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This paper submits that the hegemonic order in celebrity studies is fixated upon questions of utility, yield and economic asset value. These technical considerations support a technocratic engagement with celebrity that exaggerates the importance of technology and linearity. By the same token, it devalues philosophical perspectives that address questions of Transcendence and Ultimate Meaning. The term 'Triangulation' is introduced to describe the dominant paradigm in celebrity studies. The paper develops the case that to ignore these philosophical issues impoverishes the domain of celebrity studies. The value of these questions is demonstrated by discussing the relevance of Kant's concepts of noumena and noumena, Hegel's account of World Historical Individuals. This material is used to advance the value of phenomenological perspectives, notably the contributions of Bergson and Husserl, in respect of time and space, in the analysis of celebrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic has produced an abundance of medical misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Many of these narratives appear impervious to scientific evidence and indifferent to the authority of the state. This has resulted in 'true believers' being cast as paranoid and irrational. In this article, we take a different approach by exploring the cultural appeal of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Drawing on qualitative analysis of two leading figures of the anti-vaccination movement – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joseph Mercola – we demonstrate how these influencers establish authority by staging indignation against a corrupt scientific establishment and positioning themselves as Truthers offering simple solutions to complex (wicked) problems. By conceptualising what we refer to as the Truther Playbook, we examine how anti-vaccine Truthers capitalise on existing grievances and conditions of low institutional trust to further solidify people's troubled relationship with institutional expertise while drawing attention to the structural conditions and social inequalities that facilitate belief in conspiracy theories. We contend that conspiracy theories offer not only offer alternative facts and narratives but are predicated on identification and in-group membership, highlighting the limits of debunking as a strategy to tackle disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the personal and professional relationship between the author, Chris Rojek, and Peter Beilharz, highlighting their encounters, conversations, and shared interests in sociology. Topics include their meetings, Peter's scholarly orientation, and the significant role Thesis Eleven played in bridging Australian sociology with the academic community and Chris Rojek reminisces about his interactions with Peter, highlighting their common ground as first-generation nationals.

This article argues that John Locke's defence of Natural Rights and private property are prerequisites in the rise of Achieved Celebrity. It addresses how the rights of private property are anterior to taking 'the ordinary citizen' as an object of attention capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article introduces the concept of designer notoriety to refer to calculated attempts to derail aspects of normative order so as to garner media attention. The objective is for otherwise unexceptional people to gain celebrity. The case of the alleged sabotage of Germanwings Airbus A320 Flight, by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, in 2015, is used as a case study. Drawing on the methods of content analysis from various media sources and historical sociology, the article examines the media claim that Lubitz sought celebrity and planned the crash as a means to acquire media interest. Public receptivity to the notion of designer notoriety is investigated. It is related to three key concepts: 'the demotic turn', 'mediatization' and the 'world historic event'. The application of each concept to designer notoriety is set out and justified. The article ends by expanding the Lubitz case to refer to other examples of designer notoriety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spengler’s The Decline of the West was a major publishing success in Weimar Germany. The study presents the end of Western civilization as an inevitable process of birth, maturity and death. Civilization is conceived as an inflexible ‘morphology’. Spengler’s thinking was influenced by a profound distaste with the optimism of the Belle Epoque, which he found to be complacent. The argument had a good deal of attraction to readers, especially German readers, who were suffering under the ‘Carthaginian Peace’ of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. Adorno and others were critical of Spengler’s thesis. The article examines Spengler’s thesis and its implications for the West today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political crowd as a World Historical Event (WHE). Historians define the latter as an episode, incident or emergency that transforms the course of history. The article analyses Hayden White's discussion of the WHE and the grounds he submits for separating it from pseudo-events: namely, the identification of collective trauma and the attribution of the episode as the fulfilment or 'filling out' of an historical sequence. The article offers a preliminary taxonomy and concentrates on the non-violent political crowd protest. It examines Occupy (2011) as a World Historical Event. It draws comparisons between Occupy, the Paris