Journal articles on the topic 'Poverty porn'

This article critically examine how Benefits Street - and the broader genre of poverty porn television - functions to embed new forms of ‘commonsense’ about welfare and worklessness. It argues that such television content and commentary crowds out critical perspectives with what Pierre Bourdieu (1999) called ‘doxa’, making the social world appear self-evident and requiring no interpretation, and creating new forms of neoliberal commonsense around welfare and social security. The article consider how consent for this commonsense is animated through poverty porn television and the apparently ‘spontaneous’ (in fact highly editorialized) media debate it generates: particularly via ‘the skiver’, a figure of social disgust who has re-animated ideas of welfare dependency and deception.

This article considers how media production is framed by class experience, and how this framing mediates exclusion. Drawing on research on ‘poverty porn’ the article presents an analysis of how experimental exclusion is operationalized in media representations before moving the analysis to consider the framing of an additional exclusion that afflicts mainly working class people ‐ that which comes with the status of prisoner and convict. Here, poverty porn becomes prison porn and we find a double exclusion. After noting the shortcomings of a number of prison documentaries in the framework of Third Cinema, the article finishes with a proposal, based on the production of a prison film made by the author, to more adequately represent such marginalized classes, finishing with a reflection on the perseverance of exclusion.

Focusing on Benefits Street, and specifically the figure of White Dee, this rapid response article offers a feminist analysis of the relationship between media portrayals of people living with poverty and the gender politics of austerity. To do this we locate and unpick the paradoxical desires coalescing in the making and remaking of the figure of ‘White Dee’ in the public sphere. We detail how Benefits Street operates through forms of classed and gendered shaming to generate public consent for the government's welfare reform. However, we also examine how White Dee functions as a potential object of desire and figure of feminist resistance to the transformations in self and communities engendered by neoliberal social and economic policies. In this way, we argue that these public struggles over White Dee open up spaces for urgent feminist sociological enquiries into the gender politics of care, labour and social reproduction.

The Grenfell Tower fire that took place in a council owned high-rise housing block in the early hours of 14 June 2017 in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea represented the worst fire in Britain for many decades. This article draws, in part, on the example of Grenfell Tower to interrogate some of the most pressing issues of our time around poverty, inequality and austerity. After a period of quiet, poverty now features more regularly in popular and political conversations. This is, in part, due to the proliferation of foodbanks that in many ways have become the public face of poverty in contemporary Britain. Additionally the increased popularity of so-called ‘poverty porn’ exemplified by programmes such as Benefit Street have provoked public and political debate about the realities of poverty and its causes and consequences. Punitive policies towards out of work benefits claimants, austerity measures and the proliferation of low paid and insecure work mean poverty has been extended to more and more people, yet at the same time it is a condition that is frequently stigmatised, misrepresented and misunderstood. Whilst evidence shows increased stereotyping and stigmatisation of those experiencing poverty and other related disadvantages, there is also evidence that the British general public on the whole tend to care about fairness, equality of opportunity and that they dislike extremes of income and wealth, although importantly they also generally underestimate the realities of both. It was these extremes of inequality that Grenfell thrust so violently into the public imagination with many newspapers visually capturing the gulf between rich and ‘poor’ in their pictures of the burnt out shell of Grenfell set against a typical block of luxury apartments of the sort that are proliferating in London and other cities in Britain and that, particularly in London, often cost in excess of a million pounds or more. This article looks at examples of how critical work is being done by those in power to manipulate and frame the terms of the discussion around poverty, inequality and economic insecurity and its causes and its consequences.

As study abroad programs continue to increase and expand the places they send students, it is important for colleges and universities to pay close attention to the depictions of the African continent in promotional materials. While existing literature in the field of tourism, social work, and African studies have analyzed images of the cultural Other in study abroad text, there is a paucity of higher education and student affairs research that utilizes postcolonial theory to analyze representations of teach abroad programs. To address this gap, this research undertakes a critical content analysis of promotional material of a teach abroad program and finds that promotional materials remain fixated on representing the African continent in a hegemonic way that reinforces white savior complex, culturalism, and the poverty porn discourse. Ultimately, we argue colleges will need to make purposeful efforts in order to achieve new visions of African countries by deconstructing mainstream stereotypes.

AbstractThis article examines the implications of the multi-scalar politics of Mexican anti-poverty policy for the long-term process of democratization. The federal anti-poverty policy, Progresa/Oportunidades, was designed to eliminate traditional clientelistic practices. While more obvious practices of pork-barrel politics have been eliminated in poverty alleviation programs, continued practices of top-down processes of program design and implementation strategies have resulted in the emergence of semi-clientelism. Argued in this paper is that municipal and state political actors have responded to these federal policies in ways that may or may not promote deeper levels of democracy, and which have led to the reconstitution of semi-clientelism. The paper draws upon recent revisionist approaches to political clientelism, and introduces a multi-scalar approach borrowed from political geography. Based on this theoretical approach, the article examines the role of state and municipal authorities in the delivery of federal anti-poverty benefits within the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program.

The article deals with the sociological aspects of the analysis of political conflict related to the socio-structural and subjective foundations of political processes and relations. It is shown that many problems and contradictions in the social sphere, such as social polarization, excessive inequality, poverty and violation of the principles of social justice, deprivation of basic needs and interests, unstable labor employment significantly determine the field of politics and are projected on the object and subject of political conflict, weighing down their course and positive outcomes. The insolubility of social problems and contradictions, their encapsulation cause either a decrease in the population's interest in politics, in the effectiveness of democratic institutions, contribute to the widening of the gap between the «private» and «public», generate a sense of political alienation and powerlessness, or push to meet basic needs beyond the existing social norms and political institutions, to destructive forms of resolving political conflicts, which leads to a loss of control of society and social catastrophe. The sociological analysis of conflict interactions based on the predominance of horizontal connections and relationships contributes more to maintaining a dynamic balance in society and realizing the positive potential of political conflict, as it differs in flexible intra-group connections and mobile inter-group barriers in the socio-political system. Excessive class divisions and inequality tend to vertical polarization of society, which strengthens the «discontinuous» lines of interaction between the «top» and «bottom», makes the dichotomy «rule-submission» rigid, and reduces the possibilities of dialogical plasticity and flexibility of the political system.

Isu kemiskinan tetap menjadi isu penting bagi negara-negara berkembang, demikian pula dengan Indonesia. Penanganan persoalan kemiskinan harus dimengerti dan dipahami sebagai persoalan dunia, sehingga harus ditangani dalam konteks global pula. Sehingga setiap program penanganan kemiskinan harus dipahami secara menyeluruh dan saling interdependen dengan beberapa program kegiatan lainnya. Dalam SDGs dinyatakan no poverty (tanpa kemiskinan) sebagai poin pertama prioritas. Hal ini berarti dunia bersepakat untuk meniadakan kemiskinan dalam bentuk apapun di seluruh penjuru dunia, tidak terkecuali Indonesia. Pengentasan kemiskinan akan sangat terkait dengan tujuan global lainnya, yaitu lainnya, dunia tanpa kelaparan, kesehatan yang baik dan kesejahteraan, pendidikan berkualitas, kesetaraan jender, air bersih dan sanitasi, energy bersih dan terjangkau; dan seterusnya hingga pentingnya kemitraan untuk mencapai tujuan-tujuan tersebut.

Within the framework of the project: "contribution of the social sciences and the pharmacology to the process of the sustainable development and struggle against poverty in the region of Poro and Bagoué", a first campaign of archaeological and anthropological research has been undertaken in the localities of Tongon and Poungbè in the region of Bagoue, located in the north of Côte d’Ivoire, approximately 50 km in the north of Korhogo city; administrative center of the region of Poro. This mission, which enters into a multidisciplinary approach, deals with the funeral sites of Nawavogo and Daovogo that is presented by traditionnists as former metallurgists graves to whom we attribute the sites of restriction of the iron, extraction of the ore, and the habitat in the locality of Nawavogo and Poungbè. The first results based on the topographic analysis of sites, the preliminary study of the ceramic, and the two excavated graves show many specific funeral practices and a technical know-how of the populations which have occupied these spaces. The scientific, cultural and patrimonial value of these data has already explained all the interest to make the study of this region works deeper.

The unprecedented mining boom of the 1990s in Latin America may or may have not contributed to socioeconomic development in the region, but it has certainly been accompanied by increased socio-environmental conflicts. Economists and sociologists have developed taxonomies for such conflicts and have attempted to explain them based on theories of resource mobilization, rational options, social cohesion, and identity construction applied to settings of generally extreme poverty. This study developed and tested psychological hypotheses based on personal values, attribution theory, reputational concern of the firm, intergroup threat theory, and UV radiation theory entailing mining managers’ reactions to socio-environmental conflicts in Peru and effects of latitude and altitude. Forty-three Corporate Social Responsibility managers of the 49 mining corporations registered in the Society of Mining, Petroleum, and Energy of Peru filled-in a 20-minute questionnaire in the presence of one of the investigators at company offices (December 2017). 100 % of respondents were male, most of them middle-aged. A 3-factor structure of political, economic, and ecological concerns sustained the attributions of cause whereas mine’s surrounding populations were perceived as moral, incompetent, and positive; in balance, these perceptions represent favorable conditions for conflict resolution. However, contrary to expectations, firm’s experience of socio-environmental conflicts was not associated with these outcomes. Rather, geography emerged as a moderator of the relationship between the level of socio-environmental conflict experienced and managers’ perceptions of the surrounding populations. These results suggest that mining managers more affected by socio-environmental conflict strengthened racial stereotypes in response to the external challenge.

