‘Molida’, That’s Shimshali Food: Modernization, Mobility, Food Talk, and the Constitution of Identity in Shimshal, Pakistan

This thesis examines how “food talk” – or talking about food – is used by members of a rural community in mountainous northern Pakistan called Shimshal to articulate identities to both local and transcultural audiences. Food and food practices have been well-established as important resources for the constitution and performance of identity, including in contexts of mobility and modernization. However, the literature on food, identity, and mobility tends to focus on contexts that involve primarily linear, unidirectional, and permanent movement from one country to another. My thesis draws attention to contexts of multilocality, a common livelihood strategy in Shimshal and other rural communities in the Global South in which household members move between and maintain connections in multiple spatially-distanced locations at once. In particular, I examine instances of transcultural identity constitution, in which Shimshalis construct representations for themselves and for outsiders. These kinds of interactions exemplify the increasingly common representational contexts that are both produced by and characteristic of the circumstances of mobility, multilocality, and modernization in which I am interested. To examine how food talk was used as a conversational resource for transcultural articulations of identity, I conduct discourse analysis on two sets of pre-existing published texts: a collection of oral testimonies and an archive of narrativized photographs. I identify four main discourses of modern Shimshali identity in the texts – unity, agropastoralism and modernity, exceptionalism, and multilocality – and trace how food talk is used to help perform these identity tropes to local and transcultural audiences, with talk about food as an agropastoral mode of production, community, health, ‘modernity’, ritual, ‘tradition’, and wealth particularly salient as identity resources. I also show how the use of food talk as an identity resource is shaped by the context in which it is employed, including the perceived aims of different texts and the symbolic and material changes in food itself. Drawing on an autoethnographic sensibility, I suggest that we can gain more meaningful insights into the performance of identity and food talk by attending to the specific contexts of their production and reception. Finally, I show how food talk and identity have changed (and been maintained) in the two sets of texts I analyze, which take place across a period of rapid increases in mobility and multilocality. By doing so, this thesis brings together and contributes to preoccupations from mobility studies, modernization and development studies, migration and multilocality, food studies, identity studies, discourse analysis, and geographical research on rural northern Pakistan

Trust, Credibility And Authenticity: Race And Its Effect On Audience Perceptions Of News Information From Traditional And Alternative Sources

The purpose of this study is to investigate audience perceptions of trust, credibility and authenticity in news information coming from traditional and social media sources, especially focused on how securitization amplifies the effects of news frames regarding race and culture. Research in race and media suggests that citizens of nations who look like the other will be framed differently than those of nations that look like us. The study examines the effects of securitization and how exceptionalism coupled with framing can create an atmosphere where American culture has become securitized, in particular the ways in which multiculturalism due to increased immigration, especially from South Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, has led to a racially charged space post-9/11. The study employed an experiment comparing traditional and social media to determine the ways in which audiences perceive news information and found that story type (securitized and nonsecuritized) played an important role in how audiences percieved trust, credibility and authenticity in the information, the presenter and the modality. Overall, securitized stories were trusted and perceived more credible than nonsecuritzed stories. Race played a larger role in the way audiences perceived the presenter, with the Brown presenters generally being perceived as more authentic than their White counterparts. Audiences also perceived traditional media more trustworthy and credible compared to social media. But news from social media was perceived as more authentic than traditional media. Further, this dissertation focused on how securitization has a framing function with the news media as an important intermediary between political actors and the public. Broadcast news can provide a multilayered look at how audiences perceive information from on-air personalities. But in recent years, the growth of social media has provided consumers an alternative place to get their news, such as video blogs and/or podcasts. Thus, this study examines perceptions of news information from multiple channels, presenters of different ethnicities and modality due to the drastically changed ways in which the American public, politicians and the media talk about security

