REPRESENTATION, RACIALISATION AND RESPONSIBILITY: MALE ATHLETIC BODIES IN THE (BRITISH) SPORTS AND LEISURE MEDIA

The predominance of the male ‘Other’ on the pages of contemporary sport and leisure print media has become increasingly ordinary over the last decade or so. Many subjugated ethnic groups have utilised sport and leisure stages to challenge the fallacies of psychological and biological inferiority and other ill-founded vestiges of nineteenth-century bio-racist discourses (Carrington, 2002; Hylton, 2009; Messner, 1993). Evidently, whilst ‘black’ females remain underrepresented in media spaces (Knoppers and Elling, 2004), their male counterparts, particularly those of African-Caribbean heritage, have accessed the realm of the popular en masse (Carrington, 2002). The mere presence of these men no longer seems to threaten the status quo of modern Western social democracies; in fact, images of African-Caribbean males are often held as exemplars of neo-liberalism and its fetish for championing quasi-multiculturalism. Indeed, according to some, media consumers only have to open a magazine (Hylton, 2009), switch on the television (Carrington, 2002) or visit the cinema (Giardina, 2003) to experience “a bit of the Other”. Before one is falsely charmed by some gloriously liberating homily of absolute social improvement, it is important to consider the instrumentalism of these developments more critically. This paper therefore aims to address the implications of racialisation in the context of the sport and leisure media and its role in representing athletic bodies in highly stylised and particularised ways. It will be argued that the racialisation of ethnically differing athletic bodies, through modes of photographic and digital manipulation, delivers messages that disadvantage particular ethnic groups, whilst advantaging others. Throughout, racialisation is conceptualised as a process of “categorisation, a representational process of defining an Other, usually, but not exclusively, somatically” (Miles and Brown, 2003: p. 101). For the purpose of this paper, I employ this conception to foreground the negative implications of racialisation

Conflicts, integration, hybridization of subcultures: An ecological approach to the case of queercore

This paper investigates the case study of queercore, providing a socio-historical analysis of its subcultural production, in the terms of what Michel Foucault has called archaeology of knowledge (1969). In particular, we will focus on: the self-definition of the movement; the conflicts between the two merged worlds of punk and queer culture; the \u201cinternal-subcultural\u201d conflicts between both queercore and punk, and between queercore and gay\lesbian music culture; the political aspects of differentiation. In the conclusion, we will offer an innovative theoretical proposal about the interpretation of subcultures in ecological and semiotic terms, combining the contribution of the American sociologist Andrew Abbot and of the Russian semiologist Jurij Michajlovi\u10d Lotma

New Media & Youth Identity. Issues and Research Pathways

Media have held a considerable and growing place in the social environment of industrial society in recent decades, transforming the perception that a people have of their place in the world and of their memberships and belonging, creating new paths for social relations, affecting lifestyles, socialization, and communication processes, and the construction of identity itself. The relationship between young people (especially teenagers and adolescents) and new media shows some peculiarities which are worth further reflection to understand the extent and outcomes of these social changes. This article aims to investigate the discourse on youth identity and new media in the social science literature, determining which are the key trends and exploring the more relevant research questions about this theme and the way these topics relate to one another. Titles and abstracts of articles published during the period 2004 \u2013 2013 were selected from the Scopus social sciences database and they were analysed using different content analysis techniques supported by the T-Lab software. The international literature on these topics presents a certain liveliness and heterogeneity in themes and its perspectives on theoretical and empirical research. Nevertheless, it has been possible to identify some key trends, focusing mainly on the idea of active identity construction by new media

Faculty Excellence

Each year, the University of New Hampshire selects a small number of its outstanding faculty for special recognition of their achievements in teaching, scholarship and service. Awards for Excellence in Teaching are given in each college and school, and university-wide awards recognize public service, research, teaching and engagement. This booklet details the year\u27s award winners\u27 accomplishments in short profiles with photographs and text

The accidental youth club: skateboarding in NewcastleGateshead.

Skateboarders re-invent and interrogate the physical structure of cityscapes as they use spaces, buildings and objects for skating. However skaters are routinely regarded by the civic and business interests who dominate city centre planning and regeneration as, at best, a nuisance and at worst an unruly and dangerous blight. This paper reports findings from a research project involving skaters which begins to unpick this stereotype. A participatory methodology combining mapping, interviews and observation was used to identify spots used by skaters in Newcastle and Gateshead (North East England). The key spots were characterized using Woolley & Johns’(2001) criteria: trickability, accessibility, sociability and compatibility. Findings reveal two further 12 factors – temporal and relational dimensions – are crucial the journeys skaters embark on. Sociability was the one constant factor defining favoured spots. The study revealed a sociable, entrepreneurial, creative skate scene. Far from being a problem the skaters add to the social capital of the cityscape. Our findings suggest rather than designing out skaters from the city the civic authorities should work with skaters to sustain their scene as a positive benefit to city regeneration

Chinese and Japanese: The Changing Values of "Flexible Capital"

Our project hinged on the ability of the undergraduate advanced Chinese and Japanese students at the UIUC to describe, during short interviews, the value of their respective languages in economic terms. We found that the undergraduate students involved in learning third-year Chinese and Japanese were very well aware of the changing economic reasons for learning their languages. Our hypothesis that Japanese students were more motivated by popular Japanese media while the Chinese students were more motivated by economic reasons was borne out by our findings, though to say that our hypothesis was perfect would be a gross generalization not cognizant of the outlying data and the limitations of our project.unpublishe

Consultation and involvement in the Library of Birmingham

This paper outlines the role of consultation in the development of a new city centre library. The initial section focuses on the planning behind Birmingham City Council’s project to replace its existing Central Library with a new Library of Birmingham on the other side of the city centre. The paper then goes on to discuss the role of public consultation in the early stages of this project, outlining the purposes, constraints, methods used, early findings and the longer-term ideas, questions and potential

Never Being Able to Say You’re Sorry: Barriers to Apology By Leaders in Group Conflicts

Conner and Jordan discuss three implications of the foregoing analysis for leaders, peacemakers, and scholars interested in apology as an instrument to advance justice, prevent destructive conflict, and promote cooperation. First, an effective apology is likely to occur only after other changes have softened up negative attitudes between the groups--referred to here as ripeness. Second, even with a degree of ripeness, apology is unlikely without a window of opportunity, a confluence of circumstances that permits the leader to limit the scope of the apology so as not to concede too much. Third, even if these conditions are satisfied, words alone are not enough for an apology to be effective