The Covid-19 pandemic has rapidly expanded from China to the other continents, following global economic activity and international travels. In LMIC, the rapid political decision process necessary for either its mitigation or suppression is conditioned by the huge economic impact that will lead millions to extreme poverty. The incidence in these countries is variable and depends on the state of the economy and the control measures adopted once the first cases showed up but also on a combination of social factors such as population density, family overcrowding and the productive system. In the absence of a vaccine, control of the pandemic can only be achieved where a strong epidemiological surveillance is present, for which the possibilities are very limited in LMIC. The strategic priorities in these countries are thus based on capacity building of laboratories, surveillance, prevention and control in hospitals, case management, communication and logistics. Covid-19 infection is characterized by endotheliitis and an inflammatory reaction with a multi-organ symptomatology. It is unknown how it manifests clinically in LMIC where endemic diseases with similar physio-pathological mechanisms are highly prevalent. Beyond the limited medical capacities in many LMIC with its consequences in terms of morbi-mortality, the response capacity depends on the setup of non-pharmaceutical measures at the individual and social level to avoid the spread of the virus. These measures, apart from economic implications, have societal consequences for mental health and coexistence, and also structural ones since the pandemic has caused a collapse of the already weak health systems at the primary and hospital levels. Moreover, the fact that the majority of attention and resources have been diverted to Covid-19, with direct damage to the rest of communicable and non-communicable programs, will lead to an increase of other diseases, poverty and mortality. Finally, assuming that the advances will come from the North, a fluid dialogue with the South is required in the decision making process regarding the distribution of medicines or vaccines that will be used in the near future, and when and how these will be tested, and this without preventing the LMIC capacities to carry out their own research. The coordination with WHO and a number of ad-hoc platforms is of paramount importance to empower the South to decide about its future. Only solidarity and concerted efforts by the public and private sectors can avert an even bigger disaster.

Residents in neighborhoods characterized by concentrated poverty and high violent crime rates report lower levels of satisfaction with police. The prevailing neighborhood-level explanation posits that such outcomes are a product of ecologically structured unconventional norms and values regarding crime and criminal justice. What remains unanswered, however, is whether variation in police behavior affects citizens' attitudes independent of neighborhood structural characteristics (e.g., concentrated disadvantage). To address this question, we use four independent sources of data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) to estimate a series of hierarchical linear models to assess the influence of neighborhood-level police behavior. Our results suggest that alternative patrol strategies advocated by proponents of community policing—foot and bike patrols—have a direct positive effect on citizens' satisfaction, net of neighborhood structure and known individual-level correlates (e.g., perceived quality of life). In contrast, the use of physical force is (at best) only weakly associated with neighborhood-level satisfaction.

Cashew was introduced in the north of Côte d’Ivoire to support the economy in the region. This study was conducted to evaluate the technical efficiency of cashew farms in Côte d’Ivoire. The technical efficiency of producers was measured using the Data Envelopment Analysis approach, and the determinants of this efficiency were identified using a TOBIT model. Data were collected in 4 regions: GBEKE, HAMBOL, PORO and WORODOUGOU. In the four regions studied, the average technical efficiency is 49.2% in Variable Scale Efficiency (VRS) and 38.3% in Constant Return to Scale (CRS). Based on our results, the producers in the study area were not efficient. The producers who follow the good practices, have a technical coefficient estimated at 74.2%, and superior to those who follow the good practices, of which, the coefficient is estimated at 70.2%, in Variable Scale Efficiency (VRS). The technical efficiency of farms was positively influenced by the age of farms and agricultural advisory services, and negatively influenced by the pruning practice. Income from cashew farming in the study area (21,816 to 37,987 CFAF/person/year according to region) is below extreme poverty line (CFA F 122,385/year/person), leading to deteriorating cashew/food terms of trade. Cashew farming is often used as a means of land appropriation and of getting credit. Its rapid expansion has dramatically reduced land for subsistence agriculture, raising an accute food security issue. Cashew farming has helped improve poverty indicators through macroeconomic policy. However, this impetus from the agricultural sector economy remains insufficient to boost the modernization of the agricultural sector. The country still has all assets (research institutes, schools of agronomy, skills etc.) to reverse this situation. Hence the he study recommends that producers capitalize on exogenous variables which can improve agricultural efficiency. It also recommends coaching organizations to use technical efficiency measurement and identification of effectiveness determinants to better guide their coaching. As for the Government, it should redouble efforts to implement the recommended solutions in order to avoid producer impoverishment, a barrier to harmonious development in this region of Côte d’Ivoire.

The present paper explored the influence of breeding native pigs on livelihood conditions and the contribution of native pigs to the rural development and rural poverty reduction in the rural areas of Lao PDR. Pig production plays an important role in meat supply for both urban and rural areas of Laos. It is clear that most of the pig products in the country come from smallholder pig farms, and more than 90 percent of those products are the native pigs mostly raised by farmers in remote areas. In general, livestock production distributed between 15–18 percent to GDP, while most of animal production still remains as the traditional methods. Rural development is always the first priority of the Laos government since its independence in 1975, however, the poverty rate in rural areas remained high at 23% in 2018. It might block the development goal of the government which will lead the country out of the least development status by 2020. The food security and malnutrition in the rural or mountainous areas are considered as the majority issue that both government and several international organizations have been thriving hard to overcome, which researchers showed that more than 45% of children under 5 years of age were stunted, and 28% of them were underweight. Inspired of more than 50 % of the households in the rural areas of Laos reported they consumed chicken and pork at least one day a week. While native pigs play an important role on meat supply, it also constituted around 9–14 % of annual income of the households in rural areas. Therefore, the increase the production of pigs and poultry is one option to promote the meat supply to households in the rural areas of Laos. This paper will be a pathway to guide and identify for the final decision to what experiment will be implemented on Lao native pig in Laos (2021–2023) to complete the comparative study on reproductive physiology and reproductive management methods of Hungarian and Lao Indigenous pig breed. Which found it still needs further afford to research and improve more about native pig performance for all areas of productive and quality management.

In many sub-Saharan countries, pig (Susscrofa domesticus) production is increasingly an important food security and income generating activity for smallholder farmers. This is attributed to the high prospects for vigilance of the pork market, driven by urbanisation, population growth and dietary transition towards more animal protein per capita. Therefore, increasing pig production is one of the viable pathways to get smallholder farmers out of poverty and food insecurity. Although there are extensive studies about the elements of pig production, such as feeding, breeding and space requirements; little work has been done on distribution of innovation behaviour and the socio-economic factors that influence labour utilisation in the region. The objective of this study was to determine the socio-economic factors that influence labour (family or hired) utilisation and distribution of innovation behaviour among pig farmers in Northern Uganda. Through a cross sectional survey and descriptive analysis, we characterised smallholder pig farmers in the northern Uganda by type of labour used for pig production, and explored the distribution of the dimensions of innovation behaviour (exploration, experimentation, adaptation and modification) among them. Results revealed that young educated farmers with non-farm employment, a smaller household size, belonging to a farmer group and who had many pigs were more likely to use hired labour than those with counter characteristics. There were significant differences in the number of farmers who exhibited the different dimensions of innovation behavior. Therefore, interventions to boost pig production through the use of hired labour should consider the socio-economic differences among farmers which determine labour constraints they face.

AbstractObjective:To understand non-adherence to medically recommended diets among Mayans with diabetes.Design:Using partially sequential mixed methods, questionnaires, semi-structured brief and in-depth interviews were applied. Questionnaire data were analysed with Pearson’s χ2 and Student’s t tests and qualitative interviews with grounded theory microanalysis.Setting:Rural, predominantly Mayan communities in Chiapas, Quintana Roo and Yucatan, Mexico, 2008–2012.Participants:Purposive sample of Mayans with type 2 diabetes; using public health care; 168 women and twenty-seven men; age 21–50+ years.Results:Participants understood diabetes as caused by negative emotions, divine punishment, revenge via spells, chemicals in food and high sugar/fat consumption. Eliminating corn, pork, sugary beverages and inexpensive industrialized foods was perceived as difficult or impossible. More Mayans reporting not understanding physician instructions (30 v. 18 %) reported difficulty reducing red meat consumption (P = 0·051). Non-adherence was influenced by lack of patient–provider shared knowledge and medical recommendations misaligned with local culture. Men whose wives prepared their meals, women who liked vegetables and young adults whose mothers prepared their meals reported greater adherence to dietary recommendations. Partial adherents said it made life tolerable and those making no physician-recommended dietary changes considered them too restrictive (they meant ‘starving to death’). Over half (57 %) of participants reported non-adherence; the two principal reasons were dislike of recommended foods (52·5 %) and high cost (26·2 %).Conclusions:Adherence to dietary regimens in diabetes treatment is largely related to social and cultural issues. Taking cultural diversity, food preferences, local food availability and poverty into consideration is essential when developing health-promotion activities related to diabetes.

