Charlie Posted March 4, 2010 Posted March 4, 2010 Actually I've been told by a couple of friends who go there to avoid the Murano street halls. When I went to the open day I had a look around Kelvinhaugh, which seemed really nice, so I'll probably put that as my first choice. Plus, Kelvinhaugh is nearer to Sauchiehall Street, which I can see myself being at quite regularly for gigs and whatnot. I've not really spent all that much time in Glasgow, like I say Sauchiehall Street for gigs is about all I know. Oh, and Byers Road on the other side of the uni is where all the good pubs are at I've been told. But I'm looking forward to living there, my cousin is there, I'll be near enough to Parkhead to get in for the occassional game, and theres always something going on S'hall Street for gigs... The only major venue there is ABC which has a lot of gigs on but rarely any 'major' bands (at least from my POV). As you said, Byres Road is great for pubs, especially Ashton Lane which is just off it. Murano Street is quite far out but Glasgow Uni students don't tend to grace the city centre with their presence. They tend to stick to Viper and The Hive for nights out! We're not good enough for them.
chairdriver Posted March 4, 2010 Posted March 4, 2010 Trust me/my sister who goes to Glasgow uni, as a student Sauchiehall Street will be so irrelevant, and you'll spend the majority of your time on and around Byers Road. Good bands usually play Oran Mor and QMU, both of which are right on Byers Road.
Charlie Posted March 4, 2010 Posted March 4, 2010 Trust me/my sister who goes to Glasgow uni, as a student Sauchiehall Street will be so irrelevant, and you'll spend the majority of your time on and around Byers Road. Good bands usually play Oran Mor and QMU, both of which are right on Byers Road. Our definition of good bans must be different. All the bands which I like play at either O2 (previously Carling) Academy, SECC, the Barrowlands or even Hampden. S'hall street has a lot of good clubs. The ABC is meant to be fantastic for a night out although I personally don't like it. The Garage is always great banter.
Daft Posted March 4, 2010 Posted March 4, 2010 Also, a friend of mine is doing film in London some place (the fact he's doing film is irrelevant) and he says it's hugely alienating...all his course-mates are dotted all over london (he's in a flat with his brother) and he just feels a bit lost in the city etc, the people on his course aren't all friends or whatever. I'd imagine that was pot luck. I live in South London and everyone else lives in and around the North or East. No problem really. EDIT: Also my aunt went to Uni there for a bit (I know this was like the 80's) but she said it was such a hassle to get anywhere and she had to leave things early just to get home etc. I'm so bored of hassle. Cycle. It takes me just over half an hour to get from Camberwell to Angel. Absolutely no hassle, it's fast, free (after getting the bike) and it's great exercise.
Gizmo Posted March 4, 2010 Posted March 4, 2010 S'hall Street for gigs... The only major venue there is ABC which has a lot of gigs on but rarely any 'major' bands (at least from my POV). As you said, Byres Road is great for pubs, especially Ashton Lane which is just off it. Murano Street is quite far out but Glasgow Uni students don't tend to grace the city centre with their presence. They tend to stick to Viper and The Hive for nights out! We're not good enough for them. Well I've been to about 10 gigs there, ABC1/2, The Garage/G2, and theres another I'm forgetting. Kelvinhaugh is a really nice building, the rooms are very modern and clean looking, theres loads of parking right out front for if I take my car through, and it's right in the middle of the train station and the Uni for if I don't.
ipaul Posted March 13, 2010 Posted March 13, 2010 I think I can confidently put Southampton as my firm now, having got good results in my January modules: History Britain Module - 86/100 - A Law 01 - 97/100 - A Law 03 - 64/100 - C I'm still fairly pleased with that C, considering I'm doing the whole A level in a year and was supposed to have studied it for at least a year before hand. Overall my law result currently stands at 161/200, which I believe is still an A. Was going to have to re sit the History had I gotten a B, so I'm quite relieved about that. I just can't make my mind up whether to re sit the Law module or not =S
chairdriver Posted March 13, 2010 Posted March 13, 2010 Do, resitting a module I got 78 in first time round saved my life (I got 96 the second time).
Ashley Posted March 13, 2010 Posted March 13, 2010 What boring module names. Least my uni had interesting module names such as 'Evil', 'Feminism, Pornography and Men' and 'Sexuality in Performance' Anyway congrats iPaul And just to celebrate once more; I got onto the Character Animation course at CSM (London). Now I just need to find money and somewhere to live. One things for sure, I don't want to go back into student housing. But I'm looking forward to it More so than the MA I nearly did last year.
Daft Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 Didn't really know where to post this but does anyone know about the construction of gender in Japanese popular culture?!
Paj! Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 Sorry, no. --- My interview for Kingston is tomorrow...dunno what's going on, my mum phoned them today to see how much taxis from Gatwick would be/to find out general info, and the woman claimed that there were NO interviews tomorrow. I died. I assumed I'd read my e-mail from them wrong, and cost my family £300 worth of flights. Ran upstairs at college after she phoned, checked my mail, and no, I was right. Interview tomorrow, Tuesday 16th of March! So yeah. I'm going...see what they say. If they lied I'll demand to be seen.
