Cultural trauma, counter-narratives, and dialogical intellectuals: the works of Murakami Haruki and Mori Tatsuya in the context of the Aum affair

In this article, we offer a new conceptualization of intellectuals as carriers of cultural trauma through a case study of the Aum Affair, a series of crimes and terrorist attacks committed by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyō. In understanding the performative roles intellectuals play in trauma construction, we offer a new dichotomy between “authoritative intellectuals,” who draw on their privileged parcours and status to impose a distinct trauma narrative, and “dialogical intellectuals,” who engage with local actors dialogically to produce polyphonic and open-ended trauma narratives. We identify three dimensions of dialogical intellectual action: firstly, the intellectuals may be involved in dialogue with local participants; secondly, the intellectual products themselves may be dialogical in content; and thirdly, there might be a concerted effort on the part of the intellectuals to record and to disseminate dialogue between local participants. In the context of the Aum Affair, we analyze the works of Murakami Haruki and Mori Tatsuya as dialogical intellectuals while they sought, with the help of local actors’ experiences, to challenge and to alter the orthodox trauma narrative of Aum Shinrikyō as exclusively a social evil external to Japanese society and an enemy to be excluded from it. Towards the end of the article, we discuss the broader significance of this case study and suggest that in light of recent societal and technological developments, the role and scope of dialogical intellectuals as carriers of trauma are changing and possibly expanding

Different standards: engineers’ expectations and listener adoption of digital and FM radio broadcasting

As digital radio broadcasting enters its third decade of operation, few would argue that it has met all expectations expressed at the time of its launch in the mid-1990s. Observers are now more circumspect, with views divided on the pace of transition to an all-digital future. In exploring this mismatch between expectation and actuality, this article considers the introduction of FM radio from the 1950s. It too was expected to replace its forebear (AM) but, like digital radio, its adoption by listeners was slower than anticipated. An examination of published literature, in particular engineering and technical documents, reveals a number of similarities in the development of digital radio and FM. Assumptions about listeners’ needs and preferences appear to have been based on little actual audience research and, with continual reference in the literature to the supposed deficiencies of the predecessor technology, suggest an emphasis in decision making on the technical qualities of radio broadcasting over an appreciation of actual audience preferences

The Visualization of Uncertainty: HIV Statistics in Public Media

Rauer V. The Visualization of Uncertainty: HIV Statistics in Public Media. In: Alexander JC, Bartmanski D, Giesen BB, eds. Iconic Power. Materiality and Meaning in Social Life. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan; In Press

Creating global moral iconicity

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.Since at least the late 19th century, a world-level moral culture has developed, providing a space for certain persons to be presented as global moral icons. This global moral space was already pointed to by Kant as an emergent form, and was later theorized by Durkheim. This paper shows how an important institutionalisation of global moral culture was enacted by the founding, and subsequent mutations of, the Nobel Prizes. These, and other awards which imitated them, are performative in a profound sense: they simultaneously reflect and help bring into being a planet-spanning culture which demands moral icons which both exemplify and partly constitute it. How the Nobel prizes and their imitators work to create globally-relevant moral iconicity is explored. The case of Gandhi is taken as an example of how, despite not being awarded a Nobel prize, some moral icons are also brought into being through symbolic contact with other such icons, including Nobel winners. The paper considers the lingering, powerful, but generally invisible, influence today on world moral culture of the innovations pursued by the early Nobel prize committees