Possibilities – serie

This book provides a rhetorical analysis of some key legal situations that illustrate some of the problematics of colonial and neocolonial situations. A series of case studies from several continents is used to illustrate how colonial rules and regulations have been «co-produced» by elites and subalterns. This book looks at how both material and symbolic resources have been mobilized at key historical moments to justify the appropriation of land, mineral wealth, labor, and even genetic resources. These key colonial histories continue to influence many of the economic, political, social, and legal relationships that exist between «developed» and «underdeveloped» countries.

Based on a two-year critical ethnography, Performing Purity: Whiteness, Pedagogy, and the Reconstitution of Power demonstrates the potential of a performative conceptualization of whiteness – a way of seeing whiteness in production, in the process of reiteration. This book builds on prior studies by searching for the repetitions of whiteness in our daily communication. The move to the performative is an explicit detailing of whiteness in and through the repetitious acts that work to reconstitute whiteness as a communicative ideal. Performing Purity creates a critical space of dialogue, shifting the conversation to how we make race, as a construct, matter.

Casting Gender puts forward a vision of theatre, storytelling, and the performance of the everyday function within the lived spaces of its performers and audiences, asking how women artists/scholars embody meaning, carry social value, and constitute possible identities. Drawing on scholarship in intercultural communication, performance studies, women’s studies, and cultural studies, this collection of new, critically informed research advances our understanding of how theater works as intercultural communication and as a vehicle for change. Casting Gender offers varied locations and sites of research, highlighting the rich diversity of women’s cultural identities, roles, and societal positions. This book moves beyond the western-centered nature of intercultural performance and intercultural communication theory and practice by creating a forum for nonwestern voices.

In the last fifty years, Korea has transformed itself from an agrarian, Confucian-based culture into a global and technological powerhouse, and one of the most important political and economic forces in the world. Based on previous research and face-to-face interviews, the book shows how contemporary Koreans negotiate traditional Confucian values and Western capitalistic values in their everyday encounters – particularly in business and professional contexts. This is a useful companion book for courses in international business, intercultural communication, and Asian studies.

In the last fifty years, Korea has transformed itself from an agrarian, Confucian-based culture into a global and technological powerhouse, and one of the most important political and economic forces in the world. Based on previous research and face-to-face interviews, the book shows how contemporary Koreans negotiate traditional Confucian values and Western capitalistic values in their everyday encounters – particularly in business and professional contexts. This is a useful companion book for courses in international business, intercultural communication, and Asian studies.

This book investigates the experiences of a Chinese and Taiwanese community on the U.S.-Mexico border from a critical communication perspective. Based on ethnographic material from El Paso/Juárez, the book critically explores the processes of identity-crafting in accordance with the global geopolitical landscape. By examining the everyday communications within a group of transnational travelers and dwellers in between boundaries, the book illustrates how cultural practices and identities are strategically accomplished through communication. In tracing the forces behind these transnational movements and understanding the multiple worlds of travelers and dwellers, Culturing Interface brings to light the previously unheard voices of the Chinese people on the U.S.-Mexico border.

This volume occasions a dialogue between major authors in the field who engage in a conversation on cosmopolitanism and provinciality from a communication ethics perspective. There is no consensus on what constitutes communication ethics, cosmopolitanism, or provinciality: the task is more modest and diverse and began with contributors being asked what the bias of their work suggests or offers for understanding the theme Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitanism and Provinciality. Rather than responding authoritatively, each essay acknowledges the contributor’s own work. This book offers no answers, but invites a conversation that is more akin to a beginning, a joining, an admission that there is more than «me», «us», or «my kind» of people, theory, or wisdom. The book will be an excellent resource for instructors and for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in communication.

