Journal articles on the topic 'Hip-hop Mass media and culture'

This article was developed on the basis of my master’s thesis on hip-hop culture as a factor shaping young people’s identity. In today’s world, young people are increasingly looking for ways to express themselves and their values, which may be associated with belonging to different types of subcultures. Growing individuals manifest their independence by disagreeing with the surrounding reality and defying the prevailing social principles. It seems appropriate to belong to a chosen youth subculture. I will devote my attention to the subculture originating among the black Americans, namely the hip-hop subculture. The rap environment is very often associated with a pejorative phenomenon, vulgarisms, blockers derived from the social margin. In today’s times, in the era of ubiquitous openness and availability of mass media, in the consumer-oriented environment, hip-hop has become a part of the lives of most young, adolescent audiences. The article will also present the development of hip-hop culture in Poland and around the world, as well as the effects that it brought in the process of shaping the identity of young people.

This article was developed on the basis of my master’s thesis on hip-hop culture as a factor shaping young people’s identity. In today’s world, young people are increasingly looking for ways to express themselves and their values, which may be associated with belonging to different types of subcultures. Growing individuals manifest their independence by disagreeing with the surrounding reality and defying the prevailing social principles. It seems appropriate to belong to a chosen youth subculture. I will devote my attention to the subculture originating among the black Americans, namely the hip-hop subculture. The rap environment is very often associated with a pejorative phenomenon, vulgarisms, blockers derived from the social margin. In today’s times, in the era of ubiquitous openness and availability of mass media, in the consumer-oriented environment, hip-hop has become a part of the lives of most young, adolescent audiences. The article will also present the development of hip-hop culture in Poland and around the world, as well as the effects that it brought in the process of shaping the identity of young people.

Programming schedules in the West End and other prominent London venues are increasingly featuring hip-hop dance productions, marking innovative forays into the mainstream performance field by a former subcultural style. Choreography by Rennie Harris in the USA and Jonzi D, Kate Prince, Sandy ‘H20’ Kendrick and composer Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante in London offers material through which to consider developments in the theatricalisation of hip hop culture. Discussion also centres on mass media dissemination through television talent shows, films and cultural festivals such as the Olympic Games ceremonies. Analysis of reviews by professional critics reveals how some stereotypes are disrupted as the cultural capital of hip-hop dance rises. Key themes, including the use of narrative, characterisation and the disruption of dominant gender expectations, are drawn from a Society for Dance Research Study Day on ZooNation Dance Company in 2011. *

This research describes about the growth of popular culture with one relevant example of popular culture product called music but with the specific mainstream called Hip-Hop. This era is also well known with the era of technology and the spread worldwide quickly rather than we thought. Advances in technology now moves so quickly that directly affect the lives of people in the world, for example with new innovations with all the advantages that make it as a product that is consumed and even become a role model gadget by the society such as iPod, Music, Internet, Hollywood Movies, Jeans, BlackBerry, iPhone, Music, Barbie, etc. America is a highest standard for these products then the power of mass media distribute through advertisements, songs, movies, internet, cable tv and deploy these products to the world and then consumed by society who later became part of our daily lives . These products are known as popular culture. One way to find out is the study of popular culture is through music. The music certainly can not be separated from popular culture because it is a culture that has a lot of fans around the world virtually. In this paper the author tried to theme music Hip-Hop as the study of popular cultureproducts.

A significance feature of globalization is the transaction of ideas as indicated by internet. The concern engages the clash of cultures and the spread of acquisitive values. This has enormous influence on hoe people think, act or behave. The values that this entertainment industry reflects often promote materialism, violence and immorality. Hence, this paper examines the concept of globalization and culture as well as the study of sociolinguistics. It also scans the impact of globalization on culture. Since the turn of the Millennium, globalization has become a major focus in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, investigating themes such as: learning and teaching in diverse urban classrooms (Spotti, 2011; Karrebæk, 2012) complementary education (Blackledge & Creese, 2010); internationalisation in higher education (Piller & Cho, 2013) mass media and the internet (Androutsopoulos, 2007; Varis & Wang, 2011) popular culture and advertising (Jacquemet, 2005; Kasanga, 2010) hip-hop and graffiti (Pennycook, 2007) language vitality (Vigouroux & Mufwene, 2008) travel and tourism (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010) migration and asylum seekers (Vigouroux, 2008; Dong, 2011; Maryns, 2006) the new globalised economy (Block, 2012; Heller, 2003) and long-distance financial fraud (Blommaert & Omoniyi, 2006). Papers in Coupland (2003, 2010) and such monographs as (Fairclough, 2006; Blommaert, 2010; Heller, 2011) among others, have attempted general statements outlining a sociolinguistics of globalization.

Marcus Wood; Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography (Lynn M. Festa)Michèle Praeger; The Imaginary Caribbean and Caribbean Imaginary (Celia Britton)Charles V. Carnegie; Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands (John Collins)Mervyn C. Alleyne; The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World (Charles V. Carnegy)Jerry Gershenhorn; Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge (Richard Price)Sally Cooper Coole; Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology (Olivia Maria Gomes Da Cunha)Maureen Warner Lewis; Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Robert W. Slenes)Gert Oostindie (ed.); Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe (Gad Heuman)Gert Oostindie, Inge Klinkers; Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective (Paul Sutton)Kirk Peter Meigho; Politics in a ‘Half-Made Society’: Trinidad and Tobago, 1925-2001 (Douglas Midgett)Linden Lewis (ed.); The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean (David A.B. Murray)Gertrude Aub-Buscher, Beverly Ormerod Noakes (eds.); The Francophone Caribbean Today: Literature, Language, Culture (Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw)Sally Lloyd-Evans, Robert B. Potter; Gender, Ethnicity and the Iinformal Sector in Trinidad (Katherine E. Browne)STeve Striffler, Mark Moberg (eds.); Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (Peter Clegg)Johannes Postma, Victor Enthoven (eds.); Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817 (Gert J. Oostindie)Phil Davison; Volcano in Paradise: Death and Survival on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat (Bonham C. Richardson)Ernest Zebrowski jr; The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed Thirty Thousand Lives (Bernard Moitt)Beverley A. Steele; Grenada: A History of Its People (Jay R. Mandle)Walter C. Soderlund (ed.); Mass Media and Foreign Policy: Post-Cold War Crises in the Caribbean (Jason Parker)Charlie Whitham; Bitter Rehearsal: British and American Planning for a Post-War West Indies (Jason Parker)Douglas V. Amstrong; Creole Transformation from Slavery to Freedom: Historical Archaeology of the East End Community, St. John, Virgin Islands (Karin Fog Olwig)H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen; Een koloniaal drama: De grote staking van de Marron vrachtvaarders, 1921 (Chris de Beet)Joseph F. Callo; Nelson in the Caribbean: The Hero Emerges, 1784-1787 (Carl E. Swanson)Jorge Duany; The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Juan Flores)Raquel Z. Rivera; New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (Halbert Barton)Alfonso J. García Osuna; The Cuban Filmography, 1897 through 2001 (Ann Marie Stock)Michael Aceto, Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.); Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean (Geneviève Escure)In: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (NWIG) 79 (2005), no. 1 & 2

Marcus Wood; Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography (Lynn M. Festa)Michèle Praeger; The Imaginary Caribbean and Caribbean Imaginary (Celia Britton)Charles V. Carnegie; Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands (John Collins)Mervyn C. Alleyne; The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World (Charles V. Carnegy)Jerry Gershenhorn; Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge (Richard Price)Sally Cooper Coole; Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology (Olivia Maria Gomes Da Cunha)Maureen Warner Lewis; Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Robert W. Slenes)Gert Oostindie (ed.); Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe (Gad Heuman)Gert Oostindie, Inge Klinkers; Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective (Paul Sutton)Kirk Peter Meigho; Politics in a ‘Half-Made Society’: Trinidad and Tobago, 1925-2001 (Douglas Midgett)Linden Lewis (ed.); The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean (David A.B. Murray)Gertrude Aub-Buscher, Beverly Ormerod Noakes (eds.); The Francophone Caribbean Today: Literature, Language, Culture (Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw)Sally Lloyd-Evans, Robert B. Potter; Gender, Ethnicity and the Iinformal Sector in Trinidad (Katherine E. Browne)STeve Striffler, Mark Moberg (eds.); Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas (Peter Clegg)Johannes Postma, Victor Enthoven (eds.); Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817 (Gert J. Oostindie)Phil Davison; Volcano in Paradise: Death and Survival on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat (Bonham C. Richardson)Ernest Zebrowski jr; The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed Thirty Thousand Lives (Bernard Moitt)Beverley A. Steele; Grenada: A History of Its People (Jay R. Mandle)Walter C. Soderlund (ed.); Mass Media and Foreign Policy: Post-Cold War Crises in the Caribbean (Jason Parker)Charlie Whitham; Bitter Rehearsal: British and American Planning for a Post-War West Indies (Jason Parker)Douglas V. Amstrong; Creole Transformation from Slavery to Freedom: Historical Archaeology of the East End Community, St. John, Virgin Islands (Karin Fog Olwig)H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen; Een koloniaal drama: De grote staking van de Marron vrachtvaarders, 1921 (Chris de Beet)Joseph F. Callo; Nelson in the Caribbean: The Hero Emerges, 1784-1787 (Carl E. Swanson)Jorge Duany; The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Juan Flores)Raquel Z. Rivera; New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (Halbert Barton)Alfonso J. García Osuna; The Cuban Filmography, 1897 through 2001 (Ann Marie Stock)Michael Aceto, Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.); Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean (Geneviève Escure)In: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids (NWIG) 79 (2005), no. 1 & 2

Abstract Previous research on Hip Hop Education has advocated for the inclusion of critical media literacy in schools and for the recognition of Hip Hop music and culture as a central component of young people’s literate and social identities (e.g. Hall, 2017; Kelly, 2020; McArthur, 2016). This article places critical Hip Hop literacy at the intersections of media education, social justice education, and culturally sustaining pedagogies by discussing the role of Hip Hop literature and culture as a form of text that can foster young people’s critical consciousness development in the secondary classroom. Through analysis of data collected in a high school Hip Hop Literature and Culture class, this qualitative case study examines how critical Hip Hop literacy practices can support youth sociopolitical development in racially diverse classrooms and schools. The results of this study reveal the need for schools to support students in identifying, analyzing, and challenging structures of oppression through the development of critical Hip Hop literacies.

