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In this paper I focus on designations of 'our culture and heritage' that defend practices and symbols of religious majorities. I consider the entanglement of nationalist narratives, secularity and the 'us' in the claims of social actors and public discussions about culture and heritage. What is understood as being religious and what is culture/heritage is dependent on the social actors involved, their position in society and the interpretive frameworks available to them. I consider the following questions: How are culture and heritage used in legal and public discourse to justify the continued presence of such symbols and practices in Christian majority countries in the West? What are the religious histories implicated in this process? Who is imagined to be included when crosses and prayers are staked out as 'our culture and heritage'? What is the relationship between culture and heritage and national imaginaries? Ultimately, as religious majorities see their numbers dwindle and power relations shift, the attempt to imbricate religious practices and beliefs in public spaces and rituals is quite possibly a translation of the religious to the secular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental problems, including climate change, exhaustion of natural resources, and persistent degradation of air quality, have escalated in the name of development despite the warnings of scientists and environmentalists. Written when the interconnectedness of the globe is evident in the Coronavirus pandemic and extensive carbon footprints, this paper examines the role of ecocriticism in illuminating the condition of a city such as Hong Kong, which is susceptible to contagion because its success is based on its interconnectedness with the world through the flow of people, resources, finance, and tourism. How does ecocritical discourse help us to see the ways Hong Kong's success has contributed to its vulnerability? What are the tropes that defined the development of Hong Kong in the colonial period and how have they been re-imagined in the post-handover period? Will Hong Kong's post-handover reappropriation of nature encourage other former colonies to adopt a green agenda and lead to the cross-fertilization of ecocritcal, historical, cultural and social discourses? This paper adopts an ecocritical perspective and revisits some of the central natural symbols that have shaped the grand narrative of Hong Kong. It reconsiders the natural tropes— the barren rock — that were used to reinforce colonial superiority, the ways that geography has determined the city's destiny, and the role of the official flower in the creation of the city's identity. Citing developments in the post-handover period (the Save Choi Yuen Village movement, the rise of organic communities, and the tactics of protestors in the summer of 2019), the paper reveals how natural tropes have been liberated from their traditional associations. Hong Kong shows not only the ways in which the human and non-human can work together interdependently but also the processes of identity formation in the period after decolonization and in an age of globalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the state of the ‘field’ of affect studies and its development – partly through the involvement of one of its authors – over the course of decades. It argues that rather than identifying affect as the ‘other’ of signification and representation, thus ‘subtracting’ it from the conjuncture, one should understand the question of affect to point to the multiplicity of forms of sign behaviours – or, better, of forms of expression or collective assemblages of enunciation (in the terms of Deleuze and Guattari) that constitute a conjuncture in all its complexity. This article attempts to map this multiplicity by refining and expanding Guattari’s ‘mixed semiotics’. Finally, it offers a brief example of how such multiplicities (and their resulting hybridities) might be used to compare the ‘affective topographies’ and structures of feelings that have differentially enabled oppositional movements in the 1960s and the current moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim'sThe Elementary Forms of Religious Life(1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed inElementary Formsto draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates a general theory of scenes as multi-dimensional complexes of meaning embedded in material, local practices. It outlines techniques for measuring scenes empirically and shows how certain types of scenes provide environments in which new social movement (NSM) organizations (like human rights and environmental groups) tend to thrive. However universal and cosmopolitan the content of NSM goals, they appear to get much of their energy and support from the qualities that inhere in concrete local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an on-going, multi-method investigation into Media Molecule's popular LittleBigPlanet video game franchise and its ever-growing network of games, players, activities and events, this paper seeks to explore how the notion of ‘cultural scene’ might be used to better understand and analyse games-based, collaborative cultural activities. The discussion begins with a description of LittleBigPlanet, its contents and history, and the various actors involved in the social shaping of its wide-reaching community. The focus then shifts to identifying some of the ways in which LittleBigPlanet might be understood as functioning as (or at least akin to) a ‘cultural scene’, as well as to exploring those facets of LittleBigPlanet that challenge previous interpretations of this concept and its underlying assumptions. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which the LittleBigPlanet scene reflects, extends and deviates from the geographically situated notions of the cultural scene found in previous works in this area. An argument is made that understanding examples such as LittleBigPlanet as cultural scenes requires more than a shift in our notions and experience of locale, but also necessitates a renewed foregrounding of lingering questions relating to power and privatization within both traditional and digital cultural practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how discourses about obscurity, ambivalence and nostalgia serve to perpetuate cultural scenes. I consider Toronto bar and performance venue the Rivoli and Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall (KITH) as part of a cultural scene that existed on Queen Street West in the early 1980s. I analyse this case study through media discourses found in reviews and interviews about the scene and argue that representations of KITH's participation in the early days of the scene continue to legitimize the troupe as a groundbreaking and countercultural comedy team. That is, even now that they have ostensibly left ‘the scene’ they are still defined by it. In contemporary interviews with the group, their origins on the Queen West circuit, particularly at the Rivoli, are consistently used to frame them as innovators in Canadian comedy. These discourses also work to obscure the extent to which scenes are constructed and at times part of profoundly predictable taste cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“New Keywords: Migration and Borders” is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding author engagements with migrant movements. The paper is organized in four parts (i) Introduction, (ii) Migration, Knowledge, Politics, (iii) Bordering, and (iv) Migrant Space/Times. The keywords on which we focus are: Migration/Migration Studies; Militant Investigation; Counter-mapping; Border Spectacle; Border Regime; Politics of Protection; Externalization; Migrant Labour; Differential inclusion/exclusion; Migrant struggles; and Subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the last 30 years, the victims' rights movement has expanded the role of victims in the American criminal justice system. As a result of this movement, judges, prosecutors and parole boards must now hear victims' views at all stages of the criminal justice process, including plea bargains, and sentencing and parole decisions. Legislative efforts have been spearheaded by victims' families, and legislation has been named after deceased victims. Also, victims' families can now view executions in states across the country. The victims' right movement assumes that the criminal justice system should privilege victims' interests over those of society. In so doing, it denies society as a consideration, which is tantamount to a denial of society itself. This article positions victims' rights' denial of society within the current conjuncture, marked as it is by the contradiction between neoliberalism and American liberalism. Victims' rights' denial if society is an expression of the denial of society implicit in American neoliberalism, which seeks to privilege individual interests over those of society. This paper argues that victims' rights is a powerful element of the neoliberal project for three reasons. First, victims' rights imputes the authority of legal discourse to neoliberalism's denial of society. Second, important actors in the rise of neoliberalism have also worked to establish victims' rights. Finally, victims' rights comprehensively circulates throughout America and offers powerful points of identification that incorporate Americans into the victims' rights formation. I explore the denial of society in three victims' rights practices: naming criminal legislation after crime victims and passing such laws in honour of victims; allowing victims' families to view executions; and prosecutors, judges and police personnel making legal decisions according to victims' wishes. I examine the consonant denial of society in three neoliberal practices -- monetarism, supply-side economics and welfare reform -- and demonstrate how neoliberal advocates like Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Paul Gann worked to advance victims' rights. I also describe the production, consumption and comprehensive circulation of victims' rights texts. Finally, I consider Cultural Studies' unique contribution to legal studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automation has a long history in cultural production, but the contemporary moment presents a range of new possibilities and demands for the deployment of automated and autonomous systems in the shaping of our cultural and social worlds. The cultural implications of the deployment of automated systems for producing, curating, and distributing a growing range of cultural texts and artifacts extend beyond the realm of content to encompass their pace, rhythm, and scale. Understanding the significance of these shifts remains a central task for cultural studies research that builds on the field's historical engagement with the entwinement of cultural practices, social relations, and power. This theme issue builds on the historical and recent concerns of cultural studies to provide a range of approaches to the cultural significance of automation. Given the scope of the transformations, the coverage of possible topics is indicative rather than exhaustive. The articles in this collection range across the realms of automated news curation, credit scoring, image curation, deep fakes, data science, the gig economy, and content moderation. They engage with possible responses to the real and potential pathologies of automation in the cultural realm – while highlighting the links between culture, politics, and economics. Taken together they develop a range of critical approaches to the sometimes creeping, sometimes galloping automation of cultural production, curation, and distribution. While stressing the moments of historical continuity with earlier forms of bureaucratic and administrative rationality, they simultaneously indicate that we are, in many ways, still in the very early stages of a process that is likely to encompass an expanding range of cultural practices and texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the 2015 film Ex Machina as a cultural text that exemplifies the technologization of gender within algorithmic