions are caused by the consumption of the wealthiest. In this article, we will explore the challenges that consumer culture has exacerbated regarding climate change and propose that transitioning to a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle could be an effective solution in the fight against climate change. (...) Such transitions can be leveraged through the inspiration of celebrities (e.g., Keanu Reeves, Chow Yun-fat, Kristen Bell, Leonardo DiCaprio) that pursue simple, non-glamorous lifestyles that do not promote excessive consumerism. (shrink)

As the grandchild of Italian immigrants, photographer Gina J. Grillo has a personal impetus in her photographic studies of ethnic and immigrant life in the United States. In Between Cultures, Grillo explores the struggles immigrant children face as they develop their cultural identity in an environment completely new and foreign to them. Following the tradition of the pioneering photographers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, Grillo portrays the immigrant experience through children's eyes, unearthing a complex and poignant world. She begins (...) with images of newly arrived immigrant families at O'Hare International Airport during their first few hours in the United States, and then follows them through the gates and into Chicago's urban life: through her chronicle of citizenship ceremonies, cultural celebrations, weddings and dances, and other everyday scenes of immigrant life, Grillo captures the crucial elements that shape not only the characters of the children, but also the neighborhoods in which they reside. For adults, emigration to America is filled with both hope and fear, yet it is tempered by a mature understanding. For children, however, this same journey unfolds in the unrelenting present as they must constantly negotiate their individual identities and allegiances to culture, country, and kin. With moving quotations and drawings by immigrant children woven into Grillo's visual sequence, Between Cultures is a unique meditation on the development of individual identity through the reconciliation of multiple cultural heritages. (shrink)

A commonly raised criticism against celebrity culture is that it celebrates people who become famous without any connection to their skills, talents or achievements. A culture in which people become famous simply for being famous is criticized for being shallow and inauthentic. In this paper we offer a defence of celebrity by arguing against this criticism. We begin by outlining what we call the Talent Argument: celebrity is a negative cultural phenomenon because it creates and sustains fame without any (...) connection to the accomplishments that arise from an expression of talent or skill. By appealing to the metaphysics of talent and skill, we argue against the Talent Argument and propose that being a celebrity requires the skills that are necessary to acquire and maintain one’s status as a celebrity. A celebrity is more likely to be talented and successful in their expression of these skills, and even celebrities who are ‘famous for being famous’ will often display talents and skills that give rise to their fame. This means that those who critique celebrity culture should not do so by appealing to the Talent Argument. We show how our account of celebrity, talent and skill works to reject both the strong version of the Talent Argument, as well as a weaker and more plausible version of the argument we call the Valuable Talents argument. We conclude by noting that our analysis has demonstrated the need to explore more closely the kinds of skills that are necessary to cultivate celebrity status. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of what a celebrity is, and the values that are attached to celebrity culture. (shrink)

For some, cultured animal products ought to be celebrated for the potential they offer to replace factory farming. Others argue that, for the same reason, there is a duty to support their production and consumption. This paper argues that the ethical status of cultured animal products ought to be assessed not just in comparison with factory farming, but also in terms of its potential to bring about interspecies justice. The claim is made that the attitudes embodied within cultured animal products (...) show a lack of proper respect for nonhuman animals and are at odds with those required by justice. Although cultured animal products have the potential to greatly reduce harms done to nonhuman animals, this paper argues that their adoption ought to nevertheless be regarded with some regret. Using a Rawlsian framework for assessing transitional steps towards justice, the paper shows that, whilst the adoption of cultured animal products may be permissible, the case for regarding it as a duty is much weaker. For cultured meats to be permissible, it must first be shown that alternatives that respect the value of nonhuman animals as ends-in-themselves do not exist. (shrink)

This article proposes to redefine celebrity as a kind of capital, thereby extending Bourdieu’s field theory. This redefinition is necessary, it is argued, because one of the main limitations shared by current definitions of celebrity is their lack of explanatory power of the convertibility of celebrity into other resources, such as economic or political capital. Celebrity capital, or broadly recognizability, is conceptualized as accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations. In that sense, it is a substantial kind of (...) capital and not a subset or special category of social or symbolic capital, the latter being defined as legitimate recognition by other agents in a social field. Rather than adding another definition of celebrity next to many others, the notion of celebrity capital proposed here should be seen as an attempt to integrate the existing approaches of celebrity into a single comprehensive conceptualization that can enable us to grasp this societal and cultural phenomenon better. (shrink)

