You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Against the background of the so-called ’obesity epidemic’, Media and the Rhetoric of Body Perfection critically examines the discourses of physical perfection that pervade Western societies, shedding new light on the rhetorical forces behind body anxieties and extreme methods of weight loss and beautification. Drawing on rich interview material with cosmetic surgery patients and offering fresh analyses of various texts from popular culture, including internationally-screened reality-television shows including The Biggest Loser, Extreme Makeover and The Swan as well as entertainment programs and documentaries, this book examines the ways in which Western media capitalize on body anxiety ...
This book explores the real-world consequences changing ideas and strategies have on effective climate governance. Its main focus is on why accountability matters - both for transformations and transitions in international climate change governance and how international support for environmentally responsible actions, and extending shared accountabilities, might strengthen climate governance globally. A main point of discussion is if and how better understanding of accountabilities and transformations in ecosystems dynamics, the capacities of organisms to adapt, migrate or otherwise respond to environmental or climatic changes, can improve climate governance mechanisms. Bringing together a d...
Focusing on the digital lives of children aged eight and under, and paying attention to their parents and educators, this book showcases research findings from the UK, Denmark, Turkey, Indonesia and Australia. The authors’ disciplinary backgrounds are as diverse as their cultural contexts, and the volume brings together insights from education, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, physiotherapy, and communication studies. Covering both positive and negative perspectives, it contributes to existing research on young children’s online interactions. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in early years’ care and education, media, communication and cultural studies, human-computer interaction and technology studies, and the sociology of childhood and the family.
As a response to real or imagined subordination, popular culture reflects the everyday experience of ordinary people and has the capacity to subvert the hegemonic order. Drawing on central theoretical approaches in the field of critical disability studies, this book examines disability across a number of internationally recognised texts and objects from popular culture, including film, television, magazines and advertising campaigns, children’s toys, music videos, sport and online spaces, to attend to the social and cultural construction of disability. While acknowledging that disability features in popular culture in ways that reinforce stereotypes and stigmatise, Disability and Popular C...
Over the past thirty years the Australian travel experience has been ‘Aboriginalized’. Aboriginality has been appropriated to furnish the Australian nation with a unique and identifiable tourist brand. This is deeply ironic given the realities of life for many Aboriginal people in Australian society. On the one hand, Aboriginality in the form of artworks, literature, performances, landscapes, sport, and famous individuals is celebrated for the way it blends exoticism, mysticism, multiculturalism, nationalism, and reconciliation. On the other hand, in the media, cinema, and travel writing, Aboriginality in the form of the lived experiences of Aboriginal people has been exploited in the se...
Everyone has the right to seek asylum under international law. However, successive governments in Australia have declared the need to ‘stop the boats’ whatever the cost, be it human, economic, moral or legal. In this new book, Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong find that Australia’s policies towards refugees have hardened since their bestsellingRefugees: Why seeking asylum is legal and Australia’s policies are notwas published in 2014. Now,Refugee Rights and Policy Wrongs provides a wholly updated account of Australian refugee law and policy. Bringing facts to bear on a highly politicised debate, McAdam and Chong explain why Australia falls short of its own international commitments when it comes to policies on offshore processing, detention and boat turnbacks, among others. This up-to-date account of Australia’s refugee laws and policies could not come at a more crucial time and is compelling reading for anyone seeking to understand the human impacts of Australia’s practices. ‘This book should be read by all Australians concerned about the inhumanity demonstrated by successive federal governments when dealing with refugees seeking our protection.’ — Ian McPhee AO
Packed with case studies drawn from around the world, The internet presents a clear and up-to-date introduction to the social, cultural, technological and political worlds this new media form is creating.
This book explores the ways in which contemporary writers, artists, directors, producers and fans use the opportunities offered by popular fantasy to exceed or challenge norms of gender and sexuality, focusing on a range of media, including television episodes and series, films, video games and multi-player online role-play games, novels and short stories, comics, manga and graphic novels, and board games. Engaging directly with an enormously successful popular genre which is often overlooked by literary and cultural criticism, contributors pay close attention to the ways in which the producers of fantasy texts, whether visual, game, cinematic, graphic or literary texts, are able to play wit...
Winner of the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the National Communication Association's International and Intercultural Communication Division and the 2017 Sue DeWine Book Award from the NCA Applied Communication Division Using oral history, ethnography, and close readings of media, Sarah C. Bishop probes the myriad and sometimes conflicting ways refugees interpret and use mediated representations of life in the United States. Guided by 74 refugee narrators from Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, and Somalia, U.S. Media and Migration explores answers to questions such as: What does one learn from media about an unfamiliar place? How does media help or hinder refugees' sense of belonging after relocation? And how does the U.S. government use media to shape refugees' understanding of American norms, standards, and ideals? With insights from refugees and resettlement administrators throughout, Bishop provides a compelling and layered analysis of the interaction between refugees and U.S. media before, during, and long after resettlement.
None