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Book Review: Joe Turner, Bordering Intimacy: Postcolonial Governance and the Policing of Family
Get PDFReview of Joe Turner's Bordering Intimacy: Postcolonial Governance and the Policing of Family
A pilot study on analyzing critical retellings using digital humanities tools
No full textThis paper presents the early findings of a pilot study on the analysis of longform video essays as critical retellings of video game narratives. Using web-based reading and analysis environment Voyant, the study explores the indicators of how players critically approach and discuss game narrative design
Luxury brands aura reconstituted for the digital age
Get PDFAs the Internet has risen in prominence, it has become one of the essential brand management tools. As such, luxury brands are increasingly using digital strategies. Yet, because the luxury brand has unique characteristics compared to other brands, their brand aura has been gradually undermined by these digital initiatives. As the pandemic has been worldwide, the luxury brand needs to find a new way for its brand development in the future. This research aims to explore a new strategy for luxury brands based on digital platform technology. Previous research demonstrates that luxury brands have developed websites but used them primarily for brand image development rather than sales. Thus, there is a need for research on how luxury brands can increase digital sales without diluting their brand image, or aura, as can happen on third-party sales platforms such as Tmall. Thus, this study has focused on how luxury brands can develop their internet sales presence while retaining their aura and offers insights into building a digital strategy and reconstituting brand aura in digital spaces. It has adopted qualitative research to collect all customers' negative feedback from the Burberry flagship store in Tmall to do content analysis and explore how the luxury brand aura has been affected by this sales place. In conclusion, luxury brands collaborating with online retail is a trend under the economic rescession situation. As a luxury brand, it could use a proper way to work with the Internet and make its digital strategy simultaneously
The Virtual Launch event: The Commons Launch including ‘The Virtual Commons Feast’
No full textThe Virtual Launch event including 'The Virtual Commons Feast' kicked off The Commons: Re-enchanting the World project on Friday 30 July 2021. It was hosted on Zoom with a livestream tour by MERL curator, Ollie Douglas; live and recorded talks and performances by Carl Gent, Sigrid Holmwood, Catherine Morland, Amanda Couch, and Josefin Vargö.
The ‘Virtual Commons Feast’ was co-designed by Amanda Couch and Josefin Vargö and consisted of an interactive participatory performance where participants requested a sourdough culture from Vargö’s Levande Arkivet to make bread prior to the event as well as preparing food and drink from foraged plants to share in discussions.
D1.4 Critical evaluation of material criticality and product-related circularity approaches
Get PDFThe deliverable presents a critical evaluation of existing approaches addressing material criticality and circularity
Mourning and melancholia in Zimbabwean culture and cinema
Get PDFThis thesis interrogates postcolonial melancholia and femininity through the textual analysis of literary and cinematographic works from Zimbabwe. The work is a transdisciplinary project encompassing psychosocial and postcolonial studies, as well as film and cultural studies. I define post-colonial melancholia in relation to how it has affected the postcolonial social sphere following the independence of Zimbabwe from British colonial rule in April 1980. I characterise melancholia as a loss of identity, ‘the missing object’/ lost object of affection that stemmed from colonial subjugation alongside the little remaining evidence of written Zimbabwean culture before colonialism. Today, there is a fragment of evidence that shows pre colonial Zimbabwean culture: it is forever lost. The colonial era is also relatively sparse regarding its cultural outputs, which is typical of any trauma that is ‘unrepresentable’. It is only recently that some films and plays have begun to address this head on. It is my argument that Zimbabwe is still in a state of melancholia, mourning the loss of her identity. I contend that the notion of identity is not straightforward, but rather is multifaceted and layered in trauma, tribalism, racism, class and sexism. There is, therefore, a need to re-evaluate post-colonial theories in relation to post-colonial melancholia and find the correlation it has in forming a national identity. This thesis also explores the lack of female authorship in literature and film and what this tells us of the role of women in Zimbabwean society. I argue that the black female voice has been silenced through the ions of time and is only being regained very slowly. Thus autoethnography is used here as an anti -patriachal gesture, a resistance tool against the double interpellation black women endured/ are enduring in Zimbabwe.