Our goal was to understand the behavior of sellers and consumers of imported agricultural products (corn, rice, chicken and pork) vis-à-vis local products. To test our hypotheses, we used methods of analysis and surveys using documentary techniques and the interview. The results reveal that 4.4% of respondents say they buy imported rice because it is cheaper and is found in abundance; 22.4% say it is of better quality and 6.9% say it is in good taste. This confirms our first hypothesis. Our analysis shows that 70.7% of respondents believe that local cereals are of better quality and 29.3% of respondents believe that imported cereals are not better. 58.6% of respondents prefer imported fresh food; 39.9% prefer local fresh food and 1.7% did not give their opinion.The vast majority, 86.2% of the respondents, want local products to be sold by the producers themselves, 5.2% want it to be a farm product and 3.4% to have a local brand. These results support the sustainable economy in the community. However, 22.4% of respondents complain of being exposed to cholesterol which can lead to cardiovascular diseases in the short and long term following consumption of live spawns without prior checks of health and public health officials; on the other hand 77.6% are abstraction, following the precariousness of life and poverty in Kinshasa. At the national level, taking into account the agricultural sector is inevitable for sustainable development. The state must take responsibility by feeding its own population with organic products of good quality. So, we must work and invest in the agricultural sector in the DRC, to reduce the food and economic dependence that the country is going through. The tax policy on imported fresh food would be one way to support local production and reduce imports so much that makes the balance of trade deficit in the DRC. Keywords: Marketing, imported agricultural products, Hinterlands households, Kinshasa, DRC

AbstractPeople in developed countries currently consume about three to four times as much meat and fish and five to six times as much milk products per capita as in developing Asia and Africa. Meat, milk and fish consumption per capita has barely grown in the developed countries as a whole over the past 20 years. Yet poor people everywhere clearly desire to eat more animal protein products as their incomes rise above the poverty level and as they become urbanized. Growth in per capita consumption and production has in fact occurred in regions such as developing Asia and most particularly China. Per capita consumption of animal proteins and use of cereals for animal food in Asia have both grown in the 3 to 5% per annum range over the past 20 years. By 2020, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute's IMPACT model projections, the share of developing countries in total world meat consumption will expand from 47% currently to 63%. Of the global total projected increase in meat consumption, 40% is from pork, 30% is from poultry and 24% is from beef. The latter helps mitigate the otherwise much larger decline in real beef prices expected through 2020. Projected annual growth in meat consumption in China of 3.2% per annum through 2020, up from 8.3% per annum from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, drives these results.A rapidly expanding supply of feedgrains will be essential to achieving the desired production increases for livestock products without undue upwards pressure on grain prices, especially in view of the rôle of monogastrics and the relative increase in industrial production in developing countries. IMPACT projections under various technical and economic assumptions suggest that there is enough production supply response in world systems to accomplish these production increases smoothly. Sensitivity analysis of the impact of restrictions on China's ability to produce more feedgrains illustrates that in a system of linked global markets for cereals and livestock products, such restrictions are not effective at lowering Chinese livestock consumption, which is driven by global trade in manufactures, although they do lower Chinese livestock production. The resulting imbalance raises world food costs by one-third in 2020 over anticipated levels, encourages increased livestock exports from Latin America, discourages livestock exports from the USA and reduces meat and cereals imports and consumption in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia.

Kesejahteraan akan dapat diminimalisir apabila ada distribusi pendapatan dan kekayaan yang merata. Maka Zakat merupakan salah satu instrument ampuh untuk memberikan solusi pembangunan dan pemerataan ekonomi secara adil dan bijaksana. Apabila dilakukan secara optimal dalam penghimpunan, pengorganisasian zakat harus dilakukan secara efektif dengan dukungan regulasi dan aparat yang professional. Adapun tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah (1) untuk mengetahui sistem pengelolaan dana zakat di Baznas Jawa Barat. (2) Untuk Mengetahui Keterkaitan SDGs dengan Tujuan Zakat. (3) Untuk Mengetahui Hasil dari Rencana Strategis Optimalisasi Pendistribusian Dana Zakat dalam Pencapaian Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) di Baznas Provinsi Jawa Barat. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah pendekatan kualitatif, dengan jenis penelitian lapangan (field research). Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan wawancara, observasi dan dokumentasi. Adapun subjek penelitian adalah para Pimpinan dan staff Baznas Jawa Barat.Setelah data diperoleh kemudian dianalisis kemudian dicek keabsahan data dengan cara reduksi data, penyajian data, dan penarikan kesimpulan. Dalam penelitian ini peneliti membatasi lingkup pengoptimalan distirbusi dan pendayagunaan dana zakat yang diteliti, yaitu diambil dari: (1) Sistem pengelolaan, dan (2) Strategi penguatan peran. Adapun hasil yang ditemukan dari penelitian ini yaitu: (1) Dalam Pengelolaan Zakat BAZNAS Propinsi berkedudukan di Ibukota Provinsi yang bersangkutan dan melakukan pengumpulan zakat melalui UPZ yang ada di provinsi (2) Strategi Penguatan Pendistribusian dan Pendayagunaan BAZNAS Jawa Barat yakni dengan irisan program SDGs dan zakat bertemu dalam sebuah objektif untuk mengurangi kemiskinan termasuk kelaparan yang terjadi di dunia ini dan aneka turunannya. Beberapa pendapat dan pandangan muncul mencoba mengaitkan satu per satu dari poin-poin SDGs dengan interpretasi atas kerja zakat khususnya dari sudut penerima manfaat dan peruntukkan zakat. Welfare will be minimized. So Zakat is one of the powerful instruments to provide development solutions and economic checks that are fair and wise. If carried out optimally in the collection, organizing zakat must be carried out effectively with professional regulatory and supervisory support. As the purpose of this study, First, To study the management system of zakat funds in Baznas West Java. Second, To Know the Linkages of SDGs to the Purpose of Alms. Third, To Know the Results of the Strategic Plan for the Optimization of Zakat Funds in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in National Baznas West Java Province. The method used in this study is qualitative research, with the type of field research (field research). Data collection is done by interviews, collection and arrangement. While the research subjects were the West Java Baznas Leaders and staff. After the data is obtained then analyzed then the validity of the data is checked by means of data reduction, data presentation, and discussed conclusions. In this study, this study discusses optimization of the utilization and utilization of zakat funds collected, which are taken from: (1) Management system, and (2) Role strengthening strategy. The following results found from this study are: (1) In the Management of Provincial Zakat BAZNAS located in the Capital of the Province needed and zakat through UPZ in the province (2) West Java BAZNAS Distribution and Utilization Strategy is provided with SDGs slice and zakat fulfill the goal of reducing poverty, including what happens in this world and its various derivatives. Some opinions and opinions that appear link one by one from SDGs points to the interpretation of the special zakat work from the point of view of beneficiaries and zakat allocation.

Welfare will be minimized. So Zakat is one of the powerful instruments to provide development solutions and economic checks that are fair and wise. If carried out optimally in the collection, organizing zakat must be carried out effectively with professional regulatory and supervisory support. As the purpose of this study, First, To study the management system of zakat funds in Baznas West Java. Second, To Know the Linkages of SDGs to the Purpose of Alms. Third, To Know the Results of the Strategic Plan for the Optimization of Zakat Funds in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in National Baznas West Java Province. The method used in this study is qualitative research, with the type of field research (field research). Data collection is done by interviews, collection and arrangement. While the research subjects were the West Java Baznas Leaders and staff. After the data is obtained then analyzed then the validity of the data is checked by means of data reduction, data presentation, and discussed conclusions. In this study, this study discusses optimization of the utilization and utilization of zakat funds collected, which are taken from: (1) Management system, and (2) Role strengthening strategy. The following results found from this study are: (1) In the Management of Provincial Zakat BAZNAS located in the Capital of the Province needed and zakat through UPZ in the province (2) West Java BAZNAS Distribution and Utilization Strategy is provided with SDGs slice and zakat fulfill the goal of reducing poverty, including what happens in this world and its various derivatives. Some opinions and opinions that appear link one by one from SDGs points to the interpretation of the special zakat work from the point of view of beneficiaries and zakat allocation. Kesejahteraan akan dapat diminimalisir apabila ada distribusi pendapatan dan kekayaan yang merata. Maka Zakat merupakan salah satu instrument ampuh untuk memberikan solusi pembangunan dan pemerataan ekonomi secara adil dan bijaksana. Apabila dilakukan secara optimal dalam penghimpunan, pengorganisasian zakat harus dilakukan secara efektif dengan dukungan regulasi dan aparat yang professional.Adapun tujuan dari penelitian ini Pertama, Untuk mengetahui sistem pengelolaan dana zakat di Baznas Jawa Barat. Kedua, Untuk Mengetahui Keterkaitan SDGs dengan Tujuan Zakat.Ketiga, Untuk Mengetahui Hasil dari Rencana Strategis Optimalisasi Pendistribusian Dana Zakat dalam Pencapaian Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) di Baznas Provinsi Jawa Barat..Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah pendekatan kualitatif, dengan jenis penelitian lapangan (field research). Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan wawancara, observasi dan dokumentasi. Adapun subjek penelitian adalah para Pimpinan dan staff Baznas Jawa Barat.Setelah data diperoleh kemudian dianalisis kemudian dicek keabsahan data dengan cara reduksi data, penyajian data, dan penarikan kesimpulan. Dalam penelitian ini peneliti membatasi lingkup pengoptimalan distirbusi dan pendayagunaan dana zakat yang diteliti, yaitu diambil dari: (1) Sistem pengelolaan, dan (2) Strategi penguatan peran.Adapun hasil yang ditemukan dari penelitian ini yaitu: (1) Dalam Pengelolaan Zakat BAZNAS Propinsi berkedudukan di Ibukota Provinsi yang bersangkutan dan melakukan pengumpulan zakat melalui UPZ yang ada di provinsi (2) Strategi Penguatan Pendistribusian dan Pendayagunaan BAZNAS Jawa Barat yakni dengan irisan program SDGs dan zakat bertemu dalam sebuah objektif untuk mengurangi kemiskinan termasuk kelaparan yang terjadi di dunia ini dan aneka turunannya. Beberapa pendapat dan pandangan muncul mencoba mengaitkan satu per satu dari poin-poin SDGs dengan interpretasi atas kerja zakat khususnya dari sudut penerima manfaat dan peruntukkan zakat.