Black masculinity in the hip-hop culture often promotes instances of homophobia, effeminophobia, and misogyny. To reify an “authentic” black masculinity, individuals within the hip-hop genre police its boundaries through discourse and behavior. This policing is evident in popular media content like songs, music videos, interviews, television shows, and film. These media depictions can, over time, cultivate the attitudes and opinions of the viewing public about homosexuals and their place within black culture, specifically in hip-hop. Through a quare lens, the study investigates how Fox’s television show Empire helps construct and maintain stereotypical representations of black gay men against the milieu of hip-hop. Empire reifies queer stereotypes and highlights conventions of black masculinity and hip-hop authenticity.

Purpose This study aims to refocus the field of Hip Hop based education on youth identities and epistemologies rather than on the tangible artifacts of Hip Hop culture. It argues that centering classroom pedagogy and curriculum on youth self-actualization best supports the critical literacy development of students grappling with social and structural inequities within an ever-evolving youth and media culture. Design/methodology/approach Building upon previous literature on critical literacy, Hip Hop pedagogy and adolescent identity formation, this paper shares data from a semester-long teacher–researcher case study of a high school Hip Hop literature and culture class to explore how young people develop critical literacies and self-actualizing practices through a critical study of youth culture. Findings For youth engaged in Hip Hop culture, co-constructing spaces to discuss their consumption of popular media and culture in class allows them to openly grapple with questions of identity, provide support for each other in dealing with these questions and reflect more critically upon their self-constructed, performed and perceived identities. Originality/value This form of English education challenges traditional notions of teaching and learning as it positions students as co-creators of curriculum and as part of the curriculum itself. Building on research that frames Hip Hop pedagogy as a culturally relevant tool for engaging urban youth, this paper argues that educators should approach critical Hip Hop literacy development as a means by which young people across diverse educational and social backgrounds come to know themselves and others as part of the process of self-actualization and critical resistance.

AbstractThis article examines the practice and recent rise in the use of various aspects of Japanese popular culture in hip hop, particularly as manifest in the work of RZA, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj. Often these references highlight the high-tech, futuristic aesthetic of much Japanese popular culture and thus resonate with concepts and practices surrounding Afro-futurism. Drawing on various theories of hybridity, this article analyses how Japanese popular culture has informed constructions of African American identity. In contrast to the often sensational media coverage of racial tensions between African American and Asian communities, the nexus of Japanese popular culture and African American hip hop evinces a sympathetic connection based on shared notions of Afro-Asian liberation and empowerment achieved, in part, through a common aesthetic of technological mastery and appropriation. The synthesis of Asian popular culture and African American hip hop represents a globally hybridised experience of identity and racial formation in the 21st century.

Jewish identity is increasingly fluid in Canada, as evidenced by new developments in Jewish culture. Klezmer music—traditionally associated with Jewish wedding celebrations—has experienced a mass revival and entry into the mainstream and has become firmly entrenched within Yiddish culture, including the emergence of new unions with genres such as hip hop. This close study of a bilingual Yiddish—English track called ‘‘Kale bazetsn’’ (Veiling the Bride) by Canadian artist DJ Socalled (a.k.a. Josh Dolgin) on his 2003 album HipHopKhasene situates it within the paradoxical state of secular Yiddish culture today: while the Yiddish language is facing global attrition, there is renewed interest in its culture among young musicians and audiences.

Street dance, one of the four most important elements of hip hop culture, was developed mainly by African American youths in the 1970s and imported to Japan in the 1980s. Since then, street dance has been diversified by local media such as manga/anime in Japan. This article therefore analyses how Japanese storytelling, exemplified by Shin’ichirō Watanabe’s anime Samurai Champloo (2004–05), Santa Inoue’s manga Tokyo Tribe-2 (1997–2005) and Tatsuo Satō’s anime adaptation Tokyo Tribes (2006–07), has transcribed the hip hop elements into the Tokugawa-Edo period’s art scenes and fictitious ‘Tōkyō’, and provides a basis for understanding hip hop culture in Japan by drawing on Charles Taylor’s ‘language of perspicuous contrast’ (1985). Although manga and anime quickly reflected popular cultural trends in Japan, hip hop elements did not manifest as main material until Tokyo Tribe-2 was released. Thus, there was apparently a prolonged interval between the arrival of hip hop culture in Japan and its representation by manga/anime after Japanese youths’ first fancied street dance. Therefore, street dance culture could have been transformed within the Japanese cultural context. This article also analyses the representation/transcription of street dance and hip hop in manga/amine by contextualizing the Japanese sociopolitical background to explain this prolonged interval.

The inherent traits of digital media have challenged traditional understandings of artistic authorship and creativity. This division in understanding can clearly be observed in the popular culture context of hip-hop music. Hip-hop initially began with analog technologies such as vinyl record players, then transitioned to predominately digital mediums. This changeover in artistic mediums has been well documented by opposing viewpoints from hip-hop artists, consumers, record companies, and lawyers. By focusing on hip-hop for critical discussion on artistic authorship and creativity, art students can engage in discussion reflecting on their own artistic and online practices, and how these behaviors are legally supported or suppressed by copyright law.

This article addresses issues that lie at the intersection of debates about language, Hip Hop Culture, and globalization. Critically synthesizing a wide range of recent work on Hip Hop and foregrounding issues of youth agency as evidenced by Hip Hop youth’s metalinguistic theorizing, the article presents an empirical account of youth as cultural theorists. Hip Hop youth are both participants and theorists of their participation in the many translocal style communities that constitute the Global Hip Hop Nation. Highlighting youth agency, the article demonstrates that youth are engaging in the agentive act of theorizing the changes in the contemporary world as they attempt to locate themselves at the intersection of the local and the global. The article concludes by calling for a linguistic anthropology of globalization characterized by ethnographic explorations of and a theoretical focus on popular culture, music, and mass-mediated language as central to an anthropological understanding of linguistic processes in a global era.

Hip hop dangdut is music identity of NDX A.K.A group. Hip hop dangdut that became popular in society also bring the pros and cons for some groups. Political identity in this research investigates background in choosing music dangdut and hip hop that integrated in NDX’s songs. Political identity used to see the factor that played a role in formation of hip hop dangdut, but not fully realized by NDX group. Political identity in formation of hip hop dangdut then analyzed in textual and contextual to answer the contestation of hip hop dangdut in postcolonial perspective. The concept postcolonial in this research is criticized dominance or the form of leadership culture (hegemony) conducted by capitalists. Hip hop dangdut formed because of the hegemony of media in popularizing hip hop that occurs massively. Contestation on hip hop dangdut identity is analyzed using the concept of mimicry and hybridity to see ‘in-between’ space or third space that can be described the position of hip hop dangdut. Negotiations between hip hop and dangdut is a form of hybridity that takes place in ambivalence, which is mimicking and mocking, and not entirely subordinated to the cultural discrimination that occurs to the strategy of globalization. The performance and NDX music that performed on stage shows the cultural identity negotiations between hip hop and dangdut that formed in the third space.

Hip-hop remains a viable method for the teaching of radical theory, emancipatory journalism and Africana Media Theory. Fight Club is an emergent model that builds from existing hip-hop traditions of freetyle battling where critical thought and intellectual challenges of hueristic norms are upended. This article argues in favor of bringing the Fight Club model into the classroom which allows for heightened student engagement and the inclusion of radical theoretical approaches to the study of mass media, communication and journalism.

This article entitled “The Use of Slang among American Youths as Related to The rise of Hip Hop Culture: A Sociolinguistics Analysis”. This research focuses on the types of slang commonly used by American youths and the influence of hip hop on slang use among American youths.This research belongs to descriptive qualitative research as a method. The subject of this research is rap song lyrics, utterances in slang in America YouTube video and Ellen Show: On Fleek Episode as well as the Urban Dictionary slangs. Then, the objects of this research are the use of slang. The researcher collected the data through the utterances in the rap song lyrics, movie and video, and also slangs in Urban Dictionary.The results of this analysis show that the type of slang used among American youths are divided into two types. They are based on use and word formation. Meanwhile the use of slang among American youths is related to the rise of hip hop culture influence which brought by some of rap song. The slang contained in rap song lyrics are spread easily by the massive consumption of social media and enlighten highly by the report of conventional media.

This article aims at understanding the Black womanhood concept through Hip-Hop song lyrics, since song lyrics are not only a part of art but also a media to express people’s feelings, education, therapy and entertainment. This article also helps the readers to understand that sexuality portrayed in Hip-Hop song lyrics stands for something and has a function because music is related to the social background, message, function, and effect generated from the artwork.The qualitative method and interdisciplinary approach are used in conducting this article, which involves the literature, history, culture, sociology, and to enhance the understanding of multi-ethnic America, especially about Black womanhood. The article starts with introduction, a discussion about African American culture in general. To produce an up to date writing, the article choses the recent popular singer, Beyonce. In finding Black womanhood concepts in Beyonce’s lyrics. One thing that also needs to be highlighted is Black women’s sexuality.The findings are about Black womanhood from Beyonce’s standpoint, such as the Black woman’s self-definition, the sisterhood, the relationship between mother and daughter, and the relationship with Black men. In addition, since it highlights the Black woman’s sexuality in Hip-Hop that is based on Beyonce’s songs, it indicates that recently Black women began to realize that they have power over their own body.Keywords: Black womanhood, sexuality, Hip-Hop music, Lyrics

In 2012, a fashion line called “Conflict of Interest NYC” (C.O.I.) released a collection of three unisex t-shirts: each one took the brand name and/or logo of a storied fashion house and imposed a set of urban and hip hop references to subvert the brand’s refined, Eurocentric connotations. This article describes the t-shirts’ function as parodies using media studies accounts of culture jamming as political practice; Linda Hutcheon’s formulation of parody as literary method; and Henry Louis Gates’s outline of Signifyin(g) in the black oral vernacular tradition. It further contextualizes the t-shirts within historical tensions between dominant fashion institutions and hip hop culture at the semiotic level of the brand logo. It then reads the t-shirt containing the name BALLINCIAGA (manipulating the Paris fashion house Balenciaga) for its intertextual and historical relations to the expressive forms and urban locations of hip hop culture. Finally, the article examines a photograph of a fashion editor wearing the BALLINCIAGA t-shirt to London Fashion Week, in October 2012, as a moment of resistance but also of fashion re-appropriating the t-shirts’ political content. Still, the t-shirts’ circulation as commodities permits for reflection on the politics of fashion and subcultures within the dominant logic of capitalism.

