Journal articles: 'Psychological aspects of Brand name products' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

The brand name is one of the most important devices for marketing a product. Western companies spend vast sums of money devising brand names that convey the positive characteristics of products marketed on the strength of their image. Many of the brand names patented are complex linguistic units, using aspects of phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax and semantics to make names memorable. These names use language to impact on readers and therefore have transferable meanings. This article analyses the linguistic devices in a corpus of English language adverts and investigates which translation strategies are employed when the adverts are transferred into Russian. It argues that the transfer process is more complex than previous literature has suggested and that although the original meaning is often not maintained after transfer, brand names in the target adverts carry new connotations which are appealing due to the target audience’s expectations.

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Objective: Determining how and in what way the brand communicates in retail outlets and how the different parameters affect the product’s communication and perception is a key part of business strategy. Identifying how the brand name is perceived is a fundamental phase of an SME’s marketing strategy for products in new markets. Methodology: This paper describes a theoretical analysis model of the components of a brand that influence its communication and affect the consumers’ perception at sales outlets. Results: The model was able to clarify the relevant external factors, especially those associated with environmental and cultural factors. A cross-sectional examination was able to indicate the visual, acoustic and marketing components of the brand that should be analysed to clarify its communicational strengths in new cultural environments. Limitations: The brand analysis model is implemented by means of a specially designed survey and allows the graphic aspects to be selected, besides pointing out the graphic and phonetic aspects of the brand’s weaknesses and strengths in new markets. Practical implications: This study is expected to be useful to both graphic designers and marketing departments in that it provides a shared reference point for both these specialist areas to assist in precision tuning of the brand’s graphic, phonetic and marketing variables by means of shared points of analysis.

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With regard to the meaning and evolution of "Hangzhou Silk", the author uses the documentary research methodology to trim and verify from three aspects of industry name, product name and brand name respectively, attempting to find out the source of "Hangzhou Silk" from historical documents. Research shows that, as the industry name being called as "Hangzhou satin industry" or "Hangzhou silk weaving industry", it was generally called as the "Hangzhou Silk and Satin Industry” after the combination of Hangzhou Silk Reeling Industry Association and Hangzhou Silk Weaving Industry Association until 1952. As the product name being called as "Hangzhou silk” or “Hangzhou satin", it was called as “Hangzhou silk “after the China liberation. As the brand name, it referred to the specific silk products of Hangzhou region in particular after being awarded of protection as Chinese national geographical mark product since September 2011.

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This paper focuses on existing practice of branding, packaging and labeling of new products in consumer product manufacturing units. Product identification is not possible without brand name. Protection of product is also equally important to provide quality product for consumer satisfaction. Information regarding the product such as: ingredents, guidelines to use, price, produced and expiry date etc. are also concerned subject of the potential buyer. All these aspects have to be considered for effective promotion of product. It is useful for immediate introduction and recovery in the market by a new product.Key words: Product identification, promotion, protection, information, consumer satisfactionThe Journal of Nepalese Business Studies Vol. V, No. 1, 2008, December Page: 16-24

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This paper demonstrates how an expert in Forensic Linguistics, using his skills and abilities to come up with a legal decision-making based on scientific evidence in cases involving brand names under dispute. The very important aspect in the likelihood of confusion between two brand names is when two products have names which could make consumers a bit confused while the composition of both products has one or two different ingredients which could have some allergic reactions in the body of some consumers referring to sectors like the food industry, pharmaceutical sector and so on. The study states that the conflict on the trademarks Adidas and Abidas could be avoided if the linguists are called upon as experts while the junior brand looks for name about his new brand or in the courts for the legal decision-making between brands. For these reasons, the discussion tries to provide answers to the following research questions: (a) Can a forensic linguist provide relevant evidence in the conflicts between brand names? (b) What are aspects to take into consideration? (c) Is it possible to determine the likelihood of confusion between Adidas and Abidas? To answer these research questions, an authentic case was thoroughly examined. This involved revisiting the Community Trademark conflict between the earlier and international brand Adidas and Abidas. For purposes of analysis, the likelihood of confusion was taken into consideration in the review of the Adidas vs Abidas case.

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A study was made to investigate ways in which consumers perceive the quality of food products and a model of the quality perception process was developed. Consumers used intrinsic (colour and appearance of product) and extrinsic (price and brand name) factors to determine rating of a product on quality aspects that cannot be evaluated at point of purchase (such as taste). The model was used on 13 foods and a high score for a food quality variable (nutritive value, energy content, additives and sensory quality) indicates that this quality is perceived as important. Energy content of meat, cheese, minced meat, margarine and meat products is perceived as most important indicator of quality. A high score for additives in jams, canned and jarred vegetables indicates that these products are perceived as poor quality. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission)

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Examination of counterfeit and adulterated products requires a comprehensive approach. This article discusses the concept of «fraud» and «counterfeiting», given their classification; the need to conduct comprehensive research; the main issues and challenges addressed by experts in various fields of knowledge in the study of counterfeit products. Examination of counterfeit and adulterated products, depending on which product is subject to analysis, requires a whole complex of expert studies: commodity examination (consumer characteristics of products, compliance with standards), examination of substances and materials (to determine what materials or substances the products are made of), documentary examination (product instructions, accompanying documents, warranty cards, certificates, etc), examination in the field of intellectual property (identity or similarity to the degree of confusion of registered marks for goods and services and designations applied to the studied products; presence of all essential features of the patented industrial design in the design of the external form of products or its packaging), chemical and biological examination, etc. In General, the examination of counterfeit and falsified products is one of the means of obtaining evidence, carried out in strict accordance with the current legislation and departmental regulations. Tactics of appointment and carrying out examinations depends on a concrete investigative situation, available forces, means and methods. The conclusion on the results of a comprehensive study provides not only the solution of the question of originality of products, but also the definition in the case of falsification of its form and type. Thus, the goods may be real in terms of intellectual property, but may be falsified in terms of consumer properties or simply defective. In addition, it is necessary to take into account not only the misappropriation of a trademark, name (brand), but also the forgery of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the goods. Examination for the study of counterfeit and / or counterfeit products is one of the most complex examination and requires a comprehensive approach involving a large number of specialists in various fields of knowledge, requires a lot of experience, availability of information and technical support.

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The article considers the process of branding as a means of self-promotion and personal expression. When conducting the study, the authors used the theory of consumer behavior of A. Maslow as a methodological basis, as well as the visual structures of the personality of Z. Freud, K. Jung. The aim of the study is to analyze the process of branding as a psycho-logical means of self-promotion and personality expression. During the study, general scientific methods of cognition were used within the framework of dialectical and systemic approaches, methods of logical and situational analysis. The main tasks of personal expression, solved with the help of brand products, have been identified. At the same time, the authors argue that the choice of brand products for self-promotion in all three cases is based on one psychological motive - self-realization and self-expression. It is shown that the brand brings additional income, since many consumers are ready to overpay, giving an additional amount of money for the opportunity to have a prestigious product even for a premium price. Brands have an emotional connection with consumers. Leading companies with famous brands have long noted for themselves that the connection of their goods with consumers lies through emotions. Brands help people fulfill their dreams, desires, open up more opportunities in life. The stronger and more significant the unique, rational and emotional characteristics of the brand for the consumer, the higher the price he is willing to pay for the product, the greater the opportunity for the company to profit. The increase in profits in turn leads to an increase in the value of shares and to an increase in the value of the company itself, since the brand is a kind of intangible asset. Brand ownership is a winning result of the history of the company, the fate of its founders and executives, skillful talented brand makers. Not every name of the company can be called a brand, not everyone is destined to become one, not everyone is given to maintain the level of the brand. Having a brand means that even with approximately equal consumer and other properties, the product will buy more, the idea will have more adherents.

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Despite some improvements in access to evidence-based medications for opioid use disorder, treatment rates remain low at under a quarter of those with need. High costs for brand name products in these medication markets have limited the volume of drugs purchased, particularly through public health insurance and grant programs. Brand firm anti-competitive practices around the leading buprenorphine product Suboxone — including product hops, citizen petitions and Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy abuses — helped to maintain high prices by extending brand exclusivity periods and hindering generic drug entry. Remedies to address costly anti-competitive activities include adoption of the proposed CREATES Act and modernization of the Hatch-Waxman Act by the Congress, and implementation of substantive modifications to the Food and Drug Administration citizen petition filing procedures. Given the persistence of these abuses, prescriptive changes are favorable to the procedural and clarifying steps thus far favored by the federal government. Extrapolating from the 37% price declines attributable to generic entry for buprenorphine tablets in 2011, our calculations suggest that implementing these remedies to facilitate generic competition with Suboxone film would have resulted in savings of approximately $703 million overall and $203 million to Medicaid in 2017.

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Economic, financial and political development has strongly influenced on the textile industry, which accelerated the pace of change. In order to catch the pace it is necessary to take certain steps now or in the near future. The Far East countries record high economic growth, while other, mostly developed industrial countries growth has considerably declined. Consumer behaviour tends to restrain from purchasing of clothing products, raw material prices are growing and lack of raw materials on the market is noticeable. These trends are causing a certain amount of restlessness in the textile industry. The textile and clothing industry have their distinctive features visible in a manufacturing sector which dominantly depends on brand name firms that spread their business all over the world. Production mainly takes place in developing and fast growing countries, since their production destinations, working conditions and wages are most affordable. For example, about 90 % of clothing items sold in northern countries are produced in Eastern Europe or at the Far East. At the same time, in the northern countries, where most of clothing products are sold, manufacturing facilities of the clothing industry almost doesn’t exist.

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The halal cosmetics industry has a very potential trend both globally and nationally. In Indonesia, the halal cosmetics industry is one of the industries that contribute to the improvement of the Islamic economy. Along with the development of public knowledge about organic products that are environmentally friendly and do not contain animal ingredients, the demand of halal cosmetics products are increase.Unfortunately, the great potential of the halal industry cannot be used properly by local brand. This study aims to analyze some factors that related in halal purchasing decisions. The primary data collection in this study was carried out by purposive sampling method which is women workers. Data processing methods include descriptive analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis with Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach. The results of SEM analysis shown that the Psychological latent variable has a direct positive effect to Purchasing, with a path coefficient of 0.603. Psychological aspects are a relevant factor in the halal cosmetic purchasing as halal using motifs could be reflect fulfillment an attractive confession as female workers.

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Consumer behavior might be considered as a kind of economic or social behavior, but, in any case, it bases on the psychological traits of the person and depend on his motivation. The last is a trigger in the decision-making process of particular product`s purchasing. That is why one of the main approaches in describing consumer behavior is psychoanalytic theory. In contrast to the rational theory of knowledge, psychoanalysis leaves room for the irrational decisions and momentary impulses that "It" provokes. Just remind sacral consumption — the belief that not only goods are acquired, but also a certain lifestyle, hopes for improving one’s own life and etc. In general, consumption is influenced by a number of factors, among which F. Kotler mentions: cultural factors, social, personal and psychological factors. The article describes the factors of internal and external influence on the behavior of consumers, the possibilities of their influence to direct the psychological factors of behavior in marketing activities and the main psychological aspects of consumer behavior and factors that determine the choice of a particular type of consumer behavior. The main groups of factors that influence the formation and implementation of consumer behavior are analyzed, special attention is paid to socio-psychological factors: social class (eight groups: the top of society, conservatives; dominant traditionalists; traditionally working class; dominant "new"; trendsetters; avant-garde; social "dependers"; poors), reference group, communication, social norms and values, personal lifestyle. There are examples of successful and unsuccessful marketing decisions of companies that, accordingly, account or ignored the needs of their consumers in the article. By the way, for Ukrainians, the main criteria for choosing a product are: price, brand and packaging, since the psyche of the consumer is not always aimed specifically at the product and, if products are more or less uniformity, the consumer will choose one, focusing not only on the specific differences of the goods, but also on their appearance.

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Pharmaceutical companies routinely engage physicians, particularly those with prestigious academic credentials, to deliver educational talks to groups of physicians in the community to help market the company's brand-name drugs. These speakers receive substantial compensation to lecture at events sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, a practice that has garnered attention, controversy, and scrutiny in recent years from legislators, professional associations, researchers, and ethicists on the issue of whether it is appropriate for academic physicians to serve in a promotional role. These relationships have become so contentious that three years ago the pharmaceutical industry trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), adopted voluntary guidelines stating that drug companies should stop giving doctors free pens, calendars, sports bags, or tickets to entertainment events. Further, numerous medical associations, such as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP), and government bodies such as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) have recommended that medical schools and teaching hospitals prohibit or strongly discourage faculty from participating in so-called industry Speakers Bureaus — promotional events designed solely to market pharmaceutical products.

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The aim of this study is to investigate Bangladeshi viewers’ attitudes towards product placement activities. Here product placement indicates a paid form of non-traditional advertisem*nt where products or brand names are intentionally present along with the programs. Consumers’ purchase decisions relate to how they know the brand name, and traditional marketing activities failed several times to hit the customer’s black box. People are fascinated by an innovative way of product representation, a tough and challenging task for marketers. Embedded marketing or Product placement helps both viewers and marketers to build a bridge for communication. In Bangladesh, people are less conscious about their local products as well as their media programs. Media and marketing relate inextricably with each other. The study has been conducted in two aspects to investigate the consumer attitude towards product placement. The first one is a comparative analysis of several product placements between Bangladeshi and the Indian media program. The second one is devolving and analyzing questionnaires to determine the Bangladeshi viewers’ scenario about embedded marketing. The logic behind choosing the Indian tv program for comparison is that Bangladeshi viewers are habituated with the Indian program. From 121 respondents, this study tries to forecast the viewers’ attitude toward product placement. Comparing Bangladeshi and Indian movies, dramas, and reality shows, the study expresses that Bangladeshi channel set minimal concern about embedded marketing. An online survey portrays a viewer’s preference level and thinking pattern about their media programs. Proper representation of programs such as an exciting story from movies and drama, a reality show with more customer engagement, less repetition of the same news, more consciousness about irrelevant talk shows, proper timing of the advertisem*nt can help to back the viewers to their media that allows marketers to communicate with their target customers. This study has been conducted with limited sample size. Further research may be conducted about this study with large sample size and may compare with other countries.

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Purpose The discount image associated with odd-ending prices has led to its extensive use by retailers. The purpose of this study is to assess the impacts and applications of nine-ending vs round-ending prices on the purchase of green and non-green products at different price levels and under different purchase motivations. Design/methodology/approach Three experiments are conducted. The first experiment is a 2 (price ending: nine-ending vs round-ending) × 2 (product appeal: green vs non-green) between-subjects study; the second experiment is a 2 (price ending: nine-ending vs round-ending) × 2 (price level: low price vs high price) × 2 (product appeal: green vs non-green) between-subjects study; and the third experiment examined buyers’ preferences of price endings regarding the purchase of green products having either utility (utilitarian) or pleasure (hedonic) motivation. Findings This research highlights that consumers prefer zero-ending prices for green products and pleasure motivation products, but they prefer odd endings for low-priced and utilitarian products. These results support the increased reception of round-ending prices. Accordingly, this study contributes to the literature by providing a boundary condition for odd-ending prices. Specifically, the study finds that the effect of nine-ending prices becomes weaker as the price of the product increases. Practical implications The findings of this study have practical implications for managers, as the results indicate that pricing green products and high-quality perception products using round digits and pricing low-priced and utility perception products using odd digits will increase consumers’ purchase intentions. Moreover, pricing the products using round-ending prices will reduce the perception of low quality and deter brand loyalty emanating from a low-priced/discount image of a product. Originality/value This research contributes to theoretical and practical aspects of behavioural pricing literature. This research uncovers the buyers’ distinct preferences for zero-ending prices and odd-ending prices when purchasing different products based on different motivations and varied price levels. This is the first research of its kind to explore and compare the impact of psychological pricing on green products. The study also resolves a contradiction in past literature regarding the use of nine-ending prices by providing boundary conditions.

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SMEs in Indonesia have given a significant monetary contribution to the Indonesian economy. In our Community Development case study in Cianjur, some of the community members showed enthusiasm in SME business. In this study, the case was observed through Kue Basah Ny. Anong, which was the business’ brand name. In Indonesia itself, the obstacles of SME businesses were inefficient and ineffective business processes to enhance their business growth. These drawbacks were also found in Kue Basah Ny. Anong. These Community Development activities were held to improve their business process on operational, financial, marketing, and human resource aspects. Firstly, in the operational aspect, the activities were to improve food hygiene and standardization. Secondly, in the financial aspect, this Community Development project provided training and facilitation to make daily financial bookkeeping to monitor their business progress. In the marketing aspect, the assistance was to find other alternative marketing strategies to expand marketing through social media and WhatsApp. This tool was considered effective as the consumers in Cianjur possessed mobile phones. In the human resource aspect, training was provided to Mrs. Anong’s family members to promote their business and products to potential business partners and consumers. From the Community Development intervention, the impact was a better business model canvas and approach toward their customers and partners within six months of this Community Development project (one semester). The period of this Community Development project was from January to June 2020.

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Bagi seorang muslim, kita diperintahkan hanya mengkonsumsi barang atau jasa yang halal saja dan menghindari semua barang dan jasa yang haram dan meragukan. Konsumsi dalam hukum Islam, selain untuk memenuhi kebutuhan hidup juga mencerminkan pola hubungan dengan Allah SWT. Bahwa setiap pergerakannya dalam mengonsumsi, adalah manifesti zikir atas nama Allah SWT. Larangan konsumsi produk haram tidak hanya berdasarkan rasionalisme semata, tetapi juga didasarkan pada aspek kerohanian, sosial, dan lingkungan. Roti naf’a adalah salah satu contoh kecil dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, dan hasilnya mengejutkan, bila dibanding antara harga dengan label halal ternyata harga adalah aspek yang paling berpengaruh terhadap minat beli masyarakat dengan hasil yang diperoleh dengan nilai regresi linear berganda t hitung sebesar 2,170 dengan tingkat signifikan 0,005 lebih kecil dari 0,05 (0,005 > 0,05). Label halal tidak berpengaruh positif terhadap minat beli produk roti Pia Naf’a. Dimana penghitungan uji secara parsial diperoleh nilai t hitung yang didapatkan dari hasil penghitungan sebesar 1,907 dengan nilai signifikansi 0,005 lebih kecil dari taraf kesalahan 5% maka Ha diterima dan Ho ditolak. . Faktor yang mempergaruhi minat beli tidak hanya diukur dari pencatuman label halal dalam kemasan, melainkan dari harga, rasa, dan merek.For a Muslim, halal is an obligation. Consumption in Islamic law, apart from fulfilling the necessities of life, also reflects a pattern of relationship with Allah SWT. That every movement in consuming, is a manifestation of dhikr in the name of Allah SWT. The prohibition of consumption of haram products is not only based on logic, but also on social aspects. This research on Roti naf'a products shows that the price variable is the most influential aspect of people's buying interest with the results obtained with the multiple linear regression value counting 2.170 with a significant level of 0.005 less than 0.05 (0.005> 0.05). Meanwhile, the halal label does not have a positive effect on buying interest in Pia Naf'a bread products. Partial calculation is obtained that the calculation value obtained from the calculation results is 1.907 with a significance value of 0.005 which is smaller than the 5% error, so Ha is accepted and Ho is rejected. Factors affecting purchase intention are not only measured from the inclusion of halal labels on the packaging, but also from price, taste, and brand.

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Market changes affect consumer psychology. Consumer behavior is variable. In this study, the author examines some of the main aspects of consumer psychology that help to understand consumer behavior. Consumer behavior includes the psychological processes that consumers go through when recognizing needs, finding ways to meet them, making purchasing decisions (for example, whether to buy a product, and if so, which brand and where), interpreting information, making plans, and implementing these plans (for example, by making comparative purchases or actually purchasing a product).The movement from scarcity to saturation of demand leads to the fact that among a large number of goods and services, the buyer begins to look for something that meets his personal aspirations for self-realization.A well-known point of view used in consumer psychology is behaviorism. This branch of psychology asserts that people’s actions are conditioned by external stimuli. Consumers want individuality. Individuality in consumer psychology is how the possession of a product increases their self - es- teem or satisfies a need caused by external influence.The era of mass production of goods has been replaced by customization, reflecting the change in consumer priorities (instead of the desire to be “like everyone else”, a new generation of consumers values their own individuality). Customization (English to customize - customize, change something, making it more suitable for the needs of a particular consumer). This is achieved by making structural or design changes and individualizing products to meet the needs of specific consumers.Customization in the full sense of the word is not an extension of the product line, but a unique product for a specific consumer, which creates a potential demand for a product category.According to the author, the topic of customization is very ambiguous. For example, in the retail business, the use of customization in relation to mass-market food products is not entirely correct. Customization is considered an ideal way to interact in the “supplier of goods or services - customer” scheme. It provides a competitive advantage by creating a higher value for the customer. The main goal of customization is to create a sense in the consumer that the work is done personally for them and meets their personal needs.

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Learning outcomes Understand the dynamics of the diabetes supplement market and carry out an industry analysis using Porter’s five force analysis. Understand the challenges faced by a small entrepreneur in setting up distribution channels and examine the channel powers that come into play in the given context. Discuss the merits and demerits of traditional vs online channels. Understand the factors that are important to succeed in a highly competitive diabetes supplement industry (this would include aspects such as value sought by end customer, business-to-business [B2B] buyers, expertise required to handle B2B customers and also the price and salesforce reward approaches). Enumerate the merits and demerits of individual product branding vs an umbrella brand for a company selling over-the-counter (OTC) drugs online. Understand the various considerations for export marketing for OTC drugs. Case overview/synopsis Sushruth Ayurved Industry (SAI) is a proprietorship firm owned by Girish Banvi who always dreamt of being an entrepreneur. He had set up SAI to produce diabetes supplement by the name “Sugar Knocker” to give wings to his dreams. Notwithstanding competition from corporate players and demands from health-care practitioners, he had to abandon his traditional route to selling his product and open his eyes to online marketing. He believed it could provide him the perfect medium to reach his prospects directly without any middlemen within a cost-effective budget. SAI registered revenue of INR 24m per year, completely attributable to online sales. With a firm footing in the online space, Girish was now exploring physical marketing to expand his audience reach in the B2B market and also add new products to his portfolio. He was also worried about the low capacity utilization of his manufacturing unit, which stood at 20%. With only 30% of the 40 formulations used, there was much scope for expansion. With his plant capacity underused, the time was ripe for Girish to trace his footsteps from where he had begun in the first place. Complexity academic level This case can be used in marketing management course under the marketing strategy module. It can also find use in the elective course on marketing channels, and in sectoral programs such as health-care management or MBA in health care. This case can also be used in the health-care products marketing course. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing.

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Inbound marketing focuses on producing relevant, audience captivating, high quality content that attracts consumers towards the online presence of a specific organization, brand or product. This study has been conducted using the online marketing research technique called netnography – a qualitative and interpretive methodology for the study of users in the virtual space. As the virtual medium presents a good medium for organization-consumer, bi-directional dialogue, companies can use the online arena for soliciting consumer views for their products, promotion mechanisms etc., hence, making these ideal tools to enable consumer participation in the co-creation strategies of organizations. Co-creation involves the consumers' participation in the creation of the core offering itself. It can occur through shared inventiveness, co-design or shared production of related goods, and can occur with customers and any other partners in the value network (R. Bolton, & S. Saxena-Iyer, 2009). Co-creation occurs when the customer participates through spontaneous, discretionary behaviors that uniquely customize the service experience (beyond the selection of pre-determined options). This was done by exploratory research on consumers' behavior in the online community “My Starbucks Idea”, with respect to updates and responses from Starbucks and their behavior with respect to feedback and suggestions from consumers. Ideas include fresh ideas given by other consumers to Starbucks through posts and the ideas which have been implemented recently in the stores that are updated by Starbucks' employees. Starbucks behavior was seen in terms of the ratio of volume of suggestion posts by consumers and volume of ideas adopted by Starbucks. “My Starbucks Idea” involves the psychological aspects of consumer behavior which are utilized by Starbucks because the ratio of volume of suggestion posts by consumers and the volume of ideas adopted by Starbucks is remarkably high. Another reason of participation of the consumers is the social connection; it is supported by the higher volume of posts observed.

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Šio straipsnio tikslas – atskleisti informacijos ir komunikacijos elementų svarbą šiuolaikinėje marketingo vadyboje, informaciją suvokiant kaip esminį mainų atributą, kuris skatina sandoriais (angl. transaction) grindžiamus mainus keisti santykių (angl. relationship) mainais. Šis aprašomojo pobūdžio tyrimas yra atliktas pasitelkiant mokslinės santykių marketingo literatūros šaltinių apžvalgos ir hipotetinio pobūdžio interpretacijomis grindžiamus mokslinės kūrybos metodus. Straipsnyje siekiama pagrįsti hipotezę, jog santykių mainai tarp įmonės ir vartotojo pasireiškia kaip informacijos ir komunikacijos procesų nulemta veikla, kuria mažinamas pažinimo disonansas, užtikrinamas saugumo jausmas, emocinis pasitenkinimas informacijos turiniu ir kiekiu. Santykių mainai nagrinėjami informacijos ir komunikacijos aspektais, siekiant atskleisti jų svarbą marketingo vadyboje. Informacija interpretuojama kaip esminė šiuolaikinės marketingo vadybos kategorija, nuo kurios valdymo priklauso būsima mainų tarp įmonės ir vartotojo forma bei mainų trukmė. Kintančio sociumo kontekste marketingas gali būti apibrėžiamas kaip informacijos procesų nulemta veikla, kuri leidžia didinti žinojimą apie rinką ir joje veikiančius dalyvius, šias žinias naudojant vertybiniams vartotojų bruožams nustatyti ir jomis remiantis kurti vertę rinkoje.Reikšminiai žodžiai: informacijos valdymas, komunikacija, dialogas, santykiai, socialinis emocinis ryšys.Informational aspects of relationship exchange in marketingTomas Rytel SummaryThe article aims at rationalizing a hypothesis that exchange of relations between a company and a user occurs as an activity conditioned by informational and communicational processes, which reduces cognitive dissonance and guarantees the feeling of safety and emotional satisfaction in terms of the content and amount of information. Information is interpreted as a basic category of modern marketing management, which influences the future swap between a company and a user as well as the duration of exchanges. Needs of current users may be approached as natural demand of a person for information, materialization of which in terms of content and amount enables to reduce cognitive dissonance in market exchanges. By applying postmodernistic discourse in the context of marketing management, the basic factor generating market-based exclusiveness and competitiveness (or an element of the value-establishing chain) is the know-how, and the main resource is information; thus, from the economic point of view, success or failure of any kind of business depends not on its production efficiency, but on the ability to involve the creative potential and know-how. An increasing need for brands and symbols in marketing prompts to satisfy individual expectations of users in terms of the content and amount of information. Users in today’s market are being governed by a great number of rapidly changing symbols which are being created in terms of the content and amount of information.The performed research has confirmed that relationship exchange is being generated as an activity determined by information and communication, which may change even the very conception of marketing management. The scientific problem discussed in the paper effectuates the following conclusions:1. Relations are being interpreted as an activity determined by verbal and non-verbal communication, which stimulate information spread, en courage a user to trust a company, minimize the search of alternatives, and increase loyalty towards a company, its products / services or brand name.2. Relationship exchanges appeal to the maximally individual relationship between a user and a company, which may occur only in the presence of the feeling of reliability and obligation, which is being generated as permanent phenomena of information exchange. These facts act as the basis for interpreting information and communication as a significant category of exchanges, which under participation in the process of exchange is likely to reduce formal separation and to increase the interdependence in terms of fellow-feeling.3. Relations are being generated on the emotional basis which is established according to the social-economic features of exchange. The mentioned features of exchange occur when swapping not material objects, but those involving the informational features.4. Bilateral communication is being developed, which discloses exchange as the process of information and know-how exchange capable of turning the interrelation between a company and a user into a relationship.5. Information and know-how turn into commodity which is a value for a company and a user. Information and know-how in the modern market ensure an organic link between a company and a user and serve for the development of relations, for exchanges based on relationship, reducing formal divides, determining a communication.Key words: information management, communication, dialogue, relationship.

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PurposeThis study aims to focus on proposing and empirically validating a model that captures certain critical socio-psychological factors that nurture consumers' attitude towards affordable luxury brands in an emerging market context of India.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected via a cross-sectional questionnaire survey from 491 customers of different fashion accessory luxury products in India. The data were analyzed through structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS 23.0 SEM software.FindingsThe findings of this study reveal that conspicuousness, status consumption, brand name consciousness, need for uniqueness and hedonism positively affect consumer attitude towards affordable luxury, which consequently affects consumers' purchase intention. The findings further reveal that age acts as a moderator in driving consumers' neo-luxury consumption.Originality/valueBy uniting various socio-psychological factors with consumer attitude and purchase intention in a conceptual model, along with studying the moderating role of age, this study responds to the calls for further research regarding affordable luxury and offers a more granular understanding of specific consumer motivations that guide Indian consumers' affordable luxury consumption.

