Journal Public Culture in For Some Changes

Read about changes in store for the prominent cultural studies journal Public Culture in the May 13th Chronicle of Higher Education. The journal, under new editorship, plans to aim for a broader audience. Sociologist and public intellectual Eric Klinenberg, one of the new editorial board members, explains that "the remade Public Culture will place greater emphasis on 'imaginative social theory' and 'vivid ethnographic writing.' It will also emphasize contemporary issues such as climate change, military interventions, the power of markets, and links between social media and social movements."

The journal will also include "'visual investigations'—images that invite readers to ponder and analyze. Some of those will run online only, alongside videos and podcast" as reported by Chronicle reporter Peter Monaghan.

You can read the full article here.

Special issue of Topia

"Cultures of Militarization" is the topic of a special double issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (23-24, 2010).

This special double issue adds perspective to the rampant militarization of everyday civilian culture. Edited by Jody Berland (York University) and Blake Fitzpatrick (Ryerson University), "Cultures of Militarization" features contributions from twenty-two international scholars and artists whose work investigates the processes through which military presence is normalized or critiqued in private, public and national narratives.

Articles

Introduction: Cultures of Militarization and the Military-Cultural Complex (the editors)

A.L. McCready Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round Public Discourse, National Identity and the War: Neoliberal Militarization and the Yellow Ribbon Campaign in Canada

Howard Fremeth Searching for the Militarization of Canadian Culture: The Rise of a Military-Cultural Memory Network

Carole R. McKenna Canadian and American Cultures of Militarism: Coping Mechanisms in a Military-Industrial-Service-Complex

Uli Linke Fortress Europe: Globalization, Militarization and the Policing of the Interior Borderland

Markus Kienscherf Plugging Cultural Knowledge into the U.S. Military Machine: The Neo-Orientalist Logic of Counterinsurgency

Neil Balan Corrective for Cultural Studies: Beyond the Militarization Thesis to the New Military Intelligence

Erin Riley Operation Nunalivut - Photo Essay

Susan Cahill Conflict(ing) Narratives: Representations of War in "The Battleground Project" and the Performative Potential of its Audience

Marc Lafleur Tracing the Absent-Present of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in America as Sensuous Encounter: Notes on (Nuclear) Ruins

Mary Alemany-Galway Peter Jackson's use of Hollywood Film Genres in The Lord of the Rings and New Zealand's Anti-nuclear Stance

Stuart Allan and Kari Anden-Papadopoulos Come on, let us shoot! : Wikileaks, Militarization and Journalism

Bill Burns Extraterritorial prison plans and a play list in the style of IKEA - Art Work

David Clearwater Living in a Militarized Culture: War, Games and the Experience of U.S. Empire

Ian Roderick Mil-bot Fetishism: The Pataphysics of Military Robots

Mary Sterpa King Preparing the Instantaneous Battlespace: a Cultural Examination of Network Centric Warfare

Gary Genosko The Terrorist Entrepreneur

James R. Compton Fear and Spectacle on the Planet of Slums

Christopher Dornan Unknown Soldiers: On the Comparative Absence of the Military from Canadian Entertainment Film and Television

Jim Daems "i wish war wud fuck off:" bill bissett's Critique of the Military-Cultural Complex"

Darin Barney Miserable Priests and Ordinary Cowards: On Being a Professor

This issue is available in print at the ASC Library.

Conflicts and Tensions, Volume I in The Cultures and Globalization Series

Conflicts and Tensions, edited by Helmut K. Anheier (Center for Civil Society, School of Public Policy and Social Research, UCLA) and Yudhushthir Raj Isar (The American University of Paris) is the first title in The Cultures and Globalization Series, devoted to the economic and political consequences of globalization.

Analyzing the relationship between globalization and cultures is the core objective of this volume. In it leading experts track cultural trends in all regions of the world, covering issues ranging from the role of cultural difference in politics and governance to heritage conservation, artistic expression, and the cultural industries. --back of book description

Each volume in the series will include a suite of Indicators--"innovative information graphics" to convey information about various cultural phenomena across the globe. The suite is breathtaking visually and for all the information it conveys in this section qualifies the title as a reference book (and thus will have a home in ASC Reference). Visual representations of time spent watching television by country, the reach of Disney (and many other transnational cultural organizations) across cultures, languages of the web, telephone traffic flows in Europe, Latin America and Asia, growth in broadband use and internt use in general, per cent of world public wireless access points, blogs by region, growth in number of blogs and hosting sites, movie attendance, film investment, radio and television station comparisons are just some of the pages I pored over. The suite has a media section from which a lot of these examples come but it also includes other indicator sections on human rights, terrorism, current conflicts between nations, piracy, trafficking, tourism, transportation, patents, diplomacy, and others.

The article From Violence to Discourse: Conflict and Citizens' Radio Stations in Columbia, by Clemencia Rodriguez and Amparo Cadavid appears in a previous (less visual) section of the 600+ page volume.

The logic behind the series is that promoting understanding between cultures, in this and subsequent volumes, serves in the interest of peace. I'll be keeping an eye out for forthcoming volumes.