Themed issues on TVIII, language and discrimination, and coloniality

The Journal of Language and Social Psychology (Volume 26, Number 2, June 2007) titled Communication, Language, and Discrimination and edited by Richard Clement features articles that aim to draw attention to "current conceptualizations of the links between language and discrimination, delineate communicative features related to discrimination, focus on the experience of victims of discrimination, and outline measures that may contribute to thwarting discriminatory practices or limiting their impact" (writes Itesh Sachdev in the issue's Prologue).


New Review of Film and Television Studies (Volume 5, Number 1, April 2007) is devoted to "TVIII." What is TVIII? "TVI generally refers to the origins of the medium (beginning in the 1930s), a time that John Ellis (2000) has defined as a period of ‘scarcity’ because of its lack of consumer choice. TVII refers to the changes in technologies and institutional structures that took place in the 1980s (deregulation, the introduction of cable and satellite and so on), or what Ellis describes as a period of ‘availability’. TVIII therefore labels television’s present state and beyond; a time of increased fragmentation consumer interactivity and global market economies—what Ellis defines as ‘choice’. As Jane Roscoe has recently put it (2004): Content is more dispersed across… platforms, and our engagement with it is more fleeting. Our experience of contemporary media is fragmented rather than unified or centralised. Instead of our viewing habits being controlled by the ‘flow’ of schedules, our viewing is now clustered around events, and through technologies such as personal video recorders, DVDs, and subscription television services. Choice is the buzzword…" (Issue editors Glen Greeber and Matt Hills in the editorial introduction).


A double issue of Cultural Studies (Volume 21, Numbers 2-3, March/May 2007) is on the subject of coloniality. The issue, edited by Walter D. Mignola is titled Globalization and the De-Colonial Option. Kicking off the issue is "the seminal article by Peruvian sociologist, Anibal Quijano, published at the beginning of the 90s, when the dust of a crumbling Soviet Union was still in everybody eyes. At the beginning of this century [2002], Arturo Escobar (an anthropologist from Columbia current residing in the US) wrote a critical review of what he called ‘the modernity/coloniality research program’." This article follows the one by Quijano. The rest of the issue reflects the research and publications of those participating in the project that continues to meet yearly and exchange research and views, as reported by W.D. Mignolo in the issu'es introduction, Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-colonial Thinking). The 500+ page issue is divided into five sections: I The Emergence of An-Other Paradigm, II (De)Colonization of Knowledges and of Beings, III The Colonial Nation-States and the Imperial Racial Matrix, IV (De)Coloniality at Large, and V On Empires and colonial/Imperial Differences.