Abstract:

The brand began, quite literally, as a method for ranchers to identify their cattle. By burning a distinct symbol into the hide of a baby calf, the owner could insure that if it one day wandered off his property or was stolen by a competitor, he’d be able to point to that logo and claim the animal as his rightful property. When the manufacturers of products adopted the brand as a way of guaranteeing the quality of their goods, its function remained pretty much the same. Buying a package of oats with the Quaker label meant the customer could trace back these otherwise generic oats to their source. If there was a problem, he knew where he could turn. More important, if the oats were of satisfactory or superior quality, he knew where he could get them again. Trademarking a brand meant that no one else could call his oats Quaker. Advertising in this innocent age simply meant publicizing the existence of one’s brand. The sole objective was to increase consumers awareness of the product or company that made it. Those who even thought to employ specialists for the exclusive purpose of writing ad copy hired newspaper reporters and travelling salesmen, who knew how to explain the attributes of an item in words that people tended to remember. It wasn’t until 1922 that a preacher and travelling “medicine show” salesman-turned-copywriter named Claude Hopkins decided that advertising should be systematized into a science. His short but groundbreaking book Scientific Advertising proposed that the advertisem*nt is merely a printed extension of the salesman¹s pitch and should follow the same rules. Hopkins believed in using hard descriptions over hype, and text over image: “The more you tell, the more you sell” and “White space is wasted space” were his mantras. Hopkins believed that any illustrations used in an ad should be directly relevant to the product itself, not just a loose or emotional association. He insisted on avoiding “frivolity” at all costs, arguing that “no one ever bought from a clown.” Although some images did appear in advertisem*nts and on packaging as early as the 1800s - the Quaker Oats man showed up in 1877 - these weren¹t consciously crafted to induce psychological states in customers. They were meant just to help people remember one brand over another. How better to recall the brand Quaker than to see a picture of one? It wasn’t until the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as Americans turned toward movies and television and away from newspapers and radio, that advertisers’ focus shifted away from describing their brands and to creating images for them. During these decades, Midwestern adman Leo Burnett concocted what is often called the Chicago school of advertising, in which lovable characters are used to represent products. Green Giant, which was originally just the Minnesota Valley Canning Company’s code name for an experimental pea, became the Jolly Green Giant in young Burnett’s world of animated characters. He understood that the figure would make a perfect and enticing brand image for an otherwise boring product and could also serve as a mnemonic device for consumers. As he watched his character grow in popularity, Burnett discovered that the mythical figure of a green giant had resonance in many different cultures around the world. It became a kind of archetype and managed to penetrate the psyche in more ways than one. Burnett was responsible for dozens of character-based brand images, including Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, and the Marlboro Man. In each case, the character creates a sense of drama, which engages the audience in the pitch. This was Burnett’s great insight. He still wanted to sell a product based on its attributes, but he knew he had to draw in his audience using characters. Brand images were also based on places, like Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, or on recognizable situations, such as the significant childhood memories labelled “Kodak moments” or a mother nurturing her son on a cold day, a defining image for Campbell’s soup. In all these cases, however, the moment, location, or character went only so far as to draw the audience into the ad, after which they would be subjected to a standard pitch: ‘Soup is good food’, or ‘Sorry, Charlie, only the best tuna get to be Starkist’. Burnett saw himself as a homespun Midwesterner who was contributing to American folklore while speaking in the plain language of the people. He took pride in the fact that his ads used words like “ain’t”; not because they had some calculated psychological effect on the audience, but because they communicated in a natural, plainspoken style. As these methods found their way to Madison Avenue and came to be practiced much more self-consciously, Burnett¹s love for American values and his focus on brand attributes were left behind. Branding became much more ethereal and image-based, and ads only occasionally nodded to a product’s attributes. In the 1960s, advertising gurus like David Ogilvy came up with rules about television advertising that would have made Claude Hopkins shudder. “Food in motion” dictated that food should always be shot by a moving camera. “Open with fire” meant that ads should start in a very exciting and captivating way. Ogilvy told his creatives to use supers - text superimposed on the screen to emphasize important phrases and taglines. All these techniques were devised to promote brand image, not the product. Ogilvy didn’t believe consumers could distinguish between products were it not for their images. In Ogilvy on Advertising, he explains that most people cannot tell the difference between their own “favourite” whiskey and the closest two competitors’: ‘Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don¹t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn¹t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is ninety percent of what the distiller has to sell.’ (Ogilvy, 1993). Thus, we learned to “trust our car to the man who wears the star” not because Texaco had better gasoline than Shell, but because the company’s advertisers had created a better brand image. While Burnett and his disciples were building brand myths, another school of advertisers was busy learning about its audience. Back in the 1920s, Raymond Rubicam, who eventually founded the agency Young and Rubicam, thought it might be interesting to hire a pollster named Dr. Gallup from Northwestern University to see what could be gleaned about consumers from a little market research. The advertising industry’s version of cultural anthropology, or demographics, was born. Like the public-relations experts who study their target populations in order to manipulate them later, marketers began conducting polls, market surveys, and focus groups on the segments of the population they hoped to influence. And to draw clear, clean lines between demographic groups, researchers must almost always base distinctions on four factors: race, age, sex, and wages. Demographic research is reductionist by design. I once consulted to an FM radio station whose station manager wanted to know, “Who is our listener?” Asking such a question reduces an entire listenership down to one fictional person. It’s possible that no single individual will ever match the “customer profile” meant to apply to all customers, which is why so much targeted marketing often borders on classist, racist, and sexist pandering. Billboards for most menthol cigarettes, for example, picture African-Americans because, according to demographic research, black people prefer them to regular cigarettes. Microsoft chose Rolling Stones songs to launch Windows 95, a product targeted at wealthy baby boomers. “The Women’s Global Challenge” was an advertising-industry-created Olympics for women, with no purpose other than to market to active females. By the 1970s, the two strands of advertising theory - demographic research and brand image - were combined to develop campaigns that work on both levels. To this day, we know to associate Volvos with safety, Dr. Pepper with individuality, and Harley-Davidson with American heritage. Each of these brand images is crafted to appeal to the target consumer’s underlying psychological needs: Volvo ads are aimed at upper-middle-class white parents who fear for their children’s health and security, Dr. Pepper is directed to young nonconformists, and the Harley-Davidson image supports its riders’ self-perception as renegades. Today’s modern (or perhaps postmodern) brands don’t invent a corporate image on their own; they appropriate one from the media itself, such as MetLife did with Snoopy, Butterfinger did with Bart Simpson, or Kmart did by hiring Penny Marshall and Rosie O’Donnell. These mascots were selected because their perceived characteristics match the values of their target consumers - not the products themselves. In the language of today’s marketers, brand images do not reflect on products but on advertisers’ perceptions of their audiences’ psychology. This focus on audience composition and values has become the standard operating procedure in all of broadcasting. When Fox TV executives learned that their animated series “King of the Hill”, about a Texan propane distributor, was not faring well with certain demographics, for example, they took a targeted approach to their character’s rehabilitation. The Brandweek piece on Fox’s ethnic campaign uncomfortably dances around the issue. Hank Hill is the proverbial everyman, and Fox wants viewers to get comfortable with him; especially viewers in New York, where “King of the Hill”’s homespun humor hasn’t quite caught on with the young urbanites. So far this season, the show has pulled in a 10.1 rating/15 share in households nationally, while garnering a 7.9 rating/12 share in New York (Brandweek, 1997) As far as Fox was concerned, while regular people could identify with the network’s new “everyman” character, New Yorkers weren’t buying his middle-American patter. The television show’s ratings proved what TV executives had known all along: that New York City’s Jewish demographic doesn’t see itself as part of the rest of America. Fox’s strategy for “humanizing” the character to those irascible urbanites was to target the group’s ethnographic self-image. Fox put ads for the show on the panels of sidewalk coffee wagons throughout Manhattan, with the tagline “Have a bagel with Hank”. In an appeal to the target market’s well-developed (and well-researched) cynicism, Hank himself is shown saying, “May I suggest you have that with a schmear”. The disarmingly ethnic humor here is meant to underscore the absurdity of a Texas propane salesman using a Jewish insider’s word like “schmear.” In another Upper West Side billboard, Hank’s son appeals to the passing traffic: “Hey yo! Somebody toss me up a knish!” As far as the New York demographic is concerned, these jokes transform the characters from potentially threatening Southern rednecks into loveable hicks bending over backward to appeal to Jewish sensibilities, and doing so with a comic and, most important, nonthreatening inadequacy. Today, the most intensely targeted demographic is the baby - the future consumer. Before an average American child is twenty months old, he can recognize the McDonald’s logo and many other branded icons. Nearly everything a toddler encounters - from Band-Aids to underpants - features the trademarked characters of Disney or other marketing empires. Although this target market may not be in a position to exercise its preferences for many years, it pays for marketers to imprint their brands early. General Motors bought a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated for Kids for its Chevy Venture minivan. Their brand manager rationalized that the eight-to-fourteen-year-old demographic consists of “back-seat consumers” (Leonhardt, 1997). The real intention of target marketing to children and babies, however, goes deeper. The fresh neurons of young brains are valuable mental real estate to admen. By seeding their products and images early, the marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (Bud-weis-er) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, “They¹re great!” (Currently, more children recognize the frogs than Tony.) This indicates a long-term coercive strategy. The abstraction of brand images from the products they represent, combined with an increasing assault on our demographically targeted psychological profiles, led to some justifiable consumer paranoia by the 1970s. Advertising was working on us in ways we couldn’t fully understand, and people began to look for an explanation. In 1973, Wilson Bryan Key, a communications researcher, wrote the first of four books about “subliminal advertising,” in which he accused advertisers of hiding sexual imagery in ice cubes, and psychoactive words like “sex” onto the airbrushed surfaces of fashion photographs. Having worked on many advertising campaigns from start to finish, in close proximity to everyone from copywriters and art directors to printers, I can comfortably put to rest any rumours that major advertising agencies are engaging in subliminal campaigns. How do images that could be interpreted as “sexual” show up in ice cubes or elbows? The final photographs chosen for ads are selected by committee out of hundreds that are actually shot. After hours or days of consideration, the group eventually feels drawn to one or two photos out of the batch. Not surprising, these photos tend to have more evocative compositions and details, but no penises, breasts, or skulls are ever superimposed onto the images. In fact, the man who claims to have developed subliminal persuasion, James Vicary, admitted to Advertising Age in 1984 that he had fabricated his evidence that the technique worked in order to drum up business for his failing research company. But this confession has not assuaged Key and others who relentlessly, perhaps obsessively, continue to pursue those they feel are planting secret visual messages in advertisem*nts. To be fair to Key, advertisers have left themselves open to suspicion by relegating their work to the abstract world of the image and then targeting consumer psychology so deliberately. According to research by the Roper Organization in 1992, fifty-seven percent of American consumers still believe that subliminal advertising is practiced on a regular basis, and only one in twelve think it “almost never” happens. To protect themselves from the techniques they believe are being used against them, the advertising audience has adopted a stance of cynical suspicion. To combat our increasing awareness and suspicion of demographic targeting, marketers have developed a more camouflaged form of categorization based on psychological profiles instead of race and age. Jim Schroer, the executive director of new marketing strategy at Ford explains his abandonment of broad-demographic targeting: ‘It’s smarter to think about emotions and attitudes, which all go under the term: psychographics - those things that can transcend demographic groups.’ (Schroer, 1997) Instead, he now appeals to what he calls “consumers’ images of themselves.” Unlike broad demographics, the psychographic is developed using more narrowly structured qualitative-analysis techniques, like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and even home surveillance. Marketing analysts observe the behaviors of volunteer subjects, ask questions, and try to draw causal links between feelings, self-image, and purchases. A company called Strategic Directions Group provides just such analysis of the human psyche. In their study of the car-buying habits of the forty-plus baby boomers and their elders, they sought to define the main psychological predilections that human beings in this age group have regarding car purchases. Although they began with a demographic subset of the overall population, their analysis led them to segment the group into psychographic types. For example, members of one psychographic segment, called the ³Reliables,² think of driving as a way to get from point A to point B. The “Everyday People” campaign for Toyota is aimed at this group and features people depending on their reliable and efficient little Toyotas. A convertible Saab, on the other hand, appeals to the ³Stylish Fun² category, who like trendy and fun-to-drive imports. One of the company’s commercials shows a woman at a boring party fantasizing herself into an oil painting, where she drives along the canvas in a sporty yellow Saab. Psychographic targeting is more effective than demographic targeting because it reaches for an individual customer more directly - like a fly fisherman who sets bait and jiggles his rod in a prescribed pattern for a particular kind of fish. It’s as if a marketing campaign has singled you out and recognizes your core values and aspirations, without having lumped you into a racial or economic stereotype. It amounts to a game of cat-and-mouse between advertisers and their target psychographic groups. The more effort we expend to escape categorization, the more ruthlessly the marketers pursue us. In some cases, in fact, our psychographic profiles are based more on the extent to which we try to avoid marketers than on our fundamental goals or values. The so-called “Generation X” adopted the anti-chic aesthetic of thrift-store grunge in an effort to find a style that could not be so easily identified and exploited. Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying “Whatever.” The members of Generation X are putting up a good fight. Having already developed an awareness of how marketers attempt to target their hearts and wallets, they use their insight into programming to resist these attacks. Unlike the adult marketers pursuing them, young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives. As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic-based pandering, they adopt a stance of self-protective irony‹distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers. Lorraine Ketch, the director of planning in charge of Levi¹s trendy Silvertab line, explained, “This audience hates marketing that’s in your face. It eyeballs it a mile away, chews it up and spits it out” (On Advertising, 1998). Chiat/Day, one of the world’s best-known and experimental advertising agencies, found the answer to the crisis was simply to break up the Gen-X demographic into separate “tribes” or subdemographics - and include subtle visual references to each one of them in the ads they produce for the brand. According to Levi’s director of consumer marketing, the campaign meant to communicate, “We really understand them, but we are not trying too hard” (On Advertising, 1998). Probably unintentionally, Ms. Ketch has revealed the new, even more highly abstract plane on which advertising is now being communicated. Instead of creating and marketing a brand image, advertisers are creating marketing campaigns about the advertising itself. Silvertab’s target market is supposed to feel good about being understood, but even better about understanding the way they are being marketed to. The “drama” invented by Leo Burnett and refined by David Ogilvy and others has become a play within a play. The scene itself has shifted. The dramatic action no longer occurs between the audience and the product, the brand, or the brand image, but between the audience and the brand marketers. As audiences gain even more control over the media in which these interactive stories unfold, advertising evolves ever closer to a theatre of the absurd. excerpted from Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say)? Works Cited Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage, 1983. Brandweek Staff, "Number Crunching, Hollywood Style," Brandweek. October 6, 1997. Leonhardt, David, and Kathleen Kerwin, "Hey Kid, Buy This!" Business Week. June 30, 1997 Schroer, Jim. Quoted in "Why We Kick Tires," by Carol Morgan and Doron Levy. Brandweek. Sept 29, 1997. "On Advertising," The New York Times. August 14, 1998 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Rushkoff, Douglas. "Coercion " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>. APA Style Rushkoff, D. (2003, Jun 19). Coercion . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>

Abstract:

Introduction Darkness is often characterised as something that warrants heightened caution and scrutiny – signifying increased danger and risk. Within settler-colonial settings such as Australia, cautionary and negative connotations of darkness are projected upon Black people and their bodies, forming part of continuing colonial regimes of power (Moreton-Robinson). Negative stereotypes of “dark” continues to racialise all Indigenous peoples. In Australia, Indigenous peoples are both Indigenous and Black regardless of skin colour, and this plays out in a range of ways, some of which will be highlighted within this article. This article demonstrates that for Indigenous peoples, associations of fear and danger are built into the structural mechanisms that shape and maintain colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples and their bodies. It is this embodied form of darkness, and its negative connotations, and responses that we explore further. Figure 1: Megan Cope’s ‘I’m not afraid of the Dark’ t-shirt (Fredericks and Heemsbergen 2021) Responding to the anxieties and fears of settlers that often surround Indigenous peoples, Quandamooka artist and member of the art collective ProppaNow, Megan Cope, has produced a range of t-shirts, one of which declares “I’m not afraid of the Dark” (fig. 1). The wording ‘reflects White Australia’s fear of blackness’ (Dark + Dangerous). Exploring race relations through the theme of “darkness”, we begin by discussing how negative connotations of darkness are represented through everyday lexicons and how efforts to shift prejudicial and racist language are often met with defensiveness and resistance. We then consider how fears towards the dark translate into everyday practices, reinforced by media representations. The article considers how stereotype, conjecture, and prejudice is inflicted upon Indigenous people and reflects white settler fears and anxieties, rooting colonialism in everyday language, action, and norms. The Language of Fear Indigenous people and others with dark skin tones are often presented as having a proclivity towards threatening, aggressive, deceitful, and negative behaviours. This works to inform how Indigenous peoples are “known” and responded to by hegemonic (predominantly white) populations. Negative connotations of Indigenous people are a means of reinforcing and legitimising the falsity that European knowledge systems, norms, and social structures are superior whilst denying the contextual colonial circ*mstances that have led to white dominance. In Australia, such denial corresponds to the refusal to engage with the unceded sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples or acknowledge Indigenous resistance. Language is integral to the ways in which dominant populations come to “know” and present the so-called “Other”. Such language is reflected in digital media, which both produce and maintain white anxieties towards race and ethnicity. When part of mainstream vernacular, racialised language – and the value judgments associated with it – often remains in what Moreton-Robinson describes as “invisible regimes of power” (75). Everyday social structures, actions, and habits of thought veil oppressive and discriminatory attitudes that exist under the guise of “normality”. Colonisation and the dominance of Eurocentric ways of knowing, being, and doing has fixated itself on creating a normality that associates Indigeneity and darkness with negative and threatening connotations. In doing so, it reinforces power balances that presents an image of white superiority built on the invalidation of Indigeneity and Blackness. White fears and anxieties towards race made explicit through social and digital media are also manifest via subtle but equally pervasive everyday action (Carlson and Frazer; Matamoros-Fernández). Confronting and negotiating such fears becomes a daily reality for many Indigenous people. During the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, which extended to Australia and were linked to deaths in custody and police violence, African American poet Saul Williams reminded his followers of the power of language in constructing racialised fears (saulwilliams). In an Instagram post, Williams draws back the veil of an uncontested normality to ask that we take personal responsibility over the words we use. He writes: here’s a tip: Take the words DARK or BLACK in connection to bad, evil, ominous or scary events out of your vocabulary. We learn the stock market crashed on Black Monday, we read headlines that purport “Dark Days Ahead”. There’s “dark” or “black” humour which implies an undertone of evil, and then there are people like me who grow up with dark skin having to make sense of the English/American lexicon and its history of “fair complexions” – where “fair” can mean “light; blond.” OR “in accordance with rules or standards; legitimate.” We may not be fully responsible for the duplicitous evolution of language and subtle morphing of inherited beliefs into description yet we are in full command of the words we choose even as they reveal the questions we’ve left unasked. Like the work of Moreton-Robinson and other scholars, Williams implores his followers to take a reflexive position to consider the questions often left unasked. In doing so, he calls for the transcendence of anonymity and engagement with the realities of colonisation – no matter how ugly, confronting, and complicit one may be in its continuation. In the Australian context this means confronting how terms such as “dark”, “darkie”, or “darky” were historically used as derogatory and offensive slurs for Aboriginal peoples. Such language continues to be used today and can be found in the comment sections of social media, online news platforms, and other online forums (Carlson “Love and Hate”). Taking the move to execute personal accountability can be difficult. It can destabilise and reframe the ways in which we understand and interact with the world (Rose 22). For some, however, exposing racism and seemingly mundane aspects of society is taken as a personal attack which is often met with reactionary responses where one remains closed to new insights (Whittaker). This feeds into fears and anxieties pertaining to the perceived loss of power. These fears and anxieties continue to surface through conversations and calls for action on issues such as changing the date of Australia Day, the racialised reporting of news (McQuire), removing of plaques and statues known to be racist, and requests to change placenames and the names of products. For example, in 2020, Australian cheese producer Saputo Dairy Australia changed the name of it is popular brand “Coon” to “Cheer Tasty”. The decision followed a lengthy campaign led by Dr Stephen Hagan who called for the rebranding based on the Coon brand having racist connotations (ABC). The term has its racist origins in the United States and has long been used as a slur against people with dark skin, liking them to racoons and their tendency to steal and deceive. The term “Coon” is used in Australia by settlers as a racist term for referring to Aboriginal peoples. Claims that the name change is example of political correctness gone astray fail to acknowledge and empathise with the lived experience of being treated as if one is dirty, lazy, deceitful, or untrustworthy. Other brand names have also historically utilised racist wording along with imagery in their advertising (Conor). Pear’s soap for example is well-known for its historical use of racist words and imagery to legitimise white rule over Indigenous colonies, including in Australia (Jackson). Like most racial epithets, the power of language lies in how the words reflect and translate into actions that dehumanise others. The words we use matter. The everyday “ordinary” world, including online, is deeply politicised (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”) and comes to reflect attitudes and power imbalances that encourage white people to internalise the falsity that they are superior and should have control over Black people (Conor). Decisions to make social change, such as that made by Saputo Dairy Australia, can manifest into further white anxieties via their ability to force the confrontation of the circ*mstances that continue to contribute to one’s own prosperity. In other words, to unveil the realities of colonialism and ask the questions that are too often left in the dark. Lived Experiences of Darkness Colonial anxieties and fears are driven by the fact that Black populations in many areas of the world are often characterised as criminals, perpetrators, threats, or nuisances, but are rarely seen as victims. In Australia, the repeated lack of police response and receptivity to concerns of Indigenous peoples expressed during the Black Lives Matter campaign saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets to protest. Protestors at the same time called for the end of police brutality towards Indigenous peoples and for an end to Indigenous deaths in custody. The protests were backed by a heavy online presence that sought to mobilise people in hope of lifting the veil that shrouds issues relating to systemic racism. There have been over 450 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to die in custody since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 (The Guardian). The tragedy of the Indigenous experience gains little attention internationally. The negative implications of being the object of white fear and anxiety are felt by Indigenous and other Black communities daily. The “safety signals” (Daniella Emanuel) adopted by white peoples in response to often irrational perceptions of threat signify how Indigenous and other Black peoples and communities are seen and valued by the hegemony. Memes played out in social media depicting “Karens” – a term that corresponds to caricaturised white women (but equally applicable to men) who exhibit behaviours of entitlement – have increasing been used in media to expose the prevalence of irrational racial fears (also see Wong). Police are commonly called on Indigenous people and other Black people for simply being within spaces such as shopping malls, street corners, parks, or other spaces in which they are considered not to belong (Mohdin). Digital media are also commonly envisioned as a space that is not natural or normal for Indigenous peoples, a notion that maintains narratives of so-called Indigenous primitivity (Carlson and Frazer). Media connotations of darkness as threatening are associated with, and strategically manipulated by, the images that accompany stories about Indigenous peoples and other Black peoples. Digital technologies play significant roles in producing and disseminating the images shown in the media. Moreover, they have a “role in mediating and amplifying old and new forms of abuse, hate, and discrimination” (Matamoros-Fernández and Farkas). Daniels demonstrates how social media sites can be spaces “where race and racism play out in interesting, sometimes disturbing, ways” (702), shaping ongoing colonial fears and anxieties over Black peoples. Prominent footballer Adam Goodes, for example, faced a string of attacks after he publicly condemned racism when he was called an “Ape” by a spectator during a game celebrating Indigenous contributions to the sport (Coram and Hallinan). This was followed by a barrage of personal attacks, criticisms, and booing that spread over the remaining years of his football career. When Goodes performed a traditional war dance as a form of celebration during a game in 2015, many turned to social media to express their outrage over his “confrontational” and “aggressive” behaviour (Robinson). Goodes’s affirmation of his Indigeneity was seen by many as a threat to their own positionality and white sensibility. Social media were therefore used as a mechanism to control settler narratives and maintain colonial power structures by framing the conversation through a white lens (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”). Indigenous peoples in other highly visible fields have faced similar backlash. In 1993, Elaine George was the first Aboriginal person to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine, a decision considered “risky” at the time (Singer). The editor of Vogue later revealed that the cover was criticised by some who believed George’s skin tone was made to appear lighter than it actually was and that it had been digitally altered. The failure to accept a lighter skin colour as “Aboriginal” exposes a neglect to accept ethnicity and Blackness in all its diversity (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”; Carlson “Love and Hate”). Where Adam Goodes was criticised for his overt expression of Blackness, George was critisised for not being “black enough”. It was not until seventeen years later that another Aboriginal model, Samantha Harris, was featured on the cover of Vogue (Marks). While George inspired and pathed the way for those to come, Harris experienced similar discrimination within the industry and amongst the public (Carson and Ky). Singer Jessica Mauboy (in Hornery) also explains how her identity was managed by others. She recalls, I was pretty young when I first received recognition, and for years I felt as though I couldn't show my true identity. What I was saying in public was very dictated by other people who could not handle my sense of culture and identity. They felt they had to take it off my hands. Mauboy’s experience not only demonstrates how Blackness continues to be seen as something to “handle”, but also how power imbalances play out. Scholar Chelsea Watego offers numerous examples of how this occurs in different ways and arenas, for example through relationships between people and within workplaces. Bargallie’s scholarly work also provides an understanding of how Indigenous people experience racism within the Australian public service, and how it is maintained through the structures and systems of power. The media often represents communities with large Indigenous populations as being separatist and not contributing to wider society and problematic (McQuire). Violence, and the threat of violence, is often presented in media as being normalised. Recently there have been calls for an increased police presence in Alice Springs, NT, and other remotes communities due to ongoing threats of “tribal payback” and acts of “lawlessness” (Sky News Australia; Hildebrand). Goldberg uses the phrase “Super/Vision” to describe the ways that Black men and women in Black neighbourhoods are continuously and erroneously supervised and surveilled by police using apparatus such as helicopters and floodlights. Simone Browne demonstrates how contemporary surveillance practices are rooted in anti-black domination and are operationalised through a white gaze. Browne uses the term “racializing surveillance” to describe a ”technology of social control where surveillance practices, policies, and performances concern the production of norms pertaining to race and exercise a ‘power to define what is in or out of place’” (16). The outcome is often discriminatory treatment to those negatively racialised by such surveillance. Narratives that associate Indigenous peoples with darkness and danger fuel colonial fears and uphold the invisible regimes of power by instilling the perception that acts of surveillance and the restrictions imposed on Indigenous peoples’ autonomy are not only necessary but justified. Such myths fail to contextualise the historic colonial factors that drive segregation and enable a forgetting that negates personal accountability and complicity in maintaining colonial power imbalances (Riggs and Augoustinos). Inayatullah and Blaney (165) write that the “myth we construct calls attention to a darker, tragic side of our ethical engagement: the role of colonialism in constituting us as modern actors.” They call for personal accountability whereby one confronts the notion that we are both products and producers of a modernity rooted in a colonialism that maintains the misguided notion of white supremacy (Wolfe; Mignolo; Moreton-Robinson). When Indigenous and other Black peoples enter spaces that white populations don’t traditionally associate as being “natural” or “fitting” for them (whether residential, social, educational, a workplace, online, or otherwise), alienation, discrimination, and criminalisation often occurs (Bargallie; Mohdin; Linhares). Structural barriers are erected, prohibiting career or social advancement while making the space feel unwelcoming (Fredericks; Bargallie). In workplaces, Indigenous employees become the subject of hyper-surveillance through the supervision process (Bargallie), continuing to make them difficult work environments. This is despite businesses and organisations seeking to increase their Indigenous staff numbers, expressing their need to change, and implementing cultural competency training (Fredericks and Bargallie). As Barnwell correctly highlights, confronting white fears and anxieties must be the responsibility of white peoples. When feelings of shock or discomfort arise when in the company of Indigenous peoples, one must reflexively engage with the reasons behind this “fear of the dark” and consider that perhaps it is they who are self-segregating. Mohdin suggests that spaces highly populated by Black peoples are best thought of not as “black spaces” or “black communities”, but rather spaces where white peoples do not want to be. They stand as reminders of a failed colonial regime that sought to deny and dehumanise Indigenous peoples and cultures, as well as the continuation of Black resistance and sovereignty. Conclusion In working towards improving relationships between Black and white populations, the truths of colonisation, and its continuing pervasiveness in local and global settings must first be confronted. In this article we have discussed the association of darkness with instinctual fears and negative responses to the unknown. White populations need to reflexively engage and critique how they think, act, present, address racism, and respond to Indigenous peoples (Bargallie; Moreton-Robinson; Whittaker), cultivating a “decolonising consciousness” (Bradfield) to develop new habits of thinking and relating. To overcome fears of the dark, we must confront that which remains unknown, and the questions left unasked. This means exposing racism and power imbalances, developing meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples, addressing structural change, and implementing alternative ways of knowing and doing. Only then may we begin to embody Megan Cope’s message, “I’m not afraid of the Dark”. Acknowledgements We thank Dr Debbie Bargallie for her feedback on our article, which strengthened the work. References ABC News. 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Abstract:

ExpositionPortland, Oregon (USA) has become known for an artisanal or ‘maker’ economy that relies on a resurgence of place specificity (Heying), primarily expressed and exported to a global audience in the notion of ‘Portland Made’ (Roy). Portland Made reveals a tension immanent in the notion of ‘place’: place is both here and not here, both real and imaginary. What emerges is a complicated picture of how place conceptually captures various intersections of materiality and mythology, aesthetics and economics. On the one hand, Portland Made represents the collective brand-identity used by Portland’s makers to signify a products’ material existence as handcrafted, place-embedded, and authentic. These characteristics lead to certain assumptions about the concept of ‘local’ (Marotta and Heying): what meaning does Portland Made convey, and how is such meaning distributed? On the other hand, the seemingly intentional embedding of place-specificity in objects meant for distribution far outside of Portland begs another type of question: how does Portland come to be discursively representative of these characteristics, and how are such representations distributed to global audiences? How does this global distribution and consumption of immaterial Portland feed back into the production of material Portland?To answer these questions we look to the realm of social media, specifically the popular image-based service Instagram. For the uninitiated, Instagram is a web-based social media service that allows pictures to be shared and seen by anyone that follows a person or business’ Instagram account. Actions include posting original photos (often taken and posted with a cell phone), ‘liking’ pictures, and ‘hash-tagging’ posts with trending terms that increase visibility. Instagram presents us with a complex view of place as both material and virtual, sometimes reifying and sometimes abstracting often-contradictory understandings of place specificity. Many makers use Instagram to promote their products to a broad audience and, in doing so, makers participate in the construction of Portland’s mythology. In this paper, we use empirical insights to theorise makers’ role in shaping and cultivating the virtual and material aspects of place. Additionally, we discuss how makers navigate the complex relationships tied to the importance of place in their specific cultural productions. In the first section, we develop the notion of a curated maker subjectivity. In the second section, we consider the relationship between subjectivity and place. Both sections emphasize how Instagram mediates the relationship between place and subjectivity. Through spotlighting particular literatures in each section, we attempt to fill a gap in the literature that addresses the relationship between subjectivity, place, and social media. Through this line of analysis, we attempt to better understand how and where Portland is made, along with the implications for Portland’s makers.ActionThe insights from this paper came to us inadvertently. While conducting fieldwork that interrogated ‘localism’ and how Portland makers conceptualise local, makers repeatedly discussed the importance of social media to their work. In our fieldwork, Instagram in particular has presented us with new opportunities to query the entanglements of real and virtual embedded in collective identifications with place. This paper draws from interviews conducted for two closely related research projects. The first examines maker ecosystems in three US cities, Portland, Chicago and New York (Doussard et. al.; Wolf-Powers and Levers). We drew from the Portland interviews (n=38) conducted for this project. The second research project is our multi-year examination of Portland’s maker community, where we have conducted interviews (n=48), two annual surveys of members of the Portland Made Collective (n=126 for 2014, n=338 for 2015) and numerous field observations. As will be evident below, our sample of makers includes small crafters and producers from a variety of ‘traditional’ sectors ranging from baking to carpentry to photography, all united by a common identification with the maker movement. Using insights from this trove of data as well as general observations of the changing artisan landscape of Portland, we address the question of how social media mediates the space between Portland as a material place and Portland as an imaginary place.Social Media, Subjectivity, and Authenticity In the post-Fordist era, creative self-enterprise and entrepreneurialism have been elevated to mythical status (Szeman), becoming especially important in the creative and digital industries. These industries have been characterized by contract based work (Neff, Wissinger, and Zukin; Storey, Salaman, and Platman), unstable employment (Hesmondhalgh and Baker), and the logic of flexible specialization (Duffy and Hund; Gill). In this context of hyper individualization and intense competition, creative workers and other entrepreneurs are increasingly pushed to strategically brand, curate, and project representational images of their subjectivity in order to secure new work (Gill), embody the values of the market (Banet-Weiser and Arzumanova), and take on commercial logics of authenticity (Duffy; Marwick and boyd). For example, Duffy and Hund explore how female fashion bloggers represent their branded persona, revealing three interrelated tropes typically used by bloggers: the destiny of passionate work; the presentation of a glam lifestyle; and carefully curated forms of social sharing. These curated tropes obscure the (unpaid) emotional and aesthetic labour (Hracs and Leslie), self-discipline, and capital required to run these blogs. Duffy and Hund also point out that this concealment is generative of particular mythologies about creative work, gender, race, and class. To this list we would add place; below, we will show the use of Instagram by Portland’s makers not only perpetuates particular mythologies about artisan labour and demands self-branding, but is also a spatial practice that is productive of place through the use of visual vernaculars that reflect a localized and globalized articulation of the social and physical milieu of Portland (Hjorth and Gu; Pike). Similar to many other artists and creative entrepreneurs (Pasquinelli and Sjöholm), Portland’s makers typically work long hours in order to produce high quality, unique goods at a volume that will afford them the ability to pay rent in Portland’s increasingly expensive central city neighbourhoods. Much of this work is done from the home: according to our survey of Portland Made Collective’s member firms, 40% consist of single entrepreneurs working from home. Despite being a part of a creative milieu that is constantly captured by the Portland ‘brand’, working long hours, alone, produces a sense of isolation, articulated well by this apparel maker:It’s very isolating working from home alone. [...] The other people I know are working from home, handmade people, I’ll post something, and it makes you realize we’re all sitting at home doing the exact same thing. We can’t all hang out because you gotta focus when you’re working, but when I’m like ugh, I just need a little break from the sewing machine for five minutes, I go on Instagram.This statement paints Instagram as a coping mechanism for the isolation of working alone from home, an important impetus for makers to use Instagram. This maker uses Instagram roughly two hours per workday to connect with other makers and to follow certain ‘trendsetters’ (many of whom also live in Portland). Following other makers allows the maker community to gauge where they are relative to other makers; one furniture maker told us that she was able to see where she should be going based on other makers that were slightly ahead of her, but she could also advise other makers that were slightly behind her. The effect is a sense of collaborative participation in the ‘scene’, which both alleviates the sense of isolation and helps makers gain legitimacy from others in their milieu. As we show below, this participation demands from makers a curative process of identity formation. Jacque Rancière’s intentional double meaning of the French term partage (the “distribution of the sensible”) creates space to frame curation in terms of the politics around “sharing in” and “sharing out” (Méchoulan). For Rancière, the curative aspect of communities (or scenes) reveals something inherently political about aesthetics: the politics of visibility on Instagram “revolve around what is seen and what can be said about it, who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of space and the possibilities of time” (8-9). An integral part of the process of curating a particular identity to express over Instagram is reflected by who they follow or what they ‘like’ (a few makers mentioned the fact that they ‘like’ things strategically).Ultimately, makers need followers for their brand (product brand, self-brand, and place-brand), which requires makers to engage in a form of aesthetic labour through a curated articulation of who a maker is–their personal story, or what Duffy and Hund call “the destiny of passionate work”–and how that translates into what they make at the same time. These identities congeal over Instagram: one maker described this as a “circle of firms that are moving together.” Penetrating that circle by curating connections over Instagram is an important branding strategy.As a confections maker told us, strategically using hashtags and stylizing pictures to fit the trends is paramount. Doing these things effectively draws attention from other makers and trendsetters, and, as an apparel maker told us, getting even one influential trendsetter or blogger to follow them on Instagram can translate into huge influxes of attention (and sales) for their business. Furthermore, getting featured by an influential blogger or online magazine can yield instantaneous results. For instance, we spoke with an electronics accessories maker that had been featured in Gizmodo a few years prior, and the subsequent uptick in demand led him to hire over 20 new employees.The formulation of a ‘maker’ subjectivity reveals the underlying manner in which certain subjective characteristics are expressed while others remain hidden; expressing the wrong characteristics may subvert the ability for makers to establish themselves in the milieu. We asked a small Portland enterprise that documents the local maker scene about the process of curating an Instagram photo, especially curious about how they aesthetically frame ‘site visits’ at maker workspaces. We were somewhat surprised to hear that makers tend to “clean too much” ahead of a photo shoot; the photographer we spoke with told us that people want to see the space as it looks when it’s being worked in, when it’s a little messy. The photographer expressed an interest in accentuating the maker’s ‘individual understanding’ of the maker aesthetic; the framing and the lighting of each photo is meant to relay traces of the maker to potential consumers. The desire seems to be the expression and experience of ‘authenticity’, a desire that if captured correctly grants the maker a great deal of purchase in the field of Portland Made consumers. This is all to say that the curation of the workspaces is essential to the construction of the maker subjectivity and the Portland imaginary. Maker workshops are rendered as real places where real makers that belong to an authentic maker milieu produce authentic Portland goods that have a piece of Portland embedded within them (Molotch). Instagram is central in distributing that mythology to a global audience.At this point we can start to develop the relationship between maker subjectivity and place. Authenticity, in this context, appears to be tied to the product being both handmade and place-specific. As the curated imaginary of Portland matures, a growing dialogue emerges between makers and consumers of Portland Made (authentic) goods. This dialogue is a negotiated form of authority in which the maker claims authority while the consumer simultaneously confers authority. The aforementioned place-specificity signals a new layer of magic in regards to Portland’s distinctive position: would ‘making’ in any other place be generative of such authority? According to a number of our interviewees, being from Portland carries the assumption that Portland’s makers have a certain level of expertise that comes from being completely embedded in Portland’s creative scene. This complex interplay between real and virtual treats Portland’s imaginary as a concrete reality, preparing it for consumption by reinforcing the notion of an authoritative collective brand (Portland Made). One bicycle accessory maker claimed that the ability of Portland’s makers to access the Portland brand transmits credibility for makers of things associated with Portland, such as bikes, beer, and crafty goods. This perhaps explains why so many makers use Portland in the name of their company (e.g. Portland Razor Company) and why so many stamp their goods with ‘Made in Portland’.This, however, comes with an added set of expectations: the maker, again, is tasked with cultivating and performing a particular aesthetic in order to achieve legitimacy with their target audience, only this time it ends up being the dominant aesthetic associated with a specific place. For instance, the aforementioned bicycle accessory maker that we spoke with recalled an experience at a craft fair in which many of the consumers were less concerned with his prices than whether his goods were handmade in Portland. Without this legitimation, the good would not have the mysticism of Portland as a place locked within it. In this way, the authenticity of a place becomes metonymic (e.g. Portlandia), similar to how Detroit became known as ‘Motor City’. Portland’s particular authenticity is wrapped up in individuality, craftiness, creativity, and environmental conscientiousness, all things that makers in some way embed in their products (Molotch) and express in the photos on their Instagram feeds (Hjorth).(Social) Media, Place, and the Performance of Aesthetics In this section, we turn our attention to the relationship between subjectivity, place, and Instagram. Scholars have investigated how television production (Pramett), branding (Pike), and locative-based social media (Hjorth, Hjorth and Gu, Hjorth and Lim, Leszczynski) function as spatial practices. The practices affect and govern experiences and interactions with space, thereby generating spatial hybridity (de Souza e Silva). McQuire, for example, investigates the historical formation of the ‘media city’, demonstrating how various media technologies have become interconnected with the architectural structures of the city. Pramett expands on this analysis of media representations of cities by interrogating how media production acts as a spatial practice that produces and governs contested urban spaces, the people in those spaces, and the habitus of the place, forming what she dubs the “media neighbourhood.” The media neighbourhood becomes ordered by the constant opportunities for neighbourhood residents to be involved in media production; residents must navigate and interact with local space as though they may be captured on film or asked to work in the background production at any moment. These material (on site shooting and local hiring practices) and immaterial (textual, musical, and visual representations of a city) production practices become exploitative, extracting value from a place for media industries and developers that capitalize on a place’s popular imaginary.McQuire’s media city and Pramett’s media neighbourhood help us understand the embeddedness of (social) media in the material landscapes of Portland. Over the past few years, Portland has begun experiencing new flows of tourists and migrants–we should note that more than a few makers mentioned in interviews that they moved to Portland in order to become makers–expecting to find what they see on Instagram overlaid materially on the city itself. And indeed, they do: ‘vibrant’ neighbourhood districts such as Alberta Arts, Belmont, Mississippi, Hawthorne, Northwest 23rd, and downtown Portland’s rebranded ‘West End’ are all increasingly full of colourful boutiques that express maker aesthetics and sell local maker goods. Not only do the goods and boutiques need to exemplify these aesthetic qualities, but the makers and the workspaces from which these goods come from, need to fit that aesthetic.The maker subjectivity is developed through the navigation of both real and virtual experiences that contour the social performance of a ‘maker aesthetic’. This aesthetic has become increasingly socially consumed, a trend especially visible on Instagram: as a point of reference, there are at least four Portland-based ‘foodies’ that have over 80,000 followers on Instagram. One visible result of this curated and performed subjectivity and the place-brand it captures is the physical transformation of Portland: (material) space has become a surface onto which the (virtual) Instagram/maker aesthetic is being inscribed, a stage on which the maker aesthetic is performed. The material and immaterial are interwoven into a dramaturgy that gives space a certain set of meanings oriented toward creativity, quirkiness, and consumption. Meanings cultivated over Instagram, then, become productive of meaning in place. These meanings are consumed by thousands of tourists and newly minted Portlanders, as images of people posing in front of Portland’s hipster institutions (such as Salt & Straw or Voodoo Donuts) are captured on iPhones and redistributed back across Instagram for the world to experience. Perhaps this is why Tokyo now has an outpost of Portland’s Blue Star Donuts or why Red Hook (Brooklyn) has its own version of Portland’s Pok Pok. One designer/maker, who had recently relocated to Portland, captured the popular imaginary of Portland in this conversation:Maker: People in Brooklyn love the idea that it came from Portland. People in Seattle love it; people in the Midwest love that it came from Portland right now, because Portland’s like the thing.Interviewer: What does that mean, what does it embody?Maker: They know that it’s local, it like, they know that maker thing is there, it’s in Portland, that they know it’s organic to Portland, it’s local to Portland, there’s this crazy movement that you hear throughout the United States about–Interviewer: So people are getting a piece of that?Maker: Yeah.For us, the dialogical relationship between material and immaterial has never been more entangled. Instagram is one way that makers might control the gap between fragmentation and belonging (i.e. to a particular community or milieu), although in the process they are confronted with an aesthetic distribution that is productive of a mythological sense of place that social media seems to produce, distribute, and consume so effectively. In the era of social media, where sense of place is so quickly transmitted, cities can come to represent a sense of collective identity, and that identity might in turn be distributed across its material landscape.DenouementThrough every wrench turn, every stitching of fabric, every boutique opening, and every Instagram post, makers actively produce Portland as both a local and global place. Portland is constructed through the material and virtual interactions makers engage in, both cultivating and framing everyday interactions in space and ideas held about place. In the first section, we focused on the curation of a maker aesthetic and the development of the maker subjectivity mediated through Instagram. The second section attempted to better understand how those aesthetic performances on Instagram become imprinted on urban space and how these inscriptions feedback to global audiences. Taken together, these performances reveal the complex undertaking that makers adopt in branding their goods as Portland Made. In addition, we hope to have shown the complex entanglements between space and place, production and consumption, and ‘here’ and ‘not here’ that are enrolled in value production at the nexus of place-brand generation.Our investigation opens the door to another, perhaps more problematic set of interrogations which are beyond the scope of this paper. In particular, and especially in consideration of Portland’s gentrification crisis, we see two related sets of displacements as necessary of further interrogation. First, as we answer the question of where Portland is made, we acknowledge that the capturing of Portland Made as a brand perpetuates a process of displacement and “spatio-subjective” regulation that both reflects and reproduces spatial rationalizations (Williams and Dourish). This dis-place-ment renders particular neighbourhoods and populations within Portland, specifically ethnic minorities and the outer edges of the metropolitan area, invisible or superfluous to the city’s imaginary. Portland, as presented by makers through their Instagram accounts, conceals the city’s “power geometries” (Massey) and ignores the broader social context Portland exists in, while perpetuating the exclusion of ethnic minorities from the conversation about what else is made in Portland.Second, as Portland Made has become virtually representative of a deepening connection between makers and place, the performance of such aesthetic labour has left makers to navigate a process that increasingly leads to their own estrangement from the very place they have a hand in creating. This process reveals an absurdity: makers are making the very thing that displaces them. The cultivation of the maker milieu attracts companies, in-movers, and tourists to Portland, thus creating a tight real estate market and driving up property values. Living and working in Portland is increasingly difficult for makers, epitomized by the recent sale and eviction of approximately 500 makers from the Town Storage facility (Hammill). Additionally, industrial space in the city is increasingly coveted by tech firms, and competition over such space is being complicated by looming zoning changes in Portland’s new comprehensive plan.Our conclusions suggest additional research is needed to understand the relationship(s) between such aesthetic performance and various forms of displacement, but we also suggest attention to the global reach of such dynamics: how is Portland’s maker ecosystem connected to the global maker community over social media, and how is space shaped differentially in other places despite a seemingly hom*ogenizing maker aesthetic? Additionally, we do not explore policy implications above, although there is significant space for such exploration with consideration to the attention that Portland and the maker movement in general are receiving from policymakers hungry for a post-Fordist magic bullet. ReferencesBanet-Weiser, Sarah, and Inna Arzumanova. “Creative Authorship, Self-Actualizing Women, and the Self-Brand.” Media Authorship. Eds. Cynthia Chris and David A. Gerstner. New York, NY: Routledge, 2012: 163-179. De Souza e Silva, Adriana. “From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces.” Space and Culture 9.3 (2006): 261–278.Duffy, Brooke Erin, “The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspirational Labour in the Digital Culture Industries.” International Journal of Cultural Studies (2015): 1–17. Duffy, Brooke Erin, and Emily Hund. “‘Having It All’ on Social Media: Entrepreneurial Femininity and Self-Branding among Fashion Bloggers.” Social Media + Society 1.2 (2015): n. pag. Doussard, Marc, Charles Heying, Greg Schrock, and Laura Wolf-Powers. Metropolitan Maker Networks: The Role of Policy, Organization, and "Maker-Enabling Entrepreneurs" in Building the Maker Economy. Progress update to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. 2015. Gill, Rosalind. “‘Life Is a Pitch’: Managing the Self in New Media Work.” Managing Media Work (2010): n. pag. Hammill, Luke. "Sale of Towne Storage Building Sends Evicted Artists, Others Scrambling for Space." The Oregonian, 2016.Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries. London, UK: Routledge, 2011. Heying, Charles. Brew to Bikes: Portland’s Artisan Economy. Portland, OR: Ooligan Press, 2010. Hjorth, Larissa. “The Place of the Emplaced Mobile: A Case Study into Gendered Locative Media Practices.” Mobile Media & Communication 1.1 (2013): 110–115. Hjorth, Larissa, and Kay Gu. “The Place of Emplaced Visualities: A Case Study of Smartphone Visuality and Location-Based Social Media in Shanghai, China.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 26.5 (2012): 699–713. Hjorth, Larissa, and Sun Sun Lim. “Mobile Intimacy in an Age of Affective Mobile Media.” Feminist Media Studies 12.4 (2012): 477–484. Hracs, Brian J., and Deborah Leslie. “Aesthetic Labour in Creative Industries: The Case of Independent Musicians in Toronto, Canada.” Area 46.1 (2014): 66–73. Leszczynski, A. “Spatial Media/tion.” Progress in Human Geography 39.6 (2014): 729–751. Marotta, Stephen, and Charles Heying. “Interrogating Localism: What Does ‘Made in Portland’ Really Mean?” Craft Economies: Cultural Economies of the Handmade. Eds. Susan Luckman and Nicola Thomas. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic: forthcoming. Marwick, Alice E., and danah boyd. “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media & Society 13.1 (2011): 114–133. Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place.” Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. McQuire, Scott. The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 2008. Mechoulan, Eric. “Introduction: On the Edges of Jacques Ranciere.” SubStance 33.1 (2004): 3–9. Molotch, Harvey. “Place in Product.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26.4 (2003): 665–688. Neff, Gina, Elizabeth Wissinger, and Sharon Zukin. “Entrepreneurial Labor among Cultural Producers: ‘Cool’ Jobs in ‘Hot’ Industries.” Social Semiotics 15.3 (2005): 307–334. Pasquinelli, Cecilia, and Jenny Sjöholm. “Art and Resilience: The Spatial Practices of Making a Resilient Artistic Career in London.” City, Culture and Society 6.3 (2015): 75–81. Pike, Andy. “Placing Brands and Branding: A Socio-Spatial Biography of Newcastle Brown Ale.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36.2 (2011): 206–222. ———. “Progress in Human Geography Geographies of Brands and Branding Geographies of Brands and Branding.” (2009): 1–27. Ranciere, Jacque. The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004. Roy, Kelley. Portland Made. Portland, OR: Self-Published, 2015.

Abstract:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, ... full of grace and truth. -- John 1, 14. So you use the Internet. Perhaps during the course of today you have interacted with an individual with whom you have had no direct real life experience. In email, on ICQ, or within one of the Activeworlds, you may have come to understand and recognise the personality of someone with whom you interact regularly. Even though you've never met them in the flesh, they have a presence in your life. They may give no clues as to their location or hints at any form of personal identifier. You even accept what they show of themselves as a sort of truth, although it may be unverifiable. What else can you do? In effect, you have been dealing with a pseudonymous individual. The use of pseudonyms "creates a context of 'managed ambiguity', permitting relationship, while offering an opportunity to actively conceal or reveal elements of real-life identity" (Chester & Gwynne). Pseudonymity differs from anonymity in that an alias is bestowed upon or chosen by the user, and used consistently over time. New technologies will allow this idea to be taken even further, with users able to construct untraceable identities for use online. These identities will be the "bodies", the new flesh, the vehicle in which users will conduct their online lives. Like Baudrillard's simulacra, this new flesh may even be a representation of something that does not exist in the real world. The driving forces for Internet pseudonymity may include users' desires to play with the concept of identity and explore their own personalities. As Sherry Turkle notes, "computer-mediated communications can serve as a place for the construction and reconstruction of identities" (Turkle 14). With more and more of our everyday activities occurring online the opportunities increase for creation of an online identity that may be different to that presented in real life. Even in choosing a name for use online, we are creating the new flesh in embryonic form. For example on Internet Relay Chat, like many communication forms on the Internet, there is a lack of visual cues associated with participants. To overcome the lack of information which would otherwise be obtained by viewing participants face to face, a self-chosen name becomes the "only initial way of saying who we are, in literally one word or one expression" (Bechar-Israeli). Thus the chosen name becomes a very important token of identity, and may communicate a quite different picture of its owner than exists in reality. However some Internet users lack the opportunity or inclination for this sort of "play". In particular, for many professional, academic and business users, "their institutional connection is a highly relevant fact" (Wynn & Katz). Conducting themselves pseudonymously would require a long period of reputation and credential building that would interfere with their purpose in using the Internet. Pseudonymity is thus unlikely to be an attractive option for these users. However, out in the wider Internet community, another driver for the development of technological solutions to pseudonymity is a broadly felt concern for privacy on the Internet. In October last year a major survey of Internet users found that respondents ranked privacy as the "single most critical issue facing the Internet" (Graphic, Visualization, & Usability Center). Internet users need assurance that they may conduct online activities without fear of surveillance. The concerns about Internet privacy have expanded beyond the traditional fears of government intrusion to include fears about commercial interests reaching further into our private lives. This latter concern may be best expressed in terms of the commoditisation of private information. Information about the behaviour and patterns of individuals is becoming increasingly valuable in our societies. If information about ourselves is becoming valuable, we hope to respond by controlling access to that information and even requiring something in exchange for its use. Think of a customer loyalty card on which you are collecting "points". In effect, the user has swapped their demographic details and a full purchase history for a prize, or a discount on some future purchase. This allows a commercially useful correlation between the individual and their personal situation, likes, dislikes, wants and needs, and behaviour as a consumer. At the same time the user has (hopefully) gained something from the exchange. For commercial interests on the Internet, such an arrangement is unnecessary because the correlation of individuals with their online behaviour patterns is easier to uncover. One example of this is the recent move of database marketers onto the Internet. Last year IntelliQuest, owners of a large database comprising "over 50% of Internet-enabled households" (IntelliQuest), announced a plan to join forces with 24/7, an Internet advertising firm. Unless the user indicates otherwise, Intelliquest will collect demographic data when a software product is registered online. An identifying file (a "cookie") is placed on the user's hard-drive which can be "read" by Websites visited subsequently. 24/7, in cooperation with the visited Website, are then able to serve advertisem*nts targeted to the specific user. 24/7 will track the movements of specific users, and can then "supply IntelliQuest with online surfing habits to supplement [Intelliquest's] demographic information" (Bicknell). In effect, the Internet user has given away their demographic data and a full browsing history for nothing in return. In response to issues of this nature, researchers around the world are developing methods to separate the content of online communications from association with individual senders and receivers. An example is "Crowds", which "operates by grouping users into a large and geographically diverse group (crowd) that collectively issues requests on behalf of its members" (Reiter & Rubin). This prevents a Webserver from identifying the original user requesting a Web page. At the same time, the user could also employ the "Lucent Personal Web Page Assistant" which inserts randomly generated pseudonyms "into Web forms that request a user's name". The system is designed to "consistently use the same pseudonyms every time a particular user returns to the same site, but use a different pseudonym at each Web site" (Cranor). Although each Website may gain information about the browsing habits of a particular pseudonymous user on their own site, it is unable to cross-reference that information with other sites and databases. Taking these and related ideas further is Zero-Knowledge Systems, whose unreleased "Freedom" product reportedly allows the user to create multiple untraceable digital pseudonyms. The company even states that using Freedom to create different pseudonyms gives the user the "opportunity to separately explore completely different areas of the Internet and avoid being profiled by Internet marketers" (Zero-Knowledge Systems). As yet, all of these technologies are immature and often require a motivation and degree of proficiency possibly beyond that of many Internet users. But increasingly the trend is for the technologies to be built invisibly into the lower levels of Internet infrastructure, so that the user may only need to overtly choose who or what they want to be today. The technical details of presenting a consistent and pseudonymous identity will be taken care of automatically. Pseudonymity, and especially anonymity, on the Internet are subject to abuse. Several anonymous remailers, forerunners of systems like Freedom, have had to shut down or restrict their services. In most cases this was not because of criminal or libellous abuse (which would be difficult to prove given the nature of the systems concerned), but because of mass email spam being routed through them. Authorities worldwide are naturally concerned that anonymising and pseudonymising systems may shield the activities of serious criminals. The Cypherpunks, a loose grouping of Internet cryptography and anonymity advocates, term this the "Four Horsem*n of the Infocalypse" scenario. Cypherpunks see authorities exaggerating the spectres of "terrorists, paedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers" ("Adam") in their arguments for greater regulation of the Internet. Despite the hyperbole on both sides, these are serious issues over which debate will intensify. Up until now a deterrent to crime has been the possibility that a criminal might be held responsible for their actions and be bodily removed from society by being taken to prison. With a real life crime committed under conditions of untraceable pseudonymity, only the criminal's pseudonym may be identified. The pseudonymous identity may be removed from society by perhaps somehow being prevented from using the network. But the actual criminal is still free to create another pseudonym and resume activities. Thus, the pseudonymous identity is not subject to the same physical controls or constraints on behaviour as the bodies we use in real life. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the new flesh may still be subject to what could arguably be seen as derivations of real life crimes, such as rape. By the same token this freedom from constraint could also be a positive thing. A person could choose to shape a pseudonymous identity quite different from their real life identity. They might choose a different name, gender, age, body or personality type; and if they are unsatisfied with their experiment, they may try another. Here, the new flesh allows changes in appearence and personality without therapy or surgery. Explorations of the possibilities inherent in the new flesh might help reconcile people to their problems with the old. The improvement and eventual transparency of pseudonymity enhancing technologies will have wide ranging effects. David Post, of the Cyberspace Law Institute, believes pseudonymous speech "is valuable in a way that anonymous speech is not and cannot be, because it permits the accumulation of reputational capital and 'goodwill' over time in the pseudonym itself, while simultaneously serving as a liability limitation insulating the speaker's 'true identity' from exposure" (Post). Given enough time, we may come to accept and trust a pseudonymous identity without needing to question its real life owner. An individual may ultimately be judged less on who or what they are and more on what they are actually seen to do. Pseudonymous life will permit individuals to take part in all aspects of Internet society, to build communities, participate in electronic commerce, and explore aspects of human existence independently and without compromising their real life identities. As the use of the Internet broadens we shall likely see not only pseudonyms in use, but also avatars, representations of a physical form that the user has chosen as their outward appearance. These may be seen now in some three-dimensional interactive spaces, such as Activeworlds, where the user can construct their own body. The avatar is "seen" by other users as the form and location of a pseudonymous individual. One wonders if the new flesh will be a replacement for the old, rather than a sort of supplement. Certainly there is not the technology available now or in the near future for pseudonymous life as a full replacement for the real, The Matrix notwithstanding. Would anyone really want a full replacement which is technically inferior to the real thing? But perhaps without wanting to divorce themselves from the real world, users will still take up pseudonyms for varied reasons -- among them a desire for experiment, privacy, or simply because their Internet Service provider offers the facility. Stewart Brand once said "we are as gods and might as well get good at it". In terms of the Internet, the potential for an almost godlike power to create identities and appearances could lead to a virtual world of the word made flesh. This new flesh may not necessarily be full of grace and truth, but it will dwell amongst us. References "Adam". "The Four Horsem*n of the Infocalyse." 1995. 16 Apr. 1999 <http://www.decode.com/fourhorsem*n.php>. Bechar-Israeli, Haya. "From <Bonehead&gt to <cLoNehEAd&gt: Nicknames, Play, and Identity on Internet Relay Chat." 1995. 3 May 1999 <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue2/bechar.php>. Bicknell, Craig. "Database Marketing on the Web." 1998. 8 Apr. 1999 <http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/15456.php>. Chester, Andrea, and Gillian Gwynne. "Online Teaching: Encouraging Collaboration through Anonymity." Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 4.2 (1998). 12 Apr. 1999 <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue2/chester.php>. Cranor, Lorrie. "Internet Privacy: A Public Concern." 1998. 7 Apr. 1999 <http://www.research.att.com/~lorrie/pubs/networker-privacy.php>. Graphic, Visualization, & Usability Center. "10th WWW User Survey." 1999. 7 Apr. 1999 <http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-10/>. IntelliQuest. "IntelliQuest's Rapidly Growing High-Tech Household Database Now Identifies More Than 11.5 Million Internet-User Households." 1999. 8 Apr. 1999 <http://www.iq2.net/news/hthh.htm>. Post, David. "Pooling Intellectual Capital: Thoughts on Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Limited Liability in Cyberspace." 1996. 14 Apr. 1999 <http://www.cli.org/DPost/paper8.htm>. Reiter, Mike, and Avi Rubin. "Anonymity Loves Company." 1999. 14 Apr. 1999 <http://www.research.att.com/projects/crowds/>. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1995. Wynn, Eleanor, and James Katz. "Hyperbole over Cyberspace: Self-presentation & Social Boundaries in Internet Home Pages and Discourse." The Information Society 13.4 (1998). 13 Apr. 1999 <http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/hyperbole.php>. Zero-Knowledge Systems. "What is Freedom?" 1999. 14 Apr. 1999 <http://www.zeroknowledge.com/products/what.asp>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Alan Macdougall. "'And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt among Us...': Towards Pseudonymous Life on the Internet." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.3 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/life.php>. Chicago style: Alan Macdougall, "'And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt among Us...': Towards Pseudonymous Life on the Internet," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 3 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/life.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Alan Macdougall. (1999) 'And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us...': towards pseudonymous life on the Internet. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(3). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/life.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