Parental Involvement in their children's schooling has long been recognized as a critical component of good education. This study aims to find out the relationship between socioeconomic status, interpersonal communication, and school climate with parental involvement in early childhood education. Using survey and correlational research design, data collection was carried out through accumulation techniques with tests and questionnaires. The data analysis technique used statistical analysis and multiple regressions. The findings in the socio-economic context of parents show that the measure of power is an indicator in the very high category with a total score of 5, while the measures of wealth, honour and knowledge are included in the high category with a total score of 4 in relation to parental involvement. The form of interpersonal communication, the openness of parents in responding happily to information / news received from schools about children is a finding of a significant relationship with parental involvement in early childhood education. The school climate describes the responsibility for their respective duties and roles, work support provided, and interpersonal communication relationships, parents at home and teachers at school. Keywords: Socio-economic Status, Interpersonal Communication, Climate School, Parental Involvement, Early Childhood Education References Amato, P. R. (2005). The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation. The Future of Children, 15(2), 75–96. https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2005.0012 Arnold, D. H., Zeljo, A., Doctoroff, G. L., & Ortiz, C. (2008). Parent Involvement in Preschool: Predictors and the Relation of Involvement to Preliteracy Development. 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Abstract Background The local diet in high-poverty areas in China is mainly vegetarian, and children may be more vulnerable to vitamin B12 deficiency. Objective The aims of this study were to explore the vitamin B12 status of toddlers living in high-poverty areas of China and to observe the effects of different complementary foods on the vitamin B12 status and cognitive level of these toddlers. Methods The study was nested within a cluster-randomized controlled trial implemented in 60 administrative villages (clusters) of Xichou County in which infants aged 6 months old were randomized to receive 50 g/d of pork (meat group), an equi-caloric fortified cereal supplement (fortified cereal group) or local cereal supplement (local cereal group) for one year. At 18 months, a subsample of the 180 toddlers (60 from each group) was randomly tested for serum vitamin B12 and total homocysteine (tHcy) levels, and their neurodevelopment was evaluated. Results The median serum concentrations of vitamin B12 and tHcy were 360.0 pg/mL and 8.2 μmol/L, respectively, in children aged 18 months. Serum vitamin B12 concentrations less than 300 pg/mL were found in 62 (34.4%) children, and concentrations less than 200 pg/mL were found in 30 (16.7%) children. The median vitamin B12 concentration was significantly different among the three groups (P < 0.001). The highest vitamin B12 level was demonstrated in the fortified cereal group (509.5 pg/mL), followed by the meat group (338.0 pg/mL) and the local cereal group (241.0 pg/mL). Vitamin B12 concentration was positively correlated with the cognitive score (P < 0.001) and the fine motor score (P = 0.023) of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 3rd Edition (BSID III) screening test. Compared to the local cereal group, children in the meat group had higher cognitive scores (P < 0.05). Conclusion In poor rural areas of China, vitamin B12 deficiency in toddlers was common due to low dietary vitamin B12 intake. Fortified cereal and meat could help improve the vitamin B12 status of children and might improve their cognitive levels. Trial registration The larger trial in which this study was nested was registered at clinical trials.gov as NCT00726102. It was registered on July 31, 2008.

"Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes, but there are people who will put just about anything in their mouth" -- Isabel Allende (90) In the beginning is not the word, but the caress of the eye, the touch of the tongue and the taste of food. From the nipple onwards, the primary pleasure of food is part of a social eroticism -- a playful eroticism -- that prefigures and sets up the logic of speaking to and loving others. And it is this sensual and emotional potential of food as a source of power that has guaranteed a place for food in cultural media such as M/C. Food as eroticism is not food as sex. In "Beyond Food/Sex", Elspeth Probyn manoeuvres the reader around the conflation of food and sex and convinces us that we really are over food porn! She tantalises instead with the idea that the way to shake off constraining prohibitions and achieve greater susceptibility to pleasure is to think through food, to sex, the universe and everything... Thinking through our tongues reminds us of our shared corporeal vulnerability -- reminds us that we are bodies, connected to others, intuitively, materially and meaningfully. This is a politicisation of desire, a passionate advocacy of the impulse to give and receive pleasure with food. Of course, this impulse has always been exploited and distorted -- power says no as often as it says yes. Centuries of extravagant personal rivalry between élites while starving masses hungrily watch spectacles of waste have shown us that patriarchy is not the sole provenance of the misuse and abuse of food. Nations, groups and individuals define themselves by and through acts of consumption that are as much about exclusion, and creating otherness, as they are about inclusion. These twin themes of consumption and identity inform much of what is written about food today. Issues of identity -- both personal and national -- are held within a tension between have and have-not; inclusion and exclusion; self and Other. And frequently these binaries are articulated within the discourse of food and gastronomy: whether it is racial vilification based on the perception of cuisine stereotypes; or snobbery about the correct pronunciation of prosciutto or the ingredients for baba ghanoush. Even something as simple and necessary as cooking is commonly gendered in problematic and political ways. The articles in this issue of M/C all, to a greater or lesser extent, address these issues. Sydney academic Elspeth Probyn has long been interested in the problematics of identity and subjectivity, and in this issue's feature article, "The Indigestion of Identities", she suggests that a productive way of interrogating identity is through the lens of food, and those themes which append to eating. As she says, "eating continually interweaves individual needs, desires and aspirations within global economies of identities". Teemu Taira continues this theme in his discussion of unemployment in Finland, "Material Food, Spiritual Quest: When Pleasure Does Not Follow Purchase". His provocative view is that for the unemployed, the socialising role of work is replaced by food preparation and consumption, a social activity which is, paradoxically, jeopardised by the marginalisation and poverty which frequently coexists with unemployment. Construction of identity through food is also featured in "You Have a Basket for the Bread, Just Put the Bloody Chicken in It", Felicity Newman's reminiscence of growing up in a Jewish part of Sydney. Warm memories of fish and chips at Bondi lead Felicity to a discussion of ethnicity and race in contemporary Australian politics. According to Todd Holden in his investigation of portrayals of food on Japanese television, "And Now for the Main (Dis)course: Or, Food as Entrée in Contemporary Japanese Television", food is important because of the way it evokes a sense of nihonjinron -- that which is unique about Japanese culture -- and its ubiquity in everyday life. Food becomes a "common conduit" through which non-food issues can be understood. "Killer Zucchini", Ric Masten's witty and clever poem about gender politics, is framed around a description of that most phallic of vegetables, the zucchini. In a first for M/C, photographer Judith Villamayor presents a series of five images that evoke themes of food, sex and consumption. As described in the editors' introduction, "Chuck Another Steak on the Barbie, Would'ja Doll", all sorts of assumptions and beliefs about the gendering of food are played out in these confronting and original photographs. Lynn Houston, in her article "A Recipe for "Blackened 'Other': Process and Product in the Work of Victor Grippo", describes the work of the Argentinian artist who combines a fascination with food with other cultural issues, especially representations of the "Other". In "What About the Women? Food, Migration and Mythology", Danielle Gallegos and Felicity Newman use the stories of three women to provide a point of departure from the dominant discourse that suggests that migration and the increased mobility of Australians fills a culinary void left by a lack of affinity with the land and its produce. "Food Deserts: An Issue of Social Justice" is the descriptive title of Sinead Furey's, Heather McIlveen's, and Christopher Strugnell's article on the growth of "food shopping deserts" in parts of the United Kingdom. These are areas where the concentration of major supermarkets on the edges of towns have caused the closure of inner-city grocery stores, making access to food difficult for low-income families, who often do not have the advantage of private transport. Finally, issues of food and nationalism are brought together in Guy Redden's article, "Packaging the Gifts of Nation", in which he examines the packaging of certain food stuffs that construct a link between the food and idealised images of nature and nation. We want to thank Team M/C for their help in the planning and production of this issue of M/C, as well as our reviewers and all the authors who contributed to the journal. We especially want to thank Ian Van Wert who helped with translations from Spanish. Throughout the production we have scrupulously avoided the temptation to fall into obvious and regrettable food puns. Now, as the work is nearly done, we can afford the liberty of claiming one for ourselves: if this collection resembles a smorgasbord, we invite you to enjoy as much or as little of the offerings as you desire, but hope that all the dishes will provide satisfying food for thought. Bon appétit! Vikki Fraser, John Gunders -- 'Food' Issue Editors References Allende, Isabel. Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. Sydney: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1998. Probyn, Elspeth. "Beyond Food/Sex: Eating and an Ethics of Existence." Theory, Culture and Society 16.2 (1999): 215-28, 244. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Vikki Fraser, John Gunders. "Editorial: 'Food'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php>. Chicago style:M Vikki Fraser, John Gunders, "Editorial: 'Food'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 7 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Vikki Fraser, John Gunders. (1999) Editorial: 'Food'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(7). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