Ashley Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 Didn't really know where to post this but does anyone know about the construction of gender in Japanese popular culture?! In what regards? I can dig around stuff I did and remember the MA I nearly did at Birkbeck? They sent me the intro module (which covered everything really) outline which featured a really extensive reading list. Paj. 1) Good luck 2) Its a bit late in the day now but could you try and speak to the interviewer directly? Print off the confirmation and if they still say its not happening when you're there show them that and show them how you've flown down for it. Raise hell and they should find someone to talk to you.
Daft Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 (edited) In what regards? I can dig around stuff I did and remember the MA I nearly did at Birkbeck? They sent me the intro module (which covered everything really) outline which featured a really extensive reading list. Pretty much what can be learnt about constructions or notions of gender from a study of pop culture. Edit: Gender or 'the self'. Edited March 15, 2010 by Daft
Ashley Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 Do you want general stuff as well, not specifically Japan? I would have some stuff on that as well from my UG, and Jodie is doing her postgrad on Gender and Sexuality at Birkbeck so I could ask her too.
Daft Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 Mainly Japan but if I can draw parallels then definitely! Thanks for the help!
Ashley Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 (edited) No worries. Here is something I have thrown together (or perhaps more accurately, thrown up as its word vomitey at times). Mixture of references you can use, general ideas, some kind of structured plan (although not rigidly structured as that's up to you as you know what you're aiming for more than me obviously), a few links and then notes from some research I've got saved from my undergrad. As you can probably tell, a lot of the books at the start are available in your library. There is one that isn't (Richter, Steffi etc) but as students on the Japanese course are allowed to use the SOAS library for resources I'm sure you could arrange access to the Birkbeck library. Or even see if you can just walk in? I went into that building with Jodie but didn't go into the library part itself, can't remember if you needed a card to get in like you do at SOAS. I found JSTOR to be the best for Japanese stuff when I was doing my Godzilla and Spirited Away essays, but obviously it depends what/how much your uni subscribes (although I'd imagine they do so more than mine because mine is essentially a Butlins). SwetsWise is also okay. Collection of random readings I had knocking about on my computer which may be of use: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5MOUR39M Buckley, Sandra (ed.), 2002. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture. London, Routledge. (SOAS Reference Room). Martinez, D.P. (ed.), 1998. The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global Cultures. Cambridge UP. (especially her introduction BBK, SOAS) Powers, R.G. and H. Kato (eds.), 1989. Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture. Greenwood Press. (Especially Introduction). (SOAS) Richter, Steffi and Annette Schad-Seifert (eds.), 2001. Cultural Studies and Japan. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. (NL SLC; BBK) Treat, John Whittier (ed.), 1996. Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture. Curzon. (SOAS, NL SLC) Tsurumi, Shunsuke, 1987. A Cultural History of Postwar Japan, 1945-1980. First published by Iwanami Shoten. KPI (SOAS) Skov, Lise. ‘Environmentalism seen Through Japanese Women’s Magazines’, in Brian Moeran and Lise Skov (eds.), (1995) Women, Media and Consumption in Japan. Curzon. 170-196. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Soft nationalism and narcissism: Japanese popular culture goes global. Asian Studies Review 26 (4): 447-469. (TP) Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Iwabuchi, Recentering globalization: Popular culture and Japanese transnationalism. Duke UP. (BBK, SOAS). http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UIajAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6mqM8m-sJY4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=japanese+gender+popular+culture&ots=kO55x0i0hd&sig=aWT89f3Jj_34Cz4pNfyH8T6l_Eo#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oJ8Sla06PuEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=japanese+gender+popular+culture&ots=jKMJ0q3XwU&sig=PIPTUlkXg6Q5Mk6RcESjyfBikOc#v=onepage&q=japanese%20gender%20popular%20culture&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Apey2BuA-u8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA165&dq=japanese+gender+popular+culture&ots=f7Shu1bfIa&sig=nuy7SK9AmGzMAtQBJj_o9vpql2I#v=onepage&q=japanese%20gender%20popular%20culture&f=false Manga - there's about 20 different categories of it in terms of gender(s) involved, genre (action, romance etc) and even the types of romance (hetero/homo). How this reflects/shapes gender identities. http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/bv230/lang-var/ueno%202006%20manga.pdf The impact of the greater sexualisation (than the West) within popular culture over there and its affect on women; the proliferation of nearly porn-like manga visible within the shop front, the hostess club things (granted, more social than popular cultures). This must have some impact upon the way that women view themselves/their identities. Giroux and Adorno have written quite a bit about popular culture and how it shapes identities. Angela McRobbie has written about women constructing their own gender identities through popular culture. Butler is the go to theorist for gender identity construction, as is Foucault. Simone De Beauvoir explored feminism and what makes women, women. Has the famous quote "One is not born a woman, but becomes one." Didn't you do a paper on otakus at some point? Could you use that? How otaku's are 'created' by popular culture (and wider sociological issues), as well as the obvious fact they are (by and large) male. Is there a word for female otakus, or are they all assumed to be males? So depending on how big the assignment is you could explore: Social context - the inequalities of the genders that still exists. how males are constructed/treated in society, in work, in the home etc and how females are. how this permeates into the inner workings of gender identity and construction. the socialisation process, typically in the west its explored in terms of "girls get given pink things and soft loving toys, boys get blue and have to blow things up!" and I'm sure similar exists in Japan. The impact of popular culture, particularly in a place like Tokyo where you can't move without seeing some manga, anime, film