Commune (1871) and the May Spring in Paris (1968). The aim is to set the evidence for Occupy as a World Historical Event against claims made on its behalf by the media of the day and leading political and social commentators, notably David Harvey, Todd Gitlin, Cornell West and Noam Chomsky. The concept of 'Event inflation' is introduced and the claim that World Historical Events can only be determined by retrospective (historical) wisdom is advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American society was transformed by the expansion of capital Westward and the explosion in opportunities for land-grabbing and agricultural and industrial investment. F.J. Turner’s ([1893] 1961) frontier thesis portrays this transformation as the fulfilment of American character. The tensions between character and personality are examined following the ideas of Carl Schmitt on the significance of ‘the occasion’ in acquiring competitive advantage. Schmitt indicated the significance of a ‘vertical’ frontier in challenging social conventions and this constitutes a counterpoint to the ‘horizontal’ frontier developed in the frontier thesis of Turner. The importance of the occasion and personality in developing the American way of life is presented by an examination of the vaudeville and celebrity traditions in American entertainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study of the consumption of counterfeit products casts consumers as reflexive agents who knowingly break the law (through the consumption of illegal commodities). Because this analysis is pitched at the level of meaning rather than structural constraints, it produces a misleading view of reflexive counterfeit consumption as being motivated by resistance or the wish to escape from normative coercion. This article contrasts this with approaches that prefigure meaning in explaining counterfeit commerce by treating the trade as an unavoidable structural feature of capitalism. That is, the structural logic of capital accumulation inevitably creates a black market of counterfeit commerce. It is a parasitic form of illegal consumerism which mirrors conventional capitalist organization, reproducing familiar dynamics of status differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalating interest in celebrity studies has not translated into a serious enquiry into the origins of the subject in social and political theory. Instead, celebrity has been usually explained as either the reflection of industrialisation or the expression of timeless, unchanging fate. The result is a distorted, compressed time frame in which the phenomenon is located in unsatisfactory, metaphysical accounts of the position of celebrity in the social order. This paper aims to redress the balance by demonstrating the profound importance ofcultural intermediariesin the social construction of celebrity. I argue that the birth of cultural intermediaries lies in Florentine civic humanism. Machiavelli’sThe Princehas been celebrated as a major contribution to the acquisition and effective management of tyrannical power. There is ample reason to hold this view. At the same time, this interpretation is too limiting. When read from the standpoint of the rise of Florentine civic humanism, the text is also, transparently, a contribution to the successful engineering of renown. More particularly, in this respect, it offers a prototypical understanding of cultural intermediaries. As such, this paper contends that Machiavelli’s study is a seminal contribution to the study of celebrity. Machiavelli formulates impersonal principles on exposure management and the accumulation of attention capital that are presented as the preserve of civil experts. Far from being the high-water mark of tyrannical power,The Princeis evidence of the growth of civic humanism and the ascending importance of expertise in managing fame. The paper aims to revise the boundaries of celebrity studies by demonstrating the canonical significance of Machiavelli’s text. Further, it proposes that cultural intermediaries are seminal in the emergence and development of the fame economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Leaderless organizations’ are a seductive category in the field of Cultural Studies and critical organization studies. In the 1960s, arguably, Situationism made a fetish of the idea. Various authors made the case for direct, spontaneous action without the hierarchies and directive lead of conventional management structures. The Occupy protest movement revived this thinking. Following the Arab Spring (2011), it gained high media publicity for a series of occupations of prominent sites adjacent to international centres of finance capital. Global events provide a relevant parallel to this. Ever since Live Aid (1985) they have presented themselves as stateless solutions to international issues and emergencies. But are leaderless events possible in cultural management? This paper examines a neglected area in the sociology of culture: global event management and the type of social consciousness that it exploits and perpetuates. The Burning Man City annual event in Nevada is explored as a case of flat horizon strategy in cultural management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cultural Studies has not devoted much notice to one of the keynote developments in modern culture over the last 30 years: namely, the rise of various charity projects fronted and, in the public mind, defined by celebrities. Celanthropy – the transformation of causes into cause celebres via the public involvement of celebrities – is striking for the subtle shift in devolving the responsibilities of the state onto the shoulders of the citizens. It purports to offer ‘stateless solutions’, articulated by ‘Big Citizens’ (celebrities), for domestic problems and the ills of the world (hunger, inequality, injustice, corruption, pollution). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the professional Event Management literature considerable claims have been made for Event Management. Investment in the area and student enrolments has risen dramatically. In some circles, Event Management is portrayed as challenging Leisure Studies and even undermining it. However, if one examines the professional literature, one quickly finds that it is overwhelmingly uncritical and self-congratulatory. The relationship between Events, manipulation, corruption and social control has not been rigorously examined. This paper distinguishes the main types of Global Event (Single Issue and Cyclical). It attempts a balanced account of the claims made by Event Management. It examines data from Live Aid, the FIFA World Cup and the Sydney Olympics to test the claims against practice. It also includes two longer examinations of Global Event Management, namely the Sydney Mardi Gras and the Live 8 (2005) concert. The paper concludes that Event Management is based in principles from neo-liberalism and communitarianism. This produces an attitude to Events and leisure which is Reformist. This perspective is contrasted with the critical tradition in Leisure Studies which supports a more radical perspective on leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music therapy is a vigorous, well-established field of theory and practice. The attribution of healing power to music goes a long way back. However, sinceLive Aid(1985) a new dimension of music therapy has emerged. This pertains to the role played by unqualified music superstars who act as activists and diplomats providing music therapy for mankind. World-renowned celebrities like Sir Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting, Michael Stipe and Madonna transfer the kudos they have won in the field of popular entertainment to produce stateless solutions to global incidents and emergencies, and wider questions of inequality, hunger and injustice. They act as self-appointed global ‘big citizens’. They are unelected and mostly accountable. Yet they have the ear of many elected world leaders and the widespread support of the public. This aggregate tendency is known by the name of celanthropy. It represents a remarkable switch in attention capital from state departments of health, education and foreign aid to celebrity advocates and campaigners. The celebrity big citizen is now the focal point of what might be termed stateless solutions to many global ills. This paper examines the rise of this new relationship between celanthropy and music therapy. It demonstrates the contradictions involved, not least in the matter of trying to live with capitalism, rather than to change the way in which it works as a system of organised inequality and sanctioned injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is an attempt to reaffirm the relevance of Marxism for Leisure Studies. It is motivated by the view that the influence of Marxism on the field was late and short lived (primarily through Clarke and Critcher’s bookThe Devil Makes Work(1985)). Marxism in Leisure Studies was rapidly eclipsed by the revival of neo-liberal approaches and the ascent of post-structuralism which privileged ‘discourse’, ‘coding’ and ‘representation’ over economics and class. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called ‘velvet revolution’ in Eastern Europe seemed to expose Marxism as passé and wrong headed. The serious Western economic crisis following the banking collapse (2008) and its effects on employment, work prospects, public investment in welfare, education, health and leisure, together with the persistence of the development gap between the economically advanced countries and the emerging/developing world, and the threat to the environment and society of competitive industrial production, combine (with many other features) to put Marxism back on the agenda. This paper aims to examine the impact of Marxism upon Leisure Studies. It offers a rationale for why this influence was short lived. It moves on to evaluate some aspects of Marxism that are indispensable in the analysis of leisure today. The point is not to claim that Marxism was right all along. More modestly, the purpose of this article is to suggest that flight from Marxism in the field was premature and that, while by no means having all of the answers, Marx and his followers still have much to teach students of leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response by British sociologist Chrisk Rojek to his study which focused on the relations of emotional intelligence and leisure. Rojek states that the concepts of emotional labor and emotional intelligence deal with the organization of credibility and the people's appearance of competence. He mentions that it is possible that emotional labor may lead to volunteer and philanthropic acts.

The article explains the pedagogic and publishing success of the book "The McDonaldization of Society" by George Ritzer. The publishing of the academic book that is a pedagogic success in academic sociology is organized into four categories including research monographs, modular texts and textbooks. The article presents notes on the four categories and the reasons for the success of the book "The McDonaldization of Society" is explained. The article defines public intellectuals as the people possessing special media skills.