German Longings:A Dialogue on the Promises and Dangers of National Stereotypes

Germanness is always already entangled with the complicated and torn history of Germany, as it continues to be haunted by the specter of the war. This chapter engages with the issue of Germanness in popular music from two different personal perspectives, one Dutch, and one German, and it navigates between issues of national identity and stereotyping through the lens of popular music. It explores the fascination for, and struggle with, and at times, even longings for Germanness as it asks: What is German music, and how do we, as listeners with our specific classed, gendered, aged, and national biographies, negotiate such sounds? By first drawing on the Dutch perspective on Germanness as “exotic other,” the chapter provides an outside view on German stereotypes and irony in popular music as a means of reflecting on other national identifications, such as the author’s Dutchness. Secondly, this dialogic chapter questions stereotypes and irony as productive means of complicating national identification, while also problematizing the increasing banalization and naturalization of the German nation in contemporary German pop. Finally, this chapter argues for a continuous reflection on naturalized productions of togetherness and national belonging instead of alienation and strangeness, and a more reflexive stance towards the tropes of stereotypes and irony for their ambiguity and dangers of infelicitous appropriation. <br/

Introduction:Creative labour in East Asia

In this introduction to this special issue on creative labour in East Asia, we explore how the creative industries discourse, and related debates around creative labour, continue to be haunted by a Eurocentric cum Anglocentric bias. The critical language of this discourse often directs all discussion of “inequality”, “precarity” and “self-exploitation” of creative labour towards a critique of “neoliberalism”, thus running the risk of overlooking different socio-political contexts. We point at the urgency to contextualize and globalize, if not decolonize, creative work studies, including the debates surrounding precarity. This special issue explores the nuanced situations of governance and labour experiences in the cultural economies of East Asia

Platformization of the Unlikely Creative Class:Kuaishou and Chinese Digital Cultural Production

This article studies the platformization of cultural production in China through the specific lens of Kuaishou, an algorithm-based video-sharing platform targeting second- and third-tier cities as well as the countryside. It enables the forming of an “unlikely” creative class in contemporary China. Kuaishou’s platform business fits into the Party State’s socio-economic agenda of “Internet+” and “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” and is also folded into the state’s demand for cultural censorship and social stability. As we will show, this state-commerce relationship largely shapes Kuaishou’s interface and its affordances as encoded in its algorithm. Nevertheless, Kuaishou enables the diverse, often marginalized, Chinese living outside the urban centers of the country to become “unlikely” creative workers, who have become self-employed creative, digital entrepreneurs. For these “grassroots individuals,” creativity, life, and individuality are constantly mobilized and calculated according to the workings of the platform. This grassroots entrepreneurship, in tandem with the institutional regulation and censorship of the Internet, contributes to the transformation of Chinese economy and the production of social stability and a digital culture permeated with contingency and negotiation

Shear-stress and wall-stress regulation of vascular remodeling after balloon angioplasty: effect of matrix metalloproteinase inhibition

BACKGROUND: Constrictive vascular remodeling (VR) is the most significant component of restenosis after balloon angioplasty (PTA). Whereas in physiologi

Chronic Stress Induces Sex-Specific Alterations in Methylation and Expression of Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Gene in the Rat

Contains fulltext : 91627.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

China with a Cut : Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music

Deze studie naar Chinese populaire muziek geeft een unieke inkijk in de sociaal-culturele, economische en politieke betekenissen die de snelle veranderingen in China sinds de jaren negentig hebben veroorzaakt. Van punk uit Beijing tot pop uit Hong Kong en Taiwan. Dit boek is het resultaat van zestien jaar onderzoek. Jeroen de Kloet ging naar Beijing, Shanhai en Hong Kong en analyseerde de opkomst van diverse muziek scenes in China, de fans van de muziek en de ontwikkelingen in de muziekindustrie. Hij besteedt uitgebreid aandacht aan de dakou cultuur. Dakou zijn illegaal vanuit het westen geïmporteerde cd's met een inkeping aan de rand. Ze speelden een cruciale rol in de opkomst van een nieuwe muziek- en jeugdcultuur. Een cultuur waarin authenticiteit het sleutelwoord is; hoe Chinese rock te maken zonder als kopie van westerse voorbeelden gezien te worden? En waarom telkens die nadruk op vermeende Chinese kenmerken? De kloet geeft antwoord op deze en meer vragen. Zijn boek is een kritische analyse van de culturele veranderingen in China sinds het midden van de jaren negentig