In July 2001, New York couple Jason Black and Francis Schroeder opened bidding on the internet for corporate sponsorship of their newborn son. Naming rights started at $US5000 000. For Black, the logic was simple: given the inescapable prevalence of commercial sponsorship in contemporary life, this was a valid way of working with corporate America. Black and Schroeder already had two daughters and lived in a small two-bedroom apartment. In exchange for their son’s financial security, they risked branding him ‘Big Mac’ or ‘Nike’ – literally. If nothing else, the case exemplified the amazing reach of brand consciousness. The couple had internalised its values and rationale with such ease and comfort, the notion of forfeiting their child’s name was not abhorrent, but a lucrative marketing opportunity. Then again, the story was not without precedent. In 2000, teenagers Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe, both from New Jersey, became ‘spokesguys’ for First USA, one of America’s top credit-card companies. By sporting the company logo on their surfboards and all their clothes, the pair receives an annual $US40 000 each in tuition, board and books for their four-year university contract. They do not just advertise the brand; they are its living embodiment. For critics of consumer culture, such stories exemplify the extent to which corporatism has become a complete and closed system, with the panoramic presence of brands and logos and the commodification of life itself. They demonstrate the alarming readiness of some people to encode and enact the consumerist impulse. At its most malignant, this impulse appears as a crass consumerism that eats up every aspect of a culture, so much so that consumerism becomes the culture – all meaning is both anchored in and governed by the capitalist creed. For many, mass-produced contemporary culture provides a seemingly empty substitute, what Fredric Jameson (1991) termed “a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense” (9), for genuine experience and emotion. In turn, the contemporary consumer has been reduced to a mere imitation of mediated expectations, a functionary cog in the corporatist machine. As this sign system infects and invades more and more space, a certain cultural literacy is inevitably called for, an intimate knowledge of symbol and significance, logo and logic. However, like all living language, this one is open to some resistance, albeit a somewhat piecemeal one. Part appropriation, part antithesis, it is a resistance that hijacks form in order to subvert content. To explain how this type of activism might work, one could consider the highly effective activist operation, ®TMark (http://rtmark.com). ®TMark is an online centre that organizes and directs funding for the ‘information alteration’ of corporate products (otherwise known as ‘sabotage’). In 1993, ®TMark was involved in its first high-profile act of sabotage when it channelled $US 8000 to the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO), a group that switched the voice boxes of 300 GI Joe and Barbie dolls. As befits a project affiliated with ®TMark, the critical content of BLO’s act was an alchemic stroke of humour and commentary. The protest lies within the ‘information alteration’ of commodities that usually rely on their supposed virtues. The BLO offensive drew attention to the questionable labour practices of Mattel, manufacturers of Barbie, thereby undermining the perceptions on which Barbie’s popularity rests. From the outset, ®TMark’s key feature is its corporate status. As a brokerage, ®TMark benefits from ‘limited liability’, just like any other corporation. It exploits this principle (that is, corporate protection, thereby bypassing legal responsibility) to sabotage other corporate products. Unlike other corporations, though, its bottom-line is cultural profit. As spokesperson Ray Thomas explains, the corporate model is both the object of ®TMark’s criticism, and the method by which that criticism is being facilitated: “Projects can be seen as stocks, and when you support a project you’re investing in it. When you contribute, say, $100 to a project that you would like to see accomplished, you are sort of investing in the accomplishment of the project. What you want to see out of that project is cultural dividends; you want to see a beneficial cultural event take place because of your money, as a reward. What you’re doing is investing in the improvement of the culture.” As with almost all ®TMark literature and material, the tone here is one of clipped civility, similar to the tense restraint characteristic of almost any corporation. Perhaps the closest the site gets to a ‘straightforward’ philosophy is in this piece of advice to dispirited students, fearful that, one day, they too will be sucked into the corporate void: “We believe that performing an ®TMark project can help you, psychologically at least, at such a difficult juncture; but more importantly, we urge you to at all costs remember that laws should defend human people, not corporate people like the one of which you will be a part. If you keep this in mind and work towards making it a reality, you may find your life much more bearable.” While this pseudo mission statement might be read as yet another appendage to ®TMark’s corporate veneer, it also points to some of the goals of the site. The depiction of ®TMark projects as morale boosters for disenchanted cynics goes some way in illustrating the ambitions and limits of the site. Rather than prescribe a far-reaching, holistic approach to social change (what might be termed a ‘revolutionary’ vision), ®TMark marshals ideas and initiatives a little more subtly. This is not to belittle or dispute its utility or significance; on the contrary, it is an approach that effectively (in)corporates a diverse range of people and programs. For example, rather than unifying its adherents to a common agenda, ®TMark operates as a coalition of interests. As such, the followings funds collectively serve the ®TMark project: the Labor Fund; the Frontier Fund (which challenges naïve visions of the ‘global village’); the Education Fund; the Health Fund; the Alternative Markets Fund (which considers overlooked demographics, such as poor gays); the Media Fund; the Intellectual Property Fund; the Biological Property Fund; the Corporate Law Fund; and the Environment Fund, among others. In turn, the ®TMark spectrum canvasses a plethora of pertinent, interconnected themes. This includes: the plight of workers in developing countries; censorship; institutionalised racism; the nominal triumph of consumer culture; techno-utopianism and the ‘digerati’; copyright law; and the increasing opacity of corporate activities. Underlying all these issues is ®TMark’s intention to publicise corporate abuses of democratic processes. Importantly, this multiplicity of interests is considered a suitable counterpart to the dispersed nature of corporate power. So, no one enemy is identified and targeted, since such reductionism belies the degree to which capitalism, corporatism and consumerism are irredeemably entwined in contemporary culture. In turn, these funds are often ‘managed’ by public figures whose association with certain causes lend their celebrity well to particular campaigns. For example, San Francisco band Negativeland manages the Intellectual Property Fund. This is most appropriate. Their 1991 legal battle with major label Island, on account of their ‘deceptive’ use of U2 material, cemented their place as champions of ‘creative appropriation’ and the right to create ‘with mirrors’ (as Negativeland describes it on their eponymous website). Similarly, the desire to create ‘with mirrors’ propels much of ®TMark’s work. It imbues all ®TMark projects with the same sense of calculated mischief. This suggests a mode of activism that is both opportunistic and ingenious, fashioning criticism from the very resources it is attacking. Financial reward aside (which, in any case, is negligible, at best) the real pay-off for ®TMark saboteurs comes via media coverage of their projects. As such, it straddles an interesting divide, between public infamy and necessary stealth. ®TMark requires media attention to render its projects effective, yet must maintain the critical distance necessary for any activist potency. Indeed, the need to bolster ®TMark’s profile was one of the reasons it went from being a dial-in system to a website in 1997. Within its first eight months the site had received almost 20 000 visits. In this schema, the activism in question is assigned a somewhat smaller purpose than has been hitherto associated with protest movements generally. Rather than provide a grand panacea for all the world’s ills, ®TMark’s scale is, by its own admission, modest: “The value of ®TMark is, and has always been, not in any real pressure it can possibly bear, but rather in its ability to quickly and cheaply attract widespread interest to important issues. ®TMark is thus essentially a public relations agency for anti-corporate activism”. In this way, ®TMark is firmly positioned within that strand of activism often referred to as ‘culture jamming’. This type of protest relies on a distinct degree of media and cultural literacy, one that is consonant with, and a product of, the Information Age. As Mark Dery explains, these activists “introduce noise into the signal as it passes from transmitter to receiver, encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations. Intruding on the intruders, they invest ads, newscasts, and other media artefacts with subversive meanings; simultaneously, they decrypt them, rendering their seductions impotent”(http://levity.com/markdery/culturejam.html). Culture jamming draws on (and contributes to) critiques of contemporary consumer capitalism. Its premise is that too much public space has already been ceded to Hollywood, Madison Avenue et al, and that activists must seize whatever opportunities allow this space to be reclaimed, however fleetingly. Trading on publicity and shock value, jammers manipulate those icons, slogans and trademarks that will register immediate recognition, thereby rendering their efforts meaningful. It constitutes a politicised refusal to submit to the cheerful passivity scripted by the corporate class. As jammers resist this role, reclaiming rather than forfeiting public space, they create what Naomi Klein (2000) calls “a climate of semiotic Robin Hoodism” (280). This term aptly captures the spirit of moralistic idealism that is, almost inevitably, a part of the milieu. This is not to dismiss or deride the progressive agenda of most culture jammers; if anything, it is a positive endorsem*nt of their activism, and a response to those that would deem the postmodern zeitgeist politically barren or overwhelmingly cynical. What it reveals, then, is a somewhat unexpected distribution of power, as expressions of criticism and opposition emerge at seemingly incongruous junctures. They are at once engaged and complicit, finding cracks in ‘the system’ (that is, corporate society) and co-opting them, what Linda Hutcheon (1990) calls “subversion from within” (157). Eschewing ‘big picture’ solutions, culture jammers prioritise temporary connections and hybrid forms over ideological certainties and operational rigidity. Tactical thinking, and the malleability and mobility it relies on, clearly informs and animates ®TMark’s work. As Graham Meikle (2002) explains, “Different actions and campaigns use whichever media are most appropriate at any given time for any given purpose. An event might call for making a documentary, making a website, making an A4 newsletter, or making a phone call” (120). ®TMark stops short of overstating its purpose or exaggerating its success. There is no lofty manifesto or ironclad strategy; without departing too far from its anti-corporatist stance, ®TMark encourages an almost playful combination of comedy and critique, with a thick ironic overlay. At its most ambitious, then, ®TMark can hope to alter the everyday behaviour of ordinary citizens, making inroads at the expense of powerful corporations. At the very least, it can prompt bemused surfers to rethink certain things – such as Nike’s labour practices or Shell’s environmental record. In a sense, though, the degree to which such perceptual jolts can ‘make a difference’ is almost immaterial: the fact that the status quo has been questioned is a minor triumph. Where some commentators bemoan the virtual stupor they deem characteristic of contemporary Western politics, projects like ®TMark prove that there are spaces and opportunities left for meaningful debate and dissent. Works Cited Dery, Mark. “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs”. (http://levity.com/markdery/culturejam.html). Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernity. London: Routledge, 1990. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Klein, Naomi. No Logo. London: Flamingo, 2000. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. New York and London: Routledge, and Annandale, Pluto Press, 2002. Rtmark. (http://rtmark.com). Links http://levity.com/markdery/culturejam.html http://rtmark.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Khamis, Susie. "Jamming at Work " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/04-jamming.php>. APA Style Khamis, S. (2003, Jun 19). Jamming at Work . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/04-jamming.php>

Abstract:

The rise of expertise in the lives of women is a complex and prolonged process that began when the old networks through which women had learned from each other were being discredited or destroyed (Ehrenreich and English). Enclosed spaces of expert power formed separately from political control, market logistics and the pressures exerted by their subjects (Rose and Miller). This, however, was not a question of imposing expertise on women and forcing them to adhere to expert proclamations: “the experts could not have triumphed had not so many women welcomed them, sought them out, and … organised to promote their influence” (Ehrenreich and English 28). Women’s continuing enthusiasm for self-help books – and it is mainly women who buy them (Wood) – attests to the fact that they are still welcoming expertise into their lives. This paper argues that a major factor in the popularity of self-help is the reversal of the conventional ‘priestly’ relationship and ethic of confession, in a process of conversion that relies on the enthusiasm and active participation of the reader.Miller and Rose outline four ways in which human behaviour can be transformed: regulation (enmeshing people in a code of standards); captivation (seducing people with charm or charisma); education (training, convincing or persuading people); and conversion (transforming personhood, and ways of experiencing the world so that people understand themselves in fundamentally new ways). Of these four ways of acting upon others, it is conversion that is the most potent, because it changes people at the level of their own subjectivity – “personhood itself is remade” (Miller and Rose 35). While theories of conversion cannot be adequately discussed here, one aspect held in common by theories of religious conversion as well as those from psychological studies of ‘brainwashing’ is enthusiasm. Rambo’s analysis of the stages of religious conversion, for example, includes ‘questing’ in an active and engaged way, and a probable encounter with a passionately enthusiastic believer. Melia and Ryder, in their study of ‘brainwashing,’ state that two of the end stages of conversion are euphoria and proselytising – a point to which I will return in the conclusion. In order for a conversion to occur, then, the reader must be not only intellectually convinced of the truth, but must feel it is an important or vital truth, a truth she needs – in short, the reader must be enthused. The popularity of self-help books coincides with the rise of psy expertise more generally (Rose, "Identity"; Inventing), but self-help putatively offers escape from the experts, whilst simultaneously immersing its readers in expertise. Readers of self-help view themselves as reading sceptically (Simonds), interpretively (Rosenblatt) and resistingly (Fetterly, Rowe). They choose to read books as an educational activity (Dolby), rather than attending counselling or psychotherapy sessions in which they might be subject to manipulation, domination and control by a therapist (Simonds). I have discussed the nature of the advice in relationship manuals elsewhere (Hazleden, "Relationship"; "Pathology"), but the intention of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the authors attempt to enthuse and convert the reader.Best-Selling ExpertiseIn common with other best-selling genres, popular relationship manuals begin trying to enthuse the reader on the covers, which are intended to attract the reader, to establish the professional – or ‘priestly’ – credentials of the author and to assert the merit of the book, presenting the authors as experienced professionally-qualified experts, and advertising their bestseller status. These factors form part of the marketing ‘buzz’ or collective enthusiasm about a particular author or book.As part of the process of establishing themselves in the priestly role, the authors emphasise their professional qualifications and experience. Most authors use the title ‘Dr’ on the cover (Hendrix, McGraw, Forward, Gray, Cowan and Kinder, Schlessinger) or ‘PhD’ after their names (Vedral, DeAngelis, Spezzano). Further claims on the covers include assertions of the prominence of the authors in their field. Typical are DeAngelis’s claim to being “America’s foremost relationships expert,” and Hendrix’s claim to being “the world’s leading marital therapist.” Clinical and professional experience is mentioned, such as Spezzano’s “twenty-three years of counseling experience” (1) and Forward’s experience as “a consultant in many southern California Medical and psychiatric facilities” (iii). The cover of Spezzano’s book claims that he is a “therapist, seminar leader, author, lecturer and visionary leader.” McGraw emphasises his formal qualifications throughout his book, saying, “I had more degrees than a thermometer” (McGraw 6), and he refers to himself throughout as “Dr. Phil,” much like “Dr Laura” (Schlessinger). Facts and SecretsThe authors claim their ideas are based on clinical practice, research, and evidence. One author claims, “In this book, there is a wealth of tried and accurate information, which has worked for thousands of people in my therapeutic practice and seminars over the last two decades” (Spezzano 1). Another claims that he “worked with hundreds of couples in private practice and thousands more in workshops and seminars” and subsequently based his ideas on “research and clinical observations” (Hendrix xviii). Dowling refers to “four years of research … interviewing professionals who work with and study women.” She went to all this trouble because, she assures us, “I wanted facts” (Dowling, dust-jacket, 30).All this is in order to assure the reader of the relevance and build her enthusiasm about the importance of the book. McGraw (226) says he “reviewed case histories of literally thousands and thousands of couples” in order “to choose the right topics” for his book. Spezzano (7) claims that his psychological exercises come from clinical experience, but “more importantly, I have tested them all personally. Now I offer them to you.” This notion of being in possession of important new knowledge of which the reader is unaware is common, and expressed most succinctly by McGraw (15): “I have learned what you know and, more important, what you don't know.” This knowledge may be referred to as ‘secret’ (e.g. DeAngelis), or ‘hidden’ (e.g. Dowling) or as a recent discovery. Readers seem to accept this – they often assume that self-help books spring ‘naturally’ from clinical investigation as new information is ‘discovered’ about the human psyche (Lichterman 432).The Altruistic AuthorOn the assumption that readers will be familiar with other self-help books, some authors find it necessary to explain why they felt motivated to write one themselves. Usually these take the form of a kind of altruistic enthusiasm to share their great discoveries. Cowan and Kinder (xiv) claim that “one of the wonderful, intrinsic rewards of working with someone in individual psychotherapy is the rich and intense relationship that is established, [but] one of the frustrations of individual work is that in a whole lifetime it is impossible to touch more than a few people.” Morgan (26) assures us that “the results of applying certain principles to my marriage were so revolutionary that I had to pass them on in the four lesson Total Woman course, and now in this book.”The authors justify their own addition to an overcrowded genre by delineating what is distinctive about their own book, or what other “books, articles and surveys missed” (Dowling 30) or misinterpreted. Beattie (98-102) devotes several pages to a discussion of Dowling to assert that Dowling’s ‘Cinderella Complex’ is more accurately known as ‘codependency.’ The authors of another book admit that their ideas are not new, but claim to make a unique contribution because they are “writing from a much-needed male point of view” (Cowan and Kinder, back cover). Similarly, Gray suggests “many books are one-sided and unfortunately reinforce mistrust and resentment toward the opposite sex.” This meant that “a definitive guide was needed for understanding how healthy men and women are different,” and he promises “This book provides that vision” (Gray 4,7).Some authors are vehement in attacking other experts’ books as “gripe sessions,” “gobbledegook” (Schlessinger 51, 87), or “ridiculous” (Vedral 282). McGraw (9) writes “it is amazing to me how this country is overflowing with marital therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists, counselors, healers, advice columnists, and self-help authors – and their approach to relationships is usually so embarrassing that I want to turn my head in shame.” His own book, by contrast, will be quite different from anything the reader has heard before, because “it differs from what relationship ‘experts’ tell you” (McGraw 45).Confessions of an Author Because the authors are writing about intimate relationships, they are also keen to establish their credentials on a more personal level. “Loving, losing, learning the lessons, and reloving have been my path” (Carter-Scott 247-248), says one, and another asserts that, “It’s taken me a long time to understand men. It’s been a difficult and often painful journey and I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way in my own relationships” (DeAngelis xvi). The authors are even keen to admit the mistakes they made in their previous relationships. Gray says, “In my previous relationships, I had become indifferent and unloving at difficult times … As a result, my first marriage had been very painful and difficult” (Gray 2). Others describe the feelings of disappointment with their marriages: We gradually changed. I was amazed to realize that Charlie had stopped talking. He had become distant and preoccupied. … Each evening, when Charlie walked in the front door after work, a cloud of gloom and tension floated in with him. That cloud was almost tangible. … this tension cloud permeated our home atmosphere … there was a barrier between us. (Morgan 18)Doyle (14) tells a similar tale: “While my intentions were good, I was clearly on the road to marital hell. … I was becoming estranged from the man who had once made me so happy. Our marriage was in serious trouble and it had only been four years since we’d taken our vows.” The authors relate the bewilderment they felt in these failing relationships: “My confusion about the psychology of love relationships was compounded when I began to have problems with my own marriage. … we gave our marriage eight years of intensive examination, working with numerous therapists. Nothing seemed to help” (Hendrix xvii).Even the process of writing the relationship manual itself can be uncomfortable: This was the hardest and most painful chapter for me to write, because it hit so close to home … I sat down at my computer, typed out the title of this chapter, and burst into tears. … It was the pain of my own broken heart. (DeAngelis 74)The Worthlessness of ExpertiseThus, the authors present their confessional tales in which they have learned important lessons through their own suffering, through the experience of life itself, and not through the intervention of any form of external or professional expertise. Furthermore, they highlight the failure of their professional training. Susan Forward (4) draws a comparison between her professional life as a relationship counsellor and the “Susan who went home at night and twisted herself into a pretzel trying to keep her husband from yelling at her.” McGraw tells of a time when he was counselling a couple, and: Suddenly all I could hear myself saying was blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. As I sat there, I asked myself, ‘Has anybody noticed over the last fifty years that this crap doesn’t work? Has it occurred to anyone that the vast majority of these couples aren’t getting any better? (McGraw 6)The authors go to some lengths to demonstrate that their new-found knowledge is unlike anything else, and are even prepared to mention the apparent contradiction between the role the author already held as a relationship expert (before they made their important discoveries) and the failure of their own relationships (the implication being that these relationships failed because the authors themselves were not yet beneficiaries of the wisdom contained in their latest books). Gray, for example, talking about his “painful and difficult” first marriage (2), and DeAngelis, bemoaning her “mistakes” (xvi), allude to the failure of their marriage to each other, at a time when both were already well-known relationship experts. Hendrix (xvii) says: As I sat in the divorce court waiting to see the judge, I felt like a double failure, a failure as a husband and as a therapist. That very afternoon I was scheduled to teach a course on marriage and the family, and the next day, as usual, I had several couples to counsel. Despite my professional training, I felt just as confused and defeated as the other men and women who were sitting beside me.Thus the authors present the knowledge they have gained from their experiences as being unavailable through professional marital therapy, relationship counselling, and other self-help books. Rather, the advice they impart is presented as the hard-won outcome of a long and painful process of personal discovery.Peace and PassionOnce the uniqueness of the advice is established, the authors attempt to enthuse the reader by describing the effects of following it. Norwood (Women 4) says her programme led to “the most rewarding years of my life,” and Forward (10) says she “discovered enormous amounts of creativity and energy in myself that hadn't been available to me before.” Gray (268) asserts that, following his discoveries “I personally experienced this inner transformation,” and DeAngelis (126) claims “I am compassionate where I used to be critical; I am patient where I used to be judgmental.” Doyle (23) says, “practicing the principles described in this book has transformed my marriage into a passionate, romantic union.” Similarly, in discussing the effects of her ideas on her marriage, Morgan (26) speaks of “This brand new love between us” that “has given us a brand new life together.” Having established the success of their ideas and techniques on their own lives, the authors go on to relate stories about their successful application to the lives and relationships of their clients. One author writes that “When I began implementing my ideas … The divorce rate in my practice sharply declined, and the couples … reported a much deeper satisfaction in their marriages” (Hendrix xix). Another claims “Repeatedly I have heard people say that they have benefited more from this new understanding of relationships than from years of therapy” (Gray 7). Morgan, describing the effects of her ‘Total Woman’ classes, says: Attending one of the first classes in Miami were wives of the Miami Dolphin football players … it is interesting to note that their team won every game that next season and became the world champions! … Gals, I wouldn’t dream of taking credit for the Superbowl … (Morgan 188)In case we are still unconvinced, the authors include praise and thanks from their inspired clients: “My life has become exciting and wonderful. Thank you,” writes one (Vedral 308). Gray (6) talks of the “thousands of inspirational comments that people have shared” about his advice. Vedral (307) says “I have received thousands of letters from women … thanking me for shining a beam of light on their situations.” If these clients have transformed their lives, the authors claim, so can the reader. They promise that the future will be “exceptional” (Friedman 242) and “wonderful” (Norwood, Women 257). It will consist of “self fulfilment, love, and joy” (Norwood, Women 26), “peace and joy” (Hendrix xx), “freedom and a lifetime of healing, hope and happiness” (Beattie), “peace, relief, joy, and passion that you will never find any other way” (Doyle 62) – in short, “happiness for the rest of your life” (Spezzano 77).SummaryIn order to effect the conversion of their readers, the authors seek to create enthusiasm about their books. First, they appeal to the modern tradition of credentialism, making claims about their formal professional qualifications and experience. This establishes them as credible ‘priests.’ Then they make calculable, factual, evidence-based claims concerning the number of books they have sold, and appeal to the epistemological authority of the methodology involved in establishing the findings of their books. They provide evidence of the efficacy of their own unique methods by relating the success of their ideas when applied to their own lives and relationships, and those of their clients and their readers. The authors also go to some lengths to establish that they have personal experience of relationship problems, especially those the reader is currently presumed to be experiencing. This establishes the ‘empathy’ essential to Rogerian therapy (Rogers), and an informal claim to lay knowledge or insight. In telling their own personal stories, the authors establish an ethic of confession, in which the truth of oneself is sought, unearthed and revealed in “the infinite task of extracting from the depths of oneself, in between the words, a truth which the very form of the confession holds out like a shimmering mirage” (Foucault, History 59). At the same time, by claiming that their qualifications were not helpful in solving these personal difficulties, the authors assert that much of their professional training was useless or even harmful, suggesting that they are aware of a general scepticism towards experts (cf. Beck, Giddens), and share these doubts. By implying that it is other experts who are perhaps not to be trusted, they distinguish their own work from anything offered by other relationship experts, thereby circumventing “the paradox of self-help books’ existence” (Cheery) and proliferation. Thus, the authors present their motives as altruistic, whilst perhaps questioning the motives of others. Their own book, they promise, will be the one (finally) that brings a future of peace, passion and joy. Conversion, Enthusiasm and the Reversal of the Priestly RelationshipAlthough power relations between authors and readers are complex, self-help is evidence of power in one of its most efficacious forms – that of conversion. This is a relationship into which one enters voluntarily and enthusiastically, in the name of oneself, for the benefit of oneself. Such power enthuses, persuades, incites, invites, provokes and entices, and it is therefore a strongly subjectifying power, and most especially so because the relationship of the reader to the author is one of choice. Because the reader can choose between authors, and skip or skim sections, she can concentrate on the parts of the therapeutic diagnosis that she believes specifically apply to her. For example, Grodin (414) found it was common for a reader to attach excerpts from a book to a bathroom mirror or kitchen cabinet, and to re-read and underline sections of a book that seemed most relevant. In this way, through her enthusiastic participation, the reader becomes her own expert, her own therapist, in control of certain aspects of the encounter, which nonetheless must always take place on psy terms.In many conversion studies, the final stage involves the assimilation and embodiment of new practices (e.g. Paloutzian et al. 1072), whereby the convert employs or utilises her new truths. I argue that in self-help books, this stage occurs in the reversal of the ‘priestly’ relationship. The ‘priestly’ relationship between client and therapist, is one in which in which the therapist remains mysterious while the client confesses and is known (Rose, "Power"). In the self-help book, however, this relationship is reversed. The authors confess their own ‘sins’ and imperfections, by relating their own disastrous experiences in relationships and wrong-thinking. They are, of course, themselves enthusiastic converts, who are enmeshed within the power that they exercise (cf. Foucault History; Discipline), as these confessions illustrate. The reader is encouraged to go through this process of confession as well, but she is expected to do so privately, and to play the role of priest and confessor to herself. Thus, in a reversal of the priestly relationship, the person who ‘is knowledge’ within the book itself is the author. It is only if the reader takes up the invitation to perform for herself the priestly role that she will become an object of knowledge – and even then, only to herself, albeit through a psy diagnostic gaze provided for her. Of course, this instance of confession to the self still places the individual “in a network of relations of power with those who claim to be able to extract the truth of these confessions through their possession of the keys to interpretation” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 174), but the keys to interpretation are provided to the reader by the author, and left with her for her own safekeeping and future use. As mentioned in the introduction, conversion involves questing in an active and engaged way, and may involve joy and proselytising. Because the relationship must be one of active participation, the enthusiasm of the reader to apply these truths to her own self-understanding is critical. Indeed, the convert is, by her very nature, an enthusiast.ConclusionSelf-help books seek to bring about a transformation of subjectivity from powerlessness to active goal-setting, personal improvement and achievement. This is achieved by a process of conversion that produces particular choices and types of identity, new subjectivities remade through the production of new ethical truths. Self-help discourses endow individuals with new enthusiasms, aptitudes and qualities – and these can then be passed on to others. Indeed, the self-help reader is invited, by means of the author’s confessions, to become, in a limited way, the author’s own therapist – ie, she is invited to perform an examination of the author’s (past) mistakes, to diagnose the author’s (past) condition and to prescribe an appropriate (retrospective) cure for this condition. Through the process of diagnosing the author and the author’s clients, using the psy gaze provided by the author, the reader is rendered an expert in therapeutic wisdom and is converted to a new belief system in which she will become an enthusiastic participant in her own subjectification. ReferencesBeattie, M. Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself. Minnesota: Hazelden, 1992.Beck, U. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Trans. M. Ritter. London: Sage, 1992.Carter-Scott, C. If Love Is a Game, These Are the Rules. London: Vermilion, 2000.Cheery, S. "The Ontology of a Self-Help Book: A Paradox of Its Own Existence." Social Semiotics 18.3 (2008): 337-348.Cowan, C., and M. Kinder. Smart Women, Foolish Choices: Finding the Right Men and Avoiding the Wrong Ones. New York: Signet, 1986.DeAngelis, B. Secrets about Men Every Woman Should Know. London: Thirsons, 1990.Dolby, S. Self-Help Books: Why Americans Keep Reading Them. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2005.Dowling, C. The Cinderella Complex: Women’s Hidden Fear of Independence. New York: Summit Books, 1981.Doyle, L. The Surrendered Wife: A Step by Step Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with a Man. London: Simon and Schuster, 2000.Dreyfus, H.L., and P. Rabinow. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.Ehrenreich, B., and D. English. For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women. London: Pluto, 1988.Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979.———. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. R. Hurley. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.Giddens, A. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Oxford: Polity, 1991.Gray, J. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships. London: HarperCollins, 1993.Grodin, D. “The Interpreting Audience: The Therapeutics of Self-Help Book Reading.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8.4 (1991): 404-420.Hamson, S. “Are Men Really from Mars and Women From Venus?” In R. Francoeur and W. Taverner, eds. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Human Sexuality. 7th ed. Conneticut: McGraw-Hill, 2000.Hazleden, R. “The Pathology of Love in Contemporary Relationship Manuals.” Sociological Review 52.2 (2004). ———. “The Relationship of the Self with Itself in Contemporary Relationship Manuals.” Journal of Sociology 39.4 (Dec. 2003). Hendrix, H. Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples. New York: Pocket Books, 1997.Lichterman, Paul. "Self-Help Reading as a Thin Culture." Media, Culture and Society 14.3 (1992): 421-447. Melia, T., and N. Ryder. Lucifer State: A Novel Approach to Rhetoric. Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1983.Miller, P., and N. Rose. “On Therapeutic Authority: Psychoanalytical Expertise under Advanced Liberalism.” History of the Human Sciences 7.3 (1994): 29-64. McGraw, P. Relationship Rescue: Don’t Make Excuses! Start Repairing Your Relationship Today. London: Vermilion, 2001.Morgan, M. The Total Woman. London: Harper Collins, 1973.Norwood, R. Letters From Women Who Love Too Much. New York: Pocket Books, 1988. ———. Women Who Love Too Much: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He’ll Change. New York: Pocket Books, 1986.Paloutzian, R., J. Richardson, and L. Rambo. “Religious Conversion and Personality Change.” Journal of Personality 67.6 (1999).Ricoeur, P. Oneself as Another. Trans. K. Blamey. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1990.Rambo, L. Understanding Conversion. Yale UP, 1993.Rogers, C. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.Rosenblatt, L. Literature as Exploration. 5th ed. New York: MLA, 1995.Rose, N. “Identity, Genealogy, History.” In S. Hall and Paul du Gay, eds. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage, 1995.———. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.———. “Power and Subjectivity: Critical History and Psychology.” Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts. 2000. < http://www.academyanalyticarts.org >.———., and P. Miller. “Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” British Journal of Sociology 43.2 (1992): 173-205.Rowe, Y. “Beyond the Vulnerable Self: The 'Resisting Reader' of Marriage Manuals for Heterosexual Women.” In Kate Bennett, Maryam Jamarani, and Laura Tolton. Rhizomes: Re-Visioning Boundaries conference papers, University of Queensland, 24-25 Feb. 2006.Schlessinger, L. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. New York, HarperCollins, 2004.Simonds, W. Women and Self-Help Culture: Reading between the Lines. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1992.Spezzano, C. 30 Days to Find Your Perfect Mate: The Step by Step Guide to Happiness and Fulfilment. London: Random House, 1994.Starker, S. Oracle at the Supermarket: The American Preoccupation with Self-Help Books. Oxford: Transaction, 1989.Vedral, J. Get Rid of Him! New York: Warner Books, 1994.Wood, L. “The Gallup Survey: Self-Help Buying Trends.” Publishers Weekly 234 (1988): 33.