Gorsuch and Originalism: Some Lessons from Logic, Scripture, and Art

Neil Gorsuch lauds judges who purport to “apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be . . . .” It’s hard to see how such a form of Originalism withstands scrutiny. First, using “reasonable reader” understandings rather than speaker meaning turns language and law on their heads. Audiences effectively become the speakers in ordinary speech (since reader or audience meaning prevails), and audiences (and thus the ruled) effectively become the rulers when interpreting law (since audiences’ meaning prevails). Second, since laws look forward to govern conduct, how can best legal practices keep such a backward focus? Third, words (however understood by others at the time “originally” uttered) may or may not (depending on speaker and not reader meaning) signify concepts whose meanings embrace change over time. For example, the word “planet” used by a speaker before the discovery of Uranus and Neptune may or may not include further planets depending upon what the speaker meant by “planet.” (The same applies to the inclusion or exclusion of Pluto had the speaker used the word “planet” after the discovery of Pluto but before its exclusion by current science.) Unlike the “reasonable” reader of Gorsuch’s Originalism as phrased above, speakers run the gamut from reasonable to unreasonable, from informed to uninformed, and from thoughtful to thoughtless. Fourth, to the extent a judge is principally “constrained” by a text or texts (as he may determine), by dictionaries that he chooses, and by “history” as the judge understands it, isn’t judicial activism encouraged rather than restrained? Talk of a “reasonable” reader masks the fact that there can be multiple “reasonable” conclusions of what a reasonable or unreasonable speaker meant. Is a judge not therefore left to pick definitions and applications of terms that accord with the judge’s understandings of history, understandings that may well be colored by the judge’s politics and judicial philosophy? This applies to principles as well as labels for things. Principles are also subject to multiple frames, and their terms are subject to multiple definitions therefore raising the very same questions just raised above. Finally, such Originalism doesn’t merely fail with legal texts. It also fails when applied to other texts (including sacred texts such as the Ten Commandments) and when used to interpret art (such as “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” often attributed to Bruegel and which inspired such great ekphrasis as Auden’s “Musée Des Beaux Arts”). These further failures underscore the dysfunction of Originalism in Gorsuch's form noted above. Keywords: Originalism, Neil Gorsuch, Text, Textualism, Scalia, Interpretation, Pragmatics, Speaker Meaning, Art, Painting, Bruegel, Auden, Ekphrasis, Icarus, Bible, Ten Commandments, Herod, Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincol

Ten possible experiments on communication and deception

I describe ten situations in which experimental data may provide useful guidance to the study of cheap-talk games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C92, D8. © 2013 Elsevier B.V

Building audiences: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts

Building Audiences examines the barriers to and the strategies for increasing audiences in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts sector. This research investigates the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of current and potential audiences. What is in the report? The findings reveal the key barriers facing audience attendance include: uncertainty about how to behave at cultural events and fear of offending lack of awareness with audiences not actively seeking information about Indigenous arts and outdated perceptions of the sector – that it is only perceived as ‘serious or educational’. Building Audiences also considered several strategies to build audiences for Indigenous arts: providing skills development, advice and resourcing to Indigenous practitioners within the arts sector; increasing representation of Indigenous artists in the main programing of arts companies by including more Indigenous people in decision making roles; promoting relationships between Indigenous arts and non-Indigenous companies to present their work to wider audiences; introducing children and young people to Indigenous arts through schools and extracurricular activities; allowing audiences to feel comfortable engaging by creating accessible experiences; implementing long-term strategies to change negative perceptions of Indigenous arts. The project was commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts and funding partners include Australia Council for the Arts; Faculty of Business and Law and Institute of Koorie Education, Deakin University; Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne

Mobile - First News: How People Use Smartphones to Access Information

This report is based on a research study conducted with Nielsen and commissioned by Knight Foundation to explore how people use mobile platforms for news

Building Deeper Relationships: How Steppenwolf Theatre Company Is Turning Single-Ticket Buyers Into Repeat Visitors

Describes the company's strategies to engage all audience members, including through post-show discussions, special events, diverse online content, and equal treatment of subscribers and non-subscribers; outcomes; and contributing factors

Like, Link, Share: How Cultural Institutions Are Embracing Digital Technology

This report shows how forty cultural innovators are investing in technology and media capacity to connect with new audiences in new ways, create new programs, and strengthen their operations. Established cultural insitutions face challenges as they grapple with rapidly changing technology. Taking full advantage of digital opportunities requires organizations to change their internal systems, work processes, and staff structures, and to tailor the development of digital capabilities to their individual programming, operational, and revenue strategies. However disrutive this process may be, digital strategy is no longer optional but essential. The public expects to engage with culture digitally, to sample and share, to connect and participate