Abstract Despite the potential to promote critical literacy formation, academic engagement and social justice education, maker activities and maker spaces do not always support or engage historically marginalized communities. This paper chronicles a response to this problem by examining a study created to support equitable engagement with youth in an after-school workshop series over 8-weeks that focused on Hip Hop cultural practices and the simultaneous development of critical literacy and social justice perspectives. The series, open to community youth was located in the makerspace of the local public library. Within this study, project designers drew from Gutierrez and Rogoff’s concept of “repertoires of practice” and focused particularly on questions of what counts as making, and who has agency to make these decisions and how engagement with hip hop culture mediates these understandings. I consider two instances where students engaged in Hip Hop- centered generative practices (particularly beat making and graffiti writing) and analyze moments of student resistance and agency as opportunities to expand understandings of development of critical media literacy and social justice orientation. This paper foregrounds the importance of iterative analysis and design as participants develop artistic, social, and political identities over the course of the workshop. Finally, this paper explores implications for classroom learning that emerged from the work, including expression, exploration, and collaboration.

This article contributes to the study of media, religion and culture from the perspective of gender and sexuality. It argues that media and culture need to be considered as locations in which ‘other stories’ about religion, gender and sexuality are potentially being produced. It shows that various types of media and visual artefacts have different modes of ‘making’ religion. It coins ‘religion-in-the-making’ and uses this concept to focus on two cultural productions that construct/convey ‘other’ religious narratives starting from female and queer bodies: the Belgian fictional movie Le Tout Nouveau Testament and the Al Jazeera biographical documentary Hip-Hop Hijabis.

Este texto aborda as relaes existentes entre o rap e os processos educativos. Para tanto, ocupa-se da conceituao das modalidades educativas, a saber: a educao formal, no-formal e informal, pautando-se numa bibliografia nacional e estrangeira. Em razo do objeto de estudo, este trabalho se fundamenta em reflexes interdisciplinares na medida em que se constitui a partir de referenciais tericos e metodolgicos dos campos da Educao, Msica, Comunicao e Sociologia da Cultura. Tais aportes tericos contribuem na preciso conceitual e apontam para a observncia das mltiplas dimenses que o hip hop, e mais especificamente o rap, acumula enquanto fenmeno social e cultural. Ao se centrar na particularidade da educao informal, ainda mais prevalente na chamada sociedade do conhecimento ou miditica, este estudo busca contribuir no debate em torno dos processos educativos inerentes indstria cultural e aos meios de comunicao e sua significativa influncia junto ao pblico.

To end this special issue, Dr. C. Keith Harrison and Reggie Saunders connected with individuals that exist at the intersection of hip-hop culture and sport. This series of interviews begins with Jemele Hill, an American sports journalist and activist. A graduate from Michigan State University, Jemele also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Central Florida from 2012 to 2014 teaching undergraduate sport business management students practical lessons about sport media. Reggie has been an adjunct faculty member at University of Central Florida since 2015, co-teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in sport/entertainment with Harrison. Reggie follows with an interview with Bun B, one half of the Texas rap duo, UGK and currently an adjunct professor at Rice University teaching a course on religion and hip-hop. New York rapper and entrepreneur, Fat Joe weighs in briefly on the topic, and Reggie closes out by interviewing rapper and Washington DC native, IDK. IDK is known for his hit song 24, and has a notable fan in Kevin Durant, National Basketball Association superstar and fellow Washington, DC native.

With the intercultural exchanges between different countries becoming more and more frequent, the degree of cultural exchanges is gradually deepening, which brings more and more cultural security problems. As an important part of national security, cultural security is closely related to national interests. This article takes Chinese college students and social workers who just graduated as research objects, takes online comments on “hip-hop” culture and “funeral culture” as research objects, and uses literature research and empirical research methods to analyze social media comments and study the cultural security situation in China. It is concluded that online comments have a significant impact on cultural identity and cultural security, and negative online comments have a greater impact on both than positive online comments. In addition, cultural identity has a significant impact on cultural security. At the same time, the impact of cultural identity on online comments and cultural security is partly mediated. The results of this study will help to provide reference and guidance for the maintenance of cultural security.

This article examines the place of Sonic Art in the current cultural landscape. It deconstructs some of the preconceptions often associated with this field, and postulates that because work of this nature does not necessarily fit commonly recognised categories and hierarchies, it becomes effectively invisible (and therefore inaudible). While not attempting to propose a solution, the article looks at various pointers towards an alternative cultural 'placing' of sonic art; along the way looking at other genres such as hip-hop, techno and electronica, and the dichotomies of so-called 'high' and low' culture, media convergence and divergence and cultural homogenisation and fragmentation.

Popular culture integrates people in diverse settings. Individuals share ideas through materials they use, including food, dresses, movies, magazines, and holiday spots. In the past, people set for pilgrimage to holy sites; these days, they go on trekking through hills. Pilgrimages to consecrated sites have been replaced by people's journey to discotheque, fashion center and shopping complex in the modern time corporate world. What binds them together is the transformation of consciousness in line with the journey from the terrestrial to the celestial sphere. Specific human activities, including pilgrimage and business trip become popular culture when people make them significant parts of their lives. Sound and images of disco, jazz, hip-hop, and pop-rock have entered the streets and hotels equally in cities of the industrial world, from Lhasa to London, Karachi to Kathmandu, and Tokyo to New York, irrespective of their cultures and ethnic backgrounds. In today’s world of saturated media presence, images and icons of heroes and legends, motivated by commercial and popular appeal, are circulated with a greater speed, becoming simultaneously a shared mythic currency and continuity, the modern world embodiment of silk road business, and thus, crossing the East-West divide.

AbstractDrawing on branded tweets that linguistically appropriate slang, African American Language, and hip hop lyrics, this article examines how corporations rework black culture to create “corporate cool” as part of their advertising strategy on social media. We examine three processes that corporations engage in to associate themselves with “coolness” while managing levels of racial contact and proximity for their audience: 1) racially ambiguous voicing, 2) “bleaching” black bodies out of images, and 3) the forging of “racially tinged” intertextual connections. While previous scholarship has analyzed how acts of cultural and linguistic appropriation reap profit for white people and continue to stigmatize already racially marginalized groups, we describe how these seemingly innocent cultural and linguistic references harness a corporately constructed black cool to produce a sense of white comfort. We argue that white comfort is generated not only through the avoidance of overt references to racial conflict, as the term “white fragility” suggests, but also through well-worn, familiar, and comfortable reminders of racial difference and domination that are offered at a safe distance from actual black people and contexts of racial violence.

Abstract. Introduction: When treating periprosthetic joint infection with a two-stage procedure, antibiotic-impregnated spacers can be used in the interval between prosthetic removal and reimplantation. In our experience, cultures of sonicated spacers are most often negative. The objective of the study was to assess whether that sonication causes an elution of antibiotics, leading to elevated antibiotic concentrations in the sonication fluid inhibiting bacterial growth and thus causing false-negative cultures.Methods: A prospective monocentric study was performed from September 2014 to March 2016. Inclusion criteria were a two-stage procedure for prosthetic infection and agreement of the patient to participate in the study. Spacers were made of gentamicin-containing cement to which tobramycin and vancomycin were added. Antibiotic concentrations in the sonication fluid were determined by mass-spectometry (LC-MS).Results: 30 patients were identified (15 hip and 14 knee and 1 ankle arthroplasties). No cases of culture positive sonicated spacer fluid were observed in our serie. In the sonication fluid median concentrations of 13.2µg/ml, 392 µg/ml and 16.6 µg/ml were detected for vancomycin, tobramycin and gentamicin, respectively. According to the European Committee on antimicrobial susceptibility testing (EUCAST), these concentrations released from cement spacer during sonication are higher than the minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for most bacteria relevant in prosthetic joint infections.Conclusion:Spacer sonication cultures remained sterile in all of our cases. Elevated concentrations of antibiotics released during sonication could explain partly negative-cultured sonicated spacers. Indeed, the absence of antibiotic free interval during the two-stages can also contribute to false-negative spacers sonicated cultures.

AbstractDespite a recent increase in research on its sociopolitical implications, many questions regarding rap music’s influence on mass-level participation remain unanswered. We consider the possibility that “imagining a better world” (measured here as the degree to which young African Americans are critical of the music’s negative messages) can correlate with a desire to “build a better world” (operationalized as an individual’s level of political participation). Evidence from the Black Youth Project (BYP)’s Youth Culture Survey (Cohen 2005) demonstrates that rap critique exerts a conditional impact on non-voting forms of activism. Rap critique enhances heavy consumers’ civic engagement, but this relationship does not occur among Blacks who consume the music infrequently. By demonstrating rap’s politicizing power and contradicting certain criticisms of Hip Hop culture, our research celebrates the possibilities of Black youth and Black music.

Background Across the United States, the incidence of adolescent depression and suicide cases has risen in the past 10 years. Despite the risk factors and causes being multifactorial, the influence of popular culture on society and adolescents in this media-driven generation cannot be mitigated. Although the impact of social media and its effect on shaping self-identity in adolescents have been observed, the impact of music and its potential for subliminal negative messages to adolescents remains unclear. Objective This study analyzes the lyrics and music videos of the most popular music of multiple genres to quantify the frequencies of varying music theme trends. Methods The frequencies of themes of 1052 total American and Latin songs were collected from the Nielsen Music and Billboard’s top 100 chart performance from 1998 to 2018 for hip hop/rhythm and blues (R&B), pop, Latin, country, and rock/metal genres. Themes from songs were identified, quantified, and categorized with a rubric into negative, neutral, and positive themes by 3 different reviewers. Analysis was performed using 2-tailed t tests and a generalized linear model. Results Popular songs were reviewed for positive, negative, and neutral themes in the following 3-year intervals for ease of analysis purposes: 1998 to 2000 (n=148), 2001 to 2003 (n=150), 2004 to 2006 (n=148), 2007 to 2009 (n=156), 2010 to 2012 (n= 150), 2013 to 2015 (n=150), and 2016 to 2018 (n=150). There was a significant 180% increase in the percentage of songs with negative themes between all the interval years and across all genres (P<.001), while there was no significant difference in the frequency of songs with positive (P=.54) or neutral (P=.26) themes by year. There were significant differences in the number of negative themes found across genres (P<.001), with hip hop/R&B having the highest frequency of 130 out of 208 (62.5%) of the negative themes when compared to each of the individual genres (P<.001). Conclusions This study shows there is an increase in the frequency of negative themes over the span of 20 years across all genres, with hip hop/R&B having the highest frequency among the genres. These findings point to the potential impact that music may have in popular culture and on society. Furthermore, these results can help shape discussions between caregivers and their adolescent dependents and between primary care providers and their adolescent patients.