etc advertised. If you grow up on popular culture (and in contemporary society its inevitable as its everywhere, we grow up with tv, the internet, music etc and seemingly moreso in Japan) how does influence who you become? The 'available identities' (as it were) you have to choose from? Advertising - I can't think of much to say about this myself, but I'm sure there's probably a lot written about it...somewhere. What is advertised, how its advertised, how its constructed within the social/gendered contexts. What isn't advertised towards males/females? Even if its advertising the other aspects you can discuss (manga, films, music etc). Even if you do a semiotic analysis of the cover of a manga book, film poster etc and explore who is featured, in what capacity, how are they situated in/compared to other people, what colours are used, language used (if you can find a good translation) etc and how all this tells us about how gender is constructed. Manga - its proliferation, its history, its categorisation, the way it constructs gender (or some of the ways it constructs gender in how its categorised I suppose, 'the way manga constructs gender' is a phd in itself). How male-orientated manga tends to be action packed or if its romance it tends to be smutty (or comic, but still we're talking The Inbetweeners kind of humour so smutty-funny) and often with ridiculously endowed girls. For females they tend to be romance stories, but I believe male-male romance mangas are also popular with females so you could discuss how this constructs the notion of female sexuality. Why is it they embrace male/male relationships so much? What does this say about their responses to male/female? etc Homosexuality still isn't widely accepted and quite hush-hush over there, and the ironic fact that in spite of the fact they are quite sexualised nothing graphic can be shown (i.e. genitalia), thus I think/would presume (but this would need checking) male/male manga would tend to be more coy looks/flirtation/love and romance and gently stroking etc. That kind of soppy romance, rather than lust/love. What does this say (if its indeed true) about what kind of relationships women are looking for in the manga they read? Perhaps find figures about current popular manga series and what sells best with each gender? Obviously more anime than manga but look at Miyazaki's work (and Ghibli as a whole) which tends to have powerful females, I'm sure at some point he would have spoken about how he chooses to empower women, but this is not the norm. He is trying to give power to women in this regards (similar to Whedon, although they are both obviously male so what does that say about how men need to empower women?) Music - there's a lot of those pretty boy bands that you see. Similar to what happened here in the 60's - women were becoming increasingly sexualised and this was reflected in how they went crazy for the beatles (and latter stuff like showaddaddy or whatever they're called, bay city rollers, donny osmond etc) but they're all ideologically safe. what this says about women - they're allowed to be sexualised but can't go "too far". also the construction of the music industry - who is selling these identities to females, presumably its males but this can be checked. On the flip side, what kind of music is popular with males? Is it the Japanese equivalent of Girls Aloud or are they listening to males? What genres are they listening to? Similar approaches can obviously be taken to film (I know Nodame Cantabile is popular at the moment), television and literature and they'll all have their own nuances and individual research done. Oh fuck, and video games. They're kind of a big thing in Japan aren't they? Japanese blogs in English: Obviously these aren't a great academic source, but will help you to gain insights into popular culture within Japan. A good starting point perhaps? http://bigonjapan.com/ http://www.dannychoo.com/ http://blog.livedoor.jp/auberginefleur/ http://japanese327.blog94.fc2.com/ http://www.japanbloglist.com/ http://www.jlist.com/index.html http://shibuya246.com/ http://bloglinkjapan.com/ http://kimonobox.com/ http://www.nihonsun.com/landing-page/ Notes from my UG, mostly about the construction of gender. Obviously you can draw parallels in the sense that "you can learn about the construction of gender through popular culture, like has been done in the West with these studies" kind of thing. And if you want to be bold, although you may need to find someone to back you up on this, suggest the process of learning/constructing gender is universal, but the factors that shape it/our understanding are unique to certain cultures. Theorizing Gender Rachel Alsop, Annette Fitzsimmons, Kathleen Lennon Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge, 2002 “Within this framework men and women who fail to conform to the prescribed (expected) pattern of gender behaviour appropriate to their sex within any specific context are instead written off as deviant and anomalous (Brittan 1989: 22). (138) Hegemonic masculinity “is the type of masculinity performed by popular heroes, fantasy figures and role models (Donaldson 1993).” (140) “Being able to display signs of hegemonic masculinity – for example, strength, sexual prowess with women, the ability to consume beer – becomes vital to demonstrate that one is a ‘real man’. (143) “hegemonic notions of masculinity…[is that it] is constructed in opposition to femininity.” (143) “By removing the analysis of masculinity from the site of the male body the essential base of masculinity is revealed as a fabrication and the constructedness and artificiality of masculinity is exposed.” (160) Media, Gender and Identity. An Introduction David Gauntlett 2002. Routledge, London Page 137 Butler argues that “she calls the ‘heterosexual matrix’, in which ‘sex’ is seen as a binary biological given – you are born female or male – and then ‘gender’ is the cultural component which is socialised in the person on that basis.” “Your body does not determine your gender or identity, and this will not help us to predict your desires” (paraphrasing Butler) Page 139 “There is no gender identity behind the expression of gender;…identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results” – Butler (1990: 25) Page 141 “Identity is a performance already – it’s always a performance. The self is always being made and re-made in daily interactions.” “The task is not whether to repeat, but how to repeat or, indeed, to repeat and, through a radical proliferation of gender, to displace the very gender norms that enable the repetition itself” – Butler , original emphasis (1990: 148) Page 147 Tim Edwards (1998) argues against Butler “The reality for many people much of the time is that their sexualities remain remarkably constant and stable over time even when lived experience may contradict this.” Judith Butler Live Theory