The making of “asli” Sumba woven cloth: how globalising “intangible heritage” impacts women’s roles

ABSTRACT This article discusses how the production of “original”/“asli” commodity through a local/global dialectic in how “intangible heritage” is defined and how contemporary global market-facing Sumba weaving contributes to shifts and contradictions in gender roles as they are shaped simultaneously through local community needs and through a global facing westernised patriarchal business ethos. The increasing global north facing integration of global south production communities into the world markets for instance, leads to a masculinisation of management and global facing leadership while along with a feminisation of the local production process. Evidence for our observations were drawn from over 50 in-depth interviews and onsite observation during field visits to the site

Transnationalising Dadis as Feminist Political/Activist Subjects

This article examines Twitter publics to map how the ‘dadis of Shaheen Bagh’ (grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh) emerged as political subjects through transnational media space even though they themselves did not directly access social media. A team of feminist media researchers examine how social media networks were mobilised strategically to gain international visibility and traction. Through a feminist close reading of Twitter data and a select few in-depth and unstructured interviews with various associated actors, this mediated visibility of seemingly subaltern women is mapped. This article draws on transnational/postcolonial feminist frameworks to examine digital public presences. This study uses a multi-methods approach that includes qualitative interviews with activists (local and transnational) and related actors as well as a situated feminist data analytics and critical digital humanities approach to examining big social data online. In examining the mediated production of this visibility, however, the study does not wish to imply that the women whose presence is amplified in international media are not actual protestors or to deny, discount or appropriate their agency or labour as activists

Decolonizing Privacy studies

This paper calls for an epistemic disobedience in privacy studies by decolonizing the approach to privacy. As technology companies expand their reach worldwide, the notion of privacy continues to be viewed through an ethnocentric lens. It disproportionately draws from empirical evidence on Western-based, white, and middle-class demographics. We need to break away from the market-driven neoliberal ideology and the Development paradigm long dictating media studies if we are to foster more inclusive privacy policies. This paper offers a set of propositions to de-naturalize and estrange data from demographic generalizations and cultural assumptions, namely, (1) predicting privacy harms through the history of social practice, (2) recalibrating the core-periphery as evolving and moving targets, and (3) de-exoticizing “natives” by situating privacy in ludic digital cultures. In essence, decolonizing privacy studies is as much an act of reimagining people and place as it is of dismantling essentialisms that are regurgitated through scholarship

Career guidance and the changing world of work: Contesting responsibilising notions of the future.

Career guidance is an educational activity which helps individuals to manage their participation in learning and work and plan for their futures. Unsurprisingly career guidance practitioners are interested in how the world of work is changing and concerned about threats of technological unemployment. This chapter argues that the career guidance field is strongly influenced by a “changing world of work” narrative which is drawn from a wide body of grey literature produced by think tanks, supra-national bodies and other policy influencers. This body of literature is political in nature and describes the future of work narrowly and within the frame of neoliberalism. The ‘changing world of work’ narrative is explored through a thematic analysis of grey literature and promotional materials for career guidance conferences. The chapter concludes by arguing that career guidance needs to adopt a more critical stance on the ‘changing world of work’ and to offer more emancipatory alternatives.N/

Terrorists or cowards: negative portrayals of male Syrian refugees in social media

This paper examines images and words shared on the Twitter hashtag #refugeesNOTwelcome to understand the portrayal of male Syrian refugees in a post-9/11 context where the Middle-Eastern male is often primarily cast as a potential terrorist. Queer theorist Jasbir Puar (2007) and Middle- East scholar Paul Amar (2011) provide us with a theoretical approach to make sense of the contradictions we see emerging in this social media context

El desarrollo de métodos de investigación ciberetnográfica para comprender las identidades mediadas digitalmente

In diesem Beitrag beschäftigen wir uns mit der Konstruktion von Identität entlang der Schnittstellen lokal/global und online/offline durch eine ethnografische Herangehensweise, um eine Methodologie zu veranschaulichen, die in einer Epistemologie des Handelns gründet. Wir gehen dabei davon aus, dass sich Forschende, die sich für die Konstruktion von Identität in digital vermittelten Kontexten interessieren, selbst in den Prozess der kulturellen und individuellen Konstruktion innerhalb spezifischer Settings begeben müssen, um in Interaktion mit anderen zu einem detaillierten Verständnis darüber zu kommen, wie Identitäten in solchen sozioökonomischen Kontexten konstruiert werden und diese gestalten. Die so konstruierten Identitäten sind zentral für die jeweiligen Gemeinschaften, die dortigen sozialen, ökonomischen und kulturellen Praktiken und Machtstrukturen. Indem wir die Praktiken erforschen, die diese Identitätsformationen innerhalb unterschiedlicher technologischer Umgebungen konstituieren, können theoretische Modelle abgeleitet werden, die auch zur Veränderung von Herrschaftsverhältnissen beitragen können. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0703355In this essay, we discuss the production of subjectivities at the intersection of local/global and online/offline environments through an engagement with the contexts ethnographically, to illustrate a methodology based on epistemologies of doing. We suggest that researchers studying the production of identity in technospaces must engage in the production of culture and subjectivity in the specific context while interacting with others doing the same in order to gain a nuanced understanding of how identities are formed and performed in such socio-economic environments. Identities thus produced are central to the workings of community situated in specific social, economic and cultural practices and structures of power. Through examining practices that shape these identity formations within various technological environments, we can work towards developing theoretical frameworks that actively shift hierarchies of oppression. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0703355En este ensayo se discute la producción de subjetividades en la intersección de entornos locales/globales y online/offline mediante el involucramiento etnográfico propio con los contextos, para ilustrar de esta manera una metodología basada en epistemologías del hacer. Sugerimos que los investigadores que estudian la producción de identidad en tecnoespacios deben involucrarse en la producción de cultura y subjetividad en cada contexto específico al tiempo que interactúan con otros haciendo lo mismo que ellos y con el objetivo de conocer los matices de cómo se forman y ejecutan las identidades en tales entornos socio-económicos. Las identidades así producidas son centrales para el trabajo de las comunidades situadas en prácticas sociales, económicas y culturales específicas así como en determinadas estructuras de poder. Examinando las prácticas que modelan la formación de estas identidades dentro de varios entornos tecnológicos podemos trabajar en el desarrollo de marcos teóricos que rechazan activamente jerarquías opresivas. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs070335

Introduction

4 pagesUniversity of Oregon Librarie

Introduction

In a post 2012 era of South Asian hashtag publics, we see that digital activists—trans, queer, feminist, and Dalit—have taken it upon themselves to talk truth to power to correct disinformation and misrepresentation or lack of representation in mainstream media and on social media. These movements occur in an environment of instant interaction where the activists face various kinds of push back. They populate social media spaces in an effort to express themselves on the one hand and to educate the rest of the world on issues of gender and caste oppression in India. Such hashtag publics often brought into being by online protest movements from the geographical region of South Asia highlight gender, caste, religion and queer identities as they voice their anger and protest against social oppression (contemporary and historical) through social media. This Commentary and Criticism section selected submissions that engage the emergence of political subjectivities from the geographical region of south Asia through these modes of interaction. Platforms where political subjects emerge and push against matrices of domination might include Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Tiktok, Snapchat, and so on