This volume occasions a dialogue between major authors in the field who engage in a conversation on cosmopolitanism and provinciality from a communication ethics perspective. There is no consensus on what constitutes communication ethics, cosmopolitanism, or provinciality: the task is more modest and diverse and began with contributors being asked what the bias of their work suggests or offers for understanding the theme Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitanism and Provinciality. Rather than responding authoritatively, each essay acknowledges the contributor’s own work. This book offers no answers, but invites a conversation that is more akin to a beginning, a joining, an admission that there is more than «me», «us», or «my kind» of people, theory, or wisdom. The book will be an excellent resource for instructors and for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in communication.

There is increasing awareness of the development of newer «smart» and more interactive media, at precipitate speed, in many parts of the world. The concept of change-as opposed to continuity-is central to the increasing interest in digital media. However, this focus has not yet been matched by substantive theoretical discussions, or by extensive empirical examinations of computer-mediated communication and intercultural communication. Against such a backdrop, this volume offers theoretical insights, fresh evidence and rich applications as it assesses the nature of digital culture(s) in order to address assumptions about the present state of mediated global society(ies) and their future trajectory. Chapters explore what happens in praxis when digital media are implemented across cultures and are contested and negotiated within complex local and political conditions. The book showcases interpretative and critical research from voices with diverse backgrounds, from locations around the world. As such, this volume presents a rich and colorful tapestry that provides opportunities for comparative analyses and deepened international understandings of digital media connections, particularly in the areas of identity, community and politics.

There is increasing awareness of the development of newer «smart» and more interactive media, at precipitate speed, in many parts of the world. The concept of change-as opposed to continuity-is central to the increasing interest in digital media. However, this focus has not yet been matched by substantive theoretical discussions, or by extensive empirical examinations of computer-mediated communication and intercultural communication. Against such a backdrop, this volume offers theoretical insights, fresh evidence and rich applications as it assesses the nature of digital culture(s) in order to address assumptions about the present state of mediated global society(ies) and their future trajectory. Chapters explore what happens in praxis when digital media are implemented across cultures and are contested and negotiated within complex local and political conditions. The book showcases interpretative and critical research from voices with diverse backgrounds, from locations around the world. As such, this volume presents a rich and colorful tapestry that provides opportunities for comparative analyses and deepened international understandings of digital media connections, particularly in the areas of identity, community and politics.

Although community engagement to enhance justice, equity, and inclusion is at the heart of this book, dancing with difference is the overarching metaphor. It is used to explain diverse relations between contexts, institutions, structures, community organizations, and groups, and the diverse relationships between organizational representatives and community members.It is these dances with difference through which groups and individuals deal with contextual forces, negotiate cultural identities, subjectivities, and positioning, and orient themselves toward their work.Featuring case studies of several international, national, and local organizations, the book showcases both first-hand and public discourses related to community engagement work from Nepal and Northern Ireland to Kenya, Zimbabwe, and the U.S.A framework of critical/interpretive intercultural praxis is offered to guide research and practice across the case studies. It is designed to benefit scholars, students, and practitioners who work in community-based settings by presenting a relevant and applicable guide for entering into community engagement.

Uniting communication and postcolonial studies, this volume historically situates seminal essays in the field alongside new essays that aim to answer the question: «How, if at all, might communication scholars extend, or even renew, the postcolonial dialogue?» Beginning with the premise that in the field of communication studies, postcolonial theory has declined in the wake of globalization, the primary goal of this collection is to provide space for a variety of scholars – who often do not share the same impressions of the contemporary moment – to provoke discussion and debate geared toward understanding the strengths and limitations between these two interdisciplinary fields of study. In so doing, the collection highlights themes, trends, and conflicts that appear in the scholarship produced with postcolonial communication studies.

Intercultural Communication as a Clash of Civilizations argues that Al-Jazeera is not an agent of globalization, as is widely argued, but a tool used by the Qatari government to advance its political as well as Islamist goals. This book also maps the Western tendency to reject the network outright despite Al-Jazeera’s billion-dollar investments designed to gain entrance into Western markets; it shows empirically that this rejection is similarly rooted in religious, cultural and national motives. This book asserts that the main outcome of Al-Jazeera’s activities is the promotion of religious and cultural conflicts. The network persistently portrays global events through the prism of conflicting religious and cultural values – propelling a clash of civilizations as per Samuel P. Huntington’s well-known thesis.