In an era of cancel culture, digital identities and thriving conversation surrounding parasocial relationships, we question today the nature of the celebrity, the scope of their power and influence, as well as the ethical issues these implicate. It is a wonder, then, that philosophy is a discipline that has, as of yet, contributed surprisingly little to this debate despite the growing philosophical literature on connected philosophical topics that serve as a starting point for the philosophical inquiry into the nature and (...) value of fame and celebrity. For example, the literature on the philosophy of admiration, achievement, skills and talents, epistemic authority, virtue and moral psychology can all serve to analyse the important questions arise when considering what fame is, and the way that it influences the way we live. Offering the first introductory overview of the key philosophical issues involved in the nature and value of fame and celebrity, this edited collection provides a new perspective and voice to the conversation. Divided into four parts, its first focuses on conceptual differences between fame and celebrity, the experience of being famous, how celebrities interact with the public, and what motivates people to desire or pursue fame. The second part of the volume explores fame and virtue as well as the ways in which ethical issues intertwine with fame, concluding with an examination of the nature of fame in relation to contemporary online culture. As digital technologies expand, cultural commentators remark that we are all becoming celebrities, scrutinized by the public gaze whether we like it or not. This book therefore answers a pressing need, for if celebrity culture continues to expand and consume our social lives, the case for a philosophical reflection on the nature and value of this culture becomes even more necessary. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Mark McNulty has been documenting the Liverpool music scene, both in the city and as it has proliferated worldwide. Accompanied by over 100 photographs, Pop Cultured celebrates the city, its music, and its culture through the lens of this highly acclaimed and influential photographer. McNulty has covered a wide array of iconic British bands such as the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Arctic Monkeys, as well as visiting international acts like the (...) White Stripes. Witty, enthralling, and visually stunning, Pop Cultured combines McNulty’s images with his own laconic and humorous commentary and that of his iconic musical subjects, providing a rollercoaster account of the last twenty years of British culture. (shrink)

Contributed articles on Nimbarka Sect and the contribution of Swami Dhanañjayadāsa, Hindu philosopher and scholar belonging to the sect; papers presented at the seminar, held in Uttara Cabbiśa Paragaṇā, India in 2001 and organized by Sukhchar Kathiababa Ashram; centenary commemorative volume in honor of Swami Dhanañjayadāsa.

The dualism of nature/culture widely present within Western society at large is out of step with an increasingly urbanising world. Building on previous discussions of nature/culture duality, an integrative framework is presented that argues for the embracing of the ‘mundane nature’ found within human landscapes. As over half of the human population interacts with nature primarily within urban landscapes, increasing our awareness of such spaces is critical to understanding our ecological consciousness. The examples of a recent rooftop greening bylaw in (...) the city of Toronto and the social impacts of urban gardening are examined in this context. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Defensible Taping The Public Appeal Sexual Appeal The Allure of Taping Motivations for Release The Complications of Releasing a Sex Tape When Trust Fails A Failed Career Move Why We Still Tape Notes.

Princess Diana, Jackie O, Grace Kelly—the star icon is the most talked about yet least understood persona. The object of adoration, fantasy, and cult obsession, the star icon is a celebrity, yet she is also something more: a dazzling figure at the center of a media pantomime that is at once voyeuristic and zealously guarded. With skill and humor, Daniel Herwitz pokes at the gears of the celebrity-making machine, recruiting a philosopher's interest in the media, an eye for society, and (...) a love of popular culture to divine our yearning for these iconic figures and the role they play in our lives. Herwitz portrays the star icon as caught between transcendence and trauma. An effervescent being living on a distant, exalted planet, the star icon is also a melodramatic heroine desperate to escape her life and the ever-watchful eye of the media. The public buoys her up and then eagerly watches her fall, her collapse providing a satisfying conclusion to a story sensationally told—while leaving the public yearning for a rebirth. Herwitz locates this double life in the opposing tensions of film, television, religion, and consumer culture, offering fresh perspectives on these subjects while ingeniously mapping society's creation (and destruction) of these special aesthetic stars. Herwitz has a soft spot for popular culture yet remains deeply skeptical of public illusion. He worries that the media distances us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons. It also blinds us to the shaping of our political present. (shrink)

