This article revisits the notion of ‘postfeminism’ 10 years after its formulation in critical terms as a sensibility characterizing cultural life. The article has two broad aims: first to reflect ...upon postfeminism as a critical term – as part of the lexicon of feminist scholarship – and second to discuss the current features of postfeminism as a sensibility. The first part of the article discusses the extraordinary uptake of the term and considers its continuing relevance in a changed context marked by deeply contradictory trends, including the resurgence of interest in feminism, alongside the spectacular visibility of misogyny, racism, homophobia and nationalism. I document a growing attention to the specificities of postfeminism, including attempts to map its temporal phases, its relevance to place, and intersectional developments of the term. The second part of the article examines the contours of the contemporary postfeminist sensibility. I argue that postfeminism has tightened its hold upon contemporary life and become hegemonic. Compared with a decade ago, it is much more difficult to recognize as a novel and distinctive sensibility, as it instantiates a common sense that operates as a kind of gendered neoliberalism. It has both spread out and intensified across contemporary culture and is becoming increasingly dependent upon a psychological register built around cultivating the ‘right’ kinds of dispositions for surviving in neoliberal society: confidence, resilience and positive mental attitude. Together these affective, cultural and psychic features of postfeminism exert a powerful regulatory force. This article forms part of ‘On the Move’, a special issue marking the twentieth anniversary of the journal. It also heads up a special online dossier on ‘Postfeminism in the European Journal of Cultural Studies’.
The Imagination of Sociology of Culture TSUJI, Izumi; TANIMOTO, Naho; KUDO, Yasunori
Japanese Sociological Review,
2023, 2023-00-00, Letnik:
73, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
This article aims to reveal characteristics and major currents of sociology of culture in Japan. In recent years, sociology of culture has received a great deal of scholarly attention, reaching out ...to growing numbers of students and researchers. With the backdrop of this burgeoning field, it is no exaggeration to say that we are now entering an “age of sociology of culture.” One prominent characteristic of sociology of culture lies in the breadth of its research subjects and perspectives. In comparison to other fields of sociologies, sociology of culture does not merely focus on a specific area in society, but rather, it attempts to delve into society as a whole through culture.The term “culture” can be understood in a narrow and broad sense. The former sees culture observed in everyday life, such as popular culture and mass culture, while the latter embraces a broader perspective on society, ranging from lifestyle in general to social structures, to such civilizations as the Japanese or Western culture. In this sense, sociology of culture is an approach that serves to understand thedynamism articulated between cultures in both senses.From this perspective, sociology of culture in Japan has undergone four major stages of change. The first stage was the period of emergence in the prewar era. It was followed by the period of development until the period of rapid economic growth in postwar Japan. It was a time when several sociologists, conducted important research on mass culture while refining their own theoretical perspectives, which remains influential today. The third stage was the stabilized period wherein sociology of culture became more prevalent. Now, sociology of culture is in its fourth stage.
Historical and literary analysis of the Egyptian modernization project and the conflict it caused in the area of Middle Eastern culture where Egypt plays a leading role. The article questions ...selected claims from the field of postcolonial studies and discusses how the colonial powers used “modernist” and “anti-modernist strategies” in the Arab region for their own benefit. It argues that the same conflict is being rec-reated today through identity discourses and so called “cancel culture”.
Pop culture has its significant place in education. It is also a space within which social processes take place and experiences, beliefs and cultural archetypes are presented and discussed. This text ...is a kind of revisiting of thoughts collected during workshops for young people focusing on various creative processes, particularly writing texts, expression through words and body, introducing elements of theatrical exercises, discussions of popular culture and everyday experiences of workshop participants. The purpose of the text is not just to offer conclusions and reflections after conducting such workshops, but also to critically look at processes like socialization, education and upbringing.
The article analyzes the background of the modern secular movement in Egypt and the causes of its failure. The Author compares the circumstances of the emergence of secular ideas in the Middle East ...and in Europe and argues that in order for a secular modernization project to be effective, it should be a bottom-up process, based on the cultural specificity of a given country, not imposed by hegemons. He also investigates the mistakes made by elites in the Middle East, who did not develop the cognitive framework necessary to model their own concept of a secular state.
Interview with an Egyptian historian, Dr. Ahmed Zakaria al-Shalaq, about the situation of Egypt under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire, its negative im-pact on the civilizational development of ...the country and about modernization initi-ated by the Muhammad Ali dynasty. The scholar emphasizes the importance of culture created in the period of monarchy until the outbreak of 1952 Revolution for revival of Egypt. He argues that its identity is a product of various cultural influences and should not be appropriated by anyone.
Every phenomenon has a field of existence, and due to its nature, no cultural phenomenon could be completely comprehended outside this field of existence. Therefore, in order to be able to make sense ...of a cultural phenomenon, as in other contextualities, its field of existence as the context where it is produced, executed/presented and consumed is an important dynamic that needs to be considered. There are multiple words corresponding to field of existence such as location, space, place and area. However, in this article, the word space has been preferred over others as it qualifies the relationality within itself, the atmosphere of it formed by abstract and tangible elements and the affectivity and integrity created by this atmosphere. Space as a field of existence, forms as a result of its bilateral relationship with the person. Therefore, in this article, the person cannot be deemed absolutely passive or absolutely active. In connection to this, this article did not prefer one-dimensional and strict approaches such as environmental determinism where the physical and cultural environment controls and shapes human production or possibilism which is an active human approach that uses a preference among alternate opportunities of the conditions in the environment; instead, “probabilism”, which focuses on bilateral relationality, was adopted as the main approach of the article. There is a close and indispensable relationship between music pieces and spaces. In this article, the quality of this relationship is defined with the concept of “symbiotic”, which means “vital connection between two elements for mutual existence”. Therefore, the hypothesis of this article is that there is a symbiotic relationship between music and space. While the article draws a general framework in the relationship between music and space, it rather turns towards its effect and diversity in the Turkish music culture, and it is aimed to reveal how the concept of genre which qualifies this diversity becomes noticeable on the basis of space in the light of the written and verbal literature.
A burgeoning literature spanning sociologies of culture and social network methods has for the past several decades sought to explicate the relationships between culture and connectivity. A number of ...promising recent moves toward integration are worthy of review, comparison, critique, and synthesis. Network thinking provides powerful techniques for specifying cultural concepts ranging from narrative networks to classification systems, tastes, and cultural repertoires. At the same time, we see theoretical advances by sociologists of culture as providing a corrective to network analysis as it is often portrayed, as a mere collection of methods. Cultural thinking complements and sets a new agenda for moving beyond predominant forms of structural analysis that ignore action, agency, and intersubjective meaning. The notion of "cultural holes" that we use to organize our review points both to the cultural contingency of network structure and to the increasingly permeable boundary between studies of culture and research on social networks.
Incivility in public discussions has received increasing attention from academic and popular commentators in recent years. In an effort to better understand the nature and determinants of such ...incivility, this study examined a 3‐week census of articles and comments posted to a local newspaper's website—totaling more than 300 articles and 6,400 comments. The results of the content analysis show that incivility occurs frequently and is associated with key contextual factors, such as the topic of the article and the sources quoted within the article. We also find that, contrary to popular perceptions, frequent commenters are more civil than are infrequent commenters, and uncivil commenters are no less likely than civil commenters to use evidence in support of their claims.
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