Intercultural Communication as a Clash of Civilizations argues that Al-Jazeera is not an agent of globalization, as is widely argued, but a tool used by the Qatari government to advance its political as well as Islamist goals. This book also maps the Western tendency to reject the network outright despite Al-Jazeera’s billion-dollar investments designed to gain entrance into Western markets; it shows empirically that this rejection is similarly rooted in religious, cultural and national motives. This book asserts that the main outcome of Al-Jazeera’s activities is the promotion of religious and cultural conflicts. The network persistently portrays global events through the prism of conflicting religious and cultural values – propelling a clash of civilizations as per Samuel P. Huntington’s well-known thesis.

The stories that are told about the death of Osama bin Laden are interculturally significant as a reminder of the many culturally contested junctures, fissures, and ruptures that circulate in the «true» stories that are told about Operation Neptune’s Spear. This book’s critical intercultural approach investigates what U.S. and international audiences were saying about other cultures while they wrote and talked about the bin Laden raid.The book explains why so many elite and public cultural communities have a vested interest in telling the story of «what happened» during the famous raid. The authors argue that these mediated debates have become inextricably entangled in political, military, cultural, and legal rhetorics of «American exceptionalism», where various U.S. and international audiences defend or attack particular interpretations of the raid and comment on the unique values and characteristics of America’s Way of War. This important book gives readers a sense of what these exceptionalist rhetorics look like when they circulate in different cultural and military contexts.

From brutal Nazi killers to Hanukkah heroes in the ’hood, tough Jews refute images of doomed Holocaust victims, wandering Jews of exile before them, and the post-war ‘nice Jewish boys’ who followed. They foster belligerent responses to polemics of fear and self-hatred, and as such, materialize as a challenge for postmodern cultural identity. A Culture of Tough Jews reframes the tough Jew as an enduring act of rhetorical regeneration by reifying a related figure, the vital Jew. As corrective to the tough Jew, the vital Jew encourages robust cultural production and dialogue. For audiences of rhetoric and cultural studies, the book offers critical and theoretical study of rhetorical regeneration, including original constructs of postmodern blackface and transformative performativity, as a resource for contemporary rhetorical invention. It also constitutes a case study for the postmodern critique of identity by invoking concerns of (post)assimilation, gender and power, and the social construction of race, ethnicity, class, and power to advance conversations on fractious cultural exigencies. A Culture of Tough Jews is a spirited call for postmodern cultural vitality that responds to contemporary politics of identity and memory.

The first national recognition of disparities in access to information technologies – a digital divide – surfaced in a 1995 report by The National Telecommunication and Information Administration. Despite efforts to close the gap and promote digital inclusion, statistical data over the course of nearly 20 years indicate a significant disparity remains in poor and minority communities. In this accessible yet scholarly work, Joy Pierce illustrates the need to examine the societal status of information technologies at the micro level. Digital Fusion is a sustained and integrated project that combines more than a decade of community participatory research in two regions of the United States. Using qualitative research methods and drawing from critical cultural studies and social theory, Digital Fusion is an interdisciplinary project that engages digital literacy and social justice issues related to race, ethnicity, language, class, and education. Thought-provoking, multi-vocal, and multi-lingual narratives from racial and ethnic minorities as well as institutional administrators lay the groundwork for potential policy implications and digital infrastructure and design. Digital Fusion illuminates the complexities of digital access and use at the micro-level and offers a participatory project that seeks to co-create a digital space; one that speaks to the specific cultural, linguistic, and social needs of underrepresented communities.