Abstract:

In the contemporary era, media spectacle organizes and mobilizes economic life, political conflict, social interactions, culture, and everyday life. My recently published book Media Spectacle explores a profusion of developments in hi-tech culture, media-driven society, and spectacle politics. Spectacle culture involves everything from film and broadcasting to Internet cyberculture and encompasses phenomena ranging from elections to terrorism and to the media dramas of the moment. For ‘Logo’, I am accordingly sketching out briefly a terrain I probe in detail in the book from which these examples are taken.1 During the past decades, every form of culture and significant forms of social life have become permeated by the logic of the spectacle. Movies are bigger and more spectacular than ever, with high-tech special effects expanding the range of cinematic spectacle. Television channels proliferate endlessly with all-day movies, news, sports, specialty niches, re-runs of the history of television, and whatever else can gain an audience. The rock spectacle reverberates through radio, television, CDs, computers networks, and extravagant concerts. The Internet encircles the world in the spectacle of an interactive and multimedia cyberculture. Media culture excels in creating megaspectacles of sports championships, political conflicts, entertainment, "breaking news" and media events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Death of Princess Diana, or the sex or murder scandal of the moment. Megaspectacle comes as well to dominate party politics, as the political battles of the day, such as the Clinton sex scandals and impeachment, the 36 Day Battle for the White House after Election 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War. These dramatic media passion plays define the politics of the time, and attract mass audiences to their programming, hour after hour, day after day. The concept of "spectacle" derives from French Situationist theorist Guy Debord's 1972 book Society of the Spectacle. "Spectacle," in Debord's terms, "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena" (Debord 1970: #10). In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. Spectacles are those phenomena of media culture which embody contemporary society's basic values, and dreams and nightmares, putting on display dominant hopes and fears. They serve to enculturate individuals into its way of life, and dramatize its conflicts and modes of conflict resolution. They include sports events, political campaigns and elections, and media extravaganzas like sensational murder trials, or the Bill Clinton sex scandals and impeachment spectacle (1998-1999). As we enter a new millennium, the media are becoming ever more technologically dazzling and are playing an increasingly central role in everyday life. Under the influence of a postmodern image culture, seductive spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, a semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply influence thought and action. For Debord: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society" (#18). Today, however, I would maintain it is the multimedia spectacle of sight, sound, touch, and, coming to you soon, smell that constitutes the multidimensional sense experience of the new interactive spectacle. For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium war" (#44) which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative praxis. The concept of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in passively consuming spectacles, one is separated from actively producing one's life. Capitalist society separates workers from the products of their labor, art from life, and consumption from human needs and self-directing activity, as individuals passively observe the spectacles of social life from within the privacy of their homes (#25 and #26). The situationist project by contrast involved an overcoming of all forms of separation, in which individuals would directly produce their own life and modes of self-activity and collective practice. Since Debord's theorization of the society of the spectacle in the 1960s and 1970s, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life. In the culture of the spectacle, commercial enterprises have to be entertaining to prosper and as Michael J. Wolf (1999) argues, in an "entertainment economy," business and fun fuse, so that the E-factor is becoming major aspect of business.2 Via the "entertainmentization" of the economy, television, film, theme parks, video games, casinos, and so forth become major sectors of the national economy. In the U.S., the entertainment industry is now a $480 billion industry, and consumers spend more on having fun than on clothes or health care (Wolf 1999: 4).3 In a competitive business world, the "fun factor" can give one business the edge over another. Hence, corporations seek to be more entertaining in their commercials, their business environment, their commercial spaces, and their web sites. Budweiser ads, for instance, feature talking frogs who tell us nothing about the beer, but who catch the viewers' attention, while Taco Bell deploys a talking dog, and Pepsi uses Star Wars characters. Buying, shopping, and dining out are coded as an "experience," as businesses adopt a theme-park style. Places like the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues are not renowned for their food, after all; people go there for the ambience, to buy clothing, and to view music and media memorabilia. It is no longer good enough just to have a web site, it has to be an interactive spectacle, featuring not only products to buy, but music and videos to download, games to play, prizes to win, travel information, and "links to other cool sites." To succeed in the ultracompetitive global marketplace, corporations need to circulate their image and brand name so business and advertising combine in the promotion of corporations as media spectacles. Endless promotion circulates the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, or the logos of Apple, Intel, or Microsoft. In the brand wars between commodities, corporations need to make their logos or “trademarks” a familiar signpost in contemporary culture. Corporations place their logos on their products, in ads, in the spaces of everyday life, and in the midst of media spectacles like important sports events, TV shows, movie product placement, and wherever they can catch consumer eyeballs, to impress their brand name on a potential buyer. Consequently, advertising, marketing, public relations and promotion are an essential part of commodity spectacle in the global marketplace. Celebrity too is manufactured and managed in the world of media spectacle. Celebrities are the icons of media culture, the gods and goddesses of everyday life. To become a celebrity requires recognition as a star player in the field of media spectacle, be it sports, entertainment, or politics. Celebrities have their handlers and image managers to make sure that their celebrities continue to be seen and positively perceived by publics. Just as with corporate brand names, celebrities become brands to sell their Madonna, Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, or Jennifer Lopez product and image. In a media culture, however, celebrities are always prey to scandal and thus must have at their disposal an entire public relations apparatus to manage their spectacle fortunes, to make sure their clients not only maintain high visibility but keep projecting a positive image. Of course, within limits, “bad” and transgressions can also sell and so media spectacle contains celebrity dramas that attract public attention and can even define an entire period, as when the O.J. Simpson murder trials and Bill Clinton sex scandals dominated the media in the mid and late 1990s. Entertainment has always been a prime field of the spectacle, but in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life in important new ways. Building on the tradition of spectacle, contemporary forms of entertainment from television to the stage are incorporating spectacle culture into their enterprises, transforming film, television, music, drama, and other domains of culture, as well as producing spectacular new forms of culture such as cyberspace, multimedia, and virtual reality. For Neil Gabler, in an era of media spectacle, life itself is becoming like a movie and we create our own lives as a genre like film, or television, in which we become "at once performance artists in and audiences for a grand, ongoing show" (1998: 4). On Gabler’s view, we star in our own "lifies," making our lives into entertainment acted out for audiences of our peers, following the scripts of media culture, adopting its role models and fashion types, its style and look. Seeing our lives in cinematic terms, entertainment becomes for Gabler "arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time--a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life" to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish between the two (1998: 9). As Gabler sees it, Ralph Lauren is our fashion expert; Martha Stewart designs our sets; Jane Fonda models our shaping of our bodies; and Oprah Winfrey advises us on our personal problems.4 Media spectacle is indeed a culture of celebrity who provide dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business. An ever-expanding public relations industry hypes certain figures, elevating them to celebrity status, and protects their positive image in the never-ending image wars and dangers that a celebrity will fall prey to the machinations of negative-image and thus lose celebrity status, and/or become figures of scandal and approbation, as will some of the players and institutions that I examine in Media Spectacle (Kellner 2003). Sports has long been a domain of the spectacle with events like the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup, and NBA championships attracting massive audiences, while generating sky-high advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate society's deepest values (i.e. competition, winning, success, and money), and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events. Indeed, it appears that the logic of the commodity spectacle is inexorably permeating professional sports which can no longer be played without the accompaniment of cheerleaders, giant mascots who clown with players and spectators, and raffles, promotions, and contests that feature the products of various sponsors. Sports stadiums themselves contain electronic reproduction of the action, as well as giant advertisem*nts for various products that rotate for maximum saturation -- previewing environmental advertising in which entire urban sites are becoming scenes to boost consumption spectacles. Arenas, like the United Center in Chicago, America West Arena in Phoenix, on Enron Field in Houston are named after corporate sponsors. Of course, after major corporate scandals or collapse, like the Enron spectacle, the ballparks must be renamed! The Texas Ranger Ballpark in Arlington, Texas supplements its sports arena with a shopping mall, office buildings, and a restaurant in which for a hefty price one can watch the athletic events while eating and drinking.5 The architecture of the Texas Rangers stadium is an example of the implosion of sports and entertainment and postmodern spectacle. A man-made lake surrounds the stadium, the corridor inside is modeled after Chartes Cathedral, and the structure is made of local stone that provides the look of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Inside there are Texas longhorn cattle carvings, panels of Texas and baseball history, and other iconic signifiers of sports and Texas. The merging of sports, entertainment, and local spectacle is now typical in sports palaces. Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Florida, for instance, "has a three-level mall that includes places where 'fans can get a trim at the barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser brew pub, whose copper kettles rise three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and showroom space for car dealerships'" (Ritzer 1998: 229). Film has long been a fertile field of the spectacle, with "Hollywood" connoting a world of glamour, publicity, fashion, and excess. Hollywood film has exhibited grand movie palaces, spectacular openings with searchlights and camera-popping paparazzi, glamorous Oscars, and stylish hi-tech film. While epic spectacle became a dominant genre of Hollywood film from early versions of The Ten Commandments through Cleopatra and 2001 in the 1960s, contemporary film has incorporated the mechanics of spectacle into its form, style, and special effects. Films are hyped into spectacle through advertising and trailers which are ever louder, more glitzy, and razzle-dazzle. Some of the most popular films of the late 1990s were spectacle films, including Titanic, Star Wars -- Phantom Menace, Three Kings, and Austin Powers, a spoof of spectacle, which became one of the most successful films of summer 1999. During Fall 1999, there was a cycle of spectacles, including Topsy Turvy, Titus, Cradle Will Rock, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, and Magnolia, with the latter featuring the biblical spectacle of the raining of frogs in the San Fernando Valley, in an allegory of the decadence of the entertainment industry and deserved punishment for its excesses. The 2000 Academy Awards were dominated by the spectacle Gladiator, a mediocre film that captured best picture award and best acting award for Russell Crowe, thus demonstrating the extent to which the logic of the spectacle now dominates Hollywood film. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular films of 2001 are also hi-tech spectacle, such as Moulin Rouge, a film spectacle that itself is a delirious ode to spectacle, from cabaret and the brothel to can-can dancing, opera, musical comedy, dance, theater, popular music, and film. A postmodern pastiche of popular music styles and hits, the film used songs and music ranging from Madonna and the Beatles to Dolly Parton and Kiss. Other 2001 film spectacles include Pearl Harbor, which re-enacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. that propelled the country to enter World War II, and that provided a ready metaphor for the September 11 terror attacks. Major 2001 film spectacles range from David Lynch’s postmodern surrealism in Mulholland Drive to Steven Spielberg’s blending of his typically sentimental spectacle of the family with the formalist rigor of Stanley Kubrick in A.I. And the popular 2001 military film Black-Hawk Down provided a spectacle of American military heroism which some critics believed sugar-coated the actual problems with the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, causing worries that a future U.S. adventure by the Bush administration and Pentagon would meet similar problems. There were reports, however, that in Somalian cinemas there were loud cheers as the Somalians in the film shot down the U.S. helicopter, and pursued and killed American soldiers, attesting to growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world against Bush administration policies. Television has been from its introduction in the 1940s a promoter of consumption spectacle, selling cars, fashion, home appliances, and other commodities along with consumer life-styles and values. It is also the home of sports spectacle like the Super Bowl or World Series, political spectacles like elections (or more recently, scandals), entertainment spectacle like the Oscars or Grammies, and its own spectacles like breaking news or special events. Following the logic of spectacle entertainment, contemporary television exhibits more hi-tech glitter, faster and glitzier editing, computer simulations, and with cable and satellite television, a fantastic array of every conceivable type of show and genre. TV is today a medium of spectacular programs like The X-Files or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and spectacles of everyday life such as MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, or the globally popular Survivor and Big Brother series. Real life events, however, took over TV spectacle in 2000-2001 in, first, an intense battle for the White House in a dead-heat election, that arguably constitutes one of the greatest political crimes and scandals in U.S. history (see Kellner 2001). After months of the Bush administration pushing the most hardright political agenda in memory and then deadlocking as the Democrats took control of the Senate in a dramatic party re-affiliation of Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, the world was treated to the most horrifying spectacle of the new millennium, the September 11 terror attacks and unfolding Terror War that has so far engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq. These events promise an unending series of deadly spectacle for the foreseeable future.6 Hence, we are emerging into a new culture of media spectacle that constitutes a novel configuration of economy, society, politics, and everyday life. It involves new cultural forms, social relations, and modes of experience. It is producing an ever-proliferating and expanding spectacle culture with its proliferating media forms, cultural spaces, and myriad forms of spectacle. It is evident in the U.S. as the new millennium unfolds and may well constitute emergent new forms of global culture. Critical social theory thus faces important challenges in theoretically mapping and analyzing these emergent forms of culture and society and the ways that they may contain novel forms of domination and oppression, as well as potential for democratization and social justice. Works Cited Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. Gabler, Neil. Life the Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. Thousand Oaks, Cal. and London: Sage, 1998. Wolf, Michael J. Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces are Transforming Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 1999. Notes 1 See Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 2 Wolf's book is a detailed and useful celebration of the "entertainment economy," although he is a shill for the firms and tycoons that he works for and celebrates them in his book. Moreover, while entertainment is certainly an important component of the infotainment economy, it is an exaggeration to say that it drives it and is actually propelling it, as Wolf repeatedly claims. Wolf also downplays the negative aspects of the entertainment economy, such as growing consumer debt and the ups and downs of the infotainment stock market and vicissitudes of the global economy. 3 Another source notes that "the average American household spent $1,813 in 1997 on entertainment -- books, TV, movies, theater, toys -- almost as much as the $1,841 spent on health care per family, according to a survey by the US Labor Department." Moreover, "the price we pay to amuse ourselves has, in some cases, risen at a rate triple that of inflation over the past five years" (USA Today, April 2, 1999: E1). The NPD Group provided a survey that indicated that the amount of time spent on entertainment outside of the home –- such as going to the movies or a sport event – was up 8% from the early to the late 1990s and the amount of time in home entertainment, such as watching television or surfing the Internet, went up 2%. Reports indicate that in a typical American household, people with broadband Internet connections spend 22% more time on all-electronic media and entertainment than the average household without broadband. See “Study: Broadband in homes changes media habits” (PCWORLD.COM, October 11, 2000). 4 Gabler’s book is a synthesis of Daniel Boorstin, Dwight Macdonald, Neil Poster, Marshall McLuhan, and other trendy theorists of media culture, but without the brilliance of a Baudrillard, the incisive criticism of an Adorno, or the understanding of the deeper utopian attraction of media culture of a Bloch or Jameson. Likewise, Gabler does not, a la cultural studies, engage the politics of representation, or its economics and political economy. He thus ignores mergers in the culture industries, new technologies, the restructuring of capitalism, globalization, and shifts in the economy that are driving the impetus toward entertainment. Gabler does get discuss how new technologies are creating new spheres of entertainment and forms of experience and in general describes rather than theorizes the trends he is engaging. 5 The project was designed and sold to the public in part through the efforts of the son of a former President, George W. Bush. Young Bush was bailed out of heavy losses in the Texas oil industry in the 1980s by his father's friends and used his capital gains, gleaned from what some say as illicit insider trading, to purchase part-ownership of a baseball team to keep the wayward son out of trouble and to give him something to do. The soon-to-be Texas governor, and future President of the United States, sold the new stadium to local taxpayers, getting them to agree to a higher sales tax to build the stadium which would then become the property of Bush and his partners. This deal allowed Bush to generate a healthy profit when he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers franchise and to buy his Texas ranch, paid for by Texas tax-payers (for sources on the scandalous life of George W. Bush and his surprising success in politics, see Kellner 2001 and the further discussion of Bush Jr. in Chapter 6). 6 See Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kellner, Douglas. "Engaging Media Spectacle " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>. APA Style Kellner, D. (2003, Jun 19). Engaging Media Spectacle . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>

Abstract:

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circ*mstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circ*mstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. Brock, David E. Stewart, David W. Stewart. Attention, Attitude, and Affect in Response to Advertising. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.Deuchar, Alexander. British Crests: Containing the Crests and Mottos of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland Together with Those of the Principal Cities – Primary So. London: Kirkwood & Sons, 1817.Ebert, Robert. “Great Movie: Stage Coach.” Robert Ebert.com. 1 Aug. 2011. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-stagecoach-1939>.Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. London: Henry Washbourne, 1847.Eisenberger, Naomi I., Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. "Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion." Science 302.5643 (2003): 290-92.Family Crests of Japan. California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007.Gombrich, Ernst. "The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication." Scientific American 272 (1972): 82-96.Hedarty, Stephanie. "How Jeans Conquered the World." BBC World Service. 28 Feb. 2012. 26 July 2019 <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17101768>. Han, Young Jee, Joseph C. Nunes, and Xavier Drèze. "Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence." Journal of Marketing 74.4 (2010): 15-30.Hill, Daniel Delis. Advertising to the American Woman, 1900-1999. United States of Ame: Ohio State University Press, 2002."History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>. icon-icon: Telling You More about Icons. 18 Dec. 2016. 26 July 2019 <http://www.icon-icon.com/en/hermes-logo-the-horse-drawn-carriage/>. Jones, Geoffrey. Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>. Krick, Jessa. "Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) and the House of Worth." Heilburnn Timeline of Art History. The Met. Oct. 2004. 23 July 2019 <https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.htm>. Levi’s. "About Levis Strauss & Co." 25 July 2019 <https://www.levis.com.au/about-us.html>. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. London: Penguin, 1969.Lopes, Teresa de Silva, and Paul Duguid. Trademarks, Brands, and Competitiveness. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Maslow, Abraham. "A Theory of Human Motivation." British Journal of Psychiatry 208.4 (1942): 313-13.Moore, Karl, and Susan Reid. "The Birth of Brand: 4000 Years of Branding History." Business History 4.4 (2008).Muthu, Subramanian Senthikannan. Sustainability in Denim. Cambridge Woodhead Publishing, 2017.Polan, Brenda, and Roger Tredre. The Great Fashion Designers. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.Pool, Roger C. Introduction. Totemism. New ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Press, Claire. Wardrobe Crisis: How We Went from Sunday Best to Fast Fashion. Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing, 2016.Sale, K. Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1996.Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. Snyder, Rachel Louise. Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.Starcevic, Sladjana. "The Origin and Historical Development of Branding and Advertising in the Old Civilizations of Africa, Asia and Europe." Marketing 46.3 (2015): 179-96.Tikkanen, Amy. "Coco Chanel." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 19 Apr. 2019. 25 July 2019 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Coco-Chanel>.Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. London: Macmillan, 1975.Weir, Kirsten. "The Pain of Social Rejection." American Psychological Association 43.4 (2012): 50.Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisem*nts: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. Ideas in Progress. London: Boyars, 1978.

Abstract:

A same-but-different dichotomy has recently been encapsulated within the US Food and Drug Administration’s ill-defined concept of “substantial equivalence” (USFDA, FDA). By invoking this concept the genetically modified organism (GMO) industry has escaped the rigors of safety testing that might otherwise apply. The curious concept of “substantial equivalence” grants a presumption of safety to GMO food. This presumption has yet to be earned, and has been used to constrain labelling of both GMO and non-GMO food. It is an idea that well serves corporatism. It enables the claim of difference to secure patent protection, while upholding the contrary claim of sameness to avoid labelling and safety scrutiny. It offers the best of both worlds for corporate food entrepreneurs, and delivers the worst of both worlds to consumers. The term “substantial equivalence” has established its currency within the GMO discourse. As the opportunities for patenting food technologies expand, the GMO recruitment of this concept will likely be a dress rehearsal for the developing debates on the labelling and testing of other techno-foods – including nano-foods and clone-foods. “Substantial Equivalence” “Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?” asks Clover in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. By way of response, Benjamin “read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran: ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS”. After this reductionist revelation, further novel and curious events at Manor Farm, “did not seem strange” (Orwell, ch. X). Equality is a concept at the very core of mathematics, but beyond the domain of logic, equality becomes a hotly contested notion – and the domain of food is no exception. A novel food has a regulatory advantage if it can claim to be the same as an established food – a food that has proven its worth over centuries, perhaps even millennia – and thus does not trigger new, perhaps costly and onerous, testing, compliance, and even new and burdensome regulations. On the other hand, such a novel food has an intellectual property (IP) advantage only in terms of its difference. And thus there is an entrenched dissonance for newly technologised foods, between claiming sameness, and claiming difference. The same/different dilemma is erased, so some would have it, by appeal to the curious new dualist doctrine of “substantial equivalence” whereby sameness and difference are claimed simultaneously, thereby creating a win/win for corporatism, and a loss/loss for consumerism. This ground has been pioneered, and to some extent conquered, by the GMO industry. The conquest has ramifications for other cryptic food technologies, that is technologies that are invisible to the consumer and that are not evident to the consumer other than via labelling. Cryptic technologies pertaining to food include GMOs, pesticides, hormone treatments, irradiation and, most recently, manufactured nano-particles introduced into the food production and delivery stream. Genetic modification of plants was reported as early as 1984 by Horsch et al. The case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty resulted in a US Supreme Court decision that upheld the prior decision of the US Court of Customs and Patent Appeal that “the fact that micro-organisms are alive is without legal significance for purposes of the patent law”, and ruled that the “respondent’s micro-organism plainly qualifies as patentable subject matter”. This was a majority decision of nine judges, with four judges dissenting (Burger). It was this Chakrabarty judgement that has seriously opened the Pandora’s box of GMOs because patenting rights makes GMOs an attractive corporate proposition by offering potentially unique monopoly rights over food. The rear guard action against GMOs has most often focussed on health repercussions (Smith, Genetic), food security issues, and also the potential for corporate malfeasance to hide behind a cloak of secrecy citing commercial confidentiality (Smith, Seeds). Others have tilted at the foundational plank on which the economics of the GMO industry sits: “I suggest that the main concern is that we do not want a single molecule of anything we eat to contribute to, or be patented and owned by, a reckless, ruthless chemical organisation” (Grist 22). The GMO industry exhibits bipolar behaviour, invoking the concept of “substantial difference” to claim patent rights by way of “novelty”, and then claiming “substantial equivalence” when dealing with other regulatory authorities including food, drug and pesticide agencies; a case of “having their cake and eating it too” (Engdahl 8). This is a clever slight-of-rhetoric, laying claim to the best of both worlds for corporations, and the worst of both worlds for consumers. Corporations achieve patent protection and no concomitant specific regulatory oversight; while consumers pay the cost of patent monopolization, and are not necessarily apprised, by way of labelling or otherwise, that they are purchasing and eating GMOs, and thereby financing the GMO industry. The lemma of “substantial equivalence” does not bear close scrutiny. It is a fuzzy concept that lacks a tight testable definition. It is exactly this fuzziness that allows lots of wriggle room to keep GMOs out of rigorous testing regimes. Millstone et al. argue that “substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgement masquerading as if it is scientific. It is moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests. It therefore serves to discourage and inhibit informative scientific research” (526). “Substantial equivalence” grants GMOs the benefit of the doubt regarding safety, and thereby leaves unexamined the ramifications for human consumer health, for farm labourer and food-processor health, for the welfare of farm animals fed a diet of GMO grain, and for the well-being of the ecosystem, both in general and in its particularities. “Substantial equivalence” was introduced into the food discourse by an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report: “safety evaluation of foods derived by modern biotechnology: concepts and principles”. It is from this document that the ongoing mantra of assumed safety of GMOs derives: “modern biotechnology … does not inherently lead to foods that are less safe … . Therefore evaluation of foods and food components obtained from organisms developed by the application of the newer techniques does not necessitate a fundamental change in established principles, nor does it require a different standard of safety” (OECD, “Safety” 10). This was at the time, and remains, an act of faith, a pro-corporatist and a post-cautionary approach. The OECD motto reveals where their priorities lean: “for a better world economy” (OECD, “Better”). The term “substantial equivalence” was preceded by the 1992 USFDA concept of “substantial similarity” (Levidow, Murphy and Carr) and was adopted from a prior usage by the US Food and Drug Agency (USFDA) where it was used pertaining to medical devices (Miller). Even GMO proponents accept that “Substantial equivalence is not intended to be a scientific formulation; it is a conceptual tool for food producers and government regulators” (Miller 1043). And there’s the rub – there is no scientific definition of “substantial equivalence”, no scientific test of proof of concept, and nor is there likely to be, since this is a ‘spinmeister’ term. And yet this is the cornerstone on which rests the presumption of safety of GMOs. Absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. History suggests that this is a fraught presumption. By way of contrast, the patenting of GMOs depends on the antithesis of assumed ‘sameness’. Patenting rests on proven, scrutinised, challengeable and robust tests of difference and novelty. Lightfoot et al. report that transgenic plants exhibit “unexpected changes [that] challenge the usual assumptions of GMO equivalence and suggest genomic, proteomic and metanomic characterization of transgenics is advisable” (1). GMO Milk and Contested Labelling Pesticide company Monsanto markets the genetically engineered hormone rBST (recombinant Bovine Somatotropin; also known as: rbST; rBGH, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone; and the brand name Prosilac) to dairy farmers who inject it into their cows to increase milk production. This product is not approved for use in many jurisdictions, including Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. Even Monsanto accepts that rBST leads to mastitis (inflammation and pus in the udder) and other “cow health problems”, however, it maintains that “these problems did not occur at rates that would prohibit the use of Prosilac” (Monsanto). A European Union study identified an extensive list of health concerns of rBST use (European Commission). The US Dairy Export Council however entertain no doubt. In their background document they ask “is milk from cows treated with rBST safe?” and answer “Absolutely” (USDEC). Meanwhile, Monsanto’s website raises and answers the question: “Is the milk from cows treated with rbST any different from milk from untreated cows? No” (Monsanto). Injecting cows with genetically modified hormones to boost their milk production remains a contested practice, banned in many countries. It is the claimed equivalence that has kept consumers of US dairy products in the dark, shielded rBST dairy farmers from having to declare that their milk production is GMO-enhanced, and has inhibited non-GMO producers from declaring their milk as non-GMO, non rBST, or not hormone enhanced. This is a battle that has simmered, and sometimes raged, for a decade in the US. Finally there is a modest victory for consumers: the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) requires all labels used on milk products to be approved in advance by the department. The standard issued in October 2007 (PDA, “Standards”) signalled to producers that any milk labels claiming rBST-free status would be rejected. This advice was rescinded in January 2008 with new, specific, department-approved textual constructions allowed, and ensuring that any “no rBST” style claim was paired with a PDA-prescribed disclaimer (PDA, “Revised Standards”). However, parsimonious labelling is prohibited: No labeling may contain references such as ‘No Hormones’, ‘Hormone Free’, ‘Free of Hormones’, ‘No BST’, ‘Free of BST’, ‘BST Free’,’No added BST’, or any statement which indicates, implies or could be construed to mean that no natural bovine somatotropin (BST) or synthetic bovine somatotropin (rBST) are contained in or added to the product. (PDA, “Revised Standards” 3) Difference claims are prohibited: In no instance shall any label state or imply that milk from cows not treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST, rbST, RBST or rbst) differs in composition from milk or products made with milk from treated cows, or that rBST is not contained in or added to the product. If a product is represented as, or intended to be represented to consumers as, containing or produced from milk from cows not treated with rBST any labeling information must convey only a difference in farming practices or dairy herd management methods. (PDA, “Revised Standards” 3) The PDA-approved labelling text for non-GMO dairy farmers is specified as follows: ‘From cows not treated with rBST. No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows’ or a substantial equivalent. Hereinafter, the first sentence shall be referred to as the ‘Claim’, and the second sentence shall be referred to as the ‘Disclaimer’. (PDA, “Revised Standards” 4) It is onto the non-GMO dairy farmer alone, that the costs of compliance fall. These costs include label preparation and approval, proving non-usage of GMOs, and of creating and maintaining an audit trail. In nearby Ohio a similar consumer versus corporatist pantomime is playing out. This time with the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) calling the shots, and again serving the GMO industry. The ODA prescribed text allowed to non-GMO dairy farmers is “from cows not supplemented with rbST” and this is to be conjoined with the mandatory disclaimer “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-supplemented and non-rbST supplemented cows” (Curet). These are “emergency rules”: they apply for 90 days, and are proposed as permanent. Once again, the onus is on the non-GMO dairy farmers to document and prove their claims. GMO dairy farmers face no such governmental requirements, including no disclosure requirement, and thus an asymmetric regulatory impost is placed on the non-GMO farmer which opens up new opportunities for administrative demands and technocratic harassment. Levidow et al. argue, somewhat Eurocentrically, that from its 1990s adoption “as the basis for a harmonized science-based approach to risk assessment” (26) the concept of “substantial equivalence” has “been recast in at least three ways” (58). It is true that the GMO debate has evolved differently in the US and Europe, and with other jurisdictions usually adopting intermediate positions, yet the concept persists. Levidow et al. nominate their three recastings as: firstly an “implicit redefinition” by the appending of “extra phrases in official documents”; secondly, “it has been reinterpreted, as risk assessment processes have … required more evidence of safety than before, especially in Europe”; and thirdly, “it has been demoted in the European Union regulatory procedures so that it can no longer be used to justify the claim that a risk assessment is unnecessary” (58). Romeis et al. have proposed a decision tree approach to GMO risks based on cascading tiers of risk assessment. However what remains is that the defects of the concept of “substantial equivalence” persist. Schauzu identified that: such decisions are a matter of “opinion”; that there is “no clear definition of the term ‘substantial’”; that because genetic modification “is aimed at introducing new traits into organisms, the result will always be a different combination of genes and proteins”; and that “there is no general checklist that could be followed by those who are responsible for allowing a product to be placed on the market” (2). Benchmark for Further Food Novelties? The discourse, contestation, and debate about “substantial equivalence” have largely focussed on the introduction of GMOs into food production processes. GM can best be regarded as the test case, and proof of concept, for establishing “substantial equivalence” as a benchmark for evaluating new and forthcoming food technologies. This is of concern, because the concept of “substantial equivalence” is scientific hokum, and yet its persistence, even entrenchment, within regulatory agencies may be a harbinger of forthcoming same-but-different debates for nanotechnology and other future bioengineering. The appeal of “substantial equivalence” has been a brake on the creation of GMO-specific regulations and on rigorous GMO testing. The food nanotechnology industry can be expected to look to the precedent of the GMO debate to head off specific nano-regulations and nano-testing. As cloning becomes economically viable, then this may be another wave of food innovation that muddies the regulatory waters with the confused – and ultimately self-contradictory – concept of “substantial equivalence”. Nanotechnology engineers particles in the size range 1 to 100 nanometres – a nanometre is one billionth of a metre. This is interesting for manufacturers because at this size chemicals behave differently, or as the Australian Office of Nanotechnology expresses it, “new functionalities are obtained” (AON). Globally, government expenditure on nanotechnology research reached US$4.6 billion in 2006 (Roco 3.12). While there are now many patents (ETC Group; Roco), regulation specific to nanoparticles is lacking (Bowman and Hodge; Miller and Senjen). The USFDA advises that nano-manufacturers “must show a reasonable assurance of safety … or substantial equivalence” (FDA). A recent inventory of nano-products already on the market identified 580 products. Of these 11.4% were categorised as “Food and Beverage” (WWICS). This is at a time when public confidence in regulatory bodies is declining (HRA). In an Australian consumer survey on nanotechnology, 65% of respondents indicated they were concerned about “unknown and long term side effects”, and 71% agreed that it is important “to know if products are made with nanotechnology” (MARS 22). Cloned animals are currently more expensive to produce than traditional animal progeny. In the course of 678 pages, the USFDA Animal Cloning: A Draft Risk Assessment has not a single mention of “substantial equivalence”. However the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS) in its single page “Statement in Support of USFDA’s Risk Assessment Conclusion That Food from Cloned Animals Is Safe for Human Consumption” states that “FASS endorses the use of this comparative evaluation process as the foundation of establishing substantial equivalence of any food being evaluated. It must be emphasized that it is the food product itself that should be the focus of the evaluation rather than the technology used to generate cloned animals” (FASS 1). Contrary to the FASS derogation of the importance of process in food production, for consumers both the process and provenance of production is an important and integral aspect of a food product’s value and identity. Some consumers will legitimately insist that their Kalamata olives are from Greece, or their balsamic vinegar is from Modena. It was the British public’s growing awareness that their sugar was being produced by slave labour that enabled the boycotting of the product, and ultimately the outlawing of slavery (Hochschild). When consumers boycott Nestle, because of past or present marketing practices, or boycott produce of USA because of, for example, US foreign policy or animal welfare concerns, they are distinguishing the food based on the narrative of the food, the production process and/or production context which are a part of the identity of the food. Consumers attribute value to food based on production process and provenance information (Paull). Products produced by slave labour, by child labour, by political prisoners, by means of torture, theft, immoral, unethical or unsustainable practices are different from their alternatives. The process of production is a part of the identity of a product and consumers are increasingly interested in food narrative. It requires vigilance to ensure that these narratives are delivered with the product to the consumer, and are neither lost nor suppressed. Throughout the GM debate, the organic sector has successfully skirted the “substantial equivalence” debate by excluding GMOs from the certified organic food production process. This GMO-exclusion from the organic food stream is the one reprieve available to consumers worldwide who are keen to avoid GMOs in their diet. The organic industry carries the expectation of providing food produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and by extension, without GMOs. Most recently, the Soil Association, the leading organic certifier in the UK, claims to be the first organisation in the world to exclude manufactured nonoparticles from their products (Soil Association). There has been the call that engineered nanoparticles be excluded from organic standards worldwide, given that there is no mandatory safety testing and no compulsory labelling in place (Paull and Lyons). The twisted rhetoric of oxymorons does not make the ideal foundation for policy. Setting food policy on the shifting sands of “substantial equivalence” seems foolhardy when we consider the potentially profound ramifications of globally mass marketing a dysfunctional food. If there is a 2×2 matrix of terms – “substantial equivalence”, substantial difference, insubstantial equivalence, insubstantial difference – while only one corner of this matrix is engaged for food policy, and while the elements remain matters of opinion rather than being testable by science, or by some other regime, then the public is the dupe, and potentially the victim. “Substantial equivalence” has served the GMO corporates well and the public poorly, and this asymmetry is slated to escalate if nano-food and clone-food are also folded into the “substantial equivalence” paradigm. Only in Orwellian Newspeak is war peace, or is same different. It is time to jettison the pseudo-scientific doctrine of “substantial equivalence”, as a convenient oxymoron, and embrace full disclosure of provenance, process and difference, so that consumers are not collateral in a continuing asymmetric knowledge war. References Australian Office of Nanotechnology (AON). Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR) 6 Aug. 2007. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/Innovation/Pages/ AustralianOfficeofNanotechnology.aspx >.Bowman, Diana, and Graeme Hodge. “A Small Matter of Regulation: An International Review of Nanotechnology Regulation.” Columbia Science and Technology Law Review 8 (2007): 1-32.Burger, Warren. “Sidney A. Diamond, Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks v. Ananda M. Chakrabarty, et al.” Supreme Court of the United States, decided 16 June 1980. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=447&invol=303 >.Curet, Monique. “New Rules Allow Dairy-Product Labels to Include Hormone Info.” The Columbus Dispatch 7 Feb. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2008/02/07/dairy.html >.Engdahl, F. William. Seeds of Destruction. Montréal: Global Research, 2007.ETC Group. Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-Scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture. Ottawa: Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Conservation, November, 2004. European Commission. Report on Public Health Aspects of the Use of Bovine Somatotropin. Brussels: European Commission, 15-16 March 1999.Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS). Statement in Support of FDA’s Risk Assessment Conclusion That Cloned Animals Are Safe for Human Consumption. 2007. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.fass.org/page.asp?pageID=191 >.Grist, Stuart. “True Threats to Reason.” New Scientist 197.2643 (16 Feb. 2008): 22-23.Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery. London: Pan Books, 2006.Horsch, Robert, Robert Fraley, Stephen Rogers, Patricia Sanders, Alan Lloyd, and Nancy Hoffman. “Inheritance of Functional Foreign Genes in Plants.” Science 223 (1984): 496-498.HRA. Awareness of and Attitudes toward Nanotechnology and Federal Regulatory Agencies: A Report of Findings. Washington: Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 25 Sep. 2007.Levidow, Les, Joseph Murphy, and Susan Carr. “Recasting ‘Substantial Equivalence’: Transatlantic Governance of GM Food.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 32.1 (Jan. 2007): 26-64.Lightfoot, David, Rajsree Mungur, Rafiqa Ameziane, Anthony Glass, and Karen Berhard. “Transgenic Manipulation of C and N Metabolism: Stretching the GMO Equivalence.” American Society of Plant Biologists Conference: Plant Biology, 2000.MARS. “Final Report: Australian Community Attitudes Held about Nanotechnology – Trends 2005-2007.” Report prepared for Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR). Miranda, NSW: Market Attitude Research Services, 12 June 2007.Miller, Georgia, and Rye Senjen. “Out of the Laboratory and on to Our Plates: Nanotechnology in Food and Agriculture.” Friends of the Earth, 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://nano.foe.org.au/node/220 >.Miller, Henry. “Substantial Equivalence: Its Uses and Abuses.” Nature Biotechnology 17 (7 Nov. 1999): 1042-1043.Millstone, Erik, Eric Brunner, and Sue Mayer. “Beyond ‘Substantial Equivalence’.” Nature 401 (7 Oct. 1999): 525-526.Monsanto. “Posilac, Bovine Somatotropin by Monsanto: Questions and Answers about bST from the United States Food and Drug Administration.” 2007. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.monsantodairy.com/faqs/fda_safety.html >.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “For a Better World Economy.” Paris: OECD, 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.oecd.org/ >.———. “Safety Evaluation of Foods Derived by Modern Biotechnology: Concepts and Principles.” Paris: OECD, 1993.Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Adelaide: ebooks@Adelaide, 2004 (1945). 30 Apr. 2008 < http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george >.Paull, John. “Provenance, Purity and Price Premiums: Consumer Valuations of Organic and Place-of-Origin Food Labelling.” Research Masters thesis, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2006. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://eprints.utas.edu.au/690/ >.Paull, John, and Kristen Lyons. “Nanotechnology: The Next Challenge for Organics.” Journal of Organic Systems (in press).Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA). “Revised Standards and Procedure for Approval of Proposed Labeling of Fluid Milk.” Milk Labeling Standards (2.0.1.17.08). Bureau of Food Safety and Laboratory Services, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, 17 Jan. 2008. ———. “Standards and Procedure for Approval of Proposed Labeling of Fluid Milk, Milk Products and Manufactured Dairy Products.” Milk Labeling Standards (2.0.1.17.08). Bureau of Food Safety and Laboratory Services, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, 22 Oct. 2007.Roco, Mihail. “National Nanotechnology Initiative – Past, Present, Future.” In William Goddard, Donald Brenner, Sergy Lyshevski and Gerald Iafrate, eds. Handbook of Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2007.Romeis, Jorg, Detlef Bartsch, Franz Bigler, Marco Candolfi, Marco Gielkins, et al. “Assessment of Risk of Insect-Resistant Transgenic Crops to Nontarget Arthropods.” Nature Biotechnology 26.2 (Feb. 2008): 203-208.Schauzu, Marianna. “The Concept of Substantial Equivalence in Safety Assessment of Food Derived from Genetically Modified Organisms.” AgBiotechNet 2 (Apr. 2000): 1-4.Soil Association. “Soil Association First Organisation in the World to Ban Nanoparticles – Potentially Toxic Beauty Products That Get Right under Your Skin.” London: Soil Association, 17 Jan. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/848d689047 cb466780256a6b00298980/42308d944a3088a6802573d100351790!OpenDocument >.Smith, Jeffrey. Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods. Fairfield, Iowa: Yes! Books, 2007.———. Seeds of Deception. Melbourne: Scribe, 2004.U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC). Bovine Somatotropin (BST) Backgrounder. Arlington, VA: U.S. Dairy Export Council, 2006.U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). Animal Cloning: A Draft Risk Assessment. Rockville, MD: Center for Veterinary Medicine, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 28 Dec. 2006.———. FDA and Nanotechnology Products. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.fda.gov/nanotechnology/faqs.html >.Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS). “A Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory.” Data set as at Sep. 2007. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Project on Emerging Technologies, Sep. 2007. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer >.