In a light-speed economy of communication, the only thing that moves faster than information is imagination. And in a time when, more than ever before, information is the currency of global politics, economics, conflict, and conquest what better way to critique and crinkle the global-social than to combine the two - information and imagination - into an hilarious mockery of, and a brief incursion into the vistas of the globalitarian order. This is precisely the reflexive and rhetorical pot-pourri that the group 'the Yes Men' (www.theyesmen.org) have formed. Beginning in 2000, the Yes Men describe themselves as a "network of impostors". Basically, the Yes Men (no they're not all men) fool organisations into believing they are representatives of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and in-turn receive, and accept, invitations to speak (as WTO representatives) at conferences, meetings, seminars, and all manner and locale of corporate pow-wows. At these meetings, the Yes Men deliver their own very special brand of WTO public address. Let's walk through a hypothetical situation. Ashley is organising a conference for a multinational adult entertainment company, at which the management might discuss ways in which it could cut costs from its dildo manufacturing sector by moving production to Indonesia where labour is cheap and tax non-existent (for some), rubber is in abundance, and where the workers hands are slender enough so as to make even the "slimline-tickler" range appear gushingly large in annual report photographs. Ashley decides that a presentation from Supachai Panitchpakdi - head of the WTO body - on the virtues of unrestrained capitalism would be a great way to start the conference, and to build esprit de corps among participants - to summon some good vibrations, if you will. So Ashley jumps on the net. After the obligatory four hours of trying to close the myriad porn site pop-ups that plague internet users of the adult entertainment industry, Ashley comes across the WTO site - or at least what looks like the WTO site - and, via the email link, goes about inviting Supachai Panitchpakdi to speak at the conference. What Ashley doesn't realise is that the site is a mirror site of the actual WTO site. This is not, however, grounds for Ashley's termination because it is only after careful and timely scrutiny that you can tell the difference - and in a hypercapitalist economy who has got time to carefully scrutinize? You see, the Yes Men own the domain name www.gatt.org (GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]being the former, not so formalised and globally sanctioned incarnation of the WTO), so in the higgledy-piggeldy cross-referencing infosphere of the internet, and its economy of keywords, unsuspecting WTO fans often find themselves perusing the Yes Men site. The Yes Men are sirens in both senses of the word. They raise alarm to rampant corporatism; and they sing the tunes of corporatism to lure their victims – they signal and seduce. The Yes Men are pull marketers, as opposed to the push tactics of logo based activism, and this is what takes them beyond logoism and its focus on the brand bullies. During the few years the Yes Men have been operating their ingenious rhetorical realignment of the WTO, they have pulled off some of the most golden moments in tactical media’s short history. In May 2002, after accepting an email invitation from conference organisers, the Yes Men hit an accountancy conference in Sydney. In his keynote speech, yes man Andy Bichlbaum announced that as of that day the WTO had decided to "effect a cessation of all operations, to be accomplished over a period of four months, culminating in September". He announced that "the WTO will reintegrate as a new trade body whose charter will be to ensure that trade benefits the poor" (ref). The shocking news hit a surprisingly receptive audience and even sparked debate in the floor of the Canadian Parliament where questions were asked by MP John Duncan about "what impact this will have on our appeals on lumber, agriculture, and other ongoing trade disputes". The Certified Practicing Accountants (CPA) Australia reported that [t]he changes come in response to recent studies which indicate strongly that the current free trade rules and policies have increased poverty, pollution, and inequality, and have eroded democratic principles, with a disproportionatly large negative effect on the poorest countries (CPA: 2002) In another Yes Men assault, this time at a Finnish textiles conference, yes man Hank Hardy Unruh gave a speech (in stead of the then WTO head Mike Moore) arguing that the U.S. civil war (in which slavery became illegal) was a useless waste of time because the system of imported labour (slavery) has been supplanted now by a system of remote labour (sweatshops)- instead of bringing the "labour" to the dildos via ships from Africa, now we can take the dildos to the "labour", or more precisely, the idea of a dildo - or in biblical terms - take the mount'em to Mohammed, Mhemmet, or Ming. Unruh meandered through his speech to the usual complicit audience, happy to accept his bold assertions in the coma-like stride of a conference delegate, that is, until he ripped off his business suit (with help from an accomplice) to reveal a full-body golden leotard replete with a giant golden phallus which he proceeded to inflate with the aid of a small gas canister. He went on to describe to the audience that the suit, dubbed "the management leisure suit", was a new innovation in the remote labour control field. He informed the textiles delegates that located in the end of the phallus was a small video interface through which one could view workers in the Third World and administer, by remote control, electric shocks to those employees not working hard enough. Apparently after the speech only one objection was forwarded and that was from a woman who complained that the phallus device was not appropriate because not only men can oppress workers in the third world. It is from the complicity of their audiences that the Yes Men derive their most virulent critique. They point out that the "aim is to get people to think more seriously about the sort of bullshit they are prepared to swallow, if and when the information comes from a suitably respected authority. By appearing, for example, in the name of the WTO, one could even make out a case for justifying homicide, irrespective of the target audience's training and intellect" (Yes men) Unruh says. And this is the real statement that the Yes Men make, their real-life, real-time theatre hollows-out the signifer of the WTO and injects its own signified to highlight the predominant role of language - rhetoric - in the globalising of the ideas of neo-liberalism. In speaking shit and having people, nay, experts, swallow it comfortably, the Yes Men punctuate that globalisation is as much a movement of ideas across societies as it is a movement of things through societies. It is a movement of ideals - a movement of meanings. Organisations like the WTO propagate these meanings, and propagandise a situation where there is no alternative to initiatives like free trade and the top-down, repressive regime espoused buy neoliberal triumphalists. The Yes Men highlight that the seemingly immutable and inevitable charge of neoliberalism, is in fact simply the dominance of a single way of structuring social life - one dictated by the market. Through their unique brand of semiotic puppetry, the Yes Men show that the project of unelected treaty organisations like the WTO and their push toward the globalisation of neoliberalism is not inevitable, it is not a fait accompli, but rather, that their claims of an inexorable movement toward a neo-liberal capitalism are simply more rhetorical than real. By using the spin and speak of the WTO to suggest ideas like forcing the world's poor to recycle hamburgers to cure world hunger, the Yes Men demonstrate that the power of the WTO lies on the tip of their tongue, and their ability to convince people the world over of the unquestionable legitimacy of that tongue-tip teetering power. But it is that same power that has threatened the future of the Yes Men. In November 2001, the owners of the gatt.org website received a call from the host of its webpage, Verio. The WTO had contacted Verio and asked them to shut down the gatt.org site for copyright violations. But the Yes Men came up with their own response - they developed software that is freely available and which allows the user to mirror any site on the internet easily. Called "Reamweaver", the software allows the user to instantly "funhouse-mirror" anyone's website, copying the real-time "look and feel" but letting the user change any words, images, etc. that they choose. The thought of anyone being able to mimic any site on the internet is perhaps a little scary - especially in terms of e-commerce - imagine that "lizard-tongue belly button tickler" never arriving! Or thinking you had invited a bunch of swingers over to your house via a swingers website, only to find that you'd been duped by a rogue gang of fifteen tax accountants who had come to your house to give you a lecture on the issues associated with the inclusion of pro-forma information in preliminary announcements in East Europe 1955-1958. But seriously, I'm yet to critique the work of the Yes Men. Their brand of protest has come under fire most predictably from the WTO, and least surprisingly from their duped victims. But, really, in an era where the neo-liberal conservative right dominate the high-end operations of sociality, I am reticent to say a bad word about the Yes Men's light, creative, and refreshing style of dissent. I can hear the "free speech" cry coming from those who'd charge the Yes Men with denying their victims the right to freely express their ideas - and I suppose they are correct. But can supra-national institutions like the WTO and their ilk really complain about the Yes Men’s infringement on their rights to a fair communicative playing field when daily they ride rough-shod over the rights of people and the people-defined "rights" of all else with which we share this planet? This is a hazardous junction for the dissent of the Yes Men because it is a point at which personal actions collide head-on with social ethics. The Yes Men’s brand of dissent is a form of direct action, and like direct action, the emphasis is on putting physical bodies between the oppressor and the oppressed – in this case between the subaltern and the supra-national. The Yes Men put their bodies between and within bodies – they penetrate the veneer of the brand to crawl around inside and mess with the mind of the host company body. Messing with anybody’s body is going to be bothersome. But while corporations enjoy the “rights” of embodied citizens, they are spared from the consequences citizens must endure. Take Worldcom’s fraudulent accounting (the biggest in US history) for instance, surely such a monumental deception necessitates more than a USD500 million fine. When will “capital punishment” be introduced to apply to corporations? As in “killing off” the corporation and all its articles of association? Such inconsistencies in the citizenry praxis of corporations paint a pedestrian crossing at the junction where “body” activism meets the ethic (right?) of unequivocal free-speech for all – and when we factor-in crippling policies like structural adjustment, the ethically hazardous junction becomes shadowed by a glorious pedestrian overpass! Where logocentric activism literally concentrates on the apparel – the branded surface - the focus of groups like the Yes Men is on the body beneath – both corporate and corporeal. But are the tactics of the Yes Men enough? Does this step beyond logocentric focused activism wade into the territory of substantive change? Of course the answer is a resounding no. The Yes Men are culture jammers - and culture jamming exists in the realm of ephemera. It asks a question, for a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of struggle, and then fades away. Fetishising the tactics of the Yes Men risks steering dissent into a form of entertainment - much like the entertainmentised politics it opposes. What the Yes Men do is creative and skilful, but it does not express the depth of commitment displayed by those activists working tirelessly on myriad - less-glamorous - campaigns such as the free West Papua movement, and other broader issues of social activism like indigenous rights. If politics is entertainment, then the politics of the Yes Men celebrates the actor while ignoring the hard work of the production team. But having said that, I believe the Yes Men serve an important function in the complex mechanics of dissent. They are but one tactic - they cannot be expected to work with history, they exist in the moment, a transitory trance of reason. And provided the Yes Men continue to use their staged opportunities as platforms to suggest BETTER IDEAS, while also acknowledging the depth and complexity of the subject matter with which they deal, then their brand of protest is valid and effective. The Yes Men ride the cusp of a new style of contemporary social protest, and the more people who likewise use imagination to counter the globalitarian regime and its commodity logic, the better. Through intelligent satire and deft use of communication technologies, the Yes Men lay bare the internal illogic (in terms of human and ecological wellbeing) of the fetishistic charge to cut costs at all costs. Thank-Gatt for the Yes Men, the chastisers of the global eco-social pimps. Works Cited CPA. (2002). World Trade Organisation to Redefine Charter. http://theyesmen.org/tro/cpa.html Yes Men: http://theyesmen.org/ * And thanks to Phil Graham for the “capital punishment” idea. Links http://theyesmen.org/ http://theyesmen.org/tro/cpa.html http://www.gatt.org http://www.theyesmen.org/ Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Pace, John. "The Yes Men" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/05-yesmen.php>. APA Style Pace, J. (2003, Jun 19). The Yes Men. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/05-yesmen.php>