Focusing on a YouTube performance by an emergent Finnish Somali rapper and the audience responses it has generated, this paper looks at ways in which rap music engages with the issue of belonging. Drawing on recent theorizations of belonging as a multi-dimensional, contingent and fluid process, along with sociolinguistic work on globalization and superdiversity, Finnish hip hop culture and popular cultural practices in social media, the paper investigates how belonging is performatively and multi-semiotically interrogated in its online context. It shows how rap can serve as a significant site and channel for new voices in turbulent social settings characterized by rapid social change and complex diversity, as well as provide affordances for critical responses to and interventions into xenophobic and nationalist debates and discourses of belonging.

Hip hop culture in Greece – and especially rap music – seems to be going through a period of bloom. Since 2010, a new generation of Greek-based non-commercial rap artists has surged in popularity, making rhymes and tunes about their everyday experiences (drugs, sex, nightlife, violence, poverty), while self-producing their records and maintaining a critical stance towards mainstream culture and media. In the lyrics of most artists of the genre, misogynist and homophobic assumptions are frequently reproduced, despite the rappers’ expressed militancy against all forms of authority. The article examines this dissonance – created when sexist language is employed in critiques against power – and traces the intersections of gender, sexuality and political resistance within contemporary non-commercial rap in Greece. The authors focus on the produced masculinities and femininities, on the political subjects interpellated by the lyrics and on points of destabilizing regulatory gender norms. More specifically, they highlight the ways in which heteronormative masculinity is reinforced (even) in ‘politically conscious’ Greek-speaking rap and, within the same music genre, we look for its undoing.

A consolidação das novas tecnologias de comunicação e a possibilidade de se produzir conteúdos noticiosos locais, de forma descentralizada e horizontalizada, podem ser vistas como fatores que impulsionam o desenvolvimento jornalístico em ambientes digitais e possibilitam a valorização do local e o reforço de identidades culturais, que passam a configurar como fontes básicas de significados sociais em contraste com o processo de comunicação habitual dos mass media. A partir desses conceitos, sob as óticas da Economia Criativa e do Jornalismo Hiperlocal, é analisada a experiência de comunicação da Casa do Hip Hop de Bauru, arranjo produtivo criativo local de Bauru, cidade do interior de São Paulo, que tem inovado com a criação de um modelo colaborativo e cidadão frente ao da mídia mainstream da cidade, com novas possibilidades para a seleção, captação, edição e difusão de conteúdos informativos.

The Russian hip hop artist Smoki Mo has frequently referenced religious and spiritual topics in his lyrics. The composition “Who is the creator” discusses the positive and negative replies to this question. The lyrics are interpreted as a popular culture text with the aim to discover how popular culture texts can function as religious ones and how popular culture can function as religion. The article employs a functional definition of religion to explore how the studied text discusses existential questions and struggle with identity that religion also is concerned with. The popular culture itself is understood in the article as the meaning and value that people ascribe to mass culture products, such as popular music, in their everyday lives. The article also summarizes the possible issues with reading popular culture texts as religious ones to avoid misinterpretation due to researcher’s indebtedness to traditional religious definitions or to scholarly traditions of interpretation. The article also employs the notion of spirituality to connect the ideas expressed in Smoki Mo’s lyrics to a relevant ideological framework. The understanding of the “creator”, “God” and other theological notions in the lyrics is closely related to the broad features of modern spirituality that include the focus on the individual self and universal statements rather than particular religious traditions. In this way, the studied composition in itself is an expression of modern spirituality dealing with existential questions.

This article explores the various manifestations of analogue video in digital culture. Introducing the framing concept of an aesthetics of remanence, it argues that the “society of the spectacle” (Debord) has entered an age of retrospectacle, a dominant signifier of which is the remediation and/or simulation of analogue videography. The concept of remanence connects the material conditions of magnetic tape with analogue video’s aesthetic expressions, and the cultural situation in which analogue video finds itself today. By looking at three different cases related to retro gaming, contemporary hip hop, and “old skool” rave, the article shows how the aesthetics of remanence remains highly susceptible to subcultural sensibilities—while it also functions as their shared visual variable. The short film Kung Fury (David Sandberg, 2015) is a playfully post-ironic recuperation of failed media technologies. The music video “Fromdatomb$” (David M. Helman, 2012) is a complex exploration of the idea(l) of the historical real. And the work of video art Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore(Mark Leckey, 1999) is a creative treatment of nostalgia which invites us to reconsider the medical origins of the term.

This article explores the various manifestations of analogue video in digital culture. Introducing the framing concept of an aesthetics of remanence, it argues that the “society of the spectacle” (Debord) has entered an age of retrospectacle, a dominant signifier of which is the remediation and/or simulation of analogue videography. The concept of remanence connects the material conditions of magnetic tape with analogue video’s aesthetic expressions, and the cultural situation in which analogue video finds itself today. By looking at three different cases related to retro gaming, contemporary hip hop, and “old skool” rave, the article shows how the aesthetics of remanence remains highly susceptible to subcultural sensibilities—while it also functions as their shared visual variable. The short film Kung Fury (David Sandberg, 2015) is a playfully post-ironic recuperation of failed media technologies. The music video “Fromdatomb$” (David M. Helman, 2012) is a complex exploration of the idea(l) of the historical real. And the work of video art Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999) is a creative treatment of nostalgia which invites us to reconsider the medical origins of the term.

The Chengdu-based quartet Higher Brothers recently became the first China-born hip hop group to gain global fame. As rap music – originally a local, ethnic African American culture in the United States – has been continually relocalized all over the world and thus globalized, the Higher Brothers have undergone another process of glocalization. This presents a new case study to further examine the dynamics between the global and the local. Because rap is an intensely verbal art, this article explores how the Higher Brothers construct and negotiate their complicated and multiple (local, national and global) identities from the perspective of language. It analyses the language used in their songs – Sichuan Chengdu Mandarin, Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) and English – before and after they signed with 88rising, the media company that brought the group to the West. Due to the rappers’ distinctive ways of vocal production, many of their trap-style songs prove hard to understand not only for global audiences but also for most Chinese national audiences and even for the quartet’s local audiences. Drawing on recent studies of mumble rap, this article explores the politics and sonic aesthetics of unintelligibility of the Chinese trap music.

Based on an interview with a hip-hop artist from Eastern Poland, this article critically assesses amateur art pro-duction proliferating throughout the globe today through individuals’ creative usages of new ICTs and new media affordances. The post-Fordist material and ideological context of contemporary social life is the main focus point of the article’s critique. Scarcity, dispossession, and entrepreneurship are the main analytical concepts used to develop a critical analysis and explanation of mainstream realities of amateur artistic production today. Within a context defined by precarious work conditions and prospects, material scarcity, and consumerist aspirations, media and technological potentialities are strategically used by the amateur artist-entrepreneur a) as resources where creativity is put to work for potential socio-economic elevation and inclusion in the global industrial artistic scene (in the case of private ICT), b) as “free” resources, appropriated for entrepreneurial aspirations (in the case of “free“ digital material circulating online, particularly through peer to peer networks), c) as channels for self promotion and networking (in the case of web 2.0 structures). What is often less apparent to the amateur artists, though, concerns the exploitative capacities of corporate Internet to dispossess amateur work and online social relations for the purposes of capital accumulation and reproduction. Unless critiqued, “free culture” -generated by new ICTs and new media- is assimilated by the material and ideological power of late capitalism and is “put to work” for the (re)production of late capitalism. The article concludes by suggesting the critical challenging of the mainstream artistic identity and the critical use and appropriation of new media/ICT’s potentialities.

Based on an interview with a hip-hop artist from Eastern Poland, this article critically assesses amateur art pro-duction proliferating throughout the globe today through individuals’ creative usages of new ICTs and new media affordances. The post-Fordist material and ideological context of contemporary social life is the main focus point of the article’s critique. Scarcity, dispossession, and entrepreneurship are the main analytical concepts used to develop a critical analysis and explanation of mainstream realities of amateur artistic production today. Within a context defined by precarious work conditions and prospects, material scarcity, and consumerist aspirations, media and technological potentialities are strategically used by the amateur artist-entrepreneur a) as resources where creativity is put to work for potential socio-economic elevation and inclusion in the global industrial artistic scene (in the case of private ICT), b) as “free” resources, appropriated for entrepreneurial aspirations (in the case of “free“ digital material circulating online, particularly through peer to peer networks), c) as channels for self promotion and networking (in the case of web 2.0 structures). What is often less apparent to the amateur artists, though, concerns the exploitative capacities of corporate Internet to dispossess amateur work and online social relations for the purposes of capital accumulation and reproduction. Unless critiqued, “free culture” -generated by new ICTs and new media- is assimilated by the material and ideological power of late capitalism and is “put to work” for the (re)production of late capitalism. The article concludes by suggesting the critical challenging of the mainstream artistic identity and the critical use and appropriation of new media/ICT’s potentialities.

This article tackles intermedial forms in the film O invasor (The Trespasser, Beto Brant, 2001), as it brings in diverse uses of media, predominantly connected to São Paulo’s hip-hop music and culture. I examine how intermediality can be used as a tool to explore the role of art forms within film space and to highlight a critical social view. The highly contrasted Brazilian social class stratum is illustrated using two distinct groups, namely the elite and the urban fringes. Music plays a relevant part in illustrating these divisions but also in exploring the complex notion and experience of border crossing. Analysing specific scenes that depict this division, I intend to examine the director’s decision to illustrate two distinct urban socioeconomic experiences through spatially driven visual and aural aesthetics. I will also aim to understand how the film opens a discursive space for exploring realism through unpredictable events that occur and are absorbed as a means to enhance the film’s atmosphere and narrative. This configuration sets an intriguing debate for the analysis of an intersection between realism and intermediality, or “realistic intermediality”, and a realism that promotes a collision between fiction and reality, producing a seemingly raw documentation of moments framed historically, socially and culturally.

