Reconfigurations of illness and masculinity on Instagram

In this paper, we explore how men’s experiences of living with illness are mediatized on Instagram, thus understanding social media platforms as “sociotechnical affordances” that support and modulate how everyday lives are lived (Paasonen, 2018). The article zooms in on four Danish Instagram profiles (with approximately 2,000 followers each) that centre on experiences of living with different diagnoses, including morbus chrohn, hip dysplasia, chronic pain, and mental illness. By applying the concepts “biological entrepreneurship” (Stage, 2017), “bodywork”, and “spornosexuality” (Hakim, 2019), we examine how masculinity becomes reconfigured as a resource, rather than an opposition to health. The content on Instagram emerges as entrepreneurial by extending the body: Situated within the larger framework of the profiles’ content and their place in the platform economy of attention, illness is transformed into a narrative and an affective source, whether on the politics of gender, visibility of illness, monetary gain, or self-help

“The best men can be”: New configurations of masculinity in the Gillette ad “We believe”

In January 2019, the company Gillette released a short movie “We believe” as advertisement for the brand. In the ad, Gillette reframes their slogan from “the best a man can get” to “the best a man can be.” Connecting the video to the #MeToo movement and critiquing ‘toxic masculinity’, Gillette portrays a new, more responsible, gentle, empathetic masculinity for “the men of tomorrow.” In this article, we present and discuss theories and strands of masculinity studies, and we analyze how the short movie portrays contemporary masculinity vis-à-vis these theories. Our argument is that while Gillette’s short movie and similar branding movies appeal to social responsibility and might open for new and more inclusive masculinities, it does, however, at the same time reproduce the patriarchal organization of masculinity in which power and privilege run from man to man and leave women and children as objects. Furthermore, the recoding of masculinity from toxicity to empathy is framed as an individual choice within neoliberal logics

Fortrængninger og fortællinger

Heimat som erindrin

Rugemødre, rejser og nye reproduktionsmetaforer. Weblogs om transnationalt surrogatmoderskab

SURROGACY MOTHERS, TRAVELS AND NEW REPRODUCTION METAPHORS | Surrogacy is a growing industry in India, as still more infertile couples, homosexual couples and singles from the Western world, travel abroad to fulfill their dream of having a baby. Indian clinics offer highly specialized services in exotic surroundings, an obliging culture and legislation, and remarkably low payments. This article examines and discusses how the conception of motherhood is constructed in public weblogs narrated by parents and intended parents of Indian surrogate children. The chapter aims at analyzing the rhetorical, narrative and metaphorical strategies of the blogs, focusing on how the biological aspects of motherhood (for instance pregnancy and giving birth) and the transnational aspects are negotiated and reinterpreted in the present context of globalization, tech nological possibilities and consumer culture

MED HISTORIEN I BYEN - KULTURARV SOM SMARTPHONE APPS

EMBEDDED CITY HISTORIES: CULTURAL HERITAGE AS SMARTPHONE APPS | A number of city museums and cultural heritage institutions have during the recent years developed various combinations of internet sites and smartphone apps, through which the users are guided to places of cultural interest and offered information about them. The article presents four different Danish cultural heritage smartphone apps developed and launched during the recent years, and examine the stated intentions and motivations compared to the actual content of the digital sites. It is argued that priority is given rather to affective communication and the communication of ordinary people’s everyday stories than to factual knowledge, but also that the level of participation is low. Within a theoretical framework of experience economy, mobility and affect theory, I argue that the digital and mobile museum communication has a participatory and democratic potential but needs to balance this ambition in relation to the agendas of experience economy and commercial place branding

MED HISTORIEN I BYEN - KULTURARV SOM SMARTPHONE APPS

EMBEDDED CITY HISTORIES: CULTURAL HERITAGE AS SMARTPHONE APPS | A number of city museums and cultural heritage institutions have during the recent years developed various combinations of internet sites and smartphone apps, through which the users are guided to places of cultural interest and offered information about them. The article presents four different Danish cultural heritage smartphone apps developed and launched during the recent years, and examine the stated intentions and motivations compared to the actual content of the digital sites. It is argued that priority is given rather to affective communication and the communication of ordinary people’s everyday stories than to factual knowledge, but also that the level of participation is low. Within a theoretical framework of experience economy, mobility and affect theory, I argue that the digital and mobile museum communication has a participatory and democratic potential but needs to balance this ambition in relation to the agendas of experience economy and commercial place branding

Rugemødre, rejser og nye reproduktionsmetaforer. Weblogs om transnationalt surrogatmoderskab

SURROGACY MOTHERS, TRAVELS AND NEW REPRODUCTION METAPHORS | Surrogacy is a growing industry in India, as still more infertile couples, homosexual couples and singles from the Western world, travel abroad to fulfill their dream of having a baby. Indian clinics offer highly specialized services in exotic surroundings, an obliging culture and legislation, and remarkably low payments. This article examines and discusses how the conception of motherhood is constructed in public weblogs narrated by parents and intended parents of Indian surrogate children. The chapter aims at analyzing the rhetorical, narrative and metaphorical strategies of the blogs, focusing on how the biological aspects of motherhood (for instance pregnancy and giving birth) and the transnational aspects are negotiated and reinterpreted in the present context of globalization, tech nological possibilities and consumer culture

Fiktionalitet, faktualitet og fake news

I løbet af den amerikanske valgkamp i 2016, som ender med at Donald Trump bliver den 45. præsident i USA, får begrebet fake news ny betydning som en særlig politisk retorik. Med dette temanummer ønsker vi at sætte begrebet i en større sammenhæng såvel historisk som teoretisk, og som titlen på temanummeret antyder, mener vi, at det er frugtbart at tænke på tværs af de tre begreber fiktionalitet, faktualitet og fake news. Fake news er ikke på nogen entydig måde en traditionel fiktionsgenre eller blot at betragte som en faktualitetsgenre. I stedet belyser begreberne hinanden

Moderskab(elser) - Slægtsskabsøkonomier og moderfølelser i transnational surrogatmoderskab

Today the making of families has gone global and may involve some sort of border crossing. In this essay, we discuss the ways that transnational surrogacy is constructed in two international and well-known documentaries Google Baby (Frank 2009) and Made in India (Haimowitz and Sinha 2010). Both films employ a neoliberal ideology and frame reproduction as a do-it-yourself project in which mobile and globalized homosexual and heterosexual couples from the West go to India to fulfill their desire for parenting. We suggest that affect theoretical perspectives assist in developing nuanced analyses of the ways that reproductive desire and despair circulate to make transnational surrogacy seem like a natural choice. We conclude that parenthood, in the two documentaries, is constructed along matters of intent and desire