1991 An afternoon in late 1991 found me on a Sydney bus reading Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991). A disembarking passenger paused at my side and, as I glanced up, hissed, ‘I don’t know how you can read that filth’. As she continued to make her way to the front of the vehicle, I was as stunned as if she had struck me physically. There was real vehemence in both her words and how they were delivered, and I can still see her eyes squeezing into slits as she hesitated while curling her mouth around that final angry word: ‘filth’. Now, almost fifteen years later, the memory is remarkably vivid. As the event is also still remarkable; this comment remaining the only remark ever made to me by a stranger about anything I have been reading during three decades of travelling on public transport. That inflamed commuter summed up much of the furore that greeted the publication of American Psycho. More than this, and unusually, condemnation of the work both actually preceded, and affected, its publication. Although Ellis had been paid a substantial U.S. $300,000 advance by Simon & Schuster, pre-publication stories based on circulating galley proofs were so negative—offering assessments of the book as: ‘moronic … pointless … themeless … worthless (Rosenblatt 3), ‘superficial’, ‘a tapeworm narrative’ (Sheppard 100) and ‘vile … pornography, not literature … immoral, but also artless’ (Miner 43)—that the publisher cancelled the contract (forfeiting the advance) only months before the scheduled release date. CEO of Simon & Schuster, Richard E. Snyder, explained: ‘it was an error of judgement to put our name on a book of such questionable taste’ (quoted in McDowell, “Vintage” 13). American Psycho was, instead, published by Random House/Knopf in March 1991 under its prestige paperback imprint, Vintage Contemporary (Zaller; Freccero 48) – Sonny Mehta having signed the book to Random House some two days after Simon & Schuster withdrew from its agreement with Ellis. While many commented on the fact that Ellis was paid two substantial advances, it was rarely noted that Random House was a more prestigious publisher than Simon & Schuster (Iannone 52). After its release, American Psycho was almost universally vilified and denigrated by the American critical establishment. The work was criticised on both moral and aesthetic/literary/artistic grounds; that is, in terms of both what Ellis wrote and how he wrote it. Critics found it ‘meaningless’ (Lehmann-Haupt C18), ‘abysmally written … schlock’ (Kennedy 427), ‘repulsive, a bloodbath serving no purpose save that of morbidity, titillation and sensation … pure trash, as scummy and mean as anything it depicts, a dirty book by a dirty writer’ (Yardley B1) and ‘garbage’ (Gurley Brown 21). Mark Archer found that ‘the attempt to confuse style with content is callow’ (31), while Naomi Wolf wrote that: ‘overall, reading American Psycho holds the same fascination as watching a maladjusted 11-year-old draw on his desk’ (34). John Leo’s assessment sums up the passionate intensity of those critical of the work: ‘totally hateful … violent junk … no discernible plot, no believable characterization, no sensibility at work that comes anywhere close to making art out of all the blood and torture … Ellis displays little feel for narration, words, grammar or the rhythm of language’ (23). These reviews, as those printed pre-publication, were titled in similarly unequivocal language: ‘A Revolting Development’ (Sheppard 100), ‘Marketing Cynicism and Vulgarity’ (Leo 23), ‘Designer Porn’ (Manguel 46) and ‘Essence of Trash’ (Yardley B1). Perhaps the most unambiguous in its message was Roger Rosenblatt’s ‘Snuff this Book!’ (3). Of all works published in the U.S.A. at that time, including those clearly carrying X ratings, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) selected American Psycho for special notice, stating that the book ‘legitimizes inhuman and savage violence masquerading as sexuality’ (NOW 114). Judging the book ‘the most misogynistic communication’ the organisation had ever encountered (NOW L.A. chapter president, Tammy Bruce, quoted in Kennedy 427) and, on the grounds that ‘violence against women in any form is no longer socially acceptable’ (McDowell, “NOW” C17), NOW called for a boycott of the entire Random House catalogue for the remainder of 1991. Naomi Wolf agreed, calling the novel ‘a violation not of obscenity standards, but of women’s civil rights, insofar as it results in conditioning male sexual response to female suffering or degradation’ (34). Later, the boycott was narrowed to Knopf and Vintage titles (Love 46), but also extended to all of the many products, companies, corporations, firms and brand names that are a feature of Ellis’s novel (Kauffman, “American” 41). There were other unexpected responses such as the Walt Disney Corporation barring Ellis from the opening of Euro Disney (Tyrnauer 101), although Ellis had already been driven from public view after receiving a number of death threats and did not undertake a book tour (Kennedy 427). Despite this, the book received significant publicity courtesy of the controversy and, although several national bookstore chains and numerous booksellers around the world refused to sell the book, more than 100,000 copies were sold in the U.S.A. in the fortnight after publication (Dwyer 55). Even this success had an unprecedented effect: when American Psycho became a bestseller, The New York Times announced that it would be removing the title from its bestseller lists because of the book’s content. In the days following publication in the U.S.A., Canadian customs announced that it was considering whether to allow the local arm of Random House to, first, import American Psycho for sale in Canada and, then, publish it in Canada (Kirchhoff, “Psycho” C1). Two weeks later, when the book was passed for sale (Kirchhoff, “Customs” C1), demonstrators protested the entrance of a shipment of the book. In May, the Canadian Defence Force made headlines when it withdrew copies of the book from the library shelves of a navy base in Halifax (Canadian Press C1). Also in May 1991, the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), the federal agency that administers the classification scheme for all films, computer games and ‘submittable’ publications (including books) that are sold, hired or exhibited in Australia, announced that it had classified American Psycho as ‘Category 1 Restricted’ (W. Fraser, “Book” 5), to be sold sealed, to only those over 18 years of age. This was the first such classification of a mainstream literary work since the rating scheme was introduced (Graham), and the first time a work of literature had been restricted for sale since Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969. The chief censor, John Dickie, said the OFLC could not justify refusing the book classification (and essentially banning the work), and while ‘as a satire on yuppies it has a lot going for it’, personally he found the book ‘distasteful’ (quoted in W. Fraser, “Sensitive” 5). Moreover, while this ‘R’ classification was, and remains, a national classification, Australian States and Territories have their own sale and distribution regulation systems. Under this regime, American Psycho remains banned from sale in Queensland, as are all other books in this classification category (Vnuk). These various reactions led to a flood of articles published in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and the U.K., voicing passionate opinions on a range of issues including free speech and censorship, the corporate control of artistic thought and practice, and cynicism on the part of authors and their publishers about what works might attract publicity and (therefore) sell in large numbers (see, for instance, Hitchens 7; Irving 1). The relationship between violence in society and its representation in the media was a common theme, with only a few commentators (including Norman Mailer in a high profile Vanity Fair article) suggesting that, instead of inciting violence, the media largely reflected, and commented upon, societal violence. Elayne Rapping, an academic in the field of Communications, proposed that the media did actively glorify violence, but only because there was a market for such representations: ‘We, as a society love violence, thrive on violence as the very basis of our social stability, our ideological belief system … The problem, after all, is not media violence but real violence’ (36, 38). Many more commentators, however, agreed with NOW, Wolf and others and charged Ellis’s work with encouraging, and even instigating, violent acts, and especially those against women, calling American Psycho ‘a kind of advertising for violence against women’ (anthropologist Elliot Leyton quoted in Dwyer 55) and, even, a ‘how-to manual on the torture and dismemberment of women’ (Leo 23). Support for the book was difficult to find in the flood of vitriol directed against it, but a small number wrote in Ellis’s defence. Sonny Mehta, himself the target of death threats for acquiring the book for Random House, stood by this assessment, and was widely quoted in his belief that American Psycho was ‘a serious book by a serious writer’ and that Ellis was ‘remarkably talented’ (Knight-Ridder L10). Publishing director of Pan Macmillan Australia, James Fraser, defended his decision to release American Psycho on the grounds that the book told important truths about society, arguing: ‘A publisher’s office is a clearing house for ideas … the real issue for community debate [is] – to what extent does it want to hear the truth about itself, about individuals within the community and about the governments the community elects. If we care about the preservation of standards, there is none higher than this. Gore Vidal was among the very few who stated outright that he liked the book, finding it ‘really rather inspired … a wonderfully comic novel’ (quoted in Tyrnauer 73). Fay Weldon agreed, judging the book as ‘brilliant’, and focusing on the importance of Ellis’s message: ‘Bret Easton Ellis is a very good writer. He gets us to a ‘T’. And we can’t stand it. It’s our problem, not his. American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel that revolves around its own nasty bits’ (C1). Since 1991 As unlikely as this now seems, I first read American Psycho without any awareness of the controversy raging around its publication. I had read Ellis’s earlier works, Less than Zero (1985) and The Rules of Attraction (1987) and, with my energies fully engaged elsewhere, cannot now even remember how I acquired the book. Since that angry remark on the bus, however, I have followed American Psycho’s infamy and how it has remained in the public eye over the last decade and a half. Australian OFLC decisions can be reviewed and reversed – as when Pasolini’s final film Salo (1975), which was banned in Australia from the time of its release in 1975 until it was un-banned in 1993, was then banned again in 1998 – however, American Psycho’s initial classification has remained unchanged. In July 2006, I purchased a new paperback copy in rural New South Wales. It was shrink-wrapped in plastic and labelled: ‘R. Category One. Not available to persons under 18 years. Restricted’. While exact sales figures are difficult to ascertain, by working with U.S.A., U.K. and Australian figures, this copy was, I estimate, one of some 1.5 to 1.6 million sold since publication. In the U.S.A., backlist sales remain very strong, with some 22,000 copies sold annually (Holt and Abbott), while lifetime sales in the U.K. are just under 720,000 over five paperback editions. Sales in Australia are currently estimated by Pan MacMillan to total some 100,000, with a new printing of 5,000 copies recently ordered in Australia on the strength of the book being featured on the inaugural Australian Broadcasting Commission’s First Tuesday Book Club national television program (2006). Predictably, the controversy around the publication of American Psycho is regularly revisited by those reviewing Ellis’s subsequent works. A major article in Vanity Fair on Ellis’s next book, The Informers (1994), opened with a graphic description of the death threats Ellis received upon the publication of American Psycho (Tyrnauer 70) and then outlined the controversy in detail (70-71). Those writing about Ellis’s two most recent novels, Glamorama (1999) and Lunar Park (2005), have shared this narrative strategy, which also forms at least part of the frame of every interview article. American Psycho also, again predictably, became a major topic of discussion in relation to the contracting, making and then release of the eponymous film in 2000 as, for example, in Linda S. Kauffman’s extensive and considered review of the film, which spent the first third discussing the history of the book’s publication (“American” 41-45). Playing with this interest, Ellis continues his practice of reusing characters in subsequent works. Thus, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, who first appeared in The Rules of Attraction as the elder brother of the main character, Sean – who, in turn, makes a brief appearance in American Psycho – also turns up in Glamorama with ‘strange stains’ on his Armani suit lapels, and again in Lunar Park. The book also continues to be regularly cited in discussions of censorship (see, for example, Dubin; Freccero) and has been included in a number of university-level courses about banned books. In these varied contexts, literary, cultural and other critics have also continued to disagree about the book’s impact upon readers, with some persisting in reading the novel as a pornographic incitement to violence. When Wade Frankum killed seven people in Sydney, many suggested a link between these murders and his consumption of X-rated videos, pornographic magazines and American Psycho (see, for example, Manne 11), although others argued against this (Wark 11). Prosecutors in the trial of Canadian murderer Paul Bernardo argued that American Psycho provided a ‘blueprint’ for Bernardo’s crimes (Canadian Press A5). Others have read Ellis’s work more positively, as for instance when Sonia Baelo Allué compares American Psycho favourably with Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs (1988) – arguing that Harris not only depicts more degrading treatment of women, but also makes Hannibal Lecter, his antihero monster, sexily attractive (7-24). Linda S. Kauffman posits that American Psycho is part of an ‘anti-aesthetic’ movement in art, whereby works that are revoltingly ugly and/or grotesque function to confront the repressed fears and desires of the audience and explore issues of identity and subjectivity (Bad Girls), while Patrick W. Shaw includes American Psycho in his work, The Modern American Novel of Violence because, in his opinion, the violence Ellis depicts is not gratuitous. Lost, however, in much of this often-impassioned debate and dialogue is the book itself – and what Ellis actually wrote. 