Beginning in the 1990s large numbers of women from Mainland China and Southeast Asia married men in Taiwan. They now number over 400,000, warranting some to call them «Taiwan’s Fifth Ethnic Group». This book argues that the rise of these marriages is a gendered and relational phenomenon, linked to the forces of globalization. Traditional ideas of marriage, such as the belief that a woman «marries out» of her natal family to be dependent upon her husband and his family, and the idea that a man should «marry down» to a woman of a lesser social and economic status, have not kept pace with changes in women’s educational and career opportunities. How these relationships are formed, how they impact gendered understandings of women and men, how families are constituted and relationships developed, and how they affect the children of these families and their education, are the issues explored in this book. It breaks new ground in our understanding of transnational and cross-border marriages by looking at the long-term effects of such marriages on communities, families, and individuals.

This book is an edited collection of case studies of contemporary issues in culture and communication around the world. Framed around a dialectical approach to intercultural communication, this collection offers a useful framework for thinking about contemporary research in this area. It offers in-depth cultural information about a broad range of specific cases in different places around the world. It is an ideal book to use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in culture and communication, global communication and intercultural communication courses. Scholars interested in contemporary work in intercultural communication will find this collection essential in mapping the state of the art in this area.

This book is an edited collection of case studies of contemporary issues in culture and communication around the world. Framed around a dialectical approach to intercultural communication, this collection offers a useful framework for thinking about contemporary research in this area. It offers in-depth cultural information about a broad range of specific cases in different places around the world. It is an ideal book to use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in culture and communication, global communication and intercultural communication courses. Scholars interested in contemporary work in intercultural communication will find this collection essential in mapping the state of the art in this area.

Collective remembering is an important way that communities name and make sense of the past. Places and stories about the past influence how communities remember the past, how they try to preserve it, or in some cases how they try to erase it. The research in this book offers key insights into how places and memories intersect with intercultural conflicts, oppressions, and struggles by which communities make sense of, deal with, and reconcile the past. The authors in this book examine fascinating stories from important sites—such as international commemorations of Korean “Comfort Women,” a film representation of the Stonewall Riots, and remembrances of the post-communist state in Albania. By utilizing various critical and cultural studies and ethnographic and narrative-based methods, each chapter examines cultural memory in intercultural encounters, everyday experiences, and identity performances that evoke collective memories of colonial pasts, immigration processes, and memories of places and spaces that are shaped by power structures and clashing ideologies. This book is essential reading for understanding the links between space/place and cultural memory, memories of nationally, and places constituted by markers of ethnicity, race, and sexuality. These readings are especially useful in courses in intercultural communication, cultural studies, international studies, and peace and conflict studies.

Collective remembering is an important way that communities name and make sense of the past. Places and stories about the past influence how communities remember the past, how they try to preserve it, or in some cases how they try to erase it. The research in this book offers key insights into how places and memories intersect with intercultural conflicts, oppressions, and struggles by which communities make sense of, deal with, and reconcile the past. The authors in this book examine fascinating stories from important sites—such as international commemorations of Korean “Comfort Women,” a film representation of the Stonewall Riots, and remembrances of the post-communist state in Albania. By utilizing various critical and cultural studies and ethnographic and narrative-based methods, each chapter examines cultural memory in intercultural encounters, everyday experiences, and identity performances that evoke collective memories of colonial pasts, immigration processes, and memories of places and spaces that are shaped by power structures and clashing ideologies. This book is essential reading for understanding the links between space/place and cultural memory, memories of nationally, and places constituted by markers of ethnicity, race, and sexuality. These readings are especially useful in courses in intercultural communication, cultural studies, international studies, and peace and conflict studies.

This book articulates Jotería Communication Studies as a subdiscipline and as a praxis for resisting multiple forms of oppression by focusing on how everyday performances of identity and culture challenge master narratives of power and control. Although this book is for scholars, artists, and practitioners from communication studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, cultural studies, or even, Latinx and Chicanx studies in education, sociology, history, literature, media, arts, and humanities, this book speaks to and with those nonheteronormative mestizas/os who perform their sexuality and gender in queer practices and communicative forms—Jotería. As a methodological intervention into the study of marginalized and subaltern communities, this book provides research on Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning (GBTQ) Chicano and Latino communities from specific geographic regions of the U.S. Southwest. Utilizing multiple methods, this book provides a cultural map or political snapshot of a particular time and place from a particular point of view or location and generates knowledge that highlights reflexivity, cultural/queer nuances, and decolonial acts of resistance. Specifically, this book locates “theories in the flesh” in the borderlands narratives of Jotería, such as cuentos, pláticas, chismé, testimonio, mitos, and consejos. These theories of power and resistance create knowledge about how Jotería make sense of their own difference, how people interpret their assumed or perceived difference, and ultimately, how difference is managed as an emancipatory tool toward the goal of queer of color world making.