The article aimed to identify the specific features of vocal style in rock music. This issue is considered in a complex way proceeding from the integral system of vocal intonation in its origins and evolution. It is noted that the vocal component in rock music is a synthesis of diverse origins, among which the primary and comprehensive is the song beginning, presented in all the diversity of its manifestations. Being assimilated into the forms of professional music-making, which include rock music and its historically closest source – jazz, the song component in rock music becomes the basis of meaning expression, takes the stage forms of representation, supplemented with various visual and acoustic effects and comes out to the stadium spaces with audience of many thousands. For the first time, the article proposes a systematization of those dialectical processes that were resulted in vocal rock stylistics and determined its fundamental pluralism – verballinguistic and musical-intonation, combined with social indication characteristic of rock aesthetics The article supports the idea, that vocal stylistics is a two-component concept in which two levels of terminological generalization are combined – general (“stylistics” as a set of techniques and methods, by which a music composition is created) and specific (“vocal”, which is determined by the genus of the music and its performers as a functional basis of genre). Any stylistic phenomenon, despite its concreteness, is characterized by the qualities of a meta-system, which is reflected in such concepts as “historical stylistics”, “genre stylistics”, “national stylistics” (E. Nazaikinsky). The specific stylistics, derived from the “style of any kind of music” (V. Kholopova), has the same qualities. Among them there is the vocal style which is associated with the musical implementation of the speech line, including such different forms of intonation as recitative, declamation, cantilena, also the song itself as a musical genre that incorporates all the features of “musical speech” (B. Asafiev). Therefore, the song, as the primary genre in the system of vocal intonation, was produced in the syncretism of playful forms of musical art, which included music, dance, and ritual (J. Huizinga). Keeping the quality of “conservatism” (O. Sokolov), the song on the way of its historical and evolutionary development acquired wide range of forms, being performed in different stylistic conditions and in different genre interpretations. The most general unification of multiformity of the song culture is the theory of three layers (V. Konen), in each of which it is presented as primary vocal intonation. However, despite its general origins, arising from the formula “a voice is a person” (E. Nazaikinsky), vocal art within each of the three layers – folklore, academic and the “third” – is distinguished by a number of specific features. A certain differentiation is also observed within each stratum, which also applies to the “third”, which is distinguished as something middle between folklore and academic. In the most general terms, “non-academic” vocals are distributed between such types of “third” music (V. Syrov) as jazz, rock and pop music. This article offers a comparative characteristic of the peculiarities of the varietyized forms of vocal style in rock music and jazz. Along with the general aesthetic, communicative and technological aspects, significant differences are observed here. The main one is the dominance of the vocal beginning in rock music and instrumental in jazz. At the same time, having emerged on a semi-folklore basis, as well as under the influence of entertaining forms of dance youth music of the 50s of the last century (rock & roll, youth protest songs, soul, funk, etc.), rock music has developed its own system of vocal intonation, which is distinguished by: 1) the priority of word over the music; 2) a special approach to improvisation, the role of which is less significant in rock compositions than in instrumental jazz (the exception is scat improvisation); 3) the tendency towards the revival of the genre of “poems with music”, which is peculiar to the academic song culture of Europe in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The article proves that the “whateverism” of rock (V. Zinkevich) is not only in the variety in the “intonemas”, which are used in it (E. Barban), but also in all kinds of “splitting” of the vocal and the instrumental rock compositions into genre and stylistic subspecies. Acceleration of the processes of assimilation and modification of the intonation complexes, due to the system of musical mass culture, allows observation, since the second half of the XX century, the different hybrid varieties (jazz-rock, folk-rock, etc.) and the relatively new forms of vocal and speech music (freestyle, fusion) making with the connection of dance and theatrical components (disco, hip-hop, rap, R&B). On this basis, the vocal rock style is formed, which, however, has its own specifics. It always tends to the synthesis of music and words, and the word is often a priority and defines the ideology of rock as of a system of ideological and artistic communication. Based on the abovementioned, the conclusions are about the presence of processes of dialectical interaction in the vocal style of rock of the general (patterns of vocal sound, forms of the relations between music and word, genre origins of prototypes) and the special (their realization, at the level of aesthetics and poetics, – rock as a “way of thinking” and “lifestyle”, according to V. Zinkevich). It is noted, that the study of these processes supposes referring to specific samples – styles and compositions of rock bands confessing different points of view due to their art and the role of the vocal component in it. As the perspective, the national aspects of vocal rock stylistics need the studying, including such a little researched one as the Ukrainian.