Vicki Kirby Continuum, 2006, London “gender is culturally constructed: hence gender is neither the casual result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex” (1990b, 6) (22) “to understand identity as a practice, and as a signifying practice, is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effect of a rule-bound discourse that inserts itself into a pervasive and mundane signifying acts of linguistic life. Abstractly considered, language refers to an open system of signs by which intelligibility is insistently created and contested” (1990b, 145) – Butler (44) “In Gender Trouble, she illustrates the fluid nature of identity formation through the trope of theatrical performance, the sense that identity is a staged artifice, a fantastic re-presentation with no natural stability.” (86) “there was an implied sense that different subjectivities could be chosen, or tailored, to suit changing individual fancies.” (86) Book cited = Gender Trouble Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Judith Butler Routledge, London, 1990 “In this sense, gender is not a noun, but neither is it a set of free-floating attributes, for we have seen that the substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence. Hence, within the inherited discourse {page break} of the metaphysics of substance, gender proves to be performative – that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed.” (24/25) “Nietzsche’s claim in On the Genealogy of Morals that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything.”..There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results.” (25) “If there is something right in Beauvoir’s claim that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification.” (33) “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.” (33) “Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally constructed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart form the various acts which constitute its reality.” (136) “If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity.” (136) “If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performer, and both of those are distinct from the gender of the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance, but sex and gender, and gender and performance.” (137) “In what senses, then, is gender an act? As in other ritual social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established: and it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation.” (14) “indeed, the performance is effected with the strategic aim of maintaining gender within its binary frame – an aim that cannot be attributed to a subject, but, rather, must be understood to found and consolidate the subject.” (14) “Gender [is]…a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.” (140) Obviously that's excluding anything from Jodie but if you want me to press her for info I can when I next speak to her (tomorrow, but will be seeing her on Wednesday if Nick lets her leave his side...) so let me know if there's any areas you want me to pick up on. Likewise if you want me to explain further/translate the above into English let me know. I'll keep you posted if I think of anything else but as I say, that was all just thrown together. Edited March 15, 2010 by Ashley
Daft Posted March 15, 2010 Posted March 15, 2010 (edited) Uuuurrm.... Amazing? Astonishing? Stunning? Brilliant? Mind-blowing?... No, I think phenomenal. Phenomenal is the word I will chose. Phenomenal and thank you!! I shall now sift and construct!! My plan was to start with Foucault's constructions of discourse. Use Adorno's Culture Industry (which I'm reading now and is amazingly funny, brutal and misanthropic). The Smack the whol thing over the head with Gramsci's hegemony, then Bourdieu and then back to Foucault (because the last three fit into the same space, I posit). Edit: Especially those quotes. Those quotes are all amazing. Edited March 15, 2010 by Daft
Ashley Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 Which of us is Miss Universe...? Anyway you're welcome. The plan sounds good, a nice mix of things. I like how it circles back round to Foucault. Found some more stuff from my dissertation which was about (essentially) how music constructs identity so it may be of semi-use depending on what you focus on in the assignment. Youth culture and age Jo Croft 163-200 If you're going to touch upon when gender becomes constructed in one's life this could be useful. “Nevertheless, once we begin to consider the different ways in which age underpins the identity of any given individual, it emerges as a category that is far from being simply a biological given. The social effects of age have implications far beyond the explicit classification of a person’s physical, chronological status. Age, consequently, is an aspect of identity which powerfully reflects the particular character of life in any national culture…” (165) “the period between the ages of 11 and 21 is a time when life is most punctuated by changes in status – when the rules about what you can do and where you can go are shifting most dramatically.” (166) “In other words, the ways in which money is spent and the kinds of things that people choose to buy tell us quite lot about the identities of British people and cultural formation is partly reflected in patterns of consumption.” (169) “Many studies of British youth which have been carried out since the 1950s have focused, in one way or another, upon the way young people express themselves through the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the films they watch and the places they go.” (169) “[Richard Hoggart] wrote…in his well-known book The Uses of Literacy (1957), he summoned up an image of the modern British teenager being almost literally consumed by a ‘mass culture’ which in turn was linked to the saturating effects of ‘Americanisation’.” (170) American Cultural Studies An Introduction to American Culture Neil Campbell and Alasdair Kean London, Routledge, 1997 “To see youth as something built up, or constructed, of many ‘stray smells’ is to recognise it as a complex, differentiated ‘conjunction point for various discourses’ (Acland 1995: 10), all informed by race, class, power, gender and sexuality. Youth is one of the sites where these forces cross, mix and clash: ‘at a splendid crossroad where the past meets the future in a jumble of personal anxieties and an urgent need for social self-definition’ (Fass 1977: 5).” (215) “Texts and cultural practices explore ways by {pb} which the young struggle to find a space for individual or group expression outside or alongside the adult mainstream. This has been achieved in many different forms: music, fashion, gangs, subcultural actions, writing and so on, all of which create a ‘language’ outside the immediate control of the adult world.” (229) “The idea of ‘authoring’ the self…is a response to all