This book articulates Jotería Communication Studies as a subdiscipline and as a praxis for resisting multiple forms of oppression by focusing on how everyday performances of identity and culture challenge master narratives of power and control. Although this book is for scholars, artists, and practitioners from communication studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, cultural studies, or even, Latinx and Chicanx studies in education, sociology, history, literature, media, arts, and humanities, this book speaks to and with those nonheteronormative mestizas/os who perform their sexuality and gender in queer practices and communicative forms—Jotería. As a methodological intervention into the study of marginalized and subaltern communities, this book provides research on Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning (GBTQ) Chicano and Latino communities from specific geographic regions of the U.S. Southwest. Utilizing multiple methods, this book provides a cultural map or political snapshot of a particular time and place from a particular point of view or location and generates knowledge that highlights reflexivity, cultural/queer nuances, and decolonial acts of resistance. Specifically, this book locates “theories in the flesh” in the borderlands narratives of Jotería, such as cuentos, pláticas, chismé, testimonio, mitos, and consejos. These theories of power and resistance create knowledge about how Jotería make sense of their own difference, how people interpret their assumed or perceived difference, and ultimately, how difference is managed as an emancipatory tool toward the goal of queer of color world making.

This book challenges white and Western feminist approaches to embodied politics, or the use of the body in everyday enactments of resistance, while mapping transgressive performances of femininities by the funkeiras, marginalized women and transfeminine people of color artists in Brazilian favela funk. Often studied from a white feminist perspective, embodied politics reflects debates about agency and structural change that are generally applicable to white women in the West. Concurrently, studies of femininity tend to universalize experiences of gender oppression encountered by white women to women across the globe. In this work, the author offers a transnational perspective on the performative force of embodied politics as a possible means to disrupt white, classist heteropatriarchal structures that oppress particularly poor women and transfeminine people of color in Brazil. This project has a threefold goal: first, it challenges the theoretical shortcomings of white feminist approaches to embodied politics, providing instead a transfeminista take on the concept. Secondly, this project aims to shed light on how traditional methodological approaches have hindered nuanced understandings of women and people of color and their performances. Third and finally, by challenging and re-envisioning the potential of embodied politics from a transnational perspective, the text intends to contribute to the field of critical intercultural communication’s growing but still limited research around bodies and performance, especially of those who are marginalized in global contexts. Winner of the 2021 Bonnie Ritter Book Award, Feminist and Gender Studies Division, National Communication Association; the 2022 Distinguished Scholarship Award for the Best Book, International and Intercultural Communication Division; and the 2023 Innovator Award for Most Outstanding Book, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Caucus, Central States Communication Association.

This book challenges white and Western feminist approaches to embodied politics, or the use of the body in everyday enactments of resistance, while mapping transgressive performances of femininities by the funkeiras, marginalized women and transfeminine people of color artists in Brazilian favela funk. Often studied from a white feminist perspective, embodied politics reflects debates about agency and structural change that are generally applicable to white women in the West. Concurrently, studies of femininity tend to universalize experiences of gender oppression encountered by white women to women across the globe. In this work, the author offers a transnational perspective on the performative force of embodied politics as a possible means to disrupt white, classist heteropatriarchal structures that oppress particularly poor women and transfeminine people of color in Brazil. This project has a threefold goal: first, it challenges the theoretical shortcomings of white feminist approaches to embodied politics, providing instead a transfeminista take on the concept. Secondly, this project aims to shed light on how traditional methodological approaches have hindered nuanced understandings of women and people of color and their performances. Third and finally, by challenging and re-envisioning the potential of embodied politics from a transnational perspective, the text intends to contribute to the field of critical intercultural communication’s growing but still limited research around bodies and performance, especially of those who are marginalized in global contexts. Winner of the 2021 Bonnie Ritter Book Award, Feminist and Gender Studies Division, National Communication Association; the 2022 Distinguished Scholarship Award for the Best Book, International and Intercultural Communication Division; and the 2023 Innovator Award for Most Outstanding Book, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Caucus, Central States Communication Association.