In the past two decades a number of new disciplines (cultural studies, media studies, gender studies, women's studies, etc.) have established themselves within the academy. They have often been developed from an overtly radical political stance and set out to challenge entrenched ways of thinking about the world and the society we live in. They transgress academic norms by bringing under academic scrutiny things (film, popular music, computer games, etc.) that, in the past, would have been seen as unimportant and unworthy of critical attention. Basically, these new disciplines have provided a space in which to take popular culture seriously in a way that was difficult, if not impossible, within more traditional academic disciplines. By doing so they have also opened up the more traditional disciplines so that musicologists, for example, can now write about Led Zeppelin (Headlam) and professors of philosophy and of English can write learned works about Madonna (Bordo, Kaplan). They have breached academic defences, let popular culture in, made it both acceptable and respectable as a subject of study. As these new disciplines mature, however, it is time for those of us working and studying within them to ask ourselves just what 'taking popular culture seriously' really means. We must be careful not to simply rest on our laurels and presume that work within these disciplines is somehow inherently transgressive. Sometimes our work is not as challenging as we might like to think, but rather it serves to reinforce some boundaries as it undermines others. I want to address this idea here by using as an example the study of pop music, as this is where my research interests lie, but I am sure that what I have to say applies to other areas of popular culture and its critique too. In the bad old days before these new disciplines came along culture was thought of in terms of a simple binary division between 'high art' and 'mass culture'. 'High art' was work produced by an artist who, by dictionary definition, is 'someone who displays in his [sic] work qualities such as sensibility and imagination' (Collins). Its appeal was to an educated elite who could appreciate the depth and complexity of the work, and who could actively engage with the music they were listening to. Mass music, commonly called 'pop', was work produced commercially for profit, performed by artistes rather than artists, entertainers rather than creators. Its appeal was thought to be restricted to those who could be duped into buying it; who, by implication at least, lacked the knowledge and the intelligence to do anything more than passively consume the products of the culture industry (see, for example, Adorno, Gans). High art was about quality, and was differentiated in terms of quality; mass culture referred only to quantity, how many units people could be persuaded to buy. 1960s TV programmes such as Britain's Juke Box Jury, which asked of each record 'will it be a hit or a miss?' rather than 'is it good or bad?', epitomised this. 'Hit or miss?' was a question that had no relevance to high art but was all that could be asked about 'pop'. High art was seen to have meaning, mass culture merely had effects; high art appealed to a distinguished elite of cultured individuals, mass culture to the masses, the people, undistinguished and indistinguishable. One of the earliest tasks for cultural studies and the other new disciplines was to criticise this simple binary opposition that depicted ordinary people as mindless dupes and their tastes as no taste at all. Writers such as Dick Hebdige, and others working at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s (e.g. Hall and Jefferson), showed that certain groups of young people actively produced meaning from the products of popular culture. They were not simply a passively duped audience. Others discussed the influence of art on popular music and the way in which "pop musicians apply 'high art' skills and identities to a mass cultural form" (Frith and Horne 2). This work blends well with post-modern theories of the breakdown of distinctions between the high and the mass. Here we have 'mass' audiences behaving as if they were listening to high art, 'mass' musicians behaving as if they were making high art. This work is given further credibility by writers such as Peterson and Bryson who argue that society's 'elite' no longer enjoys art music to the exclusion of everything else. Those high status, high income individuals who in the past would have looked down on mass produced work now enjoy 'lowbrow' music like rock or hip hop as well as opera and classical symphonies. Not only are 'mass' audiences behaving as if they were enjoying art but elites are starting to behave as if they were part of the mass. All the work that I have mentioned is very important and played a necessary part in the development of the study of popular music. It clearly demonstrates that the high art/mass culture divide is nowhere near as clear-cut as was often presumed. The main problem with it, however, is that it all challenges the high/mass binary on an empirical level. It says that popular music isn't simply the opposite of art music because some pop musicians bring high art values to their work. It argues that the audience for commercially produced music does not simply consist of cultural dupes because some actively create meanings from commercial products, or that some are part of the cultural elite, 'highbrow' audience. Nowhere does it challenge the value system on which the high/mass divide depends; a value system whereby imaginative, demanding, intelligent music is thought to be somehow better, more worthy, more valuable than music that simply has a catchy tune and is fun to sing along to. A value system that also implies that those who listen to imaginative, demanding, intelligent music are somehow better, more worthy, more valuable people than those who do not. When we say that some music, some parts of the audience are not 'mass' we are saying that the rest are. We are drawing the same lines just in a different place; we are constructing a high popular music/mass popular music divide that is essentially the same as the high art/mass culture divide. This worries me for a number of reasons, far too many to go into in the space allowed. I want to concentrate, therefore, on two, related problems. Firstly it mirrors the same sort of distinctions that are made in music journalism and music subcultures where, for example, Chuck D complains that most hip-hop nowadays is simply hip-pop (Touch magazine) and journalist Burhan Wazir argues that drum and bass is too intelligent for the general public to appreciate (The Observer). Surely we, as radical academics, should be critiquing this sort of attitude,not implicitly supporting it! And we do support it every time we write an article that talks about the artistic and/or political importance of a genre of pop music, or a pop music video, everytime we write about some of the audience in a way that implies they are better than the rest because of the musical choices they have made. Secondly it limits the sort of music that academics are concerned with. What seems to have happened is that when academics get their hands on popular culture they have to treat it as if it were 'high art'. They/we make judgements based on the artistic integrity of the performer, on the 'sensibility and imagination' that they bring to their product. And the popular culture that gets discussed is only that which can be discussed as if it were high art. Work that doesn't make any claims to artistic integrity is ignored. Try looking through cultural studies, media studies, gender studies journals and books for articles about 'boy band' pop or the Spice Girls, or for that matter serious academic work on Phil Collins or Céline Dion; work that is highly popular but has no artistic pretensions. You'll find almost nothing. You will, however, find loads about 'intelligent', 'artistic' music; Madonna's transgressive play with sex and gender imagery (e.g. Schwichtenberg), dance culture's artistic and political importance (e.g. Hemment, Hesmondhalgh), hip-hop's post-modern Blackness (e.g. Potter, Rose) etc.,etc. Many of these articles will draw explicit distinctions between the people they are talking about, the music they are talking about, and commercial 'mass' music. Drew Hemment, for example, is critical of the "growth of corporate clubs, corporate magazines and corporate house dance labels" (Hemment 38), and Russell Potter talks about hip-hop that has been "commodified by the music industry, 'made safe' ... for the masses" (Potter 108). Both set up distinctions between commercial music and 'art' music that would do credit to the strictest mass culture theorist. In the past two or three decades the challenge to academic orthodoxy by disciplines such as cultural studies, media studies, gender studies and women's studies has had an effect. The world, and the academy, are now very different places to what they once were. Treating commercial music as if it were art is no longer enough. If these new disciplines are to maintain a radical edge we must continue to push at the limits of the acceptable and bring into question how the boundaries of the acceptable are defined and justified. We need to be exploring ways of undermining the whole concept of cultural elites. It isn't radical to simply replace one elite with another. References Adorno, T. Prisms. London: Spearman, 1967. Bordo, S. "'Material Girl': The Effacements of Postmodern Culture". The Madonna Connection. Ed. C. Schwichtenberg. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Bryson, B. "'Anything But Heavy Metal': Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes". American Sociological Review 61 (1996): 884-899. Collins English Dictionary. London: Collins, 1991. Frith, S., and H. Horne. Art into Pop. London: Routledge, 1987. Gans, H. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Hall, S., and T. Jefferson, eds. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Headlam, D. "Does the Song Remain the Same? Questions of Authorship and Identification in the Music of Led Zeppelin." Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies. Eds. E. W. Marvin and R. Hermann. New York: U of Rochester P, 1995. 313-363. Hebdige, D. Subculture: the Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1979. Hemment, D. "e is for Ekstasis". New Formations 31 (1997): 23-38. Hesmondhalgh, D. "The Cultural Politics of Dance Music." Soundings 5 (1997). Kaplan, E. A. "Madonna Politics: Perversion, Repression, or Subversion? or Masks and/as Master-y." The Madonna Connection. Ed. C. Schwichtenberg. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Peterson, R. "Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and Univore". Poetics 2 (1992): 243-258. Potter, R. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. New York: U of New York P, 1995. Rose T. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover: UP of New England, 1994. Schwichtenberg, C., ed. The Madonna Connection. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Diane Railton. "Justify My Love: Popular Culture and the Academy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/love.php>. Chicago style: Diane Railton, "Justify My Love: Popular Culture and the Academy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/love.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Diane Railton. (1999) Justify my love: popular culture and the academy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/love.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction It appears that graffiti has begun to clean up its act. Escalating numbers of mature graffiti writers feel the removal of their graffiti has robbed them of a history, and are turning to legal projects in an effort to restore it. Phibs has declared the graffiti underground “limited” and Kano claims its illegal aspect no longer inspires him (Hamilton, 73). A sign of the times was the exhibition Sake of Name: Australian Graffiti Now which opened at the Wharf 2 Theatre in January 2001. The exhibition was commissioned by the Sydney Theatre Company and comprised twenty-two pieces painted by graffiti writers from around Australia. Keen to present a respectable image, writers rejected the original title of Bomb the Wharf, as they felt it focused on the negative aspects of the culture (Andrews, 2). Premier Bob Carr opened the exhibition with the declaration that there is a difference between “graffiti art” and “graffiti vandalism”. The Premier’s stance struck a discordant note with Tony Stevens, a twenty-three-year veteran graffiti cleaner. Described by the Sydney Morning Herald as an “urban art critic by default,” Stevens could see no distinction between graffiti art and vandalism (Leys, 1). Furthermore, he expressed his disappointment that the pieces had “no sense of individuality … it could be graffiti from any American city” (Stevens, 1). As far as Stevens could see, Australian graffiti expressed nothing of its Australian context; it simply mimicked that of America. Sydney Theatre Company director Benedict Andrews responded with a venomous attack on Stevens. Andrews accused the cleaner of being blinded by prejudice (1), and felt that years of cleaning texta tags from railway corridors could not have possibly qualified Stevens as an art critic (3). “The artists in this exhibition are not misfits,” Andrews wrote (2). “They are serious artists in dialogue with their culture and the landscapes in which they live” (2). He went on to hail the strength and diversity of the Australian graffiti scene: “it is a vital and agile international culture and in Australia has evolved in specific ways” (1). The altercation between Stevens and Andrews pointed to one of the debates concerning Australian graffiti: whether it is unique or simply imitative of the American form. Hinged on the assessment of graffiti as vandalism is the view that graffiti is dirty, a disease. Proponents of this view consider graffiti to be an undifferentiated global phenomenon. Others conceive of graffiti as art, and as such argue that it is expressive of local experiences. Graffiti writers maintain that graffiti is expressive of local experiences and they describe it in terms of regional styles and aesthetics. This article maps the transformation of hip hop graffiti as it has been disseminated throughout the world. It registers the distinctiveness of graffiti in Australia and argues that graffiti is not a globally homogenous form, but one which develops in a locally specific manner. Writing and Replicating: Hip Hop Graffiti and Cultural Imperialism Contemporary graffiti subcultures are strongly identified with large American cities. Originating in the black neighbourhood cultures of Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hip hop graffiti emerged as part of a larger, homegrown, alternative youth culture (“Urban Graffiti”, 77). Before the end of the 1970s, the aesthetic codes and stylised images of hip hop graffiti began to disseminate to major cities across America and throughout the globe. Its transmission was facilitated by: the production and export of films such as Style Wars (Silver and Chalfant, 1983) and Wild Style (Ahearn, 1983); the covers of rap albums; graffiti magazines; art dealers; and style manuals such as Subway Art (Cooper and Chalfant) and Spraycan Art (Chalfant and Prigroff). Graffiti migrated to Australian shores during the early 1980s, gaining influence through the appearance of these seminal works, which are credited by many as having inspired them to pick up a can of spraypaint. During its larval stages, the subcultural codes of graffiti invented by American writers were reiterated in an Australian context. Australian graffiti writers poached the vocabulary and rhetoric invented by their American counterparts. Writers spoke of “getting up”, “getting fame” and their “crew”, classifying their work as “tags”, “pieces”, or “throw ups”. They utilised the same bubble letters, and later, the incomprehensible “wildstyle” originally devised by American writers. It was not long, however, before Australian writers were making their own innovations and developing a unique style. Despite this, there is still widespread conviction in the view that Australian graffiti is a replica of an American cultural form. This view is supported at a theoretical level by the concept of cultural imperialism. It is generally understood, at a basic level, to be the diffusion of a foreign culture at the expense of a local culture. The concept has been usefully clarified by John Tomlinson. Since there are various orders of power involved in allegations of cultural imperialism, Tomlinson attempts to resist some implicit “master narrative” of the term, accounting for cultural imperialism in a multidimensional fashion (20). He outlines five possible versions, which inflect cultural imperialism to mean cultural domination; a discourse of nationality; media imperialism; global capital; and modernity (19-28). The idea that Australian graffiti replicates American graffiti draws particularly on the first two versions—that of cultural imperialism as cultural domination, and the discourse of nationality. Both these approaches focus on the processes involved in cultural imperialism—“the invasion of an indigenous culture by a foreign one” (Tomlinson, 23). Many people I spoke to about graffiti saw it as evidence of foreign, particularly American, domination and influence over Australian culture. They expressed concern that the appearance of graffiti would signal an influx of “American” problems: gang activity, escalating violence and social disorder. Cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality hinges on the concepts of “belonging” and “indigenous culture”. In a conference organised by the Graffiti Program of the Government of Western Australia, Senator Ian Campbell argued that graffiti had no place in Australia. He felt that, “there should be little need for social comment through the vandalism of other’s property. Perhaps in nations where … freedoms are not recognised … but not in Australia” (6). Tomlinson argues that the conceptions of cultural imperialism as both cultural domination and as a discourse of nationality are popular because of their highly ambiguous (and thus accommodating) nature (19, 23). However, both notions are problematic. Tomlinson immediately dismisses the notion of cultural imperialism as cultural domination, arguing that one should aim for specificity. “Imperialism” and “domination” are rather general notions, and as such both have sufficient conceptual breadth and ambiguity to accommodate most uses to which they might be put (19). Cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality is similarly problematic, relying on the precise definitions of a series of terms—such as belonging, and indigenous culture—which have multiple inflections (24). Cultural imperialism has often been tracked as a process of homogenisation. Conceiving of cultural imperialism as homogenisation is particularly pertinent to the argument for the global homogeneity of graffiti. Cultural homogenisation makes “everywhere seem more or less the same,” assuming a global uniformity which is inherently Western, and in extreme cases, American (6). The implications of “Americanisation” are relevant to the attitudes of Australian graffiti writers. On the Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board—an internet board for Australian graffiti writers—I found evidence of a range of responses to “Americanisation” in Australian graffiti. One of the writers had posted: “you shouldn’t even be doing graff if you are a toy little kid, buying export paint and painting legal walls during the day … f*** all y’all niggaz!” s3 replied, “I do know that modern graffiti originated in America but … token are you American? Why do you want to talk like an American gangsta rapper?” The global currency of graffiti is one in which local originality and distinctiveness are highly prized. It is a source of shame for a writer to “bite”. Many of the writers I spoke to became irate when I suggested that Australian styles “bit” those of America. It seems inconsistent that Australian graffiti writers would reproduce American graffiti, if they do not even tolerate Australian writers using the word “nigga”. Like the argument that Australian graffiti replicates that of America, the concept of cultural imperialism is problematic. By the 1970s the concept was beginning to come apart at the seams, its “artificial coherence” exposed when subjected to a range of applications (Tomlinson, 8). Although the idea of cultural imperialism has been discredited and somewhat abandoned at the level of theory, the concept nonetheless continues to guide attitudes towards graffiti. Jeff Ferrell has argued that the interplay of cultural resources involved in worldwide graffiti directly locates it inside issues of cultural imperialism (“Review of Moscow Graffiti”, paragraph 5). Stylistic and subcultural consistencies are mobilised to substantiate assertions of the operation of cultural imperialism in the global form of graffiti. This serves to render it globally homogeneous. While many graffiti writers would concede that graffiti maintains certain global elements, few would agree that this is indicative of a global homogeneity of form. As part of the hip hop component of their website, Triple J conducted an investigation into graffiti. It found that “the graffiti aesthetic developed in New York has been modified with individual characteristics … and has transformed into a unique Australian style” (“Old Skool”, paragraph 6). Veteran writers Umph, Exit, Phibs and Dmote agree. Perth writer Zenith claims, “we came up with styles from the US back in the day and it has grown into something quite unique” (personal communication). Exit declares, “every city has its own particular style. Graffiti from Australia can easily be distinguished by graffiti artists. Australia has its own particular style” (1). Umph agrees: “to us writers, the differences are obvious” (2). Although some continue to perceive Australian graffiti as replicating that of America, it appears that this is no longer the case. Evidence has emerged that Australian graffiti has evolved into a unique and localised form, which no longer imitates that of America. “Going Over” Cultural Imperialism: Hip Hop Graffiti and Processes of Globalisation The argument that graffiti has developed local inflections has lately garnered increasing support due to new theories of global cultural interaction and exchange. The modern era has been characterised by the increasing circulation of goods, capital, knowledge, information, people, images, ideologies, technologies and practices across national borders and territorial boundaries (Appadurai, 230; Scholte, 10). Academic discussion of these developments has converged in recent years around the concept of “globalisation”. While cultural imperialism describes these movements as the diffusion of a foreign culture at the expense of a local one, globalisation interprets these profound changes as evidence of “a global ecumene of persistent cultural interaction and exchange” (Hannerz, 107). In such a view, the globe is not characterised by domination and homogenisation (as with cultural imperialism), but more in terms of exchange and heterogeneity. Recent studies acknowledge that globalisation is complex and multidimensional (Giddens, 30; Kalb, 1), even a process of paradoxes (Findlay, 30). Globalisation is frequently described in terms of contradictory processes—universalisation vs. particularisation, homogenisation vs. differentiation, integration vs. fragmentation. Another of these dialectical tendencies is that of localisation. Kloos defines localisation as representing “the rise of localised, culturally defined identities … localisation stresses sociocultural specificity, in a limited space” (281). While localisation initially appears to stand in opposition to globalisation, the concepts are actually involved in a dialectical process (Giddens, 64). The relationship between localisation and globalisation has been formulated as follows: “Processes of globalisation trigger identity movements leading to the creation of localised, cultural-specific, identities” (Kloos, 282). The development of localisation is particularly pertinent to this study of graffiti. The concept allows for local diversity and has led to the understanding that global cultural phenomena are involved in a process of exchange. Work around globalisation lends credence to the argument that, as graffiti has disseminated throughout the globe, it has mutated to the specific locale within which it exists. Graffiti has always been locally specific: from the early stages which witnessed writers such as Julio 204, Fran 207 and Joe 136 (the numbers referred to their street), to the more recent practice of suffixing tag names with the name of a writers’ crew and their area code. The tendency to include area codes has been largely abandoned in Australia as the law has responded to graffiti with increasing vigilance, but evolutions in graffiti have pointed towards the development of regionally specific styles which writers have come to recognise. Thus, graffiti cannot be thought of as a globally homogenous form, nor can it be said that Australian graffiti replicates that of America. As hip hop has circulated throughout the globe it has appeared to adopt local inflections, having adapted into something quite locally distinctive. In a sense hip hop has been “translated” to particular circumstances. It is now appropriate to consider Australian hip hop and graffiti as a translation of a global cultural phenomenon. A useful reference in this regard is Yuri Lotman, who designates dialogue as the elementary mechanism of translation (143). He suggests that participants involved in a dialogue alternate between a position of “transmission” and “reception” (144). Hence cultural developments are cyclical, and relationships between units—which may range from genres to national cultures—pass through periods of “transmission” and “reception” (144). Lotman proposes that the relationship between structures follows a pattern: at first, a structure will appear in decline, static, unoriginal. He records these “intermissions” as “pauses in dialogue”, during which the structure absorbs influences from the outside (144). When saturation reaches a certain limit, the structure begins producing its own texts as its “passive state changes to a state of alertness” (145). This is a useful way of comprehending Australian hip hop culture. It appears that the Australian hip hop scene has left behind its period of “reception” and is now witnessing one of “transmission” in which it is producing uniquely Australian flavours and styles. Of the contemporary graffiti I have observed, it appears that Australian writing is truly distinctive. Australian writers may have initially poached the subcultural codes developed by their American counterparts, however Australia has evolved to be truly unique where it counts—in graffiti styles. Distinctive graffiti styles can be witnessed, not only between different continents, but also within geographic locations. American graffiti registers a variety of locally specific forms. New York remains devoted to the letter, while graffiti on the west coast of America is renowned for its gang writing. American lettering styles tend to develop existing styles. New York wildstyle is easily recognised, and differs from letters in the Bay Area and San Francisco, which feature arrows inside the letters. While American graffiti is by and large concerned with letters, Australia has gained some repute for its exploration of characters. Like American writers, Australians employ characters poached from popular culture, but for the most part Australian writers employ characters and figures that they have invented themselves, often poaching elements from a wide variety of sources and utilising a wide variety of styles. Marine imagery, not usually employed in American graffiti, recurs in Australian pieces. Kikinit in the Park, a youth festival held in Fremantle in March 2001, featured a live urban art display by Bugszy Snaps, who combined oceanic and graffiti iconography, fusing sea creatures with spraypaint cans. Phibs also “uses images from the sea a lot” (Hamilton, 73), having grown up at the beach. In spite of this focus on the development of characters and images, Australia has not neglected the letter. While initially Australian graffiti artists imitated the styles developed in America, Australian lettering has evolved into something exceptional. Some writers have continued to employ bubble letters and wildstyle, and Australia has kept up with modifications in wildstyle that has seen it move towards 3D. Australia has cultivated this form of traditional wildstyle, elevating it to new heights. Sometimes it is combined with other styles; other times it appears as controlled wildstyle—set around a framework of some sort. In other instances, Australia has charted new territory with the letter, developing styles that are completely individual. Australian writing also blends a variety of lettering and graphic styles, combining letters and figures in new and exciting ways. Australian graffiti often fuses letters with images. This is relatively rare in American graffiti, which tends to focus on lettering and, on the whole, utilises characters to less effect than Australian graffiti. Conclusion Graffiti is not a globally homogeneous form, but one which has developed in locally specific and distinctive ways. As hip hop graffiti has circulated throughout the globe it has been translated between various sites and developed local inflections. In order to visualise graffiti in this manner, it is necessary to recognise theories of cultural imperialism as guiding the widespread belief that graffiti is a globally homogeneous form. I have refuted this view and the worth of cultural imperialism in directing attitudes towards graffiti, as there is a valid foundation for considering the local distinctiveness of Australian graffiti. By engaging critically with literature around globalisation, I have established a theoretical base for the argument that graffiti is locally specific. Envisaging the global form of hip hop graffiti as translated between various sites and having developed in locally specific ways has exposed the study of graffiti outside of the United States. Current writings on cultural studies and graffiti are dominated by the American academy, taking the United States as its centre. In rectifying this imbalance, I stress the need to recognise the distinctiveness of other cultures and geographic locations, even if they appear to be similar. While writers across Australia argue that their locations produce original styles, few have been willing to expound on how their scene is “fresh”. One writer I spoke with was an exception. Zenith explained that: “the way we are original is that our style has developed for so long, fermented if you will, because of Perth being so damned isolated” (personal communication). He went on to say: “I also happen to feel that we’re losing the originality every second of every day, for a number of reasons … with web sites, videos, magazines, and all this type of graffito affiliated stuff” (personal communication). Hip hop graffiti culture is one in which communication and exchange is of central concern. The circulation of this “graffito affiliated stuff”—websites, graffiti magazines, videos, books—as well as the fact that aerosol artists frequently travel to other cities and countries to write, demonstrates that this is a culture which, although largely identified with America, is also global in reach. This global interaction and exchange is increasingly characterised by a complex relationship which involves imitation and adaptation. Glossary Bite To copy another graffiti writer’s style Crew Organised group of graffiti writers Getting up Successful graffiti endeavour; to graffiti Going over To graffiti over another’s graffiti Piece The most sophisticated kind of graffiti, which includes characters, words and phrases Tag A stylised version of a signature; the most basic form of graffiti Throw up Two-dimensional version of a tag Wildstyle Style of graffiti characterised by interlocking letters and arrows Writer Graffiti artist; one who does graffiti References Andrews, Benedict. “If a Cleaner Can Review Graffiti Art, Then …” Sydney Morning Herald 15 Jan. 2001. 15 August 2001 http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/15/features/features8.html>. Appadurai, Arjun. “Globalization and the Research Imagination.” International Social Science Journal 51.2 (1999): 229-38. Campbell, Ian. “The National Perspective.” Dealing with Graffiti. Ed. Graffiti Program, Government of Western Australia: Perth, 1997: 6-7. Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigroff. Spraycan Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1987. Cooper, Martha, and Henry Chalfant. Subway Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1984. “Exit”. n.d. [1998]. 18 Jul. 2001 http://loud.net.au/projects/digit/garry/exit.htm>. Ferrell, Jeff. “Review of Moscow Graffiti: Language and Subculture.” Social Justice 20.3-4 (1993): 188 (15). ———. “Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control, and Resistance.” Youth and Society 27 (1995-6): 73-87. Findlay, Mark. The Globalization of Crime: Understanding Transitional Relationships in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping our Lives. New York: Routledge, 2000. Hamilton, Kate. “Can in Hand.” Rolling Stone 590 (2001): 72-5. Hannerz, Ulf. “Scenarios for Peripheral Cultures.” Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Ed. Anthony D. King. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991. 107-28. Kalb, Don. “Localizing Flows: Power, Paths, Institutions, and Networks.” The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Ed. Don Kalb. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. 1-29. Kloos, Peter. “The Dialectics of Globalization and Localization.” The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Ed. Don Kalb. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 281-97. Leys, Nick. “Graffiti Removalist Gives Art Installation a Spray.” Sydney Morning Herald 9 January 2001. 9 Jan. 2001. http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/09/national/national15.html>. Lotman, Yuri. The Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1990. “Old Skool.” Triple J. 2001. 18 Jul. 2001 http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/arts/graff/oldskool/default.htm>. s3. “Name & Email Supplied.” Online posting. 9 May 2004. Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board. 20 July 2001 http://network54.com/Forum>. Scholte, Jan Aarte. “Globalisation: Prospects For a Paradigm Shift.” Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge, Ethics and Agency. Ed. Martin Shaw. London: Routledge, 1999. 9-22. Stevens, Tony. “It’s Vandalism, It’s Illegal and It Causes Anguish and Frustration.” Sydney Morning Herald 5 Feb. 2001. 4 Mar. 2001 http://www.smh.com.au/news/0102/05/features/features10.html>. Style Wars. Dir. Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant. 1983. DVD. Passion River, 2005. Token. “F*** You Little Kids!” Online posting. 5 May 2000. Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board. 20 Jul. 2001 http://network54.com/Forum>. Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Pinter Publishers, 1991. Umph. n.d. [1998]. 18 Jul. 2001. http://loud.net.au/projects/digit/garry/umph.htm>. Wild Style. Dir. Charlie Ahearn. 1983. DVD. Rhino Theatrical, 2002. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Lombard, Kara-Jane. "“To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious”: The Adaptation of Hip Hop Graffiti to an Australian Context." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/05-lombard.php>. APA Style Lombard, K. (May 2007) "“To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious”: The Adaptation of Hip Hop Graffiti to an Australian Context," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/05-lombard.php>.