Abstract:

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs infamously changed the law to read: “some animals are more equal than others” (108). From Charlotte’s Web to Babe, there are a plethora of contemporary cultural references, as well as expressions of their intelligence and worth, which would seem to support the pigs’ cause. However, simultaneously, the term “pig” is also synonymous with negative attributes—greed, dirtiness, disarray, brutality and chauvinism. Pigs are also used to name those out of favour, including police officers, the obese, capitalists and male chauvinists. Yet, the animal’s name is also used to express the most extraordinary and unlikely events as in “pigs might fly”. On the one hand, pigs are praised and represented as intelligent and useful, but then they are derided as unclean and slovenly. We are similarly paradoxical in our relationship with then, ranging from using them as a food source to keeping them as pets, and from seeing them as a valuable farm animal/resource or dangerous feral pest depending on which side of the farm gate they are on. Pigs also give a voice to many aspects of popular culture and feature in novels, fairytales, cartoons, comics and movies. As food, pigs are both for feasts and forbidden, their meat the site of both desire and disgust. They are smoked, roasted, fried, stewed and braised, and farmed in the worst of industrial food producing factories. They are also leading the charge in an eating revolution which is calling for heritage, free-range, organic and cruelty-free farming. Snuck into dishes during the Inquisition to expose false conversos, pigs are today seen by some as unclean, inedible and/or fattening and, yet, they provide the symbolic heart of tip-to-tail eating and some of the most expensive and desired of foodie products: heritage Spanish hams, for instance. In an age where to be slender is the goal of many, pigs have been bred and farmed to provide pork which is ever leaner, and yet, their fat—at its most unctuous and melting—is providing a space where the most celebrated of chefs revel. When more and more people are disconnected from what they eat, snout-to-tail eaters are dining on recognisable pigs’ ears, pig’s head filled pies and braised trotters. For many, pigs are the other white meat.Those of us who grew up with television muppet, Miss Piggy, are familiar with the mixed feelings that pigs can evoke. As the contributions to this issue attest, the idea of “pig” can evoke a similarly wide range of responses from scholars working in a variety of disciplines. While as editors we approached the idea of “pig” from an interdisciplinary food studies approach, the symbolic, and even iconic, significance of the pig is a central concern of all of the papers. As Claude Lévi-Strauss put it so elegantly “food has to be good to think as well as to eat” (1963: 128). A number of the authors in this issue have responded with a regional or country-specific focus, and include perspectives from, or about, places and cultures as diverse as Ireland, Tonga, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, the USA and China. “The Pig in Irish Cuisine and Culture”, the title and subject of Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire’s historical analysis, opens with the fact that more pork is eaten per capita than any other meat in Ireland but pigs themselves are almost invisible. Various themes confirm the importance of pigs in Irish culture—literature, folklore, the domestication of the animal and their value in household economics, their role in feasts and how they are raised, killed, prepared and consumed. How the history of the pig in Ireland complements that of the potato—the food item more widely recognised as a major contributor to Irish cuisine—is also included, as are an indication of the new interpretations of Irish pork and bacon dishes by contemporary chefs. In Tonga, conversely, pigs are killed to mark a special event, and are not eaten as everyday food by most people, although they are very significant in Tongan life and culture precisely because of this ceremonial importance. In “Pu‘aka Tonga,” ex-resident of Tonga Mandy Treagus, explains that this is one of the few things about the Tongan diet that has not changed since Cook visited the area and named it the “Friendly Islands”. Treagus also critiques the ways in which the Tongan diet has changed, and how food in Tonga is a neo-colonial issue with pervasive and, sometimes, negative ramifications for Tongans.Jeremy Fisher’s memoir “Tusk” similarly weaves personal and cultural history together, this time in New Zealand. “Tusk” orients the life story of the narrator’s father around the watershed moment he experienced when he killed a boar at 16. The tusks he took from the killing were mounted on gold and accompanied him throughout his life, as well as acting as a reminder to others of his act. The tusks thus function as a physical reminder of the night he spent out in the bush and killed the boar, but also a remembrance of both change and continuity over time. Jenny Smith moves us spatially, and temporally, to the Soviet Union in her “Tushonka: Cultivating Soviet Postwar Taste”. During the Second World War, the USA sent meat, cheese and butter overseas to help feed the Red Army. However, after receiving several shipments of SPAM, a more familiar canned pork product, Russian tushonka, was requested. Smith uses the example of tuskonka to trace how this pig-based product not only kept soldiers alive during the war, but how later the requirements for its manufacture re-prioritised muscle over fat and influenced pig breeding programs. Smith asserts that this had a significant influence on faming and food processing in the Soviet Union, as well as the relationship between the pig and the consumer.Pigs are at the centre of debates that have arisen from the growth of a number of social movements that are becoming increasingly mainstream, reminding us that they are also alive, and beings in their own right. These movements include environmentalism, vegetarianism and other alternative food movements advocating ethical eating. Thus, in his analysis of alien creatures with pig and human features in the science fiction series Dr Who, “Those Pig-Men Things”, Brett Mills explores our reactions to these characters and their fates. Discussing why pig-human representations are capable of being both “shocking and horrific”, but also of arousing our empathy, Mills’s analysis suggests the possibility of more complex notions of human/non-human interaction. It also assists in working towards, as he states, “helpfully destabilis[ing our] simplistic ideas of the superiority of the human race.” The deepest form of human-animal interaction underlies Peta S. Cook and Nicholas Osbaldiston’s “Pigs Hearts and Human Bodies: A Cultural Approach to Xenotransplantation”. Cook and Osbaldiston discuss how our categorisation of animals as a lower species has enabled their exploitation, arguing how, in the contemporary West, we largely attribute “a sacred high value to human bodies, and a low, profane quality to animal bodies.” The authors provide a compelling account of the social and cultural ramifications of the use of pigs in xenotransplantation (animal-to-human transplantation), a process in which the current “choice” animal source is pigs. The line dividing human and animal can at other times be a tenuous one, demonstrated by the anxiety generated over eating practices exposed in fears of eating “like a pig”. In her article, “Sugar Pigs: Children’s Consumption of Confectionery”, Toni Risson explains how rules about eating and concealing food in the mouth remind us that eating is an animal act that instruction is required to modify and control. Children’s lolly-eating rituals—sharing half-eaten food, monitoring the progress of its consumption and change, and using fingers to inspect this change or pull stuck lollies off teeth—can evoke disgust in adults, but can also create friendship networks, intimacy and a sense of belonging for children as they transgress the rules of civilised eating. As Risson puts it, as “the antithesis of civilisation, the pig is the means by which we understand ourselves as civilised beings, but the child with a lolly is an ever-present reminder that we may be animals after all”.Feminism can be added to this list of social movements, with Arhlene Ann Flowers drawing attention to the power of language in her article “Swine Semantics in U.S. Politics: Who Put Lipstick on the Pig?”. Flowers chronicles the linguistic battle between the presidential candidates in the US 2008 campaign over the colloquialism “lipstick on a pig”, used in a speech by then Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. Flowers traces the history of this phrase, as well as the use of other porcine terms in political language including “pork barrelling” and “male chauvinist pig.”In her article about New York’s first gastrobpub, The Spotted Pig, one of the co-editors of this issue, Donna Lee Brien, has constructed a brief restaurant biography for the eatery famous for founding chef April Bloomfield’s nose-to-tail, locally sourced pork dishes. In this, Brien reflects upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining, whether as “raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, brand, symbol or marketing tool.” In Lillian Ng’s novel, Swallowing Clouds, references to pigs are similarly closely related to food, but in her article, Spanish author Catalina Ribas Segura argues these references to flesh and meat evoke the concepts of freedom, transgression and desire. In “Pigs and Desire in Lillian Ng´s Swallowing Clouds”, Segura focuses on pork and the pig and what these reveal about the two main characters’ relationship. One of these, Zhu Zhiyee, is a butcher, which means that pigs and pork are recurrent topics throughout the novel, but other porcine expressions appear throughout. Pig-related terminology in the novel provides a means for Segura to consider the relationship between food and sex, and sex and literature, and includes a discussion about the connotations of pigs in Chinese culture, where pork is used in a variety of dishes. Lee McGowan’s “Piggery and Predictability: An Exploration of the Hog in Football’s Limelight” focuses in more closely on one of the uses to which we have put pigs, discussing how far “the beautiful game” of football (soccer) has come from the days when an inflated pigs bladder was used as the ball.Reversing this focus from use back to how we, as humans, relate to animals, can show that how we conceive of pigs in our human history reveals our own prejudices. It is known that pigs and humans have interacted for some 10,000 years. The history of that interaction and their own adaptability mean that pigs have a broad range of possible relationships with humans, wider and more complex than either that of many other species or our contemporary treatment of them would attest. The other co-editor of this issue, Adele Wessell, takes a historical perspective to restore pigs to the centre of the narrative in “Making a Pig of the Humanities.” Drawing on a growing body of work on nonhuman animals, Wessell is interested in what a history of pigs and our relationship with them reveals about humans more generally. She argues that all the significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Jim Hearn is a chef, a researcher and writer. Hearn’s article “Percy” is the story of a pig who, as the only pig in the farmyard, longs to “escape the burden of allegory”. All Percy wanted was to belong, but his pig-ness caused offence to all the other animals in the farm. Percy’s story is about belonging and identity, body-image and representation, told from a pig’s point of view. Percy is burdened with the layers of meaning that have built up around pigs and longs to escape, and this fable provides a fitting ending to this issue.Together, we hope the articles in this collection indicate the wide significance and large number of meanings of “pig” that are possible for different cultures and across historical periods, and the place that pigs inhabit in our national, popular and food cultures. They reveal how pigs are used and misused, as well as how they are understood and misunderstood. These interesting and diverse articles also show how pigs are both material and allegorical; how they are paradoxical in how they are revered, avoided and derided; and, commonly, how they are eaten. ReferencesOrwell, George. Animal Farm. Fairfield, IA: 1st World Library—Library Society, 2004.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. Boston, Beacon Press, 1963.

Abstract:

Discussing the interaction between representation and narrative structures, Anthony Mandal argues that the Gothic has always been “an intrinsically intertextual genre” (Mandal 350). From its inception, the intertextuality of the Gothic has taken many and varied incarnations, from simple references and allusions between texts—dates, locations, characters, and “creatures”—to intricate and evocative uses of style and plot organisation. And even though it would be unwise to reduce the Gothic “text” to a simple master narrative, one cannot deny that, in the midst of re-elaborations and re-interpretations, interconnections and interpolations also appear, a collective gathering of ideas and writing practices that construct what is known as “the Gothic intertext” (Mishra 235). As far as storytelling, characterisation, and symbolism are concerned, the Gothic finds strength in its ability to develop as well as negate expectation, re-moulding the culturally known and the aesthetically acceptable in order to present its audience with a multi-faceted and multi-layered narrative. Although the Gothic has traditionally found fertile ground in literary works—a connection that is now a legacy as much as an origin—other contemporary media, such as animation, have offered the Gothic a privileged chance for growth and adaptation. An evocative example of the mergence between the Gothic mode and the animated medium is Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls. This visual text provides an example of the reach of the Gothic within popular culture, where intersecting hideous creatures and interconnected narrative structures, although simple and “for children” on the surface, reveal the presence of a dense and intertextual Gothic network. Those interlacings are, of course, never disconnected from the wider cultural framework, and clearly occupy an important part in unravelling the insidious aspects of human nature, from the difficulties of finding “oneself” to the loneliness of the everyday. Gravity Falls is an animated television series created by Alex Hirsch. It premiered on the Disney Channel in the United States on 15 June 2012. Now scheduled for its second season of running, Gravity Falls follows the adventures of 12-year-old twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines while on their summer vacation in the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. The choice of “twins” as main characters reveals, even at such an embryonic level, a connection to Gothicised structures, as the mode itself, as Vijay Mishra suggests, finds an affinity with doublings and “specular identifications” that “confuse the norm” (63). The presence of twins makes the double nature of character, traditionally a metaphorical and implicit idea in the Gothic, a very obvious and explicit one. Dipper and Mabel are staying with their eccentric and money-grabbing Great Uncle Stan—often referred to as “Grunkle Stan”—who runs the local curiosity shop known as the Mystery Shack. It becomes very obvious from the very beginning that an air of mystery truly surrounds the Shack, which quickly lives up to its name, and the eponymous town. In an aptly Gothic manner, things are definitely not what they seem and the twins are caught in odd plots, eerily occurrences, and haunted/haunting experiences on a daily basis. The instigator for the twins’ interest in the odd manifestations is the finding of a mysterious journal, a manual the relays detailed descriptions of the creatures that inhabit the forest in the town of Gravity Falls. The author of the journal remains unknown, and is commonly known only as “3”, an unexplained number that marks the cover of the book itself. Although the connection between the Gothic and animation may be obscure, it is in fact possible to identify many common and intersecting elements—aesthetically, narratively, and conceptually—that highlight the two as being intrinsically connected. The successful relation that the Gothic holds with animation is based in the mode’s fundamental predilection for not only subversion, excess and the exploration of the realm of the “imagination”, but also humour and self-reflexivity. These aspects are shared with animation which, as a medium, is ideally placed for exploring and presenting the imaginative and the bizarre, while pushing the boundaries of the known and the proper. Julia Round suggests that the Gothic “has long been identified as containing a dual sense of play and fear” (7). The playfulness and destabilisation that are proper to the mode find a fertile territory in animation in view of not only its many genres, but also its style and usually sensational subject matter. This discourse becomes particularly relevant if one takes into consideration matters of audienceship, or, at least, receivership. Although not historically intended for younger viewers, the animation has evolved into a profoundly children-orientated medium. From cinema to television, animated features and series are the domain of children of various ages. Big production houses such as Disney and Warner Bros have capitalised on the potential of the medium, and established its place in broadcasting slots for young viewers. Not unlike comics—which is, in a way, its ancestral medium—animation is such a malleable and contextual form that it requires a far-reaching and inclusive approach, one that is often interdisciplinary in scope; within this, where the multi-faceted nature of the Gothic opens up the way for seeing animated narratives as the highly socio-historical mediums they are. And not unlike comics, animation shares a common ground with the Gothic in requiring a vast scope of analysis, one that is intrinsically based on the conceptual connections between “texts”. Round has also aptly argued that, like comics, animated series lend themselves to malleable and mouldable re-elaboration: “from the cultural to the aesthetic, the structural to the thematic”, graphic media always reflect the impact of “intertextual and historical references” (8). Animation’s ability to convey, connect, and revolutionise ideas is, therefore, well-matched to the aesthetic and conceptual idiosyncrasies of Gothic tropes. Dipper and Mabel’s vacation in the town of Gravity Falls is characterised by the appearance of numerous super- and preter-natural creatures. The list of “monsters” encountered by the twins is long and growing, from gnomes, goblins, mermaids and zombies, to ghosts, clones, and a wide and colourful variety of demons. And although, at first glance, this list would appear to be a simple and simplistic grouping of bizarre and creatively assembled creatures, it is made quickly apparent that these “monsters” are all inspired, often very directly, by “existing”—or, at least, well-known—Gothic creatures, and their respective contexts of development. Indeed, the links to the Gothic in contemporary popular culture are unavoidable. The creatures in Gravity Falls are presented with subtle references to Gothic literature and cinema, from John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984), to Stephen King’s The Shining (1977) and Needful Things (1991). Borrowing from these texts, the creatures in the series all have strange names that rely on play-on-words and re-inventions, and the rubric twists that they undertake are part of a system of both homage and conceptual interdependency. One can find, for instance, “Manotaurs”—creatures that are half-bull and half-man, and that value “manliness” in their society above all else—and the “Gremlobin” – a gigantic monster somewhere in between, we are told, a “gremlin” and a “goblin”, whose eyes can show “your worst nightmares”. But the range extends to other bizarre “creatures” that are clearly very spooky, such as the “Summewrween Trickster”—a large, shadowy, purple/orange monster with a “jack-o’-melon” mask – the living “mailbox”—a sentient and omniscient object—and the truly haunting Bill Cipher—a mind demon that can be summoned through an incantation and enter a person’s subconscious. The connection to the Gothic in popular culture is instrumental for the construction of the Gothic intertext in Gravity Falls. In episode One, “Tourist Trapped” (1.01), Mabel is kidnapped by a tribe of gnomes, who are set on making her their queen. The gnomes are incongruous creatures: on the one hand, they are vengeful and spiteful, recalling the horror monsters found in movies such as the questionable Blood Gnome (2004). On the other, however, they wear red pointy hats and white beards, and their friendly smiles recall the harmless appearance of actual garden gnomes. When the gnomes grow upset, they throw up rainbows; this strange fact destroys their potential as a Gothic horror icon, and makes them accessible and amusing. This subversion of iconography takes place with a number of other “creatures” in Gravity Falls, with the Summerween Trickster—subverting the “terror” of Hallowe’en—being another fitting example. When the gnomes are attempting to woe Mabel, they do not appear to her in their real form: they camouflage themselves into a teenage boy— one who is moody, brooding, and mysterious—and become Mabel’s boyfriend; the “boy’s” interest in her, however, is so intense, that Dipper suspects him to be a member of “The Undead”, a category of monster that is closely described in 3’s journal: due to their “pale skin” and “bad attitudes”, they are often mistaken for “teenagers”. Clues to Dipper’s doubts include the teenage boy’s hand “falling off” while he is hugging Mabel, a clear sign—it would seem—that the boy is obviously a decaying, zombie corpse. The intertextual connection to several horror visual narratives where limbs “fall off” the undead and the monstrous is clear here, with apt film examples being Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Fly (1986), horror comedy Army of Darkness (1992), and, more recently, television’s The Walking Dead (2010-). The references to well-known horror films are scattered throughout the series, and comprise the majority of the lampooned cultural context in which the creatures appear. In spite of Dipper’s suspicions, the situation is revealed to have a rather different outcome. When the boyfriend tells Mabel he has a big secret to reveal, her mind wanders into another direction, choosing a different type of undead, as she expectantly thinks: “Please be a vampire…please be a vampire”. It is not difficult to spot the conceptual connection here to narratives such as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga (2005-2008), both in its literary and cinematic variations, where brooding and mysterious teenage boys find ideal incarnations as the undead creature. The romanticised nature of teenage fictional narratives such as the Twilight saga is also mirrored in Mabel’s distinctive love-centred interest in the potential vampire, revealing an intertextual and highly contextual association to seeing the creature as part of an amorous relationship, as opposed to a blood-thirsty murderer. Mabel’s dreams of vampric love are unfortunately shattered when the boyfriend is revealed to be several gnomes carefully assembled to operate a human-like body, rather than one immortal lover. Irrespective of its desire to parody the Gothic, however, Gravity Falls still maintains unavoidable links to the notion of terror. Clear evidence of this is to be found in the fact that all “creatures” in the series present a level of anthropomorphism about them, and this is interpreted by the characters—and the viewers—as one of their scariest aspects. Leigh Blackmore suggests that a special brand of terror can be found in “anthropomorphic beings” that are in fact not human (Blackmore 95). Most of the creatures in the series are humanoid in shape, and can speak like humans. From gnomes to mermaids, mailboxes and demons, the creatures act as humans, but they are in fact something “other”, something that only recalls the human itself. This idea of being “almost human”, but “not quite”, is disturbing in itself, and connects the presentation of the creatures to the Gothic via the notion of the uncanny: “a crisis of the natural, touching upon everything that one might have thought was ‘part of nature’ […] human nature, the nature of reality and the world” (Royle 1). The uncanny nature of the creatures in Gravity Falls is maintained through their profound inhumanity, and their simultaneous links to human ways of acting, speaking, and even thinking. Indeed, most of the creatures are presented as petty, bitter, and childish, and often seen as greedy and sulking. In a way, the creatures lampoon some of the most intrinsic qualities of the human species, what separates us from animals. The supernatural creatures operate here as a critique of the humans themselves, exposing, as the Gothic often does, the most disturbing parts of humanity. The creatures are presented initially as scary, recalling—albeit very briefly—notions of terror and horror, but that façade is quickly destroyed as their “real nature” is exposed. They are de-terrorised by not only making them common, but also ridiculing their habits and de-constructing their thinly-veiled Gothic personas. The creatures in Gravity Falls are a subversion of the subversion, a re-thinking of the Gothic through parody that allows their conceptual, and culturally relevant, function to be rapidly exposed. The impact of the Gothic intertext in Gravity Falls is not only visible in its representational forms—its monsters and “creatures”—but also extends to its structural organisation. Jerrold Hogle has argued that, although they maintain a heterogeneous construction of texts and contexts, there are certain qualities applicable to “Gothic texts”: an antiquated space (often decaying); a concealed secret from the historical past; a physical or psychological haunting; and an oscillation between “reality” and the “supernatural” (3). Although Hogle’s pinpointing of what he calls the “Gothic matrix” (3) is mainly focused on the literary world, a broader and more wide-reaching understanding of the Gothic text allows these qualities to be clearly identifiable in other narrative mediums, such as an animated series. Indeed, Gravity Falls presents the main elements of the “Gothic matrix”: the Mystery Shack is an old and isolated place, physically crumbling and in constant state of disrepair; it is made clear that the Shack harbours many secrets—filled as it is with hidden passageways and underground vaults—connected to the shady past of Grunkle Stan and its unresolved connections to mysticism and magic; there are plenty of hauntings to be found in the series: from physical ones—in the form of demons and ghosts—to psychological ones, condensed in Dipper and Mabel’s difficulties with their approaching puberties and “growing up”; finally, the line between reality and supernatural is constantly challenged by the appearance of multiple creatures that are clearly not of this world, and even though several characters doubt their existence within the story, their very presence challenges the stability of the boundaries between real and unreal. On the surface, the series is presented as a standard linear narrative, where the linear journey of each 20-minute episode culminates with the resolution of the main “haunting”, and the usual destruction or appeasing of the “creature”. And while the series’ use of cliff-hangers is, in true television style, a common presence, they also expose and recall the unresolved nature of the narrative. Indeed, the story’s structure in Gravity Falls is reliant on narrative undertellings and off-shoots that often lie underneath the logical “line” of the plot. Sub-plots reign supreme, and multiple motives for the characters’ actions are introduced but not expanded upon, leaving the series impregnated with an aura of uncertainty and chaos. The focus of the storytelling is also denied; one moment, it appears to be Dipper’s desire to discover the “secrets” of the forest; the other, it is Grunkle Stan’s long-time battle with his arch-nemesis Gideon over the ownership of the Shack. This plot confusion in Gravity Falls continues to expose its narrative debt to the Gothic intertext, since “structural multiplicity”, as Round suggests, is “a defining feature of the Gothic” (19). The series’ narrative structure is based on numerous multiplicities, an open denial of linear journeys that is dependant, paradoxically, on the illusion of resolution. The most evocative example of Gravity Falls’ denial of clear-cut structures is arguably to be found in the narrative underlayers added by 3’s monster manual. It is obvious from the beginning that 3’s stay in the town of Gravity Falls was riddled with strange experiences, and that his sojourn intersected, at one point or the other, with the lives and secrets of Grunkle Stan and his enemies. It is also made clear that 3’s journal is not a solitary presence in the narrative, but is in fact only one in a triad of mystical books—these books, it is suggested, have great power once put together, but the resolution to this mystery is yet to be revealed. As Grunkle Stan and Gideon fight (secretly) over the possession of the three books, it is openly suggested that several uncovered stories haunt the main narrative in the series and, unknown Dipper and Mabel, are responsible for many of the strange occurrences during their stay at the Shack. Jean-Jacques Lecercle has long argued that one of the defining characteristics of the Gothic, and its intertextual structure, is the presence of “embedded narratives” (72). In Gravity Falls, the use of 3’s manual as not only an initiator of the plot, but also as a continuous performative link to the “haunted” past, uncovers the series’ re-elaboration of the traditional structure of Gothic narratives. As a paratextual presence in the story—one that is, however, often responsible for the development of the main narrative—3’s manual draws attention to the importance of constructing layered stories in order to create the structures of terror, and subsequent horror, that are essential to the Gothic itself. Although it often provides Dipper with information for solving the mysteries of the Shack, and subduing the supernatural creatures that overtake it, 3’s manual is, in reality, a very disruptive presence in the story. It creates confusion as it begins storytelling without concluding it, and opens the way to narrative pathways that are never fully explored. This is of course in keeping with the traditional narrative structures of the Gothic mode, where ancient books and stories— belonging to “antiquity”—are used as a catalyst for the present narrative to take place, but are also strangely displaced from it. This notion recalls Victor Sage’s suggestion that, in Gothic narratives, ancient books and stories paradoxically “disrupt” the main narrative, starting a separate dialogue with a storytelling structure that is inevitably unexplored and left unanswered (86). Canonical examples such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) inevitably come to mind here, but also more recent cinematic examples such as the Evil Dead franchise (1978-), where ancient books and old storytellers uncover hoary secrets that instigate, as well as obscure, the main narrative. In Gravity Falls, the interaction with 3’s manual is inherently performative, and continuously intertextual, but it is also deeply confusing, adding to the feeling of strangeness and mystery that is the conceptual basis for the series itself. The intertextual connections that drive the narrative in Gravity Falls construct lampooned versions of both the traditional concepts of Gothic horror and Gothic terror. Hogle has suggested that Gothic terror is apparent in the construction of suspense, achieved through an exploration of psychological hauntings, human nature and its un/limitations, and that which is kept out sight, the expected “hidden secrets” (3). Gothic horror, on the other hand, is characterised by the consequences of these occurrences; the physical manifestation of the “haunting”, so to speak, is achieved through the presentation of something repulsive and horrific, the monstrous in its various incarnations (Hogle 3). In Gravity Falls, the connection to the traditional Gothic intertext is made clear through both elicitations of “terror”, and subsequent manifestations of “horror”. Indeed, the “hidden secrets” of the Shack, and to some extent, the fears and insecurities of the characters, are mediated through the appearance of horrific machinery and creatures. The Shack always conceals something hidden, a magical element of sort that is kept secret by intricate passageways. The shadowy nature of the building – evoking the psychological hauntings of Gothic terror – inevitably causes the appearance of something physically disturbing, finding its apogee in a Gothic horror experience. A clear example of this can be found in the episode “Double Dipper” (1.07). Desperate to impress his co-worker and secret love-interest Wendy, and “haunted” by his lack of self-worth, Dipper roams the rooms of the Shack and discovers a very old and enchanted photocopier machine; the machine copies “people”, making clones of the original. The “clones” themselves are a manifestation of horror, a presence that breaks the boundaries of propriety, and worries its viewers in view of its very existence. The cloning copy machine is strongly intertextual as it not only provides conceptual links to numerous cinematic and literary examples where a “haunted machine” threats to destroy humanity— in examples such as Stephen King’s Christine (1983) —but also evokes the threat of “doubles”, another powerfully Gothic conduit (Royle). As it is often the case in Gravity Falls, Dipper loses control of the situation, and the dozens of clones he unwittingly created take over his life and threaten to annihilate him. Dipper must destroy the “horror” —the clones—and confront the “terror”—his haunting insecurities and personal secrets—in order to restore the original balance. This intertextual dynamic validates Hogle’s contention that, in Gothic narratives, both the physical and the psychological “hauntings” rise from view “within the antiquated space” and “manifest unresolved conflicts that can no longer be successfully buried from view” (Hogle 2). The “hidden secrets” of Gravity Falls, and their manifestations through both Gothic horror and terror, are clearly connected to explorations of human nature and deeply existentialist crises that are put forward through humour and parody. These range from Grunkle Stan’ inability to commit to a relationship—and his feeling that life is slipping away in his old age—to the twins’ constant insecurities about pre-teen amorous encounters. Not to mention the knowledge that, in reality, Dipper and Mabel were “abandoned” by their mother in the care of Stan, as she had other plans for the summer. As Round has argued, the Gothic’s most significant development seems to have been the “transvaluation of moral issues”, as notions of “monsters have become less clear cut” (18). The series’ successful engagement with the wider “monstrous” intertext, and its connection to moral issues and “hidden” preoccupations, uncovers the ability of the Gothic, as Catherine Spooner puts it, to act as “commodity”, no longer a marginalised cultural presence, but a fully purchasable item in consumer-capitalist systems (Spooner 2007). The evocations of both horror and terror in Gravity Falls are, naturally, unavoidably diluted, a homage as much as a direct encounter. The use of the monstrous and the haunted in the series is domesticated, made accessible so that it can be presented to a younger and more commercial audience. The profound interlacings with the Gothic intertext remain, however, unchanged, as the series reconciles its subversive, uncanny elements with the inevitably conventional, Disney-fied context in which it is placed. References Blackmore, Leigh. “Marvels and Horrors: Terry Dowling’s Clowns at Midnight”. 21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000, ed. Danel Olson. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 87-97. Gravity Falls. Disney Television. Disney Channel, Los Angeles. 2012-2014. Hogle, Jerrold. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture”. The Cambridge Companion of Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1-20. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. “The Kitten’s Nose: Dracula and Witchcraft”. The Gothic, ed. Fred Botting. D.S Brewer: Cambridge, 2001. 71-86. Mandal, Anthony. “Intertext”. The Encyclopaedia of the Gothic, ed. David Punter, Bill Hughes and Andrew Smith. Basingstoke: Wiley, 2013. 350-355. Mishra, Vijay. The Gothic Sublime. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Round, Julia. Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. Royle, Nicholas. The Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Sage, Victor. “Irish Gothic: C.R. Maturin and J.S. LeFanu. A Companion to the Gothic, ed. David Punter. Oxford; Blackwell, 2001. 81-93. Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion, 2007.

