CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Media in Spaces of Consumption Sessions

Organiser: Karin Becker

Media in Spaces of Consumption: Transnational Practices - Histories and Images

Chen, Kuan-Hsing (Center for Asia-Pacific/Cultural Studies, Taiwan) MEDIA SPACE AND THE FORMATION OF SOCIETY OF CONSUMPTION
This presentation charts the historical formation of consumption society in Taipei and Seoul, where media have played a constitutive role. In these countries, rapid economic development is inseparable from the outward flow of capital and the inflow of foreign capital. Closely connected to changes in the political-economic structure, consumption society develops its own inner logic and autonomous links to different social spaces, both private and public, transforming modes of mainstream politics and influencing the self-expression of social and oppositional movements. Media space, integral to the society of consumption, has also been dialectically transformed. Previously monopolized by the authoritarian state, media have undergone rapid expansion over the past twenty years. Today we see the society of consumption as a structural condition of society, directly impacting established (cultural) production. What are its historical and political effects?

Sifaki, Eirini (University of Paris 3, CHRIME, France) MULTIPLEXES AND GREEK CINEMA GOING PRACTICES
The 7th art is considered to be the most popular cultural practice, combining a plethora of artistic expressions, technological developments and commercial activities. The growth of investment and the ongoing battle between media groups at an international level, raises many questions about cinema practice, experience, meaning, aesthetics and cultural practices in general. The Greek cinema industry constitutes a specific case study used to scrutinize the relationships between local cultural practices and transnational consumption models, between cinema as an art and as an economic medium. This paper centers on the role of multinational companies in a globalised society, focusing on cinema outlets, movie houses and in particular on the 'culture of multiplexes'. A consideration will also be made on the reasons that led to their expansion, the role they conduct and the perspectives of cinematic consumption.

Manghani, Sunil (University of Nottingham, United Kingdom) THE REAL THING! (NO) LOGOS IN EASTERN GERMANY
This paper considers the status of Western goods and brand logos in contemporary Eastern Germany, in dialogue with recent debate over the role of images in critique (cf. Simons) and critique through spectacle (cf. DeLuca). East/West German ideological struggle is characterised by a struggle over material goods and images: with the 'fall of the wall' came high expectations of 'The Real Thing!', accompanied by much dissatisfaction. The changing ideological frame in relation to goods/logos available provides a unique test case, considered against recent trends in anti-globalisation protest. East German consumerism is illustrative for image study, including questions of differential access to the 'means' (and meaning) of image production/ consumption. Circumstances allowed for a great harvest of goods and images, but left little opportunity to fashion these within existing codes.

Walkerdine, Valerie (University of Western Sydney, Australia) VIDEO GAMES AND CHILDHOOD MASCULINITY
A nine-year-old Australian boy mutters 'come to papa - hasta la vista Baby', referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator, as he defeats a foe in a video game. A father admits that playing Snake in 'Metal Gear Solid' gives him a longed-for sense of adventure in a life he describes as 'boring'. This paper explores the production of fantasies of masculinity produced for and by game-players and how those fantasies are produced in complex intertextual relations with other sites of cultural consumption: television, cinema and print media. It is argued that video game consumption relates to masculine fantasies of control and omnipotence in several ways, from strategies of hyper-rational winning, to identification with all-powerful figures. While players sometimes make direct reference to other sites of cultural production, game narratives themselves also refer implicitly to classic Hollywood narratives of masculinity, but within transformed practices of consumption.

Media in Spaces of Consumption: The Give and Take of Consumption as Production and Resistance

Ganetz, Hillevi (Linkoping University, Sweden) GIVING A BOOK, GIVING ONESELF
This paper is based on an ethnographic fieldwork in two different settings for book consumption: a library and a bookshop, both located in a shopping centre. These settings offered two distinct ways of obtaining a book: the first restricted to a couple of weeks, the loan, and the second more constant, ownership. Owning a book gives the opportunity to a specific use of books, and that is giving it as a gift. Compared to other media, books and CDs are the goods that are most frequently given away as gifts. This observation constituted the foundation for a cyber-ethnographic study on Internet where 27 "book-worms", active on a list where books are discussed, answered questions about why it is important to own books and, above all, why they give books as gifts. Gift giving turned out to be a complicated process. An analysis was made of the most important factors in this process, including price, form, genre, occasion and the kind of relation between the donor and the receiver. Theoretical elements from Marcel Mauss and others were used to understand book gifts as symbols of different kinds of intimate and/or social relationships.

Toomere, Tuuli (Institute for International and Social Studies, Estonia) PERSONAL SUCCESS STORIES IN ESTONIAN PRESS
As several changes have taken place in Estonian society during recent decades, learning to cope with them as a winner is vital. In order to discover the full range of workable discourses about success, data sources were chosen that have as broad a range of audiences as possible. The paper is based on content analysis of portrait stories in Estonian newspapers and magazines in 2001. Success stories are analysed from the perspectives of what counts as success for diverse groups, which are the viable ways to achieve success, which objects, possessions and experiences are associated with success, what kind of groups are set against each other as successful and unsuccessful in the articles. It is concluded that different newspapers and magazines present different sides of personal success stories indeed, although some overlaps occur.

Bäckström, Åsa (Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden) SKATEBOARDERS CHALLENGING THE SPORTS MARKET
Sports and media has been described as the "happiest of marriages" with reference to the loyal audience among other things. Consumption must be seen as the knot tying these two phenomena together.
Within skateboard and snowboard culture videos and magazines are crucial for marketing the "feeling" of riding. Apart from marketing the essential sense of board riding, the media also promote riders and brands, as well as skateboarding and snowboarding per se. But large brands do not necessarily have large credibility. This paper investigates the way core brands tightly connected to the skateboard and snowboard scene challenge multinational sports brands through the use of unity and community among riders. In this process of resistance the community of skateboarders and snowboarders also take control over media production. Videos and magazines are produced with, for and by themselves. Here the fantasy of the true essence of skateboarding and snowboarding is reproduced.

Van Bauwel, Sofie (Ghent University, Belgium) RESISTANCE THROUGH CONSUMERISM? A RECEPTION STUDY OF GENDER BENDERS AMONG YOUNG CONSUMERS
In our current western society, gender bending is an increasingly popular articulation of politics by manipulating images of men and women in order to question dichotomous gender representations. Both within contemporary academic and social discourses gender benders are situated at the margins. In both discourses gender bending is read as set of subversive practices, perceiving the bending of gender as an act of resistance with the aim of re-ordering and re-conceptualising gender as a fluid concept. The transgression of gender boundaries has been evaluated in cultural studies academic readings as preferably resistance through pleasure. Meanwhile gender benders came out of the margins and are now commodified as mainstream and accepted within popular culture. Through commodification the 'resistance' was absorbed and incorporated into consumer capitalism. More specifically, I will use a reception study of popular culture amongst young consumers: do they read the bending of genders as resistance through pleasure?