Is a combination of varenicline and nicotine patch more effective in helping smokers quit than varenicline alone? A randomised controlled trial

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Cultural engagement and the economic performance of the cultural and creative industries: an occupational critique

This article presents a new critical engagement with the concept of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), focusing on the rationale for grouping occupations and industries under this label. We show how the definition of ‘creativity’ used to demonstrate CCIs’ economic performance remains contested and variable, particularly with regard to the inclusion of specific parts of the IT sector. In demonstrating the importance of IT to the economic narrative regarding CCIs, we then unfold a related critique, exploring patterns in cultural consumption within CCI occupations. We demonstrate how some CCI workers have distinctively high cultural consumption, others reflect their broader social class, and some, including IT workers, show lower than expected consumption. Overall, we question the coherence of the prevailing CCI category, particularly in government policy, and suggest a new mode of ‘cultural’ occupational analysis for the sociology of CCIs

Beyond 'Global Production Networks': Australian Fashion Week's Trans-Sectoral Synergies

When studies of industrial organisation are informed by commodity chain, actor network, or global production network theories and focus on tracing commodity flows, social networks, or a combination of the two, they can easily overlook the less routine trans-sectoral associations that are crucial to the creation and realisation of value. This paper shifts attention to identifying the sites at which diverse specialisations meet to concentrate and amplify mutually reinforcing circuits of value. These valorisation processes are demonstrated in the case of Australian Fashion Week, an event in which multiple interests converge to synchronize different expressions of fashion ideas, actively construct fashion markets and enhance the value of a diverse range of fashionable commodities. Conceptualising these interconnected industries as components of a trans-sectoral fashion complex has implications for understanding regional development, world cities, production location, and the manner in which production systems “touch down” in different places

Magazine and reader constructions of 'metrosexuality' and masculinity: a membership categorisation analysis

Since the launch of men's lifestyle magazines in the 1980s, academic literature has predominantly focused on them as a cultural phenomenon arising from entrepreneurial and commercial initiatives and/or as cultural texts that proffer representations of masculinity such as 'new lad' and 'new dad'. This paper steps aside from the focus on culture and, instead, treats magazine content as a discursive space in which gender and sexuality are oriented to, negotiated, and accomplished within and beyond the magazine itself (i.e. through readers' responses). Specifically, membership categorisation analysis is deployed to explore how the relatively new (and perhaps alternative) category for men - 'metrosexual' - is presented and received. Our analysis suggests that masculinity concerns are central in debates about 'metrosexuality', with self-identified 'metrosexuals' invoking heterosexual prowess and self-respect on the one hand, and critics (e.g. selfidentified 'real men') lamenting 'metrosexuality' for its perceived effeminacy and lack of authenticity on the other. Implications for understanding contemporary masculinities are discussed

Shifting new media: from content to consultancy, from heterarchy to hierarchy

This is a detailed case history of one of London’s iconic new media companies, AMX Studios. Some of the changes in this firm, we assume, are not untypical for other firms in this sector. Particularly we want to draw attention to two transformations. The first change in AMX and in London’s new media industry more generally refers to the field of industrial relations. What can be observed is a shift from a rather heterarchical towards a more hierarchical organized new media industry, a shift from short-term project networks to long-term client dependency. The second change refers to new media products and services. We want to argue for a shift from cool content production towards consultancy and interactive communications solutions

Young people's uses of celebrity: Class, gender and 'improper' celebrity

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(1), 2013, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01596306.2012.698865.In this article, we explore the question of how celebrity operates in young people's everyday lives, thus contributing to the urgent need to address celebrity's social function. Drawing on data from three studies in England on young people's perspectives on their educational and work futures, we show how celebrity operates as a classed and gendered discursive device within young people's identity work. We illustrate how young people draw upon class and gender distinctions that circulate within celebrity discourses (proper/improper, deserving/undeserving, talented/talentless and respectable/tacky) as they construct their own identities in relation to notions of work, aspiration and achievement. We argue that these distinctions operate as part of neoliberal demands to produce oneself as a ‘subject of value’. However, some participants produced readings that show ambivalence and even resistance to these dominant discourses. Young people's responses to celebrity are shown to relate to their own class and gender position.The Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology

Manageable creativity

This article notes a perception in mainstream management theory and practice that creativity has shifted from being disruptive or destructive to 'manageable'. This concept of manageable creativity in business is reflected in a similar rhetoric in cultural policy, especially towards the creative industries. The article argues that the idea of 'manageable creativity' can be traced back to a 'heroic' and a 'structural' model of creativity. It is argued that the 'heroic' model of creativity is being subsumed within a 'structural' model which emphasises the systems and infrastructure around individual creativity rather than focusing on raw talent and pure content. Yet this structured approach carries problems of its own, in particular a tendency to overlook the unpredictability of creative processes, people and products. Ironically, it may be that some confusion in our policies towards creativity is inevitable, reflecting the paradoxes and transitions which characterise the creative process

Beauty surveillance: the digital self-monitoring cultures of neoliberalism

This paper argues that ‘beauty apps’ are transforming the arena of appearance politics and foregrounds a theoretical architecture for critically understanding them. Informed by a feminist-Foucaultian framework, it argues that beauty apps offer a technology of gender which brings together digital self-monitoring and postfeminist modalities of subjecthood to produce an hitherto unprecedented regulatory gaze upon women that is marked by the intensification, extensification and psychologization of surveillance. The paper is divided into four sections. First it introduces the literature on digital self-tracking. Secondly it sets out our understanding of neoliberalism and postfeminism. Thirdly it looks at beauty and surveillance, before offering, in the final section, a typology of appearance apps. This is followed by a discussion of the modes of address/authority deployed in these apps – especially what we call ‘surveillant sisterhood’ - and the kinds of entrepreneurial subjectivity they constitute. The paper seeks to make a contribution to feminist surveillance studies and argues that much more detailed research is needed to critically examine beauty apps

Nicotine enhances an auditory Event-Related Potential component which is inversely related to habituation

Nicotine is a psychoactive substance that is commonly consumed in the context of music. However, the reason why music and nicotine are coconsumed is uncertain. One possibility is that nicotine affects cognitive processes relevant to aspects of music appreciation in a beneficial way. Here we investigated this possibility using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). Participants underwent a simple decision-making task (to maintain attentional focus), responses to which were signaled by auditory stimuli. Unlike most previous research looking at the effects of nicotine on auditory processing, we used tones of different pitch, a fundamental element of music. In addition, unlike most other studies, we tested non-smoking subjects to avoid withdrawal-related complications. We found that nicotine (4.0 mg, administered as gum) increased P2 amplitude in the frontal region. Since a decrease in P2 amplitude and latency is related to habituation processes, and an enhanced ability to disengage from irrelevant stimuli, our findings suggest that nicotine may cause a reduction in habituation, resulting in non-smokers being less able to adapt to repeated stimuli. A corollary of that decrease in adaptation may be that nicotine extends the temporal window during which a listener is able and willing to engage with a piece of music

Spectacles of intimacy? Mapping the moral landscape of teenage social media

This paper explores young people's expressed concerns about privacy in the context of a highly mediated cultural environment, mapping social media practices against axes of visibility and participation. Drawing on interdisciplinary conceptual resources from both the humanities and social sciences, we use ‘spectacles of intimacy’ to conceptualise breaches of privacy, mapping an emergent moral landscape for young people that moves beyond concerns with e-safety to engage with the production and circulation of audiences and value. The paper draws on data from a methodological innovation project using multi-media and mixed methods to capture lived temporalities for children and young people. We present a model that captures a moral landscape shaped by emotional concerns about social media, the affordances of those media and affective discourses emerging from young people's use of the media