Abstract:

Introduction It has frequently been noted that ICTs and social networking applications have blurred the once-clear boundary between work, leisure and entertainment, just as they have collapsed the distinction between public and private space. While each individual has a sense of what “home” means, both in terms of personal experience and more conceptually, the following three examples of online interaction (based on participants’ interest, or involvement, in activities traditionally associated with the home: pet care, craft and cooking) suggest that the utilisation of online communication technologies can lead to refined and extended definitions of what “home” is. These examples show how online communication can assist in meeting the basic human needs for love, companionship, shelter and food – needs traditionally supplied by the home environment. They also provide individuals with a considerably expanded range of opportunities for personal expression and emotional connection, as well as creative and commercial production, than that provided by the purely physical (and, no doubt, sometimes isolated and isolating) domestic environment. In this way, these case studies demonstrate the interplay and melding of physical and virtual “home” as domestic practices leach from the most private spaces of the physical home into the public space of the Internet (for discussion, see Gorman-Murray, Moss, and Rose). At the same time, online interaction can assert an influence on activity within the physical space of the home, through the sharing of advice about, and modeling of, domestic practices and processes. A Dog’s (Virtual) Life The first case study primarily explores the role of online communities in the formation and expression of affective values and personal identity – as traditionally happens in the domestic environment. Garber described the 1990s as “the decade of the dog” (20), citing a spate of “new anthropomorphic” (22) dog books, Internet “dog chat” sites, remakes of popular classics such as Lassie Come Home, dog friendly urban amenities, and the meteoric rise of services for pampered pets (28-9). Loving pets has become a lifestyle and culture, witnessed and commodified in Pet Superstores as well as in dog collectables and antiques boutiques, and in publications like The Bark (“the New Yorker of Dog Magazines”) and Clean Run, the international agility magazine, Website, online book store and information gateway for agility products and services. Available online resources for dog lovers have similarly increased rapidly during the decade since Garber’s book was published, with the virtual world now catering for serious hobby trainers, exhibitors and professionals as well as the home-based pet lover. At a recent survey, Yahoo Groups – a personal communication portal that facilitates social networking, in this case enabling users to set up electronic mailing lists and Internet forums – boasted just over 9,600 groups servicing dog fanciers and enthusiasts. The list Dogtalk is now an announcement only mailing list, but was a vigorous discussion forum until mid-2006. Members of Dogtalk were Australian-based “clicker-trainers”, serious hobbyist dog trainers, many of whom operated micro-businesses providing dog training or other pet-related services. They shared an online community, but could also engage in “flesh-meets” at seminars, conferences and competitive dog sport meets. An author of this paper (Rutherford) joined this group two years ago because of her interest in clicker training. Clicker training is based on an application of animal learning theory, particularly psychologist E. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, so called because of the trademark use of a distinctive “click” sound to mark a desired behaviour that is then rewarded. Clicker trainers tend to dismiss anthropomorphic pack theory that positions the human animal as fundamentally opposed to non-human animals and, thus, foster a partnership (rather than a dominator) mode of social and learning relationships. Partnership and nurturance are common themes within the clicker community (as well as in more traditional “home” locations); as is recognising and valuing the specific otherness of other species. Typically, members regard their pets as affective equals or near-equals to the human animals that are recognised members of their kinship networks. A significant function of the episodic biographical narratives and responses posted to this list was thus to affirm and legitimate this intra-specific kinship as part of normative social relationship – a perspective that is not usually validated in the general population. One of the more interesting nexus that evolved within Dogtalk links the narrativisation of the pet in the domestic sphere with the pictorial genre of the family album. Emergent technologies, such as digital cameras together with Web-based image manipulation software and hosting (as provided by portals like Photobucket and Flickr ) democratise high quality image creation and facilitate the sharing of these images. Increasingly, the Dogtalk list linked to images uploaded to free online galleries, discussed digital image composition and aesthetics, and shared technical information about cameras and online image distribution. Much of this cultural production and circulation was concerned with digitally inscribing particular relationships with individual animals into cultural memory: a form of family group biography (for a discussion of the family photograph as a display of extended domestic space, see Rose). The other major non-training thread of the community involves the sharing and witnessing of the trauma suffered due to the illness and loss of pets. While mourning for human family members is supported in the off-line world – with social infrastructure, such as compassionate leave and/or bereavement counselling, part of professional entitlements – public mourning for pets is not similarly supported. Yet, both cultural studies (in its emphasis on cultural memory) and trauma theory have highlighted the importance of social witnessing, whereby traumatic memories must be narratively integrated into memory and legitimised by the presence of a witness in order to loosen their debilitating hold (Felman and Laub 57). Postings on the progress of a beloved animal’s illness or other misfortune and death were thus witnessed and affirmed by other Dogtalk list members – the sick or deceased pet becoming, in the process, a feature of community memory, not simply an individual loss. In terms of such biographical narratives, memory and history are not identical: “Any memories capable of being formed, retained or articulated by an individual are always a function of socially constituted forms, narratives and relations … Memory is always subject to active social manipulation and revision” (Halbwachs qtd. in Crewe 75). In this way, emergent technologies and social software provide sites, akin to that of physical homes, for family members to process individual memories into cultural memory. Dogzonline, the Australian Gateway site for purebred dog enthusiasts, has a forum entitled “Rainbow Bridge” devoted to textual and pictorial memorialisation of deceased pet dogs. Dogster hosts the For the Love of Dogs Weblog, in which images and tributes can be posted, and also provides links to other dog oriented Weblogs and Websites. An interesting combination of both therapeutic narrative and the commodification of affect is found in Lightning Strike Pet Loss Support which, while a memorial and support site, also provides links to the emerging profession of pet bereavement counselling and to suppliers of monuments and tributary urns for home or other use. loobylu and Narratives of Everyday Life The second case study focuses on online interactions between craft enthusiasts who are committed to the production of distinctive objects to decorate and provide comfort in the home, often using traditional methods. In the case of some popular craft Weblogs, online conversations about craft are interspersed with, or become secondary to, the narration of details of family life, the exploration of important life events or the recording of personal histories. As in the previous examples, the offering of advice and encouragement, and expressions of empathy and support, often characterise these interactions. The loobylu Weblog was launched in 2001 by illustrator and domestic crafts enthusiast Claire Robertson. Robertson is a toy maker and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia, whose clients have included prominent publishing houses, magazines and the New York Public Library (Robertson “Recent Client List” online). She has achieved a measure of public recognition: her loobylu Weblog has won awards and been favourably commented upon in the Australian press (see Robertson “Press for loobylu” online). In 2005, an article in The Age placed Robertson in the context of a contemporary “craft revolution”, reporting her view that this “revolution” is in “reaction to mass consumerism” (Atkinson online). The hand-made craft objects featured in Robertson’s Weblogs certainly do suggest engagement with labour-intensive pursuits and the construction of unique objects that reject processes of mass production and consumption. In this context, loobylu is a vehicle for the display and promotion of Robertson’s work as an illustrator and as a craft practitioner. While skills-based, it also, however, promotes a family-centred lifestyle; it advocates the construction by hand of objects designed to enhance the appearance of the family home and the comfort of its inhabitants. Its specific subject matter extends to related aspects of home and family as, in addition to instructions, ideas and patterns for craft, the Weblog features information on commercially available products for home and family, recipes, child rearing advice and links to 27 other craft and other sites (including Nigella Lawson’s, discussed below). The primary member of its target community is clearly the traditional homemaker – the mother – as well as those who may aspire to this role. Robertson does not have the “celebrity” status of Lawson and Jamie Oliver (discussed below), nor has she achieved their market saturation. Indeed, Robertson’s online presence suggests a modest level of engagement that is placed firmly behind other commitments: in February 2007, she announced an indefinite suspension of her blog postings so that she could spend more time with her family (Robertson loobylu 17 February 2007). Yet, like Lawson and Oliver, Robertson has exploited forms of domestic competence traditionally associated with women and the home, and the non-traditional medium of the Internet has been central to her endeavours. The content of the loobylu blog is, unsurprisingly, embedded in, or an accessory to, a unifying running commentary on Robertson’s domestic life as a parent. Miles, who has described Weblogs as “distributed documentaries of the everyday” (66) sums this up neatly: “the weblogs’ governing discursive quality is the manner in which it is embodied within the life world of its author” (67). Landmark family events are narrated on loobylu and some attract deluges of responses: the 19 June 2006 posting announcing the birth of Robertson’s daughter Lily, for example, drew 478 responses; five days later, one describing the difficult circ*mstances of her birth drew 232 comments. All of these comments are pithy, with many being simple empathetic expressions or brief autobiographically based commentaries on these events. Robertson’s news of her temporary retirement from her blog elicited 176 comments that both supported her decision and also expressed a sense of loss. Frequent exclamation marks attest visually to the emotional intensity of the responses. By narrating aspects of major life events to which the target audience can relate, the postings represent a form of affective mass production and consumption: they are triggers for a collective outpouring of largely hom*ogeneous emotional reaction (joy, in the case of Lily’s birth). As collections of texts, they can be read as auto/biographic records, arranged thematically, that operate at both the individual and the community levels. Readers of the family narratives and the affirming responses to them engage in a form of mass affirmation and consumerism of domestic experience that is easy, immediate, attractive and free of charge. These personal discourses blend fluidly with those of a commercial nature. Some three weeks after loobylu announced the birth of her daughter, Robertson shared on her Weblog news of her mastitis, Lily’s first smile and the family’s favourite television programs at the time, information that many of us would consider to be quite private details of family life. Three days later, she posted a photograph of a sleeping baby with a caption that skilfully (and negatively) links it to her daughter: “Firstly – I should mention that this is not a photo of Lily”. The accompanying text points out that it is a photo of a baby with the “Zaky Infant Sleeping Pillow” and provides a link to the online pregnancystore.com, from which it can be purchased. A quotation from the manufacturer describing the merits of the pillow follows. Robertson then makes a light-hearted comment on her experiences of baby-induced sleep-deprivation, and the possible consequences of possessing the pillow. Comments from readers also similarly alternate between the personal (sharing of experiences) to the commercial (comments on the product itself). One offshoot of loobylu suggests that the original community grew to an extent that it could support specialised groups within its boundaries. A Month of Softies began in November 2004, describing itself as “a group craft project which takes place every month” and an activity that “might give you a sense of community and kinship with other similar minded crafty types across the Internet and around the world” (Robertson A Month of Softies online). Robertson gave each month a particular theme, and readers were invited to upload a photograph of a craft object they had made that fitted the theme, with a caption. These were then included in the site’s gallery, in the order in which they were received. Added to the majority of captions was also a link to the site (often a business) of the creator of the object; another linking of the personal and the commercial in the home-based “cottage industry” sense. From July 2005, A Month of Softies operated through a Flickr site. Participants continued to submit photos of their craft objects (with captions), but also had access to a group photograph pool and public discussion board. This extension simulates (albeit in an entirely visual way) the often home-based physical meetings of craft enthusiasts that in contemporary Australia take the form of knitting, quilting, weaving or other groups. Chatting with, and about, Celebrity Chefs The previous studies have shown how the Internet has broken down many barriers between what could be understood as the separate spheres of emotional (that is, home-based private) and commercial (public) life. The online environment similarly enables the formation and development of fan communities by facilitating communication between those fans and, sometimes, between fans and the objects of their admiration. The term “fan” is used here in the broadest sense, referring to “a person with enduring involvement with some subject or object, often a celebrity, a sport, TV show, etc.” (Thorne and Bruner 52) rather than focusing on the more obsessive and, indeed, more “fanatical” aspects of such involvement, behaviour which is, increasingly understood as a subculture of more variously constituted fandoms (Jenson 9-29). Our specific interest in fandom in relation to this discussion is how, while marketers and consumer behaviourists study online fan communities for clues on how to more successfully market consumer goods and services to these groups (see, for example, Kozinets, “I Want to Believe” 470-5; “Utopian Enterprise” 67-88; Algesheimer et al. 19-34), fans regularly subvert the efforts of those urging consumer consumption to utilise even the most profit-driven Websites for non-commercial home-based and personal activities. While it is obvious that celebrities use the media to promote themselves, a number of contemporary celebrity chefs employ the media to construct and market widely recognisable personas based on their own, often domestically based, life stories. As examples, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson’s printed books and mass periodical articles, television series and other performances across a range of media continuously draw on, elaborate upon, and ultimately construct their own lives as the major theme of these works. In this, these – as many other – celebrity chefs draw upon this revelation of their private lives to lend authenticity to their cooking, to the point where their work (whether cookbook, television show, advertisem*nt or live chat room session with their fans) could be described as “memoir-illustrated-with-recipes” (Brien and Williamson). This generic tendency influences these celebrities’ communities, to the point where a number of Websites devoted to marketing celebrity chefs as product brands also enable their fans to share their own life stories with large readerships. Oliver and Lawson’s official Websites confirm the privileging of autobiographical and biographical information, but vary in tone and approach. Each is, for instance, deliberately gendered (see Hollows’ articles for a rich exploration of gender, Oliver and Lawson). Oliver’s hip, boyish, friendly, almost frantic site includes the what are purported-to-be self-revelatory “Diary” and “About me” sections, a selection of captioned photographs of the chef, his family, friends, co-workers and sponsors, and his Weblog as well as footage streamed “live from Jamie’s phone”. This self-revelation – which includes significant details about Oliver’s childhood and his domestic life with his “lovely girls, Jools [wife Juliette Norton], Poppy and Daisy” – completely blurs the line between private life and the “Jamie Oliver” brand. While such revelation has been normalised in contemporary culture, this practice stands in great contrast to that of renowned chefs and food writers such as Elizabeth David, Julia Child, James Beard and Margaret Fulton, whose work across various media has largely concentrated on food, cooking and writing about cooking. The difference here is because Oliver’s (supposedly private) life is the brand, used to sell “Jamie Oliver restaurant owner and chef”, “Jamie Oliver cookbook author and TV star”, “Jamie Oliver advertising spokesperson for Sainsbury’s supermarket” (from which he earns an estimated £1.2 million annually) (Meller online) and “Jamie Oliver social activist” (made MBE in 2003 after his first Fifteen restaurant initiative, Oliver was named “Most inspiring political figure” in the 2006 Channel 4 Political Awards for his intervention into the provision of nutritious British school lunches) (see biographies by Hildred and Ewbank, and Smith). Lawson’s site has a more refined, feminine appearance and layout and is more mature in presentation and tone, featuring updates on her (private and public) “News” and forthcoming public appearances, a glamorous selection of photographs of herself from the past 20 years, and a series of print and audio interviews. Although Lawson’s children have featured in some of her television programs and her personal misfortunes are well known and regularly commented upon by both herself and journalists (her mother, sister and husband died of cancer) discussions of these tragedies, and other widely known aspects of her private life such as her second marriage to advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, is not as overt as on Oliver’s site, and the user must delve to find it. The use of Lawson’s personal memoir, as sales tool, is thus both present and controlled. This is in keeping with Lawson’s professional experience prior to becoming the “domestic goddess” (Lawson 2000) as an Oxford graduated journalist on the Spectator and deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times. Both Lawson’s and Oliver’s Websites offer readers various ways to interact with them “personally”. Visitors to Oliver’s site can ask him questions and can access a frequently asked question area, while Lawson holds (once monthly, now irregularly) a question and answer forum. In contrast to this information about, and access to, Oliver and Lawson’s lives, neither of their Websites includes many recipes or other food and cooking focussed information – although there is detailed information profiling their significant number of bestselling cookbooks (Oliver has published 8 cookbooks since 1998, Lawson 5 since 1999), DVDs and videos of their television series and one-off programs, and their name branded product lines of domestic kitchenware (Oliver and Lawson) and foodstuffs (Oliver). Instruction on how to purchase these items is also featured. Both these sites, like Robertson’s, provide various online discussion fora, allowing members to comment upon these chefs’ lives and work, and also to connect with each other through posted texts and images. Oliver’s discussion forum section notes “this is the place for you all to chat to each other, exchange recipe ideas and maybe even help each other out with any problems you might have in the kitchen area”. Lawson’s front page listing states: “You will also find a moderated discussion forum, called Your Page, where our registered members can swap ideas and interact with each other”. The community participants around these celebrity chefs can be, as is the case with loobylu, divided into two groups. The first is “foodie (in Robertson’s case, craft) fans” who appear to largely engage with these Websites to gain, and to share, food, cooking and craft-related information. Such fans on Oliver and Lawson’s discussion lists most frequently discuss these chefs’ television programs and books and the recipes presented therein. They test recipes at home and discuss the results achieved, any problems encountered and possible changes. They also post queries and share information about other recipes, ingredients, utensils, techniques, menus and a wide range of food and cookery-related matters. The second group consists of “celebrity fans” who are attracted to the chefs (as to Robertson as craft maker) as personalities. These fans seek and share biographical information about Oliver and Lawson, their activities and their families. These two areas of fan interest (food/cooking/craft and the personal) are not necessarily or always separated, and individuals can be active members of both types of fandoms. Less foodie-orientated users, however (like users of Dogtalk and loobylu), also frequently post their own auto/biographical narratives to these lists. These narratives, albeit often fragmented, may begin with recipes and cooking queries or issues, but veer off into personal stories that possess only minimal or no relationship to culinary matters. These members also return to the boards to discuss their own revealed life stories with others who have commented on these narratives. Although research into this aspect is in its early stages, it appears that the amount of public personal revelation either encouraged, or allowed, is in direct proportion to the “open” friendliness of these sites. More thus are located in Oliver’s and less in Lawson’s, and – as a kind of “control” in this case study, but not otherwise discussed – none in that of Australian chef Neil Perry, whose coolly sophisticated Website perfectly complements Perry’s professional persona as the epitome of the refined, sophisticated and, importantly in this case, unapproachable, high-end restaurant chef. Moreover, non-cuisine related postings are made despite clear directions to the contrary – Lawson’s site stating: “We ask that postings are restricted to topics relating to food, cooking, the kitchen and, of course, Nigella!” and Oliver making the plea, noted above, for participants to keep their discussions “in the kitchen area”. Of course, all such contemporary celebrity chefs are supported by teams of media specialists who selectively construct the lives that these celebrities share with the public and the postings about others’ lives that are allowed to remain on their discussion lists. The intersection of the findings reported above with the earlier case studies suggests, however, that even these most commercially-oriented sites can provide a fruitful data regarding their function as home-like spaces where domestic practices and processes can be refined, and emotional relationships formed and fostered. In Summary As convergence results in what Turow and Kavanaugh call “the wired homestead”, our case studies show that physically home-based domestic interests and practices – what could be called “home truths” – are also contributing to a refiguration of the private/public interplay of domestic activities through online dialogue. In the case of Dogtalk, domestic space is reconstituted through virtual spaces to include new definitions of family and memory. In the case of loobylu, the virtual interaction facilitates a development of craft-based domestic practices within the physical space of the home, thus transforming domestic routines. Jamie Oliver’s and Nigella Lawson’s sites facilitate development of both skills and gendered identities by means of a bi-directional nexus between domestic practices, sites of home labour/identity production and public media spaces. As participants modify and redefine these online communities to best suit their own needs and desires, even if this is contrary to the stated purposes for which the community was instituted, online communities can be seen to be domesticated, but, equally, these modifications demonstrate that the activities and relationships that have traditionally defined the home are not limited to the physical space of the house. While virtual communities are “passage points for collections of common beliefs and practices that united people who were physically separated” (Stone qtd in Jones 19), these interactions can lead to shared beliefs, for example, through advice about pet-keeping, craft and cooking, that can significantly modify practices and routines in the physical home. Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Association of Internet Researchers’ International Conference, Brisbane, 27-30 September 2006. The authors would like to thank the referees of this article for their comments and input. Any errors are, of course, our own. References Algesheimer, R., U. Dholake, and A. Herrmann. “The Social Influence of Brand Community: Evidence from European Car Clubs”. Journal of Marketing 69 (2005): 19-34. Atkinson, Frances. “A New World of Craft”. The Age (11 July 2005). 28 May 2007 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/07/10/1120934123262.html>. Brien, Donna Lee, and Rosemary Williamson. “‘Angels of the Home’ in Cyberspace: New Technologies and Biographies of Domestic Production”. Paper. Biography and New Technologies conference. Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT. 12-14 Sep. 2006. Crewe, Jonathan. “Recalling Adamastor: Literature as Cultural Memory in ‘White’ South Africa”. In Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, eds. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 1999. 75-86. Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1992. Garber, Marjorie. Dog Love. New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1996. Gorman-Murray, Andrew. “Homeboys: Uses of Home by Gay Australian Men”. Social and Cultural Geography 7.1 (2006): 53-69. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Trans. Lewis A. Closer. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. Hildred, Stafford, and Tim Ewbank. Jamie Oliver: The Biography. London: Blake, 2001. Hollows, Joanne. “Feeling like a Domestic Goddess: Post-Feminism and Cooking.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6.2 (2003): 179-202. ———. “Oliver’s Twist: Leisure, Labour and Domestic Masculinity in The Naked Chef.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6.2 (2003): 229-248. Jenson, J. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization”. The Adoring Audience; Fan Culture and Popular Media. Ed. L. A. Lewis. New York, NY: Routledge, 1992. 9-29. Jones, Steven G., ed. Cybersociety, Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Kozinets, R.V. “‘I Want to Believe’: A Netnography of the X’Philes’ Subculture of Consumption”. Advances in Consumer Research 34 (1997): 470-5. ———. “Utopian Enterprise: Articulating the Meanings of Star Trek’s Culture of Consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 28 (2001): 67-88. Lawson, Nigella. How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking. London: Chatto and Windus, 2000. Meller, Henry. “Jamie’s Tips Spark Asparagus Shortages”. Daily Mail (17 June 2005). 21 Aug. 2007 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/dietfitness.html? in_article_id=352584&in_page_id=1798>. Miles, Adrian. “Weblogs: Distributed Documentaries of the Everyday.” Metro 143: 66-70. Moss, Pamela. “Negotiating Space in Home Environments: Older Women Living with Arthritis.” Social Science and Medicine 45.1 (1997): 23-33. Robertson, Claire. Claire Robertson Illustration. 2000-2004. 28 May 2007 . Robertson, Claire. loobylu. 16 Feb. 2007. 28 May 2007 http://www.loobylu.com>. Robertson, Claire. “Press for loobylu.” Claire Robertson Illustration. 2000-2004. 28 May 2007 http://www.clairetown.com/press.html>. Robertson, Claire. A Month of Softies. 28 May 2007. 21 Aug. 2007 . Robertson, Claire. “Recent Client List”. Claire Robertson Illustration. 2000-2004. 28 May 2007 http://www.clairetown.com/clients.html>. Rose, Gillian. “Family Photographs and Domestic Spacings: A Case Study.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 28.1 (2003): 5-18. Smith, Gilly. Jamie Oliver: Turning Up the Heat. Sydney: Macmillian, 2006. Thorne, Scott, and Gordon C. Bruner. “An Exploratory Investigation of the Characteristics of Consumer Fanaticism.” Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 9.1 (2006): 51-72. Turow, Joseph, and Andrea Kavanaugh, eds. The Wired Homestead: An MIT Press Sourcebook on the Internet and the Family. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. APA Style Brien, D., L. Rutherford, and R. Williamson. (Aug. 2007) "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>.