those who would speak for you and dictate the terms of existence. To articulate is to order the world, to exercise power and to control aspects of reality, and this is why youth texts clamour to express themselves, to be heard rather than be trapped in an ‘already defined place within a social narrative that was told before it arrived’ (Grossberg 1992: 179).” (230) “Music could become ‘the space of “magical transformations” in the face of youth’s own necessary transformation into its own other, adulthood’ (Grossberg 1992: 180)” (320) Culture and Identity Warren Kidd Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002 “’identity’ relates to how we think about ourselves as people, how we think about other people around us, and what we think others think of us. ‘Identity’ means being able to ‘fix’ or ‘figure out’ who we are as people.” (7) “our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and, reciprocally, other people’s understanding of themselves and of others (which includes us). Social identity, is. Therefore, no more essential than meaning; it too is the product of agreement and disagreement, it too is negotiable.” Richard Jenkins (1966) (25) “Without frameworks for delineating social identity and identities, I would be the same as you and neither of us could relate to the other meaningfully or consistently. Without social identity there is, in fact, no society.” (as above) “Youth subcultural identities are often associated with specific styles of music and/or bands.” (113) “the growth of TV viewing in the last twenty years or so has been particularly bound up with the creation and rise of youth culture. They go hand in hand, since young people make up a vast proportion of the TV audience and images of youth – especially sexual images – are used to sell numerous commodities.” (126) “Most musical activity…begins as and from consumption, from the process of listening to music. But consumption itself is creative…it depends too on consumer abilities to make value judgements, to talk knowledgeably and passionately about their genre tastes, to place music in their lives, to use commodities and symbols for their own imaginative purposes. For many young people the purchasing of records and tapes is an important sphere of cultural activity in itself, one that can range in intensity from casual browsing to earnest searching for particular records. It is a process that involves clear symbolic work: complex and careful exercises of choice from the point of initial listening to seeking out, handling and scrutinizing records ” Willis, P., S. James, J. Canaan and G. Hurd (1993) (128) “The consumption of music is often fundamental to youth subculture and identity. Music is often an ever-present feature of life in the home, serving as a background sound-track to other activities. Equally, music is a source of entertainment outside the home and a topic of conversation and debate. Finally, because of home-taping it is often a personalised record of daily life – carried around from place to place via audio-tape and CD players.” (129) Cultural Studies An Anthology Michael Ryan (ed) Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2008 “Why Don’t You Act Your Color?”: Preteen Girls, Identity, and Popular Music Pamela J. Fryman 610-616 “The type of music they listened to, how they listened to this music, and who they listened with mattered in terms of how they organized their friendships, how they expressed their identities, and how they negotiated their place in their social and cultural worlds.” (610) “media and popular culture experiences are important socialization practices that both negatively and positively influence how we construct a sense of self and others….In fact, sometimes people use media products to construct identities, to resist authority, and to build knowledge.” (611) Understanding Identity Kath Woodward Arnold, London, 2002 “The impact and extent of globalization is strongly contested, but it clearly has a part to play in the movement of peoples and the dislocation of identities that took place in the twentieth century.” (54) “Globalization and the technologies associated with it, necessarily involve the transgression of national boundaries and an increasing transational dimension to economic, social, political and cultural life.” (56) “Pasi Falk has argued that the modern self (it may in fact be more a feature of the postmodern self) is increasingly the consuming self to the extent that we might paraphrase Descartes’ cogito into ‘I consume, therefore I am’ (1994).” (84) “As Danny Miller argues consumption is not merely an act of buying goods, it is ‘a fundamental process by which we create identity’ (1997: 19).” (86) “Our identities are made up and are represented by the consumer goods which we buy.” (86) “Ethnicity marks cultural and social differences between groups of people, rather than invoking spurious biological fixity where visible and embodied differences might be seen to determine and circumscribe identity.” (146) “As Donna Haraway argues whiteness is largely unseen, its invisibility is a sign of its dominance and hegemonic status (1992).” (146) “Identity links the inside and the outside; the personal and social.” (147) Media Culture Douglas Kellner Routledge, London, 1995 “A media culture has emerged in which images, sounds, and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life, dominating leisure time, shaping political views and social behaviour, and providing the materials out of which people forge their very identities.” (1) “Media culture also provides the materials out of which many people construct their sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality, of “us” and “them.”” (1) “Media culture provides the materials to create identities whereby individuals insert themselves into contemporary technocapitalist societies and which is producing a new form of global culture.” (1) “Culture in the broadest sense is a form of highly participatory activity, in which people create their societies and identities.” (2) “A critical multicultural perspective takes seriously the conjunction of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and other determinants of identity as important constituents of culture which should be carefully scrutinized and analysed in order to detect sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, and other tendencies that promote domination and oppression. Multiculturalism recognizes that there are many cultural constituents of identity and a critical cultural studies indicates how culture provides material and resources for identities and how cultural artefacts are appropriated and used to produce individual identities in everyday life.” (96) “there is still a structure of interaction with socially defines and available roles, norms, customs, and expectations, among which one must choose and reproduce to gain identity in a complex