Mehita Iqani – författare

Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding.

Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality.

Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on the idea of a luxurious global “Africanicity” and on the complex cultural politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.

Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding.

Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality.

Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on the idea of a luxurious global “Africanicity” and on the complex cultural politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.

This book offers a collection of scholarly writing on the meanings of happiness in relation to consumption.

The concept of happiness in relation to consumption deserves critical attention. While administrative marketing scholars might take for granted the notion that consumption and brand engagement produces positive affects in consumers, such as enjoyment and thrill, more analysis and theoretical exploration are needed to shed light on what that satisfaction and pleasure means in the context of an increasingly unjust and unequal world. This question is particularly pressing in terms of exploring consumer cultures in the global south. The chapters in this volume explore how material practices link to structures of power and exploitation. Taken together, they offer nuanced insight into what notions of a good and fulfilling life mean both to individual consumers and to the societies in which they participate, especially when those societies are characterised by inequality and poverty alongside wealth and elite consumption. This collection places the spotlight on consumption practices, that is, the various forms of social action including communication and marketing that are implemented in everyday life, in relation to the market economy, with and through it.

This book will be of great value to students and scholars who are interested in the everyday practices of consumption within a range of fields such as business and management, sociology, media and cultural studies. The chapters in this book were originally published in Consumption Markets & Culture.

This book offers a collection of scholarly writing on the meanings of happiness in relation to consumption.

The concept of happiness in relation to consumption deserves critical attention. While administrative marketing scholars might take for granted the notion that consumption and brand engagement produces positive affects in consumers, such as enjoyment and thrill, more analysis and theoretical exploration are needed to shed light on what that satisfaction and pleasure means in the context of an increasingly unjust and unequal world. This question is particularly pressing in terms of exploring consumer cultures in the global south. The chapters in this volume explore how material practices link to structures of power and exploitation. Taken together, they offer nuanced insight into what notions of a good and fulfilling life mean both to individual consumers and to the societies in which they participate, especially when those societies are characterised by inequality and poverty alongside wealth and elite consumption. This collection places the spotlight on consumption practices, that is, the various forms of social action including communication and marketing that are implemented in everyday life, in relation to the market economy, with and through it.

This book will be of great value to students and scholars who are interested in the everyday practices of consumption within a range of fields such as business and management, sociology, media and cultural studies. The chapters in this book were originally published in Consumption Markets & Culture.

This book is the first of its kind to bring together a collection of critical scholarly work on consumer culture in South Africa, exploring the cultural, political, economic, and social aspects of consumption in post-Apartheid society.

From sushi and Japanese diplomacy to Queen Sophie’s writhing gown, from middle class Sowetan golfers to an indebted working class citizenry, from wedding websites to wedding nostalgia, from the liberation of consuming to the low wage labour of selling, the chapters in this book demonstrate a variety of themes, showing that to start with consumption, rather than ending with it, allows for new insights into long-standing areas of social research. By mapping, exploring and theorizing the diverse aspects of consumption and consumer culture, the volume collectively works towards a fresh set of empirically rooted conceptual commentaries on the politics, economics, and social dynamics of modern South Africa. This effort, in turn, can serve as a foundation for thinking less parochially about neoliberal power and consumer culture.

On a global scale, studying consumption in South Africa matters because in some ways the country serves as a microcosm for global patterns of income inequality, race-based economic oppression, and hopes for the material betterment of life. By exploring what consumption means on the ‘local’ scale in South Africa, the possibility arises to trace new global links and dissonances. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts.

This book is the first of its kind to bring together a collection of critical scholarly work on consumer culture in South Africa, exploring the cultural, political, economic, and social aspects of consumption in post-Apartheid society.

From sushi and Japanese diplomacy to Queen Sophie’s writhing gown, from middle class Sowetan golfers to an indebted working class citizenry, from wedding websites to wedding nostalgia, from the liberation of consuming to the low wage labour of selling, the chapters in this book demonstrate a variety of themes, showing that to start with consumption, rather than ending with it, allows for new insights into long-standing areas of social research. By mapping, exploring and theorizing the diverse aspects of consumption and consumer culture, the volume collectively works towards a fresh set of empirically rooted conceptual commentaries on the politics, economics, and social dynamics of modern South Africa. This effort, in turn, can serve as a foundation for thinking less parochially about neoliberal power and consumer culture.

On a global scale, studying consumption in South Africa matters because in some ways the country serves as a microcosm for global patterns of income inequality, race-based economic oppression, and hopes for the material betterment of life. By exploring what consumption means on the ‘local’ scale in South Africa, the possibility arises to trace new global links and dissonances. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts.

The practice and theory of science communication can take many forms. One of them, which this volume represents, explores what forms of knowledge might be constructed when creative writing encounters science. Working outwards from a theoretical framework that sees the sciences as discourses constructed by human endeavour through forms of language and practices of authority, this collection offers writing that emerged from a scientific encounter. It explores the relationship between creativity and scientific experiment, between the languages deployed by scientists in their experiments and analyses and the languages forged by creatives in their ongoing efforts to understand the human condition.

Fic Sci 01 brought eleven creative writers together with a biomechanical engineer. The presented science invited creative enquiry into different aspects of flow, that physical property that is so central to research in fluid mechanics. This anthology collects the results of that encounter.