Abstract:

IntroductionThe 2009 American film Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine, was released at a time when the hipster had become a ubiquitous concept, entering into the common vernacular of numerous cultures throughout the world, and gaining significant press, social media and academic attention (see Žižek; Arsel and Thompson; Greif et al.; Stahl; Ouellette; Reeve; Schiermer; Maly and Varis). Trash Humpers emerged soon after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis triggered Occupy movements in numerous cities, aided by social media platforms, reported on by blogs such as Gawker, and stylized by multi-national youth-subculture brands such as Vice, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and a plethora of localised variants.Korine’s film, which is made to resemble found VHS footage of old-aged vandals, epitomises the ironic, retro stylizations and “counterculture-meets-kitsch” aesthetics so familiar to hipster culture. As a creative stereotype from 1940s and ‘50s jazz and beatnik subcultures, the hipster re-emerged in the twenty-first century as a negative embodiment of alternative culture in the age of the Internet. As well as plumbing the recent past for things not yet incorporated into contemporary marketing mechanisms, the hipster also signifies the blurring of irony and authenticity. Such “outsiderness as insiderness” postures can be regarded as a continuation of the marginality-from-the-centre logic of cool capitalism that emerged after World War Two. Particularly between 2007 and 2015, the post-postmodern concept of the hipster was a resonant cultural trope in Western and non-Western cultures alike, coinciding with the normalisation of the new digital terrain and the establishment of mobile social media as an integral aspect of many people’s daily lives. While Korine’s 79-minute feature could be thought of as following in the schlocky footsteps of the likes of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2006), it is decidedly more arthouse, and more attuned to the influence of contemporary alternative media brands and independent film history alike – as if the love child of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) and Vice Video, the latter having been labelled as “devil-may-care hipsterism” (Carr). Upon release, Trash Humpers was described by Gene McHugh as “a mildly hip take on Jackass”; by Mike D’Angelo as “an empty hipster pose”; and by Aaron Hillis as either “the work of an insincere hipster or an eccentric provocateur”. Lacking any semblance of a conventional plot, Trash Humpers essentially revolves around four elderly-looking protagonists – three men and a woman – who document themselves with a low-quality video camera as they go about behaving badly in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, where Korine still lives. They cackle eerily to themselves as they try to stave off boredom, masturbating frantically on rubbish bins, defecating and drinking alcohol in public, fellating foliage, smashing televisions, playing ten-pin bowling, lighting firecrackers and telling gay “hate” jokes to camera with no punchlines. In one purposefully undramatic scene half-way through the film, the humpers are shown in the aftermath of an attack on a man wearing a French maid’s outfit; he lies dead in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor with a hammer at his feet. The humpers are consummate “bad” performers in every sense of the term, and they are joined by a range of other, apparently lower-class, misfits with whom they stage tap dance routines and repetitively sing nursery-rhyme-styled raps such as: “make it, make it, don’t break it; make it, make it, don’t fake it; make it, make it, don’t take it”, which acts as a surrogate theme song for the film. Korine sometimes depicts his main characters on crutches or in a wheelchair, and a baby doll is never too far away from the action, as a silent and Surrealist witness to their weird, sinister and sometimes very funny exploits. The film cuts from scene to scene as if edited on a video recorder, utilising in-house VHS titling sequences, audio glitches and video static to create the sense that one is engaging voyeuristically with a found video document rather than a scripted movie. Mainstream AlternativesAs a viewer of Trash Humpers, one has to try hard to suspend disbelief if one is to see the humpers as genuine geriatric peeping Toms rather than as hipsters in old-man masks trying to be rebellious. However, as Korine’s earlier films such as Gummo (1997) attest, he clearly delights in blurring the line between failure and transcendence, or, in this case, between pretentious art-school bravado and authentic redneck ennui. As noted in a review by Jeannette Catsoulis, writing for the New York Times: “Much of this is just so much juvenile posturing, but every so often the screen freezes into something approximating beauty: a blurry, spaced-out, yellow-green landscape, as alien as an ancient photograph”. Korine has made a career out of generating this wavering uncertainty in his work, polarising audiences with a mix of critical, cinema-verité styles and cynical exploitations. His work has consistently revelled in ethical ambiguities, creating environments where teenagers take Ritalin for kicks, kill cats, wage war with their families and engage in acts of sexual deviancy – all of which are depicted with a photographer’s eye for the uncanny.The elusive and contradictory aspects of Korine’s work – at once ugly and beautiful, abstract and commercial, pessimistic and nostalgic – are evident not just in films such as Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy (1999) and Mister Lonely (2007) but also in his screenplay for Kids (1995), his performance-like appearances on The Tonight Show with David Letterman (1993-2015) and in publications such as A Crackup at the Race Riots (1998) and Pass the Bitch Chicken (2001). As well as these outputs, Korine is also a painter who is represented by Gagosian Gallery – one of the world’s leading art galleries – and he has directed numerous music videos, documentaries and commercials throughout his career. More than just update of the traditional figure of the auteur, Korine, instead, resembles a contemporary media artist whose avant-garde and grotesque treatments of Americana permeate almost everything he does. Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids when he was just 19, and subsequently built his reputation on the paradoxical mainstreaming of alternative culture in the 1990s. This is exemplified by the establishment of music and film genres such “alternative” and “independent”; the popularity of the slacker ethos attributed to Generation X; the increased visibility of alternative press zines; the birth of grunge in fashion and music; and the coining of “cool hunting” – a bottom-up market research phenomenon that aimed to discover new trends in urban subcultures for the purpose of mass marketing. Key to “alternative culture”, and its related categories such as “indie” and “arthouse”, is the idea of evoking artistic authenticity while covertly maintaining a parasitic relationship with the mainstream. As Holly Kruse notes in her account of the indie music scenes of the 1990s, which gained tremendous popularity in the wake of grunge bands such as Nirvana: without dominant, mainstream musics against which to react, independent music cannot be independent. Its existence depends upon dominant music structures and practices against which to define itself. Indie music has therefore been continually engaged in an economic and ideological struggle in which its ‘outsider’ status is re-examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical practices. (Kruse 149)Alternative culture follows a similar, highly contentious, logic, appearing as a nebulous, authentic and artistic “other” whose exponents risk being entirely defined by the mainstream markets they profess to oppose. Kids was directed by the artist cum indie-director Larry Clark, who discovered Korine riding his skateboard with a group of friends in New York’s Washington Square in the early 1990s, before commissioning him to write a script. The then subcultural community of skating – which gained prominence in the 1990s amidst the increased visibility of “alternative sports” – provides an important backdrop to the film, which documents a group of disaffected New York teenagers at a time of the Aids crisis in America. Korine has been active in promoting the DIY ethos, creativity and anti-authoritarian branding of skate culture since this time – an industry that, in its attempts to maintain a non-mainstream profile while also being highly branded, has become emblematic of the category of “alternative culture”. Korine has undertaken commercial projects with an array skate-wear brands, but he is particularly associated with Supreme, a so-called “guerrilla fashion” label originating in 1994 that credits Clark and other 1990s indie darlings, and Korine cohorts, Chloë Sevigny and Terry Richardson, as former models and collaborators (Williams). The company is well known for its designer skateboard decks, its collaborations with prominent contemporary visual artists, its hip-hop branding and “inscrutable” web videos. It is also well known for its limited runs of new clothing lines, which help to stoke demand through one-offs – blending street-wear accessibility with the restricted-market and anti-authoritarian sensibility of avant-garde art.Of course, “alternative culture” poses a notorious conundrum for analysis, involving highly subjective demarcations of “mainstream” from “subversive” culture, not to mention “genuine subversion” from mere “corporate alternatives”. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, the roots of alternative culture lie in the Western tradition of the avant-garde and the “aesthetic gaze” that developed in the nineteenth century (Field 36). In analysing the modernist notion of advanced cultural practice – where art is presented as an alternative to bourgeois academic taste and to the common realm of cultural commodities – Bourdieu proposed a distinction between two types of “fields”, or logics of cultural production. Alternative culture follows what Bourdieu called “the field of restricted production”, which adheres to “art for art’s sake” ideals, where audiences are targeted as if like-minded peers (Field 50). In contrast, the “field of large-scale production” reflects the commercial imperatives of mainstream culture, in which goods are produced for the general public at large. The latter field of large-scale production tends to service pre-established markets, operating in response to public demand. Furthermore, whereas success in the field of restricted production is often indirect, and latent – involving artists who create niche markets without making any concessions to those markets – success in the field of large-scale production is typically more immediate and quantifiable (Field 39). Here we can see that central to the branding of “alternative culture” is the perceived refusal to conform to popular taste and the logic of capitalism more generally is. As Supreme founder James Jebbia stated about his brand in a rare interview: “The less known the better” (Williams). On this, Bourdieu states that, in the field of restricted production, the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies are inversed to create a “loser wins” scenario (Field 39). Profit and cultural esteem become detrimental attributes in this context, potentially tainting the integrity and marginalisation on which alternative products depend. As one ironic hipster t-shirt puts it: “Nothing is any good if other people like it” (Diesel Sweeties).Trash HipstersIn abandoning linear narrative for rough assemblages of vignettes – or “moments” – recorded with an unsteady handheld camera, Trash Humpers positions itself in ironic opposition to mainstream filmmaking, refusing the narrative arcs and unwritten rules of Hollywood film, save for its opening and closing credits. Given Korine’s much publicized appreciation of cinema pioneers, we can understand Trash Humpers as paying homage to independent and DIY film history, including Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton (1973), Andy Warhol’s and Paul Morrissey’s Lonesome Cowboys (1967) and Trash (1970), and John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), all of which jubilantly embraced the “bad” aesthetic of home movies. Posed as fantasized substitutions for mainstream movie-making, such works were also underwritten by the legitimacy of camp as a form of counter-culture critique, blurring parody and documentary to give voice to an array of non-mainstream and counter-cultural identities. The employment of camp in postmodern culture became known not merely as an aesthetic subversion of cultural mores but also as “a gesture of self-legitimation” (Derrida 290), its “failed seriousness” regarded as a critical response to the specific historical problem of being a “culturally over-saturated” subject (Sontag 288).The significant difference between Korine’s film and those of his 1970s-era forbears is precisely the attention he pays to the formal aspects of his medium, revelling in analogue editing glitches to the point of fetishism, in some cases lasting as long as the scenes themselves. Consciously working out-of-step with the media of his day, Trash Humpers in imbued with nostalgia from its very beginning. Whereas Smith, Eggleston, Warhol, Morrissey and Waters blurred fantasy and documentary in ways that raised the social and political identities of their subjects, Korine seems much more interested in “trash” as an aesthetic trope. In following this interest, he rightfully pays homage to the tropes of queer cinema, however, he conveniently leaves behind their underlying commentaries about (hetero-) normative culture. A sequence where the trash humpers visit a whor*house and amuse themselves by smoking cigars and slapping the ample bottoms of prostitutes in G-strings confirms the heterosexual tenor of the film, which is reiterated throughout by numerous deadpan gay jokes and slurs.Trash Humpers can be understood precisely in terms of Korine’s desire to maintain the aesthetic imperatives of alternative culture, where formal experimentation and the subverting of mainstream genres can provide a certain amount of freedom from explicated meaning, and, in particular, from socio-political commentary. Bourdieu rightly points out how the pleasures of the aesthetic gaze often manifest themselves curiously as form of “deferred pleasure” (353) or “pleasure without enjoyment” (495), which corresponds to Immanuel Kant’s notion of the disinterested nature of aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic dispositions posed in the negative – as in the avant-garde artists who mined primitive and ugly cultural stereotypes – typically use as reference points “facile” or “vulgar” (393) working-class tropes that refer negatively to sensuous pleasure as their major criterion of judgment. For Bourdieu, the pleasures provided by the aesthetic gaze in such instances are not sensual pleasures so much as the pleasures of social distinction – signifying the author’s distance from taste as a form of gratification. Here, it is easy to see how the orgiastic central characters in Trash Humpers might be employed by Korine for a similar end-result. As noted by Jeremiah Kipp in a review of the film: “You don't ‘like’ a movie like Trash Humpers, but I’m very happy such films exist”. Propelled by aesthetic, rather than by social, questions of value, those that “get” the obscure works of alternative culture have a tendency to legitimize them on the basis of the high-degree of formal analysis skills they require. For Bourdieu, this obscures the fact that one’s aesthetic “‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education” – a privileged mode of looking, estranged from those unfamiliar with the internal logic of decoding presupposed by the very notion of “aesthetic enjoyment” (2).The rhetorical priority of alternative culture is, in Bourdieu’s terms, the “autonomous” perfection of the form rather than the “heteronomous” attempt to monopolise on it (Field 40). However, such distinctions are, in actuality, more nuanced than Bourdieu sometimes assumed. This is especially true in the context of global digital culture, which makes explicit how the same cultural signs can have vastly different meanings and motivations across different social contexts. This has arguably resulted in the destabilisation of prescriptive analyses of cultural taste, and has contributed to recent “post-critical” advances, in which academics such as Bruno Latour and Rita Felski advocate for cultural analyses and practices that promote relationality and attachment rather than suspicious (critical) dispositions towards marginal and popular subjects alike. Latour’s call for a move away from the “sledge hammer” of critique applies as much to cultural practice as it does to written analysis. Rather than maintaining hierarchical oppositions between authentic versus inauthentic taste, Latour understands culture – and the material world more generally – as having agency alongside, and with, that of the social world.Hipsters with No AlternativeIf, as Karl Spracklen suggests, alternativism is thought of “as a political project of resistance to capitalism, with communicative oppositionality as its defining feature” (254), it is clear that there has been a progressive waning in relevance of the category of “alternative culture” in the age of the Internet, which coincides with the triumph of so-called “neoliberal individualism” (258). To this end, Korine has lost some of his artistic credibility over the course of the 2000s. If viewed negatively, icons of 1990s alternative culture such as Korine can be seen as merely exploiting Dada-like techniques of mimetic exacerbation and symbolic détournement for the purpose of alternative, “arty” branding rather than pertaining to a counter-hegemonic cultural movement (Foster 31). It is within this context of heightened scepticism surrounding alternative culture that the hipster stereotype emerged in cultures throughout the world, as if a contested symbol of the aesthetic gaze in an era of neoliberal identity politics. Whatever the psychological motivations underpinning one’s use of the term, to call someone a hipster is typically to point out that their distinctive alternative or “arty” status appears overstated; their creative decisions considered as if a type of bathos. For detractors of alternative cultural producers such as Korine, he is trying too hard to be different, using the stylised codes of “alternative” to conceal what is essentially his cultural and political immaturity. The hipster – who is rarely ever self-identified – re-emerged in the 2000s to operate as a scapegoat for inauthentic markers of alternative culture, associated with men and women who appear to embrace Realpolitik, sincerity and authentic expressions of identity while remaining tethered to irony, autonomous aesthetics and self-design. Perhaps the real irony of the hipster is the pervasiveness of irony in contemporary culture. R. J Magill Jnr. has argued that “a certain cultural bitterness legitimated through trenchant disbelief” (xi) has come to define the dominant mode of political engagement in many societies since the early 2000s, in response to mass digital information, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and the climate of suspicion produced by information about terrorism threats. He analyses the prominence of political irony in American TV shows including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Simpsons, South Park, The Chappelle Show and The Colbert Report but he also notes its pervasiveness as a twenty-first-century worldview – a distancing that “paradoxically and secretly preserves the ideals of sincerity, honesty and authenticity by momentarily belying its own appearance” (x). Crucially, then, the utterance “hipster” has come to signify instances when irony and aesthetic distance are perceived to have been taken too far, generating the most disdain from those for whom irony, aesthetic discernment and cultural connoisseurship still provide much-needed moments of disconnection from capitalist cultures drowning in commercial hyperbole and grave news hype. Korine himself has acknowledged that Spring Breakers (2013) – his follow-up feature film to Trash Humpers – was created in response to the notion that “alternative culture”, once a legitimate challenge to mainstream taste, had lost its oppositional power with the decentralization of digital culture. He states that he made Spring Breakers at a moment “when there’s no such thing as high or low, it’s all been exploded. There is no underground or above-ground, there’s nothing that’s alternative. We’re at a point of post-everything, so it’s all about finding the spirit inside, and the logic, and making your own connections” (Hawker). In this context, we can understand Trash Humpers as the last of the Korine films to be branded with the authenticity of alternative culture. In Spring Breakers Korine moved from the gritty low-fi sensibility of his previous films and adopted a more digital, light-filled and pastel-coloured palette. Focussing more conventionally on plot than ever before, Spring Breakers follows four college girls who hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. Critic Michael Chaiken noted that the film marks a shift in Korine’s career, from the alternative stylings of the pre-Internet generation to “the cultural heirs [of] the doomed protagonists of Kids: nineties babies, who grew up with the Internet, whose sensibilities have been shaped by the sweeping technological changes that have taken place in the interval between the Clinton and Obama eras” (33).By the end of the 2000s, an entire generation came of age having not experienced a time when the obscure films, music or art of the past took more effort to track down. Having been a key participant in the branding of alternative culture, Korine is in a good position to recall a different, pre-YouTube time – when cultural discernment was still caught up in the authenticity of artistic identity, and when one’s cultural tastes could still operate with a certain amount of freedom from sociological scrutiny. Such ideas seem a long way away from today’s cultural environments, which have been shaped not only by digital media’s promotion of cultural interconnection and mass information, but also by social media’s emphasis on mobilization and ethical awareness. ConclusionI should reiterate here that is not Korine’s lack of seriousness, or irony, alone that marks Trash Humpers as a response to the scepticism surrounding alternative culture symbolised by the figure of the hipster. It is, rather, that Korine’s mock-documentary about juvenile geriatrics works too hard to obscure its implicit social commentary, appearing driven to condemn contemporary capitalism’s exploitations of youthfulness only to divert such “uncool” critical commentaries through unsubtle formal distractions, visual poetics and “bad boy” avant-garde signifiers of authenticity. Before being bludgeoned to death, the unnamed man in the French maid’s outfit recites a poem on a bridge amidst a barrage of fire crackers let off by a nearby humper in a wheelchair. Although easily overlooked, it could, in fact, be a pivotal scene in the film. Spoken with mock high-art pretentions, the final lines of the poem are: So what? Why, I ask, why? Why castigate these creatures whose angelic features are bumping and grinding on trash? Are they not spawned by our greed? Are they not our true seed? Are they not what we’ve bought for our cash? We’ve created this lot, of the ooze and the rot, deliberately and unabashed. Whose orgiastic elation and one mission in creation is to savagely fornicate TRASH!Here, the character’s warning of capitalist overabundance is drowned out by the (aesthetic) shocks of the fire crackers, just as the stereotypical hipster’s ethical ideals are drowned out by their aesthetic excess. The scene also functions as a metaphor for the humpers themselves, whose elderly masks – embodiments of nostalgia – temporarily suspend their real socio-political identities for the sake of role-play. It is in this sense that Trash Humpers is too enamoured with its own artifices – including its anonymous “boys club” mentality – to suggest anything other than the aesthetic distance that has come to mark the failings of the “alternative culture” category. In such instances, alternative taste appears as a rhetorical posture, with Korine asking us to gawk knowingly at the hedonistic and destructive pleasures pursued by the humpers while factoring in, and accepting, our likely disapproval.ReferencesArsel, Zeynep, and Craig J. Thompson. “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.5 (2011): 791-806.Bourdieu, Pierre. 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Abstract:

Wearing clothing from the past is all the rage now. Different styles and aesthetics of vintage and historical clothing, original or appropriated, are popular with fashion wearers and home sewers. Social media is rich with images of anachronistic clothing and the major pattern companies have a large range of historical sewing patterns available. Butterick McCall, for example, have a Making History range of patterns for sewers of clothing from a range of historical periods up to the 1950s. The 1950s styled fashion is particularly popular with pattern producers. Yet little research exists that explains why anachronistic clothing is all the rage. Drawing on 28 interviews conducted by the author with women who wear/make 1950s styles clothing and a survey of 229 people who wear/make historical clothing, this article outlines four key reasons that help explain the popularity of wearing/making anachronistic clothing: It argues that there exists rage against four ‘fast fashion’ practices: environmental disregard, labour breaches, poor quality, and poor fit. Ethical consumption practices such as home sewing quality clothes that fit, seeks to ameliorate this rage. That much of what is being made is anachronistic speaks to past sewing techniques that were ethical and produced quality fitting garments rather than fashion today that doesn’t fit, is of poor quality, and it unethical in its production. Fig. 1: Craftivist Collective Rage: Protesting Fast FashionRage against Fast Fashion Rage against fast fashion is not new. Controversies over Disney and Nike’s use of child labour in the 1990s, the anti-fur campaigns of the 1980s, the widespread condemnation of factory conditions in Bangladesh in the wake of the 2016 Rana Plaza collapse and Tess Holiday’s Eff Your Beauty Standards campaign, are evidence of this. Fast fashion is “cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments … at breakneck speed” (Rauturier). It is produced cheaply in short turnarounds, manufactured offshore by slave labour, with the industry hiding these exploitative practices behind, and in, complex supply chains. The clothing is made from poor quality material, meaning it doesn’t last, and the material is not environmentally sustainable. Because of this fast fashion is generally not recycled and ends up as waste in landfills. This for Rauturier is what fast fashion is: “cheap, low quality materials, where clothes degrade after just a few wears and get thrown away”. The fast fashion industry engages in two discrete forms of obsolescence; planned and perceived. Planned obsolescence is where clothes are designed to have a short life-span, thus coercing the consumer into buying a replacement item sooner than intended. Claims that clothes now last only a few washes before falling apart are common in the media (Dunbar). This is due to conscious manufacturing techniques that reduce the lifespan of the clothes including using mixed fibres, poor-quality interfacing, and using polyester threads, to name a few. Perceived obsolescence is where the consumer believes an otherwise functioning item of clothing to no longer to be valued. This is borne out in the idea that an item is deemed to be “in vogue” or “in fashion” and its value to the consumer is thus embedded in that quality. Once it falls out of fashion is deemed worthless. Laver’s “fashion cycle” elucidated this idea over eighty years ago. Since the 1980s the fashion industry has sped up, moving from the traditional twice annual fashion seasons to the fast fashion system of constantly manufacturing new styles, sometimes weekly. The technologies that have allowed the rapid manufacturing of fast fashion mean that the clothes are cheaper and more readily available. The average price of clothing has dropped accordingly. An item that cost US$100 in 1993 only cost US$59.10 in 2013, a drop of 41 per cent (Perry, Chart). The average person in 2014 bought 60 per cent more clothing that they did in 2000. Fast fashion is generally unsaleable in the second-hand market, due to its volume and poor design and manufacture. Green notes that many charity clothing stores bin a large percentage of the fast fashion items they receive. Environmental Rage Consumers are increasingly expressing rage about the environmental impact of fast fashion. The production of different textiles places different stresses on the environment. Cotton, for example, accounts for one third of the fibres found in all textiles, yet it requires high levels of water. A single cotton shirt needs 2,700 litres of water alone, the equivalent to “what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years” (Drew & Yehounme). Synthetics don’t represent an environmentally friendly alternative. While they may need less water, they are more carbon-intensive and polyester has twice the carbon footprint of cotton (Drew & Yehounme). Criticisms of fast fashion also include “water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste”. Textile dyeing is the “second largest polluter of clean water globally.” The inclusion of chemical in the manufacturing of textiles is “disruptive to hormones and carcinogenic” (Perry, Cost). Naomi Klein’s exposure of the past problems of fast fashion, and revelations such as these, inform why consumers are enraged by the fast fashion system. The State of Fashion 2019 Report found many of the issues Klein interrogated remain of concern to consumers. Consumers continue to feel enraged at the industry’s disregard for the environment (Shaw et al.) any many are seeking alternative sources of sustainable fashion. For some consumers, the ethical dilemmas are overcome by purchasing second-hand or recycled clothing, or participate in Clothing Exchanges. Another alternative to ameliorating the rage is to stop buying new clothes and to make and wear their own clothes. A recent article in The Guardian, “’Don’t Feed the Monster!’ The People Who Have Stopped Buying New Clothes” highlights the “growing movement” of people seeking to make a “personal change” in response to the ethical dilemmas fast fashion poses to the environment. While political groups like Fashion of Tomorrow argue for collective legislative changes to ensure environmental sustainability in the industry, consumers are also finding their own individual ways of ameliorating their rage against fast fashion. Over recent decades Australians have consistently shown concern over environmental issues. A 2016 national survey found that 63 per cent of Australians considered themselves to be environmentalists and this is echoed in the ABC’s War on Waste programme which examined attitudes to and effects of clothing waste in Australia. In my interviews with women wearing 1950s style clothing, almost 65 per cent indicated a distinct dissatisfaction with mainstream fashion and frustration particularly with pernicious ‘fast fashion’. One participant offered, “seeing the War on Waste and all the fast fashion … I really like if I can get it second hand … you know I feel like I am helping a little bit” [Gabrielle]. Traid, a network of UK charity clothes shops diverts 3 000 tonnes of clothes from landfill to the second-hand market annually, reported for 2017-18 a 30 per cent increase in its second-hand clothes sales (Coccoza). The Internet has helped expand the second-hand clothing market. Two participants offered these insights: “I am completely addicted to the Review Buy Swap and Sell Page” [Anna] and “Instagram is huge for girls like us to communicate and get ideas” [Ashleigh]. Slave Rage The history of fashion is replete with examples of exploitation of workers. From the seamstresses of France in the eighteenth century who had to turn to prostitution to supplement their meagre wages (Jones 16) to the twenty-first century sweatshop workers earning less than a living wage in developing nations, poor work conditions have plagued the industry. For Karl Marx fashion represented a contradiction within capitalism where labour was exploited to create a mass-produced item. He lambasted the fashion industry and its “murderous caprices”, and despite his dream that the invention of the sewing machine would alleviate the stress placed on garment workers, technology has only served to intensify its demands on its poor workers (Sullivan 36-37). The 2013 Rena Plaza factory disaster shows just how far some sections of the industry are willing to go in their race to the bottom.In the absence of enforceable, global fair-trade initiatives, it is hard for consumers to purchase goods that reflect their ethos (Shaw et al. 428). While there is much more focus on better labour practices in the fashion industry, as the Baptist World Aid Australia’s annual Ethical Fashion Report shows, consumers are still critical of the industry and its labour practices.A significant number of participants in my research indicated that they actively sought to purchase products that were produced free from worker exploitation. For some participants, the purchasing of second-hand clothing allowed them to circumnavigate the fast fashion system. For others, mid-century reproduction fashion was sourced from markets with strong labour laws and “ethically made” without the use of sweat shop labour” [Emma]. Alternatively, another participant rejected buying new vintage fashion and instead purchased originally made fashion, in this case clothing made 50 to 60 years ago. This was one was of ensuring “some poor … person has [not] had to work really hard for very little money … [while the] shop is gaining all the profits” [Melissa]. Quality Rage Planned obsolescence in fashion has existed at least since the 1940s when Dupont ensured their nylon stockings were thin enough to ladder to ensure repeat custom (Meynen). Since then manufacturers have deliberately used poor techniques and poor material – blended fabrics, unfinished seams, unfixed dyes, for example – to ensure that clothes fail quickly. A 2015 UK Barnardo’s survey found clothes were worn an average of just seven times, which is not surprising given that clothes can last as little as two washes before being worn out (Dunbar). Extreme planned obsolescence in concert with perceived obsolescence can lead to clothes being discarded before their short lifespan had expired. The War on Waste interviewed young women who wore clothes sometimes only once before discarding them.Not all women are concerned with keeping up to date with fashion, instead wanting to create their own identify though clothes and are therefore looking for durability in their clothes. Many of the women interviewed for this research were aware of the declining quality of clothes, often referring to those made before the fast fashion era as evidence of quality clothing. For many in this study, manufacturing of classically styled clothing was of higher concern than mimicking the latest fashion trend. Some indicated their “disgust” at the poor quality of fast fashion [Gabrielle]. Others has specific outrage at the cost of poorly made fast fashion: “I don’t like spending a lot of money on clothing that I know may not necessarily be well made” [Skye] and “I got sick of dresses just being see through … you know, seeing my bras under things” [Becky]. For another: “I don’t like the whole mass-produced thing. I don’t think that they are particularly well made … Sometimes they are made with a tiny waist but big boobs, there’s no seams on them, they’re just overlocked together …” [Vicky]. For other participants in this research fast fashion produced items were considered inferior to original items. One put it is this way: “[On using vintage wares] If something broke, you fixed it. You didn’t throw it away and go down to [the shop] and buy a new one ... You look at stuff from these days … you could buy a handbag today and you are like “is this going to be here in two years? Or is it going to fall apart in my hands?” … there’s that strength and durability that I do like” [Ashleigh]. For another, “vintage reproduction stuff is so well made, it’s not like fast fashion, like Vivien of Holloway and Pin Up Girl Clothing, their pieces last forever, they don’t fall apart after five washes like fast fashion” [Emma]. The following encapsulates the rage felt in response to fast fashion. I think a lot of people are wearing true vintage clothing more often as a kind of backlash to the whole fast fashion scene … you could walk into any shop and you could see a lot of clothing that is very, very cheap, but it’s also very cheaply made. You are going to wear it and it’s going to fall apart in six months and that is not something that I want to invest in. [Melissa]Fit RageFit is a multi-faceted issue that affects consumers in several ways: body size; body shape; and height. Body size refers to the actual physical size of the body, whether one is underweight, slim, average, muscular or fat. Fast fashion body size labelling reflects what the industry considers to be of ‘normal sizes’, ranging from a size 8 through to a size 16 (Hackett & Rall). Body shape is a separate, if not entirely discrete issue. Women differ widely in the ratios between their hips, bust and waist. Body shape distribution varies widely within populations, for example, the ‘Size USA’ study identified 11 different female body shapes with wide variations between populations (Lee et al.). Even this doesn’t consider bodies with physical disabilities. Clothing is designed to fit women of ‘average’ height, thus bodies that are taller or shorter are often excluded from fast fashion (Valtonen). Even though Australian sizing practices are based on erroneous historical data (Hackett and Rall; Kennedy), the fast fashion system continues to manufacture for average body shapes and average body heights, to the exclusion of others. Discrimination through clothing sizes represents one way in which social norms are reinforced. Garments for larger women are generally regarded as less fashionable (Peters 48). Enraged consumers label some of the offerings ‘fat sacks’, ‘tents’ and ‘camouflage wear’ (Colls 591-592). Further, plus size is often more expensive and having been ‘sized up’ from smaller sizes, the result is poor fit. Larger body’s therefore have less autonomy in fashioning their identity (Peters 45). Size restrictions can lead to consumers having to choose between going without a desired item or wearing a size too small for them as no larger alternative is available (Laitala et al. 33-34).The ideology behind the thin aesthetic is that it is framed as aspirational (Barry) and thus consumers are motivated to purchase clothes based upon a desire to fit in with this beauty ideal. This is a false dichotomy (Halliwell and Dittmar 105; Bian and Wang). For participants in this research rage at fashion fashions persistance in producing for ‘average’ sized women was clearly evident. For a plus-size participant: “I don’t suit modern stuff. I’m a bigger girl and that’s not what style is these days. And so, I find it just doesn’t work for me” [Ashleigh]. For non-plus participants, sizing rage was also evident: I’m just like a praying mantis, a long string bean. I’m slim, tall … I do have the body shape … that fast fashion catered for, and I can still dress in fast fashion, but I think the idea that so many women feel excluded by that kind of fashion, I just want to distance myself from it. So, so many women have struggles in the change rooms in shopping centres because things don’t fit them nicely. [Emma] For this participant reproduction fashion wasn’t vanity sized. That is, a dress from the 1950s had the body measurements on the label rather than a number reflecting an arbitrary and erroneous sizing system. Some noted their disregard for standardised sizing systems used exclusively for fast fashion: “I have very non-standard measurements … I don’t buy dresses for that reason … My bust and my waist and my hips don’t fit a standard. You know I can’t go “ooh that’s a 12, that’s an 18”. You know, I don’t believe in standard sizing basically” [Skye]. Variations of sizing by brands adds to the frustration of fashion consumers: “if someone says 'I’m a size 16' that means absolutely nothing. If you go between brands … [shop A] XXL to a [shop B] to a [shop C] XXL to a [shop D] XXL, you know … they’re not the same. They won’t fit the same, they don’t have the same fit” [Skye]. These women recognise that their body shape, size and/or height is not catered for by fast fashion. This frees them to look for alternatives beyond the product offerings of the mainstream fashion industry. Although the rage against aspects of fast fashion discussed here – environmental, labour, quality and fit – is not seeing people in the streets protesting, people are actively choosing to find alternatives to the problem of sourcing clothes that fit their ethos. ReferencesABC Television. "Coffee Cups and Fast Fashion." War on Waste. 30 May 2017. Barnardo's. 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