process of mutual recognition.” (231) “Anxiety also becomes a constituent experience for the modern self. For one is never certain that one has made the right choice, that one has chosen one’s “true” identity, or even constituted an identity at all” (232) “identity becomes more and more unstable, more and more fragile. Within this situation, the discourses of postmodernity problematize the very notion of identity, claiming that it is a myth and an illusion.” (233) “Many of the postmodern theories privilege media culture as the site of the implosion of identity and fragmentation of the subject, yet there have been few in-depth studies of media texts and their effects from this perspective.” (234) “People regularly watch certain shows and events; there are fans for various series and stars who possess an often incredible expertise and knowledge of the subjects of their fascination; people do model their behaviour, style, and attitudes on television images; television ads do play a role in managing consumer demand” (237) “I argue by contrast that television and other forms of media culture play key roles in the structuring of contemporary identity and shaping thought and behaviour.” (237) “media culture provides imagines and figures with which its audiences can identity and emulate. It thus possesses important socializing and enculturating effects via its role models, gender models, and variety of subject positions which valorize certain forms of behaviour and style while denigrating and villanizing other types.” (240) “Postmodern identity, then, is constituted theatrically through role playing and image construction…postmodern identity revolves around leisure, centered on looks, images, and consumption.” (242) “Thus it appears that postmodern identity tends more to be constructed from the images of leisure and consumption than modern identities and tends to be more unstable and subject to change. Bother modern and postmodern identity contains a level of reflexivity, an awareness that identity is chosen and constructed, though, in contemporary society, it may be more “natural” to change identities, to switch with the changing winds of fashion. While this produces an erosion of individuality and increased social conformity (to contemporary models of identity), there are, however, some positive potentials of this postmodern portrayal of identity as an artificial construct.” (243) “the images and narratives of media culture are also saturated with ideology and value, so that identity in contemporary societies can (still) be interpreted as an ideological construct.” (246) “rather than identity disappearing in contemporary society, it is rather reconstructed and redefined” (246) “Indeed, when one changes one’s images and style frequently, there is always anxiety concerning whether others will accept one’s changes and validate through positive recognition one’s new identity.” (247) “advertising is as concerned with selling lifestyles and socially desirable identities, which are associated with their products, as with selling the product themselves.” (252) “My analysis thus suggests that in a postmodern image culture, the images, scenes, stories, and cultural texts of media culture offer a wealth of subject positions which in turn help structure individual identity. These images project role and gender models, appropriate and inappropriate forms of behaviour, style and fashion, and subtle enticements to emulate and identify with certain identities while avoiding others.” (257) “Indeed, the quest for identity is arguably more intense than ever in the present moment.” (258) “The point is that many icons of media culture suggest that identity is a matter of individual choice and action and that each individual can produce their own unique identity.” (258) “Personal identity is thus fraught with contradictions and tensions.” (258) “media cultures tends to construct identities and subject positions, inviting individuals to identify with very specific figures, images, or positions.” (259) “Media culture provides images of proper role models, proper gender behaviour, and images of appropriate style, look, and image for contemporary individuals. Media culture thus provides resources for identity and new modes of identity in which look, style, and image replaces such things as action and commitment as constitutives of identity, of who one is.” (259) Settling the Pop Score Pop Texts and Identity Politics Stan Hawkins Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002 “The result of all this was that pop music would confirm, resist and subvert dominant values within the context of the dominant Anglo-American market. In fact, the pleasures derived from experiencing music through the acts of dancing, concert-going and purchasing – not to forget the ongoing everyday wrangles over taste – would create the basis for social {pb} interaction and exchange of knowledge amongst entire generations of young people.” (3-4) “This is why experiencing music makes it possible to ‘foreground the character of people’s involvement with their biographies, their societies and their environment’ (Shepherd and Wicke 1997:183).” (9) “there are important links between music reception and identity.” (12) “What is interesting is how the construction of the artist becomes a process for us to understand our own relationships to musical production and identity. In my research into identity formation in pop music, it has become more and more evident that pop culture forms a site where identity roles are constantly evolving to fit social needs.” (12) “As a concept, at least since Derrida, identity has come to imply difference as much as sameness. Identity is thus ascertaining by different: by distinguishing one person from another. In other words, only by identifying what someone is, is it possible to say what they are not. A key point of identity politics is also the insistence on a structure of sameness between more than one individual…Asserting one’s difference is therefore about stating an identity with a group that perceives itself differentially.” (13) “Identity, in a sense, is not a noun, but neither is it some vague, superfluous entity. That people are constituted by a regulation of attributes that are performatively expressed is indeed a challenge for rethinking cultural postulations of identity.” (14) “Music can shape identities through us mapping the symbolic with the imaginative. Shaped by people, music is an imaginative process capable of directing ‘a purely symbolic structuring in awareness’ (Shepherd and Wicke 1997: 199)” (14) “people are brought together by music and language to ‘reproduce themselves materially’ (ibid).” (14) “Considering the behaviour patterns and attitudes that emanate from our lived experience of musical genres form a useful starting point for working out ideologies in pop music (see Kerman 1980; Wicke 1990; Goodwin 