Experiencing Amsterdam’s Red Light District as a female resident:normalization, alliances and diversion

Every year, Amsterdam’s de Wallen neighbourhood attracts high numbers of tourists looking to experience a unique Red Light District (RLD). Yet de Wallen is a multi-use area, that combines sexualised consumption and leisure practices, with everyday residential urban functions and public spaces. This study investigated how female residents of this neighbourhood experience its sexualised nature, adjust their behaviour to it, as well as how they negotiate their feelings of belonging and being at home. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups. The results indicate that female residents navigate their ordinary lives in the neighbourhood with a sense of normality and familiarity, while acknowledging and maintaining a distance to the areas more extraordinary peculiarities, nuisances and darker, more unknown sides. They take ownership of their neighbourhood by creating a community, standing up for sex workers and reacting boldly towards sexual harassment. Becoming targets of objectification and sexualisation by male visitors to the area stimulates them to deconstruct power relations between genders. Generally speaking, this study shows how respondents residing in de Wallen manage to feel secure, spatially confident as well as attached and protective of an area that is both ordinary and extraordinary.</p

Reviewing art from the periphery. A comparative analysis of reviews of Brazilian art exhibition in the press

This paper investigates how the reception and evaluation of artists coming from a relatively peripheral and emerging art market might vary in transnational settings. Studies on cultural globalisation have primarily focused on the transnational diffusion of products and the opening up of national fields to cross-border flows. Questions of reception and evaluation of cultural products – particularly as they ‘break out’ of the periphery - remain relatively untouched, and this paper contributes to bridging this gap. Our data consists of reviews of solo shows of the top 50 Brazilian modern and contemporary artists, published in elite newspapers in three countries (Brazil, the UK and the US). We describe how two of the most salient evaluative repertoires are mobilised in the reviews. These repertoires relate to the institutional recognition bestowed upon the artist in Brazil or abroad; and to the associations made with living or deceased Brazilian or international artists. Our findings suggest that recognition bestowed by Brazilian museums and cultural institutions does not easily convert into an internationally valued marker of worth, while quite the opposite is true of international institutional recognition and its use in the Brazilian press

Transforming work:A critical literature review on degrowth, post-growth, postcapitalism and craft labor

Many scholars have called for a profound change in capitalist growth-oriented provisioning systems and business models to help address the unique socio-ecological challenges of the 21st century. Reenvisaging how work is organised, constructed, and valued is an essential part of this change. Scholars of degrowth, post-growth, postcapitalist, and craft research have long discussed alternatives to capitalist work from different perspectives and levels of analysis. We believe that cross-fertilisation of ideas between these strands of literature can advance our imaginaries of the future of work and transition pathways towards the vision of dealienated labour. For this purpose, we bring these strands of literature into conversation by performing a critical literature review on work in postcapitalist, degrowth, post-growth, and craft scholarship. Overall, 121 articles were included in the analysis. We identify autonomy, dealienation, and value creation as common themes with complementary insights from the strands of literature. We also observe that macroeconomic policies suggested by degrowth, post-growth and postcapitalist scholars provide an institutional framework that can be compatible with the micropolitics of work, as documented by craft scholars. Lastly, craft scholars provide an empirically grounded analysis of what it means to engage in useful doing, whereas degrowth and postcapitalist literature mainly contains critical theoretical reflections on the decommodification of labour, recognition of reproductive labour and value creation. Degrowth, post-growth and postcapitalist literature can benefit from more empirical research investigating these issues in relation to the everyday realities of workers.</p

Popular music as cultural heritage: scoping out the field of practice

This paper sets out to deepen our understanding of the relationship between popular music and cultural heritage and to delineate the practices of popular music as cultural heritage. The paper illustrates how the term has been mobilised by a variety of actors, from the public to the private sector, to highlight the value of particular popular music manifestations and justify or encourage their preservation and diffusion for posterity. We focus on Austria, England, France and the Netherlands – countries with diverse popular music histories and with varying national and international reach. Popular music heritage is present in national and local public sector heritage institutions and practices in a number of ways. These range from the preservation and exhibition of the material culture of heritage in museums and archives, to a variety of ‘bottom-up’ initiatives, delineating a rich landscape of emblematic places, valued for their attachment to particular musicians or music scenes. The paper points to an underlying tension between the adoption and replication of conventional heritage practices to the preservation and remembrance of the popular music and its celebration as an express

‘Do you remember rock ‘n’ roll radio?’ How audiences talk about music-related personal memories, preferences, and localities.