Culture: Its Many Meanings One of the problems we encounter in dealing with culture is that there are so many different meanings and definitions attached to the term. We think of culture two ways: first, in terms of aesthetic matters (relative to thearts) and second, as a concept used by anthropologists to describe the way people live. There are, so I understand, something like a hundred different definitions of culture used by anthropologists. The Origins of the Term "Culture" The word 'culture' comes from the Latin cultus, which means 'care', and from the French colere which means 'to till' as in 'till the ground'. There are many terms that stem from the word culture. For example, there is the term 'cult' which suggests some kind of a religious organisation. We are continually amazed at the power cults have to shape our behavior, to brainwash us -- to turn intelligent and educated people into fanatics. Here we are dealing with the power of charismatic personalities and of groups over individuals. If cults can exercise enormous power over individuals and groups of people, can't we say that cultures also can do the same thing, though usually not to the same extreme degree? There is also the term 'cultivated', which means something that has been grown or, in the realm of aesthetics and the arts, sophisticated taste. Just as plants only exist because they are cared for by some cultivator, over a period of time, so people's taste and cultivation only are developed by education and training. It takes time to develop a refined sensibility, to become discriminating, to appreciate texts that are difficult and complex and not immediately satisfying. Bacteriologists also speak about cultures, but they use the term to describe the bacteria that are grown in Petri dishes if they are given suitable media (sources of nourishment). This matter of bacteria growing in media may be an important metaphor for us: just as bacteria need media to grow into culture, so do human beings need cultures to survive and develop themselves. We don't do it all on our own. In the chart below I show the interesting parallels: Bacteriology Bacteria Grow in media Form cultures Sociology/Anthropology Humans Affected by media Form cultures Of course we are much more complex than bacteria; in truth, each of us form a kind of medium for countless kinds of bacteria that inhabit our mouths and various other parts of our bodies. Bacteriology involves the cultivation and study of micro-organisms (bacteria) in prepared nutrients and the study of media (and what is often called cultural criticism nowadays) involves the study of individuals and groups in a predominantly, but not completely, mass-mediated culture. Not all culture is mass mediated. An Anthropological Definition of Culture Let me offer a typical anthropological definition of culture. It is by Henry Pratt Fairchild and appeared in his Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences: A collective name for all behavior patterns socially acquired and transmitted by means of symbols; hence a name for all the distinctive achievements of human groups, including not only such items as language, tool-making, industry, art, science, law, government, morals and religion, but also the material instruments or artifacts in which cultural achievements are embodied and by which intellectual cultural features are given practical effect, such as buildings, tools, machines, communication devices, art objects, etc. (80) Let's consider some of the topics Fairchild mentions. Behavior Patterns. We are talking about codes and patterns of behavior here that are found in groups of people. Socially Acquired. We are taught these behavior patterns as we grow up in a family in some geographical location and are profoundly affected by the family we are born into, its religion, and all kinds of other matters. Socially Acquired. We are taught these behavior patterns as we grow up in a family in some geographical location and are profoundly affected by the family we are born into, its religion, and all kinds of other matters. The Distinctive Achievements of Human Groups. It is in groups that we become human and become enculturated or acculturated (two words for the same thing, for all practical purposes). We have our own distinctive natures but we are also part of society. Artifacts in which cultural achievements are embodied. The artifacts we are talking about here are the popular culture texts carried in the various media and other non-mediated aspects of popular culture (or not directly mediated) such as fashions in clothes, food preferences, artifacts (what anthropologists call 'material culture'), language use, sexual practices and related matters. We know that a great deal of our popular culture, while not carried by the media, is nevertheless profoundly affected by it. We can see, then, that culture is a very complicated phenomenon that plays some kind of a role in shaping our consciousness and our behavior. You may think you are immune from the impact of the media and popular culture, but that is a delusion that is generated, I would suggest, by the media. We think we are not affected in significant ways by the media and popular culture (sometimes called mass mediated culture) and culture in general but we are wrong. Culture affects us but it doesn't necessarily determine every act we do; though some scholars, who believe the media are very powerful, might argue with this point. Falling Off the Map: What Travel Literature Reveals For a graphic example of how cultures differ, let me offer two quotations from the travel writer Pico Iyer from his book Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World, a collection of travel articles about seldom-visited places (by American travelers, at least). Saigon: the only word for Saigon is 'wild'. One evening I counted more than a hundred two-wheel vehicles racing past me in the space of sixty seconds, speeding around the jam-packed streets as if on some crazy merry-go-round, a mad carnival without a ringmaster; I walked into a dance club and found myself in the midst of a crowded floor of hip gay boys in sleeveless T-shirts doing the latest moves to David Byrne; outside again, I was back inside the generic Asian swirl, walking through tunnels of whispers and hisses. "You want boom-boom?" "Souvenir for you dah-ling?" "Why you not take special massage?" Shortly before midnight, the taxi girls stream out of their nightclubs in their party dresses and park their scooters outside the hotels along 'Simultaneous Uprising' Street. (134-5) Compare his description of Saigon with his portrait of Reykjavik, Iceland, equally as fascinating and fantastic but considerably different from Saigon. Even 'civilization' seems to offer no purchase for the mind here: nothing quite makes sense. Iceland boasts the largest number of poets, presses, and readers per capita in the world: Reykjavik, a town smaller than Rancho Cucamonga, California, has five daily newspapers, and to match the literary production of Iceland, the U.S. would have to publish twelve hundred new books a day. Iceland has the oldest living language in Europe; its people read the medieval sagas as if they were tomorrow's newspaper and all new concepts, such as 'radio' and 'telephone', are given poetical medieval equivalents. Roughly three eldest children in every four are illegitimate here, and because every son of Kristjan is called Kristjansson, and every daughter Kristjansdottir, mothers always have different surnames from their children (and in any case are rarely living with the fathers). The first day I ever spent in 'Surprise City' (as Reykjavik is called), I found golden-haired princesses and sword-wielding knights enacting fairy-tale sagas on the main bridge in the capital. (67-8) We can see that there are considerable differences between Saigon and Reykjavik, though just as (to be fair) Iyer points out the incredible differences between cities in Vietnam, such as the differences between Saigon and Hue. Iyer's description of the landscape of Iceland may help explain the national character of the Icelanders. As he writes: I knew, before I visited, a little about the epidemic oddness of the place: there was no beer in Iceland in 1987, and no television on Thursdays; there were almost no trees, and no vegetables. Iceland is an ungodly wasteland of volcanoes and tundra and Geysir, the mother of geysirs, a country so lunar that NASA astronauts did their training there. (67) There has to be some influence of this remarkable landscape and climate, of the Iceland geographical location, the amount of light and darkness in which people live, upon the people who live there and there has to be some influence of the jungle and the climate of Vietnam on its people. What we become is, it seems to me, due to some curious combination of factors involving our natures (that is, the hard-wired elements of our personalities) and our cultures, with the matter of chance playing a big role as well. What we become is, it seems to me, due to some curious combination of factors involving our natures (that is, the hard-wired elements of our personalities) and our cultures, with the matter of chance playing a big role as well. References Fairchild, Henry Pratt. Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences. Totawa, NY: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1967. Iyer, Pico. Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Arthur Asa Berger. "The Meanings of Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/meaning.php>. Chicago style: Arthur Asa Berger, "The Meanings of Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/meanings.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Arthur Asa Berger. (2000) The meanings of culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/meaning.php> ([your date of access]).