culture. Analysing different textual elements — the narrative diegesis, the marketing material, and the digital techniques used in the VFX post-production process—I argue that gender is consistently figured as a kind of technology. That is, gender is systematised, codified, and reduced to a programmed set of instructions that can be used by machines to manipulate and deceive. I argue that understanding gender through its figuration with the technological, specifically through code and algorithms, raises pertinent issues concerning surveillance, race, and bias. This is reflected in the film through a problematic representation of racialised figures, particularly techno-Orientalist tropes of labouring Asian bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her 2008 novel The Knitting Circle, American writer Ann Hood identifies knitting as a form of prayer, with every stitch connecting her to her deceased daughter. In 2016, a Rotterdam-based knitting icon, Loes Veenstra, passed away. For many years, Veenstra knitted hundreds of jumpers that were not intended to be worn. She knitted solely to fight her smoking addiction. In 2010, hundreds of Peruvian women knitted together in a square in Ayacucho to commemorate their missing relatives, whose fate had remained unknown since the civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. The scarf they created served as a symbolic grave because these women knew that their relatives would probably never get a real one. The written and spoken testimonies of these women as well as the knitted objects reveal the significance of knitting as a remedy. This creative endeavour practiced in daily life becomes a remedy when it is the only activity that women want or are able to undertake while experiencing grief, trauma or addiction. Knitting is a cure for women who have no other recourse to action within their social or cultural circumstances. These case studies illustrate how being creative (as a woman) in daily life can be beneficial in difficult times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency dispatchers who receive 9-1-1 calls and initiate various emergency response services perform media work that produces 9-1-1 as an infrastructural system for the public at large. This should be considered media work because it centres the interpretation of media content and navigation of multimedia systems. While a nontraditional site for the study of media work, emergency dispatch can be studied through methods of media industry and infrastructure studies in order to understand how these workers are shaped by and shaping cultural attitudes toward new media, labour, and emergency itself. Using interviews, observations, job advertisements, and management literatures, this article traces the values and practices of dispatcher culture through the sites of 'the job', 'the console', and 'the community.' Through dispatchers' media work, the logistical infrastructure of 9-1-1 is gradually transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay both inaugurates the editorship of Ted Striphas and reflects on the contributions of Cultural Studies' longtime editor, Lawrence Grossberg. It opens by reflecting briefly on the journal's transformations over the last 28 years before taking stock of the wellbeing of Cultural Studies, the field. The claim here is that Cultural Studies devotes less time and attention than it used to in thinking through first principles, and thus that the future of the field hinges, in part, on asking whether core concepts are up to the task of answering to the urgent political questions of our time. The essay then recontextualizes the concept of culture, specifically with respect to the much-maligned (indeed, deservedly-maligned) 'high culture' tradition. In its recesses the author identifies a fugitive theoretical line in which culture signifies care, as opposed to subordination to patrician interests and aesthetic styles. This conceptual move sets the stage for the central argument of the essay, namely, that for Cultural Studies to live up to both its name and intellectual-political ambitions, it must devote significant time to caring for the infrastructure that sustains its body of ideas. The piece concludes by highlighting some of Lawrence Grossberg's efforts, as an infrastructuralist, to care for Cultural Studies and by observing how, moving forward, neither the field nor this journal will take care of itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay offers one piece of a larger conjunctural analysis, in an effort to contribute to a better story of the contemporary organic crisis. It considers three elements of the complexity of the ‘crises’ of knowledge: First, it explores the increasingly feltsocialperception that knowledge (and the forms of authority that accompany it) has become less determined and determining, less identifiable, less effective, more troubled. It argues that one must think about these developments historically and contextually, rather than going along with the panic that has surrounded their increasing visibility in recent political events. Second, it considers some of the attacks on the university as well as some of the recent changes in the political economy and institutional forms of the academy. Finally, it argues that academics have failed to examine their own contributions to the crises of knowledge, failed to consider the ways their own cultures and practices can be located within rather than against the crises of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay reflects on the lives of two people whose publications, pedagogy, lectures, and crucially, whose experiences helped set the terms of the debate about so-called high culture in Cultural Studies: Matthew Arnold (1822�88) and Frank Raymond (F. R.) Leavis (1895�78). Who was Matthew Arnold? F. R. Leavis? What were the conditions of possibility of their work and words � that is, for the practices and positions for which they advocated? What new questions might emerge by sharing in detailed and perhaps unexpected stories of individuals who, presently, seem to function in Cultural Studies mainly as known-unknowns? The argument is that the details of both Arnold and Leavis� lives are integral to understanding the conditions of possibility of their work, both individually and collectively, and indeed to more fully appreciating the meaning and implications their work holds for Cultural Studies. Apropos, this piece refines the methodology of keywords introduced by Raymond Williams [1958. Culture and society, 1780�50. New York, NY: Columbia University Press; 1983. Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Rev. ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.]. It also challenges some of the theoretical, historical, and analytical claims underpinning Tony Bennett [1996. Putting policy into cultural studies. In: what is cultural studies? A reader. London: Arnold, 307�1] and Ian Hunter抯 [1988. Setting limits to culture. New Formations, 4, 103�3; 1994. Rethinking the school: subjectivity, bureaucracy, criticism. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin] work on culture as governmentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most commentary on the Edward Snowden affair and other recent accounts of government spying leaked in the media has focused on individual privacy concerns, while overlooking how contemporary neoliberal modernity has created a social order in which new surveillance technologies grant the state a degree of power unthinkable to past generations – exceeding in reach and complexity even the totalitarian state imagined in Orwell's dystopian account, 1984. Any critical analysis of the modern surveillance state must move beyond documenting abuses of state power to address how government repression has been allowed to proceed unchecked, and even to flourish, through its support of an antidemocratic public pedagogy produced and circulated via a depoliticizing machinery of fear and consumption. In the USA, repression works through the homogenizing forces of the market as well as a corresponding loss of public memory and political identity to encourage the widespread embrace of an authoritarian surveillance culture. The state and corporate cultural apparatuses now collude to socialize everyone into a surveillance regime, even as personal information is willingly given over to social media and other corporate-based sites as people move across multiple screens and digital apparatuses. It is no longer possible to address the violations committed by the surveillance state without also analysing this broader regime of security and commodification. The authoritarian nature of the corporate–state surveillance apparatus in the USA can only be fully understood when its ubiquitous tentacles are connected to wider cultures of entertainment, commerce and punishment, and the increasing labelling of democratic dissent as an act of terrorism. If democracy is to have a future in America, then it is imperative to organize social movements capable of recovering public memory and reclaiming dissent as essential features of responsible citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Culture’ is one of those concepts so widely used that it tends to fall into ambiguity and vagueness. Institutions dealing with power use them quite often in order to produce profuse, but somehow vacuous, discourses. That would be the case of the influential Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). After evidencing there is not a clear, plain, unitary idea of what ‘culture’ means in these yearly published reports, this research makes explicit – through a hermeneutical approach – the cultural logic underlying the ‘human development’ framework. UNDP turns qualitative culture into a quantitative matter. Thus development discourse becomes one of identity. While explicitly speaking about cultural diversity, implicitly it splits the world in a binary, dichotomic way: the West and the Rest, Developed and Developing and us and them. Hence, instead of a supposedly universal discourse promoting change, we find a culturally and historically defined one that reinforces – in a subtle way – the hegemonic epistemological and political patterns that sustain the present status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is framed by discussions on the civil unrest in British cities in 2011, the politics of austerity, the mass unemployment of the young, ‘the war on terror’ and ‘radicalization’ and the vulnerability of the poor and ‘unrespectable’. It advances a concept ofbiocolonialityand explores ‘respectability’, class and transnational post colonial urban cultures in contemporary London. The essay argues for a theorization which can account for how a divided subjectproducestheeffectof an undivided and self-governing ‘core self’ who ‘possesses’ distinguishing ‘biological’ ‘capacities’, ‘psychological attributes’ and cultural ‘characteristics’. It considers how this is accomplished through our daily practical activity such as our ‘imaginable’, ‘possible’ sexual desires, everyday practices of reflection, our bodily demeanour and bodily significations. This concept of biocoloniality is composed of two theoretical strands. In ‘on inscription and creolization’ and in dialogue with a single respondent on ‘respectability’ and ‘beauty’, I entwine disparate theoretical threads from work on biopolitics and governmentality, racialization, psychoanalysis and post coloniality and performativity, sexualization and intersectionality together. I forward a formulation ofinscriptionthat can reveal how we inscribe and sculpt our ownandother bodies with different ‘capacities’ and ‘qualities’. I then tie strands of work on repetition together and advance a theorization ofreiteration. I consider how we struggle with, overcome and are defeated by ourselves as we reinscribe our ownandother bodies. The essay thus considers how it is through in part our daily biocolonial practice that different bodies that are closer to and more distant from notions of the human, the un/respectable, un/desirable, ab/normal, ir/replaceable and expendable come into being and how this unsettles clear distinctions between coloniality and post-coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]