Aestheticians have tended to focus their attention almost exclusively on high art, on museum painting and sculpture, classical music and literature, and architecture, leaving the popular arts to their colleagues in cultural studies. That seems a big mistake, for like it or not, popular movies and television attract enormous audiences everywhere, including very many people who take little interest in high art. This mass art creates stars, actors, and musicians who are so famous that everyone recognizes them. And (...) class='Hi'>celebrities such as Princess Diana are also stars. Because stars straddle the boundary between politics and popular art, they deserve attention from our philosophers. Even if your favorite leisure reading.. (shrink)

Every independent country always celebrates or mark the day they were free from colonial rule in the form of “independence day celebrations”. The impression was that they were no longer slaves working under a colonial master. A fleeting glance at cultural markets reveals that despite other competing countries like India, China and Mexico, American culture dominates. This dependency on American products for arts, entertainment, dressing, and lifestyle changes in general is the major thrust of this paper. When a people’s (...) way of life is dictated by the life of another, is it not a form of colonialism? The electronic colonialism theory was used to explain that this dominance by one culture is the modern form of colonialism and has far reaching catastrophic consequences for the dependents and needs to be checked to avoid disaster. (shrink)

Celebrity studies is an expansive and expanding field in European and American scholarship. Unfortunately, Africanist scholars have paid limited attention to this significant branch of scholarship. Drawing from varied secondary sources, including audio-visual materials, newspaper articles and journals, and books in the fields of celebrities and development, I examine Nigerian celebrity philanthropy in the age of internet technology. I argue that Nigerian celebrity philanthropy, given its mediatised nature and impact on its recipient, is a palliative measure to systemic and (...) structural crises of poverty. I show that this individualistic effort only gives temporary respite for some of its recipients while others are left even worse off after their encounters with celebrities helping. My research sits at the crossroads of multiple fields in the humanities and the social sciences and offers a new direction for celebrity studies in the global South. Future research may examine individual Nigerian celebrity philanthropy while centring on gender, class, education, ethnicity, religion, and location in celebrity humanitarians in the global South, particularly in Nigeria. (shrink)

I have always admired the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy for its public commitment to intellectual equality. I will gloss it as a headnote for this article by way of some words from Mary Rawlinson's new book, Just Life: "Critical phenomenology starts from the idea that universality appears in multiplicity and difference. More than one narrative will be necessary to do justice to life. Women's experience is just as much an opportunity for the appearance of the universal as is (...) Man's. Critical phenomenology resists both abstract universalism and cultural relativism."1Let me cite here part of the abstract that I sent ahead of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential... (shrink)

This paper examines the construction of the poet Du Mu’s libertine image to illustrate how Chinese writers and readers of the ninth and tenth centuries validated the search for sensual pleasure by associating it with literary talent, unconventional character, and political disengagement. In doing so, they added indulgence in sensual pleasures to the repertoire of fengliu cultural ideals, a repertoire previously associated with reclusion and drinking. Because sensual pleasure was traditionally viewed as trivial and/or disruptive to social order, ninth-century (...) writers approached the new ideal with considerable ambivalence. Although Du Mu had fashioned a libertine poetic self-image as a young man, he attempted to shed this image later in life. I argue that it was Du Mu’s readers who, by creatively reading his poems and writing anecdotes about his sexual adventures, re-imagined the poet as a figure of fascination and thus created one of the most enduring fengliu characters in Chinese history. (shrink)

For several decades Rafael Capurro has been at the forefront of defining the relationship between information and modernity through both phenomenological and ethical formulations. In exploring both of these themes Capurro has re-vivified the transcultural and intercultural expressions of how we bring an understanding of information to bear on scientific knowledge production and intermediation. Capurro has long stressed the need to look deeply into how we contextualize the information problems that scientific society creates for us and to re-incorporate a pragmatic (...) dimension into our response that provides a balance to the cognitive turn in information science. -/- With contributions from 35 scholars from 15 countries, Information Cultures in the Digital Age focuses on the culture and philosophy of information, information ethics, the relationship of information to message, the historic and semiotic understanding of information, the relationship of information to power and the future of information education. This Festschrift seeks to celebrate Rafael Capurro’s important contribution to a global dialogue on how information conceptualisation, use and technology impact human culture and the ethical questions that arise from this dynamic relationship. (shrink)