This chapter explores how people recall personal music memories from their youth and how they relate their past and present-day music preferences to particular local, regional and national identity signifiers. The findings are based on an online survey carried out in the Netherlands and the UK, as part of a European project on popular music, cultural memory and identity. The survey contained a mix of open questions – where respondents could elaborate on their music preferences and memories – and closed questions that were analysed to reveal how background characteristics (age, education, profession) and listening habits can help explain variations in attachment to regional and national music styles. Early music memories are often associated with family and friendship bonds, and they trigger nostalgic and emotionally charged reminiscing of family outings, holidays or first contacts with music or favourite acts. Language and locality are important markers of authenticity, while canonical acts are more often cited. We also note a strong bias towards positive reminiscing. The quantitative analysis reveals generational differences in listening practices and attachment to regional and national music, while also shedding light on how first experiences of music have become less convivial and more individualised in recent decades.</p

A flâneuse na literatura brasileira: espaços e temporalidades contestados

The question of space and its “production”, following Lefebvre (1975), has emerged as a fertile field of enquiry for literary studies, also when related to question of mobility in different contexts: from experiences of migration and diaspora to urban transits, to cite a few.&nbsp; In this context, the figure of the flâneur, intrinsically connected to experiences and representation of urban modernity, has attracted considerable critical attention. However, little attention has been awarded to its female counterpart, the flâneuse, because, as Wolff (1985) rightly observes, the experience of modernity has been in great part narrated from a male perspective. Starting with the short story “Amor” [Love] by Clarice Lispector (1960/1998), and the text “Um corpo negro pelado” [A naked black body] by Miriam Alves (2014), the article will discuss how these texts seem to dialogue with this paradigm of modern mobility. It will consider how female mobility in Brazilian literature written by women express attempts to rethink mobility as a political act and as a search for female empowerment.La cuestión del espacio, y su “producción”, según Lefebvre (1975), se ha revelado una rica área de investigación para los estúdios literários, así como las cuestiones ligadas a mobilidade en sus distintas realidades: desde las experiencias de migración y diaspora a transitos urbanos, para citar algunos ejemplos. En este contexto, la figura del flâneur, intrinsicamente ligada a las experiencias y representaciones de la modernidad urbana, ha atraido considerable interés crítico. En geral, poco estudada ainda ha sido la figura de su equivalente feminino, la flâneuse, pues, como bien observa Wolff (1985), la experiencia de la modernidade ha sido, en grande parte, narrada desde un punto de vista predominantemente masculino. A partir del cuento “Amor”, de Clarice Lispector (1960/1998), y del texto “Um corpo negro pelado” [Un cuerpo negro desnudo] de Miriam Alves (2014), este artigo estuda de que forma parecen dialogar con este paradigma de la mobilidad moderna. Discutirá de que manera podemos pensar mujeres en transito en la literatura brasileña contemporanea escrita por mujeres como tentativas de repensar la experiencia de esta mobilidad, ahora como un acto político y de busca de empoderamento feminino.A questão do espaço, e sua “produção”, conforme Lefebvre (1974), vem se revelando uma rica área de pesquisa para os estudos literários, assim como as questões ligadas à mobilidade em suas diferentes realidades: de experiências de migração e diáspora a trânsitos urbanos, para citar alguns exemplos. Nesse contexto, a figura do flâneur, intrinsicamente ligada às experiências e representações da modernidade urbana, tem atraído considerável interesse crítico. Em geral, pouco explorada ainda é a figura de seu equivalente feminino, a flâneuse, pois, como bem observa Wolff (1985), a experiência da modernidade tem sido, em grande parte, narrada sob um ponto de vista predominantemente masculino. A partir do conto “Amor”, de Clarice Lispector (1960/1998), e o texto “Um corpo negro pelado”, de Miriam Alves (2014), este artigo discute como esses textos parecem dialogar com o paradigma da mobilidade moderna, analisando personagens femininas em trânsito na literatura brasileira contemporânea escrita por mulheres como tentativas de repensar a experiência desta mobilidade, agora como um ato político e de busca de empoderamento feminino