1,721,006 research outputs found
Sex and death in modern America : media as a haven for taboo transgression
No full textThis study examines popular media representations of sex and death, using examples from television, film and the internet, and frames them using Bakhtin's [Mikhail Bakhtin] theory of carnivalization and Foltyn's [Jacque L. Foltyn] theory of corpse pornography. The goal is to show that taboos surrounding sexualized death still exist in contemporary society and are reinforced by popular media. It is argued that taboos continue to play a role in contemporary society and that popular media plays on its trademark illusory qualities to allow taboos to be broken in a safe venue, throwing into relief by contrast the consequences of transgression outside that space. This work increases the complexity of the understanding of how media work to reinforce social norms in contemporary society
Simveillance in hyperreal Las Vegas
Full text linkOn a Thursday afternoon, an average Canadian leaves her office, and goes to a
nearby bank machine to get a cash advance on one of her credit cards. She uses the
money to buy lunch at a mall food court, then wanders into various shops purchasing
clothing and compact discs with her Interac-equipped bank card. Returning to her
office, she logs on to the internet, and checks her email. She then goes back to her
assigned task of data entry. An ordinary day for millions of Canadians, but what is
extraordinary is how well-documented this banal trip was. The woman’s face has been
photographed, videotaped, and time-coded. Records of her purchases have been
distributed to her, the stores, and her bank. Her employer knows that she has checked
her email. Were she to go missing, investigators would be able to put together a fairly
comprehensive itinerary of her day, and there would be plenty of up-to-date images for
the evening news. But it should be noted, It is possible that at no time during her day
was she actually being watched by a pair of human eyes.
It is not an overstatement to claim that surveillance permeates many aspects of
North American life. There is no shortage of sociological theory to help illuminate the
situation; sociologists have been keenly aware of the importance of surveillance for
decades. However, at the dawn of the 21®' century, it is questionable whether the
theories that have dominated surveillance discourse for the last twenty-five years can
still provide insight. Technology has certainly advanced in that time, both in capability
and in frequency. The average person now takes for granted technology that would
have been unthinkable a quarter of a century ago. Along with the technological
envelopment has come an immersion in simulation, as people find themselves operating in a virtual world of computers and videoscreens. The question is whether
this has simply intensified conventional surveillance in North American society, or
produced a new kind of creature entirely. This thesis will argue that the articulation of
the two forces has produced a hybrid; for lack of a better word, this hybrid can be called
simveillance. Simveillance can not be encompassed by the classic concepts of
surveillance that dominate current discourse
A Barbara Diagram: Summer of 1984
Full text linkThis version was prepared on the occasion of a one-day special conference in honour of Barbara Godard, organized by the Toronto Semiotic Circle on April 21, 2012, at Victoria Collage in Toronto.This is an updated text of the paper presented at the Barbara Godard memorial, held at York University in May 2011. Focusing on Barbara Godard's lecture notes from Fredric Jameson's seminar during the 1984 International Summer Institute in Semiotic and Structural Studies, the author highlights her contributions to the Toronto semiotics scene
Cyborgology and the limits of human and machine implosion
Full text linkIntroduction
Anxiety accompanies human/machine intersections. This condition is,
however, relatively new. Early work on machinic extensions of humans (men in
particular) for space travel occurred at roughly the same time as other forms of
technology, such as television, began to proliferate in everyday life. With the
increasing rate of this proliferation, some might say invasion, of technology, it is
now widely acknowledged the extent to which various forms of technology shape
our worlds. At times, this anxiety takes a phobic turn, questioning the extent to
which these technologies, as a whole, benefit human life on this planet:
In our more reflexive moments, we are suspicious that the
technological instruments intended to heal and bring us together -
the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the computer, the fax
machine, medical apparatus - are in truth driving us further apart.
We fear that we are isolated bodies, plugged into technological
toys and tools but divorced from the comforts of human proximity
and touch. Even worse, the material products of technical-scientific
reason have proliferated until they promise to transform
the planet into a wasted metallic reflection of its misguided
demigod. (Rushing and Frentz, 1995:13-14)
Fear of isolation and environmental degradation and anxiousness about the
possibility that an increased relationship with and/or reliance upon technology
might mean that humans could not survive without machines; perhaps even that
human and machine are becoming integrated at the expense of pure'
humanness In short, the boundary between human and machine is becoming
blurred, if not eradicated. (see document
Failure in the frostbelt : the city in winter / by Andriko John Lozowy.
Full text link"The result of a culture rigidly atomized by individual autonomy has meant that even winter’s icy chill has not prompted a spirit of collective gathering amongst citizens. Instead, the contemporary urban winter is marked as a repeatedly failed attempt at obliterating a fear of death. The chapters that follow depict an unbridled, poetico-sociological rendering of four common winter forms or objects; the themes of failure and death have become underpaintings upon which all else has taken shape. ... In terms of a structure of analysis 1 have employed a loose ethnographic
model upon which to build an interpretive understanding of the urban winter."--Introductio
Kind of prohibition : alcohol administration in pre-computer Ontario, Canada 1927-1975
Full text linkThis thesis describes in detail the development of a vast bureaucracy of
surveillance by provincial authorities around alcohol control, and concerns itself with
the categories employed in a vast social sorting operation of drinkers undertaken from
1927 into the 1970s when the system was finally discontinued. In short, at issue are the
contact points where categories are flush with material technologies. This is a history
lesson in surveillance, the theoretical relevance of which for today lies precisely in the
extraordinary transformations it made possible in terms of social identity construction
and control. The social sorts accomplished by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario
(LCBO), working in conjunction with three levels of government agencies and police
forces, could transform the most private interests into public matters, in the process
recategorizing individuals and redefining their material possessions and property.
Beyond technology is, then, the power that accrues to those and their cohorts who use
the categorization of such personal information for varied and politically motivated
purposes of social control. In short, the concern expressed here is with an all-too-contemporary
history - “list” making - and its social consequences. To use the ominous
words of Edwin Black (2001 ; 92) in his study of the informational equivalent of
blitzkrieg, that is, the speed-processing of data by Hollerith machines, when “lists were
everywhere” the politics of race became diabolical
Recategorizing pornography through technocultural change
Full text linkPornography has long been a subject of great controversy, much disagreement and conflict on intellectual and legal levels. There have been extensive debates on pornography regarding its potential to do psychological harm, its correlations with sexual violence, and its moral properties. Pornography has also been at the forefront of legal debates regarding obscenity, organized crime, pandering, first amendment rights in the United States and freedom of expression in Canada under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Aside from being a controversial topic and source of conflict it is also an increasingly popular form of adult entertainment - one that is becoming more widely accepted North American society
Conceptualizing Silk Road as countercultural rebellion
Full text linkSilk Road (SR) is an anonymous online illicit marketplace (OIM) that is often cited as an example of criminal innovation. I add that SR is more than just a marketplace and should be considered as a demonstration of rebellion. The aim of this research is to critically co-construct a definition of SR with the members of the discussion forum. Through a virtual ethnography of the SR discussion forum, I qualitatively analyzed the textual data in order to conceptualize SR as what Robert Merton (1938) describes as rebellion and what Howard Becker (1963) refers to as pure deviance. In addition, an epistemological bricolage with the works of Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault was established to guide explanations of cultural exchange, relational trust, and the spatial dynamics of SR. I postulate that SR is more than an online illicit marketplace; it is a virtual heterotopic space and cryptocommunity that exists in countercultural rebellion against the hegemony of control societies. The findings of this study provide a new qualitatively rich conceptualization of SR.University of Ontario Institute of Technolog
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