Twitter is a linguistic marketplace in which the processes of self-branding and micro-celebrity depend on visibility as a means of increasing social and economic gain. Hashtags are a potent resource within this system for promoting the visibility of a Twitter update. This study analyses the frequency, types and grammatical context of hashtags which occurred in a dataset of approximately 92,000 tweets, taken from 100 publically available Twitter accounts, comparing the discourse styles of corporations, celebrity practitioners and ‘ordinary’ Twitter members. The (...) results suggest that practices of self-branding and micro-celebrity operate on a continuum which reflects and reinforces the social and economic hierarchies which exist in offline contexts. Despite claims that hashtags are ‘conversational’, this study suggests that participatory culture in Twitter is not evenly distributed, and that the discourse of celebrity practitioners and corporations exhibits the synthetic personalization typical of mainstream media forms of broadcast talk. (shrink)

When published, Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason appeared to be a major intellectual and political event, no less than a Kantian effort to found Marxism, with far-reaching theoretical and political consequences. Claude Levi-Strauss devoted a course to studying it, and debated Sartre's main points in The Savage Mind ; Andre Gorz devoted a major article to explaining its importance and key concepts in New Left Review . Many analysts of the May, 1968 events in Paris claimed that they were anticipated (...) by the Critique . But the book has had a very quiet 50th anniversary: it is now clear that the project has had little lasting effect beyond a narrow band of specialists. It has not entered the wider culture, has not been picked up beyond Sartre scholars except by one or two philosophically interested social scientists and feminist thinkers; and after the energy of 1968 wore off the Critique faded as well from the radar of political activists. This article asks and attempts to answer the perplexing question: Why? What became of the great promise of Sartre's project? (shrink)

The rise of social-media-mediated celebrity culture raises several philosophical concerns. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see, for example, Hollywood actors being placed in the same bracket as YouTube artists and Instagram influencers. The increased perceived ‘connectivity’ afforded by social media allows online celebrities to reach more fans and increases the perceived engagement or intimacy in the fan-celebrity relationship. In this paper I argue that this online relationship, which is beneficial to celebrities (for brand development) and social media (...) companies (in profiting from the high engagement), has the potential to cause harm to both the celebrities as well as their fanbases (and sometimes innocent third parties). Firstly, I argue that celebrities’ attempts to be more intimate or authentic with their fanbase can turn out to be – more often than not – acts of Sartrean bad faith. Celebrities who tend to project a certain self-styled ‘online authenticity’, given the context of social media’s attention economy, can run the risk of treating a fan as a means-to-an-end, rather than an autonomous for-itself. Secondly, I argue that this phenomenon can catalyse real-world harms, by drawing upon network theory and social psychology. I argue that the connectedness of social media, ‘blending into the crowd’, and social media technologies’ ethos of optimising-for-engagement, leads to real harms to human well-being when fans do not engage critically and mindfully with online celebrities. Examples include Trump-esque celebrity politicians trying to drum up populist influence; celebrities feuding online encouraging fans’ conduct of harmful trolling and harassment; and vilification of those who do not subscribe to the same perceived worldview of a celebrity’s fandom. Following my arguments within, I shall outline an online celebrity’s ethical duties in their social media engagement, with emphasis on the duties that celebrity status comes with, particularly in preventing harms that transcend the online into the offline. (shrink)

The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call for a return to Foucault is issued via a critical engagement (...) with the so-called practice-turn. This re-turn does not seek to reconstitute venerably Foucauldianism, but to theorize ‘inters-’ as vanishing points that challenge the integrity of discrete cultural orders in non-convergent manners. The propounded interdiscursivity approach is offered as a reading strategy that permeates the contemporary cultural consumption phenomena that are scrutinized in this book, against a pan-consumptivist framework. By drawing on qualitative and mixed methods research designs, facilitated by CAQDAS software, the empirical studies that are hosted here span a vivid array of topics that are directly relevant to both traditional and new media researchers, such as the consumption of ideologies in Web 2.0 social movements, the ability of micro-celebrities to act as cultural game-changers, the post-loyalty abjective consumption ethos. The theoretically novel approaches on offer are coupled with methodological innovations in areas such as user-generated content, artists’ branding, and experiential consumption. (shrink)