This study examined associations between Black youth’s engagement with hip-hop culture and their sociopolitical development (SPD) (e.g., critical social analysis, critical agency, and anti-racist activism). Participants included 499 Black adolescents recruited from across the United States through an online survey panel. Findings from regression analysis revealed the differential effects of rap media (music and music videos) and hip-hop media (e.g., blogs, video shows, radio) on youth’s SPD. Black youth who consumed more hip-hop media and who interacted with artists on social media had more agency to address racism and reported engaging in more racial-justice activism. The frequency of youth’s rap media usage was not consistently related to youth’s SPD. However, youth’s perceptions of rap (e.g., rap is empowering or misogynistic) were found to be directly associated with indicators of SPD. These findings provide insight into the potential influence of hip-hop culture beyond music on youth’s racial-justice beliefs and actions.

AbstractHip-hop music has been embraced worldwide by youth, pummeled in the media for supposedly increasing social misery and hailed as a significant musical breakthrough. Hip-hop culture has transcended musical boundaries and now impacts speech, clothing, mannerisms, movies, websites, television programming, magazines, and energy drinks (

This paper aims to observe the presence of the Hip Hop Puppet in the middle of the Yogyakarta community which is developing quite dynamically. Talcott Parsons’s theory of social action and Derrida’s deconstruction theory is used as a theoretical framework to explain the presence of this Hip Hop Puppet. The theory was chosen because the Hip Hop Puppet was created by Ki Catur Kuncoro by fusing two cultures and simultaneously deconstructing the pure shadow puppets that were present first. Hip Hop puppets were created to meet the needs of today’s young generation. The Hip Hop Puppet was created by Ki Catur Kuncoro with the aim that the young generation does not lose their cultural roots and at the same time still be able to keep up with the times. In addition, the Hip Hop Puppet is intended as an alternative media to convey criticism and proof that traditional culture can be aligned with modern culture. The acceptance of the Hip Hop Puppet as a spectacle that attracts audiences from all walks of life, proves that there is a cultural change in the middle of the social life of the people of Yogyakarta. Tulisan ini bertujuan mengamati kehadiran Wayang Hip Hop di tengah masyarakat Yogyakarta yang berkembang cukup dinamis. Teori Talcott Parsons tentang tindakan sosial dan teori dekonstruksi Derrida digunakan sebagai kerangka teori untuk menjelaskan kehadiran Wayang Hip Hop ini. Dipilihnya teori tersebut karena Wayang Hip Hop diciptakan oleh Ki Catur Kuncoro dengan meleburkan dua kebudayaan dan sekaligus mendekonstruksi wayang kulit purwa yang telah hadir lebih dulu. Wayang Hip Hop diciptakan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan generasi muda zaman sekarang. Wayang Hip Hop diciptakan Ki Catur Kuncoro dengan tujuan agar generasi muda tidak kehilangan akar kebudayaan dan sekaligus tetap dapat mengikuti arus perkembangan zaman. Selain itu Wayang Hip Hop dimaksudkan sebagai media alternatif untuk menyampaikan kritik dan sebuah pembuktian bahwa budaya tradisi dapat disejajarkan dengan budaya modern. Diterimanya Wayang Hip Hop sebagai tontonan yang menarik penonton dari semua kalangan, membuktikan bahwa terjadi perubahan budaya di tengah kehidupan sosial masyarakat Yogyakarta.