This article looks at the Thai massage industry in Slovenia and its impact on the perception of Thai women workers among users of the service. The arrival of Thai massage salons in Slovenia presents ...an aspect of global ‘body work’, which has increasingly relied on the labour of migrant women from the global South. In Slovenia, however, the presence of Thai female labour is a relatively new development, as is migration from Asia more broadly. In our analysis, we focus on the cultural aspects of the encounter between the providers and users of the service, as it unfolds in the micro setting of the massage salons. We argue that the closeness of the encounter between the two bodies – the worker’s and the consumer’s – complicates the concept of the modern stranger, as it is usually attached to the (male) migrant in the public space. Moreover, the intimate contact with the migrant worker confuses the hierarchies of gender, race and ethnicity and shifts the location of power and vulnerability. Our findings are then placed within the broader frame of contemporary post-socialist Slovene society to ask how this particular experience of body work may coincide with, or contest, local attitudes towards global migrants.
This paper investigates the prospect of the revival of the European integration project in light of current experiences of global fi nancial crisis. It is argued that the crisis has left an uneven ...mark on the European community of member state publics, a mark which has introduced a new division between the allegedly diligent North and lazy South. Moreover, the experience of public humiliation of the peripheral states in crisis, i.e., Greek, Cyprus, Spain, Slovenia, perceived as coming from the centres of the EU and the North, has made it diffi cult to continue with the construction of the postnational constitution, as suggested by scholars of the EU. Rather, EU public is witness to the rise of the condition of internal postcoloniality whereby the periphery has become the resource (in economic, fi nancial and cultural-moral sense) for the reproduction of the power regimes of the centre. Therefore, in this paper, it is claimed that leading European intellectuals who are concerned with the future of the EU, and propose scenarios of bottom-up reconstitution, should consider their own location and build an intellectual transversal which will include critical voices with peripheral experience of second-class citizenship.
Prispevek obravnava enega od temeljnih priporočil MacBridovega poročila o demokratizaciji komunikacije in informacije v kontekstu novih okoliščin postnacionalne evropske javnosti. S pojmom ...postnacionalne javnosti opredeljujemo dvoumno (utopično) konstitucijo integrirane nadnacionalne sfere evropskega političnega in kulturnega državljanstva na eni ter (dejanske) globalizirane javnosti individualiziranih potrošnikov na drugi strani. Oba aspekta tvorita povezano in soodvisno strukturo, ki določa prihodnost medijske demokracije glede na »tradicionalne« hegemone evropske javne kulture. Ob teh vzporedno nastajajo transnacionalni državljanski prostori, ki postnacionalno konstelacijo dodatno fragmentirajo s procesi začasnih, situacijskih in nepredvidljivih pripadnosti dvema ali več javnostim. To preurejanje modernih nacionalnih medijskih krajin predstavlja velik izziv za teorijo demokratizacije komunikacije in informacije, vključno s klasičnimi delitvami na vključujoče in izključujoče razpravljanje (deliberacijo), manjšine in hegemone večine, homogeno, dialoško in večglasno komunikacijo. Ključni argument v tem prispevku je, da sta transnacionalizacija in postnacionalna dispozicija razstavili enotnost pojmov medijske demokracije ter da je demokratizacija informacije danes neizogibno odvisna od družbene moči, da namesto skupinskih mobilizira individualistične želje po emancipaciji in utopičnih prihodnostih.
This article considers one of the key recommendations of MacBride report on democratization of communication and information in the context of changed conditions of post-national European public. The notion of post-national public is defined as an ambiguous (utopian) constitution of an integrated supranational sphere of European political and cultural citizenship on the one hand, and the (actual) globalized public of individualized consumers on the other. Both aspects form an interrelated and co-dependent structure which frames the future of media democracy in relation to traditional hegemonic European public cultures. Amidst these, new transnational citizenship spaces are emerging which, by virtue of temporary, situated and contingent belongings to two or more publics, further fragment the post-national constellation. The reorganization of modern national media scapes presents a major challenge for theory of democratic communication and information and concerns a rethinking of divisions such as inclusive and exclusive deliberation, minorities and hegemonic majority, homogeneous, dialogic and poly-vocal communication. The key argument in this paper is that transnationalization and postnational disposition brings a deconstruction of semantic coherence of key concepts of media democracy; and that democratization of information irrevocably depends on the power to mobilize, instead of group will, individual desires for emancipation and utopian futures.
The October-November 2005 upheavals in France dramatically shook visions of Europe and its politics of multicultural and multi-ethnic co-existence. The paper approaches the issue by looking at local ...Slovene news media and their ideological interpretative framing of the conflict. The analysis points to a deeply contradictory understanding of multicultural Europe and the ways the intercultural dialogue is imagined. Visual-narrative deconstruction of various reports and a public television special further unveils how images of the rioting second and third generation of immigrants not only clashed with the more familiar global media reports of terrorist attacks but were profoundly shaped by the discourse of global terrorism. This suggests a dire need for Europe to re-imagine itself in the direction which will recognize Europe's multicultural past as well as refashion its multicultural identity for the future. Reprinted by permission of Routledge, Taylor and Francis Ltd.
The October-November 2005 upheavals in France dramatically shook visions of Europe and its politics of multicultural and multi-ethnic co-existence. The paper approaches the issue by looking at local ...Slovene news media and their ideological interpretative framing of the conflict. The analysis points to a deeply contradictory understanding of multicultural Europe and the ways the intercultural dialogue is imagined. Visual-narrative deconstruction of various reports and a public television special further unveils how images of the rioting second and third generation of immigrants not only clashed with the more familiar global media reports of terrorist attacks but were profoundly shaped by the discourse of global terrorism. This suggests a dire need for Europe to re-imagine itself in the direction which will recognize Europe's multicultural past as well as refashion its multicultural identity for the future.
This paper investigates the relationship between the sociology of culture and cultural studies. It is argued that the relationship calls for a more in-depth inquiry because the two strands of ...analysis of culture bear much in common; yet, due to mutual misconceptions and misunderstanding of the research goals, their common agenda is often ignored (or even opposed). In addition, the shared legacies are often obscured by geographic and intellectual cultures that fall within the dividing lines between Western (democratic capitalist) and Eastern European (postsocialist) epistemological orientations in studying social change. As a result, both fields are losing in their theoretical power and practical pedagogy. The paper points to the origins of some of the mutual misconceptions with the goal of showing the potential for the mutually enforcing intellectual energy if the sociology of culture and cultural studies shift their relationship from practicing ignorance to embracing a dialogue.
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