How can one account for postcolonial melancholia and what tools does a researcher deploy to examine it? This thesis adopts a psychoanalytical approach to account for the gaps and silences in Zimbabwean culture because of post-colonial trauma. I draw upon foundational Western scholars including Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Homi Bhabha, Louis Althusser and Frantz Fanon, and more recent thinkers such as Agnieszka Piotrowska, Stephen Frosh, Lauren Berlant and Ranjana Khanna. I also draw upon Zimbabwean writers Alois Mlambo, Dambudzo Marechera, Robert Muponde and, most notably, Tsitsi Dangarembga, P Mbatha, Panashe Chigumadzi, Yvonne Vera and other black female thinkers and writers. These writers and scholars aid in investigating how the postcolonial narrative is created and in unearthing the notion of identity and race relations in Zimbabwe, as well as who can take charge of this narrative, and the role of melancholia in framing this narrative. This argument is executed through textual analysis of prominent films and literature produced in Zimbabwe from 1940 to the present. The thesis offers a re-interpretation of postcolonial thinking through the lens of psychoanalysis, combining the textual analysis of film and literature alongside psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory. Finally, it interrogates the silences and gaps (the lack of films, literature and academic research) through interviews conducted with prominent individuals involved in the creative industries, set alongside the evocation of my personal experience as a Zimbabwean woman and academic. This is in line with the autobiographical genre used by many scholars, notably Frantz Fanon
Rethinking of Marxist perspectives on big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and capitalist economic development
No full textAI and big data are not ideologically neutral scientific knowledge that drives economic development and social change. AI is a tool of capitalism which transforms our societies within an environment of technological singularity that helps in the expansion of the capitalist model of economic development. Such a development process ensures the precarity of labour. This article highlights the limits of traditional Marxist conceptualisation of labour, value, property and production relations. It argues for the rethinking of Marxist perspectives on AI led economic development by focusing on conceptual new interpretation of bourgeois and proletariat in the information driven data-based society. This is a conceptual paper which critically outlines different debates and challenges around AI driven big data and its implications. It particularly focuses on the theoretical challenges faced by labour theory of value and its social and economic implications from a critical perspective. It also offers alternatives by analysing future trends and developments for the sustainable use of AI. It argues for developing policies on the use of AI and big data to protect labour, advance human development and enhance social welfare by reducing risks
Gender stereotypes and their impact on women’s career progressions from a managerial perspective
Get PDFGender stereotypes continue to exist and are transmitted through media, and through social, educational and recreational socialization, which promote gender prejudice and discrimination. This paper argues that contemporary management culture does not critically engage with the social theories of gender studies, which could help in developing gender-neutral affirmative action-oriented managerial perspectives. The paper outlines different aspects of gender stereotyping and their impact on women’s career progressions from a managerial perspective, which engages with the critical theories of gender studies. The paper contributes to existing literature by identifying the antecedents of gender stereotypes and their impacts on the career progressions of women in management. It advances theoretical understanding of three clear conceptual shifts, that is, (a) Women in Management, (b) Women and Management and (c) Gender and Management. The theoretical transition from Women in Management to Women and Management led to progressive conceptual shifts in management literature but gender stereotypes continue to exist in society
Understanding complexity and dynamics in the career development of eSports athletes
Get PDFWith the accelerated growth of the esports industry over the last few years, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of esports athletes. Yet there is limited research examining these athletes’ professional career journeys. This study provides a novel investigation into their career development process. This qualitative study uses a sample of 35 esports athletes from 16 professional esports clubs in China. Findings from semi-structured interviews confirmed our proposition that traditional career theories may be inadequate to capture the complex and dynamic nature of the newly emerged careers within esports. The authors propose that Chaos Theory in Careers (CTC) provides principles that may more effectively describe and explain the nature and main characteristics of esports careers, compared to the more conventional linear or stage-based sports career theories. This study makes a significant theoretical contribution through developing esports career theory which is applicable to a contemporary setting and has practical implications to practitioners for esports talent identification, recruitment and development
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