1993a, 1993b, Frith 1996, Middleton 2000). In feeling music, there always seems to be a sense that emotional affect helps determine how we function – physically and cerebrally – in our responses to organised sound.” (15) “In the personal space, music discharges a wealth of emotions and feelings acquired from early on in our lives. By anchoring us in situations that account for constructing our individuality, music occupies a central position in our culture as a metaphor of our diverse feelings and sensations.” (15) “the role of the fan becomes an important issue for consideration. By identifying with the artist or group, one’s responses signify a deeping of the individual’s aesthetic experience of music. To this extent, musical taste is either an indicator of conformity or autonomy. And, thus, all facets of identity – gender, race, sexuality, class, community – assume a powerful significance.” (15) “This is because pop music consists of representations that cannot exclude the ear from the eye. Once visual representations reverberate with audio images, it is as though the equation music=identity is totalised. The dialectics between music and identity are thus realised through the pauses, the junctures, the symbols, the sights, the rhythms felt through CDs, videos, MP3 soundfiles, all of which epitomise recorded music as a vibrant dialogic process.” (24) “This, indeed, holds true for both the artist and the onlooker. In this respect, music functions as a powerful metaphor for collective identity through the countless opportunities it offers up for interpretation. And, this would explain why identity becomes a matter of social and cultural relevance based upon a sense of shared performance. To reiterate a point made earlier, what seems most significant is that music functions as a vital force for understand others and ourselves.” (30) Cultural Work. Understanding the Cultural Industries Andrew Beck (ed) London, Routledge, 2003 Fingers to the Bone or Spaced Out on Creativity? Jason Toynbee 39-55 “Popular music production is a form of capitalist enterprise in which money and labor are conjoined so as to produce star-commodities. Yet it also constitutes a creative arena in which people come together on a mutual basis to make symbolic artefacts.” (51) Frock Rock. Women Performing Popular Music Mavis Bayton Oxford, Oxford University Press 1998 “It could be argued that women are least likely to get involved in heavy rock or metal, which embodies the apotheosis of ‘masculinist’ values (Weinstein 1991). I have come across few women musicians within this musical genre, whwears a lot of women play within the, lighter, ‘pop’ category of music.” (39) “in terms of gender ideology, rock bands and rock instruments are masculine. The ideology of sexual difference permeates our society.” (40) “First, it has always been dominated by men, and, as there are few female role models easily available, this sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, it is believed that in order to play rock music/instruments certain physical and mental characteristics are required, such as aggression, power, and physical strength. It must be conceded that there is in reality no one uniform straightforward masculinity: it is fragmented by social differentiation (class, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.) into a variety of masculinities which are also subject to ongoing change (Segal 1990; Connell 1995; Mac an Ghaill 1996). However, aggression, power, and physical strength have been traditionally associated with hegemonic, mainstream masculinity.” (40) “women who play rock are considered to be putting their femininity at risk.” (41) Studying Popular Music Culture Tim Wall Hodder Arnold, London, 2003 “Identity itself is experienced differently for different individuals and cultural groups…music is not a separate phenomenon of identity, but an integral part of the process of identity-making, part of the way we begin to understand and articulate who we are.” (161) “Popular music, in one of its many paradoxes, seems to commonly represent a rather conservative set of senses of cultural groups, but it is also a creative arena in which identities are hyphenated, or even blurred. Such fluid identities are seen to be part of postmodern culture in which texts do not any longer relate to something outside themselves – in our case that a piece of music just refers to another piece of music through pastiche – and so we have lot our sense of ourselves (Baudrillard 1983; Jameson 1990). Sampling, covers of old songs, the spectacle of manufactured pop and the stripped-down nature of dance music, the ethnic-hybridity of contemporary music, are all given as examples of this phenomenon.” (161) “Stuart Hall has addressed the notion of ‘the real me’, arguing that we no longer have an essential sense of self (Hall 1992)…our identity has become fragmented, meanings are less certain, and we may feel geographically and culturally displaced, we still relate ourselves to important senses of individual and collective history. So, for Hall, identity has not been lost, it is just not to be found in some essential quality of ethnicity, race, sense of nation, gender or sexuality, but it will relate in important ways to these ideas.” (161) [Frith] “proposed that we should not understand music as a way of expressing ideas, but as a way of living them.” (161) On Record Simon Frith Andrew Goodwin London, Routledge, 1990 Teenage Dreams Sheryl Garratt 399-409 “Why do adolescent girls go loopy over gawky, sometimes talentless young men? The answer lies partially in the whole situation of adolescent women in our society. We live in a world where sex has become a commodity – used to sell everything from chocolate to cars, sold in films and magazines, and shown everywhere to be wonderful, desirable ideal that is central to our lives.” (400) “It [falling in love with musicians] is a safe focus for all that newly discovered sexual energy, and a scream can often be its only release. It is the sound of young women, not “hysterical schoolgirls” as one reporter would have it – a scream of defiance, celebration and excitement.” (401) “Part of the appeal [of female rock following] is comradeship…we were a gang of girls having fun together.” (401) “Androgyny is what they want; men they can dress like and identify with, as well as drool over. With so few women performers to use as models, perhaps girlish boys are the next best thing.” (402) teenage girls are a lucrative market (405) “Girls scream at girls, too.” “Women have continued to idolize women” (408) Cultural Studies An Anthology Michael Ryan (ed) Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2008 Talkin’ Tupac: Speech Genres and the Mediation of Cultural Knowledge George Kamberelis and Greg Dimitriadis 483-506 “Theories of race, class, and gender have argued recently that these social categories are less “essential” than they are “positional” (Alcoff, 1988; Appadurai, 1996; Bhabha 1994; Grossberg, 1992; Rosaldo, 1989). Raced, classed, or gendered identities involve positioning oneself at the intersection of various identity axes within a changing historical context of identity markers. From this perspective, being black or Latina or working class or female (or various combinations of these and other social categories) is to take up a position within a moving historical context, to choose how to interpret this position, and to imagine how to alter the context that made such positioning available in the first place.” (484) “Instead, identities are recognized as multiple, complex, porous, and shifting sets of positionings, attachments, and identifications through which individuals and collectives understand who they are and how they are expected to act across a range of diverse social and cultural landscapes (Hall, 1996).” (484) “Why Don’t You Act Your Color?”: Preteen Girls, Identity, and Popular Music Pamela J. Tracy 610-616 “identities are enacted, that we actively communicate who we are and use media to do so, and that our media consumption is always tied to social and cultural issues.” (616) Adolescents' Expressed Meanings of Music in and out of School. Campbell, Patricia Shehan, Connell, Claire, Beegle, Amy Journal of Research in Music Education; Fall2007, Vol. 55 Issue 3, p220-236, 17p “Alan Merriam (1964) asserted that music is "a universal behavior" (p. 227), while John Blacking (1995) stated more circumspectly that "every known human society has what trained musicologists would recognize as 'music'" (p. 224). Music, a human phenomenon, is hailed as a source of personal and collective identity, a means of individual expression, a social fact (Blacking, 1987, 1995; Swanwick, 1999). Its function as a universal language is hotly contested, but its very presence within the lives of young people is inarguably common to all cultures.” (220) “Music was also found to provide adolescents with a medium through which to construct, negotiate, and modify aspects of their personal and group identities, offering them a range of strategies for knowing themselves and connecting with others (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; Tarrant, North, & Hargreaves, 2002). Simon Frith acknowledges identity formation as one of the main social functions of music (1987,p. 140), and elsewhere suggests that adolescents wear music as a "badge" — a vehicle for projecting their inner selves to the world (1981,p. 217). In the different stages of human development, including the continuous flux of childhood and adolescence, identities shift and change to adapt to new situations and experiences.” “While girls have been found to listen to popular music for its emotional benefits, boys tend to be concerned with creating and maintaining an external image for their peers through music (North, Hargreaves, & O'Neill, 2000). Frith (1981) suggested that teenage girls prefer softer music than boys and are more likely to engage with the lyrics of popular songs, particularly those dealing with romantic relationships.” Feeling the Noise: Teenagers, Bedrooms and Music Sian Lincoln Leisure Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, 399-414, October 2005 “Music has the power to transform a space, to fill it, to give it a complexity of meanings, to give it a feeling and an atmosphere.” (399) “Music for young people has a dual purpose. Consuming and producing music is both an individualised and a unifying practice. As a medium it allows them to develop individual tastes but also the plethora of musical styles and genres means that they can be accepted as part of a social group of like-minded people.” (400) “More recent research has revealed that, for everyday young people, music is highly significant and is a medium through which they are able to create ‘soundtracks’ to their lives” (401) “DeNora says ‘the soundtrack of…action [is] not merely accompaniment. It does not merely follow experience…[and is] not merely overlaid upon it’ (DeNora, 2000: p. 67).” (403) She talks of how music is ‘motivation’ for individuals (when they are getting ready to go out, for example), how music is used in the ‘reconfiguring of feelings’ (2000: p. 54) and how it bedroom are ‘zoned’ out. (403) Obviously a Western bias but it may be of some use. Think that's everything. Will look again later, time for work!
nightwolf Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 So its looking like I'll be doing an mART, a masters basically that adds onto the course as a 'final' year, luckily it seems to be funded like an ordinary year. I'm just so pissed that I'm having to do this just because my course fucked up
Mr_Odwin Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 So its looking like I'll be doing an mART, a masters basically that adds onto the course as a 'final' year, luckily it seems to be funded like an ordinary year. I'm just so pissed that I'm having to do this just because my course fucked up Why do you have to do it? (It's common to register maths students for MMath, just because it is a slightly nicer qualification.)
nightwolf Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 Surely doing the Masters is a good thing? Doing a master is yes, but having to do a masters because you didn't really learn anything on the course before is the bad part. :p
Dan_Dare Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 Doing a master is yes, but having to do a masters because you didn't really learn anything on the course before is the bad part. :p What are you trying to say about English degrees?
Mr_Odwin Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 Doing a master is yes, but having to do a masters because you didn't really learn anything on the course before is the bad part. :p Maybe time to change uni before a masters? Why stick with the place that has disappointed so far? (And a postgrad masters is looked upon more favourably than an undergrad one.)
nightwolf Posted March 16, 2010 Posted March 16, 2010 Maybe time to change uni before a masters? Why stick with the place that has disappointed so far? (And a postgrad masters is looked upon more favourably than an undergrad one.) Something I've been considering, but I've taken a look at the mART in practise and its incredibly good. The masters has been running for 10 years whereas my course is now in its third year. Unfortunetly if I changed unis and did a full masters it would be completely unfunded by the student loan company, whereas an mART will be funded like a normal year. Its just something thats been irratating me, not so much the money, but mostly the extra time when I had hoped to finish my education in 2011.
MoogleViper Posted April 19, 2010 Posted April 19, 2010 Does anybody know when the deadline for student finance is?
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