This book situates migrating individuals’ sense of Otherness in receiving countries front and center and systematically illustrates the configuration of Western migrants’ Other-identity during their reverse migration from the West to China, which has become a new destination of international migration due to its rise to prominence in the global labor market. Consequently, international migrants from Western countries, especially those with skills desired in China, have become this country’s main target in the global race for talent. In this context, this book attends to American migrants on the Chinese mainland, who are perceived as the prototypical waiguoren in this region, as an illuminating case, and illustrates the configuration of their Other-identity, rising from their intercultural adaptation as the privileged but marginalized Other in an asymmetric power structure. This book also attempts to reveal the condition and process of Chinese Othering of American migrants that exists but is far less openly discussed in China.

Asians Loving Asians: Sticky Rice Homoeroticism and Queer Politics examines media representations and everyday interpersonal intercultural negotiations of vernacular discourses around sticky rice—an "Asian" man building sexual and romantic relationships with other "Asian" men. Specifically, Eguchi interrogates the following elements of sticky rice: the way sticky rice recycles, rethinks, and shifts the settler colonialist logics of whiteness that sustain ongoing histories of anti-Asian racism; the way sticky rice resists and reifies the mundane operation and execution of whiteness that organizes gay sexual cultures; the way sticky rice reproduces, reconstitutes, and challenges intra-regional political rivalries, economic hierarchies, and historical tensions in and across Asia and Asian diasporas; and the way sticky rice suggests alternative mappings of queer sex, desire, intimacy, and relationality. By taking further steps to unpack the complexities and contradictions of sticky rice as a gay vernacular, Eguchi offers an additional and alternative space to question and critique "Asians loving Asians." Asians Loving Asians: Sticky Rice Homoeroticism and Queer Politics will be of interest to academic audiences coming from various disciplines such as communication, cultural studies, critical race and ethnic studies, Asian and Asian American studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, sociology, and more. Winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award, Asian Pacific American Communication Studies Division, National Communication Association and the 2023 Book of the Year Award, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Communication Studies Division, National Communication Association.

Asians Loving Asians: Sticky Rice Homoeroticism and Queer Politics examines media representations and everyday interpersonal intercultural negotiations of vernacular discourses around sticky rice—an "Asian" man building sexual and romantic relationships with other "Asian" men. Specifically, Eguchi interrogates the following elements of sticky rice: the way sticky rice recycles, rethinks, and shifts the settler colonialist logics of whiteness that sustain ongoing histories of anti-Asian racism; the way sticky rice resists and reifies the mundane operation and execution of whiteness that organizes gay sexual cultures; the way sticky rice reproduces, reconstitutes, and challenges intra-regional political rivalries, economic hierarchies, and historical tensions in and across Asia and Asian diasporas; and the way sticky rice suggests alternative mappings of queer sex, desire, intimacy, and relationality. By taking further steps to unpack the complexities and contradictions of sticky rice as a gay vernacular, Eguchi offers an additional and alternative space to question and critique "Asians loving Asians." Asians Loving Asians: Sticky Rice Homoeroticism and Queer Politics will be of interest to academic audiences coming from various disciplines such as communication, cultural studies, critical race and ethnic studies, Asian and Asian American studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, sociology, and more. Winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award, Asian Pacific American Communication Studies Division, National Communication Association and the 2023 Book of the Year Award, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Communication Studies Division, National Communication Association.