21-years-old when Less than Zero was published, Ellis was still only 26 when American Psycho was released and his youth presented an obvious target. In 1991, Terry Teachout found ‘no moment in American Psycho where Bret Easton Ellis, who claims to be a serious artist, exhibits the workings of an adult moral imagination’ (45, 46), Brad Miner that it was ‘puerile – the very antithesis of good writing’ (43) and Carol Iannone that ‘the inclusion of the now famous offensive scenes reveals a staggering aesthetic and moral immaturity’ (54). Pagan Kennedy also ‘blamed’ the entire work on this immaturity, suggesting that instead of possessing a developed artistic sensibility, Ellis was reacting to (and, ironically, writing for the approval of) critics who had lauded the documentary realism of his violent and nihilistic teenage characters in Less than Zero, but then panned his less sensational story of campus life in The Rules of Attraction (427-428). Yet, in my opinion, there is not only a clear and coherent aesthetic vision driving Ellis’s oeuvre but, moreover, a profoundly moral imagination at work as well. This was my view upon first reading American Psycho, and part of the reason I was so shocked by that charge of filth on the bus. Once familiar with the controversy, I found this view shared by only a minority of commentators. Writing in the New Statesman & Society, Elizabeth J. Young asked: ‘Where have these people been? … Books of pornographic violence are nothing new … American Psycho outrages no contemporary taboos. Psychotic killers are everywhere’ (24). I was similarly aware that such murderers not only existed in reality, but also in many widely accessed works of literature and film – to the point where a few years later Joyce Carol Oates could suggest that the serial killer was an icon of popular culture (233). While a popular topic for writers of crime fiction and true crime narratives in both print and on film, a number of ‘serious’ literary writers – including Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Kate Millet, Margaret Atwood and Oates herself – have also written about serial killers, and even crossed over into the widely acknowledged as ‘low-brow’ true crime genre. Many of these works (both popular or more literary) are vivid and powerful and have, as American Psycho, taken a strong moral position towards their subject matter. Moreover, many books and films have far more disturbing content than American Psycho, yet have caused no such uproar (Young and Caveney 120). By now, the plot of American Psycho is well known, although the structure of the book, noted by Weldon above (C1), is rarely analysed or even commented upon. First person narrator, Patrick Bateman, a young, handsome stockbroker and stereotypical 1980s yuppie, is also a serial killer. The book is largely, and innovatively, structured around this seeming incompatibility – challenging readers’ expectations that such a depraved criminal can be a wealthy white professional – while vividly contrasting the banal, and meticulously detailed, emptiness of Bateman’s life as a New York über-consumer with the scenes where he humiliates, rapes, tortures, murders, mutilates, dismembers and cannibalises his victims. Although only comprising some 16 out of 399 pages in my Picador edition, these violent scenes are extreme and certainly make the work as a whole disgustingly confronting. But that is the entire point of Ellis’s work. Bateman’s violence is rendered so explicitly because its principal role in the novel is to be inescapably horrific. As noted by Baelo Allué, there is no shift in tone between the most banally described detail and the description of violence (17): ‘I’ve situated the body in front of the new Toshiba television set and in the VCR is an old tape and appearing on the screen is the last girl I filmed. I’m wearing a Joseph Abboud suit, a tie by Paul Stuart, shoes by J. Crew, a vest by someone Italian and I’m kneeling on the floor beside a corpse, eating the girl’s brain, gobbling it down, spreading Grey Poupon over hunks of the pink, fleshy meat’ (Ellis 328). In complete opposition to how pornography functions, Ellis leaves no room for the possible enjoyment of such a scene. Instead of revelling in the ‘spine chilling’ pleasures of classic horror narratives, there is only the real horror of imagining such an act. The effect, as Kauffman has observed is, rather than arousing, often so disgusting as to be emetic (Bad Girls 249). Ellis was surprised that his detractors did not understand that he was trying to be shocking, not offensive (Love 49), or that his overall aim was to symbolise ‘how desensitised our culture has become towards violence’ (quoted in Dwyer 55). Ellis was also understandably frustrated with readings that conflated not only the contents of the book and their meaning, but also the narrator and author: ‘The acts described in the book are truly, indisputably vile. The book itself is not. Patrick Bateman is a monster. I am not’ (quoted in Love 49). Like Fay Weldon, Norman Mailer understood that American Psycho posited ‘that the eighties were spiritually disgusting and the author’s presentation is the crystallization of such horror’ (129). Unlike Weldon, however, Mailer shied away from defending the novel by judging Ellis not accomplished enough a writer to achieve his ‘monstrous’ aims (182), failing because he did not situate Bateman within a moral universe, that is, ‘by having a murderer with enough inner life for us to comprehend him’ (182). Yet, the morality of Ellis’s project is evident. By viewing the world through the lens of a psychotic killer who, in many ways, personifies the American Dream – wealthy, powerful, intelligent, handsome, energetic and successful – and, yet, who gains no pleasure, satisfaction, coherent identity or sense of life’s meaning from his endless, selfish consumption, Ellis exposes the emptiness of both that world and that dream. As Bateman himself explains: ‘Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in. This was civilisation as I saw it, colossal and jagged’ (Ellis 375). Ellis thus situates the responsibility for Bateman’s violence not in his individual moral vacuity, but in the barren values of the society that has shaped him – a selfish society that, in Ellis’s opinion, refused to address the most important issues of the day: corporate greed, mindless consumerism, poverty, homelessness and the prevalence of violent crime. Instead of pornographic, therefore, American Psycho is a profoundly political text: Ellis was never attempting to glorify or incite violence against anyone, but rather to expose the effects of apathy to these broad social problems, including the very kinds of violence the most vocal critics feared the book would engender. Fifteen years after the publication of American Psycho, although our societies are apparently growing in overall prosperity, the gap between rich and poor also continues to grow, more are permanently homeless, violence – whether domestic, random or institutionally-sanctioned – escalates, and yet general apathy has intensified to the point where even the ‘ethics’ of torture as government policy can be posited as a subject for rational debate. The real filth of the saga of American Psycho is, thus, how Ellis’s message was wilfully ignored. While critics and public intellectuals discussed the work at length in almost every prominent publication available, few attempted to think in any depth about what Ellis actually wrote about, or to use their powerful positions to raise any serious debate about the concerns he voiced. Some recent critical reappraisals have begun to appreciate how American Psycho is an ‘ethical denunciation, where the reader cannot but face the real horror behind the serial killer phenomenon’ (Baelo Allué 8), but Ellis, I believe, goes further, exposing the truly filthy causes that underlie the existence of such seemingly ‘senseless’ murder. But, Wait, There’s More It is ironic that American Psycho has, itself, generated a mini-industry of products. A decade after publication, a Canadian team – filmmaker Mary Harron, director of I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), working with scriptwriter, Guinevere Turner, and Vancouver-based Lions Gate Entertainment – adapted the book for a major film (Johnson). Starring Christian Bale, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe and Reese Witherspoon and, with an estimated budget of U.S.$8 million, the film made U.S.$15 million at the American box office. The soundtrack was released for the film’s opening, with video and DVDs to follow and the ‘Killer Collector’s Edition’ DVD – closed-captioned, in widescreen with surround sound – released in June 2005. Amazon.com lists four movie posters (including a Japanese language version) and, most unexpected of all, a series of film tie-in action dolls. The two most popular of these, judging by E-Bay, are the ‘Cult Classics Series 1: Patrick Bateman’ figure which, attired in a smart suit, comes with essential accoutrements of walkman with headphones, briefcase, Wall Street Journal, video tape and recorder, knife, cleaver, axe, nail gun, severed hand and a display base; and the 18” tall ‘motion activated sound’ edition – a larger version of the same doll with fewer accessories, but which plays sound bites from the movie. Thanks to Stephen Harris and Suzie Gibson (UNE) for stimulating conversations about this book, Stephen Harris for information about the recent Australian reprint of American Psycho and Mark Seebeck (Pan Macmillan) for sales information. References Archer, Mark. “The Funeral Baked Meats.” The Spectator 27 April 1991: 31. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. First Tuesday Book Club. First broadcast 1 August 2006. Baelo Allué, Sonia. “The Aesthetics of Serial Killing: Working against Ethics in The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and American Psycho (1991).” Atlantis 24.2 (Dec. 2002): 7-24. Canadian Press. “Navy Yanks American Psycho.” The Globe and Mail 17 May 1991: C1. Canadian Press. “Gruesome Novel Was Bedside Reading.” Kitchener-Waterloo Record 1 Sep. 1995: A5. Dubin, Steven C. “Art’s Enemies: Censors to the Right of Me, Censors to the Left of Me.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 28.4 (Winter 1994): 44-54. Dwyer, Victor. “Literary Firestorm: Canada Customs Scrutinizes a Brutal Novel.” Maclean’s April 1991: 55. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. London: Macmillan-Picador, 1991. ———. Glamorama. New York: Knopf, 1999. ———. The Informers. New York: Knopf, 1994. ———. Less than Zero. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985. ———. Lunar Park. New York: Knopf, 2005. ———. The Rules of Attraction. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Fraser, James. :The Case for Publishing.” The Bulletin 18 June 1991. Fraser, William. “Book May Go under Wraps.” The Sydney Morning Herald 23 May 1991: 5. ———. “The Sensitive Censor and the Psycho.” The Sydney Morning Herald 24 May 1991: 5. Freccero, Carla. “Historical Violence, Censorship, and the Serial Killer: The Case of American Psycho.” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 27.2 (Summer 1997): 44-58. Graham, I. “Australian Censorship History.” Libertus.net 9 Dec. 2001. 17 May 2006 http://libertus.net/censor/hist20on.html>. Gurley Brown, Helen. 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Yardley, Jonathan. “American Psycho: Essence of Trash.” The Washington Post 27 Feb. 1991: B1. Young, Elizabeth J. “Psycho Killers. Last Lines: How to Shock the English.” New Statesman & Society 5 April 1991: 24. Young, Elizabeth J., and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on American ‘Blank Generation’ Fiction. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992. Zaller, Robert “American Psycho, American Censorship and the Dahmer Case.” Revue Francaise d’Etudes Americaines 16.56 (1993): 317-25. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brien, Donna Lee. "The Real Filth in : A Critical Reassessment." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php>. APA Style Brien, D. (Nov. 2006) "The Real Filth in American Psycho: A Critical Reassessment," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php>.

"verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice" (Barrett 1)IntroductionMany of us share in an obsessive collecting of cookbooks and recipes. Torn or cut from newspapers and magazines, recipes sit swelling scrapbooks with bloated, unfilled desire. They’re non-hybrid seeds, peas under the mattress, an endless cycle of reproduction. Desire and narrative are folded into each other in our drive, as humans, to create meaning. But what holds us to narrative is good writing. And what can also drive desire is image—literal as well as metaphorical—the visceral pleasure of the gaze, or looking and viewing the sensually aesthetic and the work of the imagination. Creative WritingCooking, winemaking, and food and wine writing can all be considered art. For example, James Halliday (31), the eminent Australian wine critic, posed the question “Is winemaking an art?,” answering: “Most would say so” (31). Cookbooks are stories within stories, narratives that are both factual and imagined, everyday and fantastic—created by both writer and reader from where, along with its historical, cultural and publishing context, a text gets its meaning. Creative writing, in broad terms of genre, is either fiction (imagined, made-up) or creative nonfiction (true, factual). Genre comes from the human taxonomic impulse to create order from chaos through cataloguing and classification. In what might seem overwhelming infinite variety, we establish categories and within them formulas and conventions. But genres are not necessarily stable or clear-cut, and variation in a genre can contribute to its de/trans/formation (Curti 33). Creative nonfiction includes life writing (auto/biography) and food writing among other subgenres (although these subgenres can also be part of fiction). Cookbooks sit within the creative nonfiction genre. More clearly, dietary or nutrition manuals are nonfiction, technical rather than creative. Recipe writing specifically is perhaps less an art and more a technical exercise; generally it’s nonfiction, or between that and creative nonfiction. (One guide to writing recipes is Ostmann and Baker.) Creative writing is built upon approximately five, more or less, fundamentals of practice: point of view or focalisation or who narrates, structure (plot or story, and theme), characterisation, heightened or descriptive language, setting, and dialogue (not in any order of importance). (There are many handbooks on creative writing, that will take a writer through these fundamentals.) Style or voice derives from what a writer writes about (their recurring themes), and how they write about it (their vocabulary choice, particular use of imagery, rhythm, syntax etc.). Traditionally, as a reader, and writer, you are either a plot person or character person, but you can also be interested primarily in ideas or language, and in the popular or literary.Cookbooks as Creative NonfictionCookbooks often have a sense of their author’s persona or subjectivity as a character—that is, their proclivities, lives and thus ideology, and historical, social and cultural place and time. Memoir, a slice of the author–chef/cook’s autobiography, is often explicitly part of the cookbook, or implicit in the nature of the recipes, and the para-textual material which includes the book’s presentation and publishing context, and the writer’s biographical note and acknowledgements. And in relation to the latter, here's Australian wine educator Colin Corney telling us, in his biographical note, about his nascent passion for wine: “I returned home […] stony broke. So the next day I took a job as a bottleshop assistant at Moore Park Cellars […] to tide me over—I stayed three years!” (xi). In this context, character and place, in the broadest sense, are inevitably evoked. So in conjunction with this para-textual material, recipe ingredients and instructions, visual images and the book’s production values combine to become the components for authoring a fictive narrative of self, space and time—fictive, because writing inevitably, in a broad or conceptual sense, fictionalises everything, since it can only re-present through language and only from a particular point of view.The CookbooksTo talk about the art of cookbooks, I make a judgmental (from a creative-writer's point of view) case study of four cookbooks: Lyndey Milan and Colin Corney’s Balance: Matching Food and Wine, Sean Moran’s Let It Simmer (this is the first edition; the second is titled Let It Simmer: From Bush to Beach and Onto Your Plate), Kate Lamont’s Wine and Food, and Greg Duncan Powell’s Rump and a Rough Red (this is the second edition; the first was The Pig, the Olive & the Squid: Food & Wine from Humble Beginnings) I discuss reading, writing, imaging, and designing, which, together, form the nexus for interpreting these cookbooks in particular. The choice of these books was only relatively random, influenced by my desire to see how Australia, a major wine-producing country, was faring with discussion of wine and food choices; by the presence of discursive text beyond technical presentation of recipes, and of photographs and purposefully artful design; and by familiarity with names, restaurants and/or publishers. Reading Moran's cookbook is a model of good writing in its use of selective and specific detail directed towards a particular theme. The theme is further created or reinforced in the mix of narrative, language use, images and design. His writing has authenticity: a sense of an original, distinct voice.Moran’s aphoristic title could imply many things, but, in reading the cookbook, you realise it resonates with a mindfulness that ripples throughout his writing. The aphorism, with its laidback casualness (legendary Australian), is affectively in sync with the chef’s approach. Jacques Derrida said of the aphorism that it produces “an echo of really curious, indelible power” (67).Moran’s aim for his recipes is that they be about “honest, home-style cooking” and bringing “out a little bit of the professional chef in the home cook”, and they are “guidelines” available for “sparkle” and seduction from interpretation (4). The book lives out this persona and personal proclivities. Moran’s storytellings are specifically and solely highlighted in the Contents section which structures the book via broad categories (for example, "Grains" featuring "The dance of the paella" and "Heaven" featuring "A trifle coming on" for example). In comparison, Powell uses "The Lemon", for example, as well as "The Sheep". The first level of Contents in Lamont’s book is done by broad wine styles: sparkling, light white, robust white and so on, and the second level is the recipe list in each of these sections. Lamont’s "For me, matching food and wine comes down to flavour" (xiii) is not as dramatic or expressive as Powell’s "Wine: the forgotten condiment." Although food is first in Milan and Corney’s book’s subtitle, their first content is wine, then matching food with colour and specific grape, from Sauvignon Blanc to Barbera and more. Powell claims that the third of his rules (the idea of rules is playful but not comedic) for choosing the best wine per se is to combine region with grape variety. He covers a more detailed and diversified range of grape varieties than Lamont, systematically discussing them first-up. Where Lamont names wine styles, Powell points out where wine styles are best represented in Australian states and regions in a longish list (titled “13 of the best Australian grape and region combos”). Lamont only occasionally does this. Powell discusses the minor alternative white, Arneis, and major alternative reds such as Barbera and Nebbiolo (Allen 81, 85). This engaging detail engenders a committed reader. Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo are as alternative as Lamont gets. In contrast to Moran's laidbackness, Lamont emphasises professionalism: "My greatest pleasure as a chef is knowing that guests have enjoyed the entire food and wine experience […] That means I have done my job" (xiii). Her reminders of the obvious are, nevertheless, noteworthy: "Thankfully we have moved on from white wine/white meat and red wine/red meat" (xiv). She then addresses the alterations in flavour caused by "method of cooking" and "combination of ingredients", with examples. One such is poached chicken and mango crying "out for a vibrant, zesty Riesling" (xiii): but where from, I ask? Roast chicken with herbs and garlic would favour "red wine with silky tannin" and "chocolatey flavours" (xiii): again, I ask, where from? Powell claims "a different evolution" for his book "to the average cookbook" (7). In recipes that have "a wine focus", there are no "pretty […] little salads, or lavish […] cakes" but "brown" albeit tasty food that will not require ingredients from "poncy inner-city providores", be easy to cook, and go with a cheap, budget-based wine (7). While this identity-setting is empathetic for a Powell clone, and I am envious of his skill with verbiage, he doesn’t deliver dreaming or desire. Milan and Corney do their best job in an eye-catching, informative exemplar list of food and wine matches: "Red duck curry and Barossa Valley Shiraz" for example (7), and in wine "At-a-glance" tables, telling us, for example, that the best Australian regions for Chardonnay are Margaret River and the Adelaide Hills (53). WritingThe "Introduction" to Moran’s cookbook is a slice of memoir, a portrait of a chef as a young man: the coming into being of passion, skill, and professionalism. And the introduction to the introduction is most memorable, being a loving description of his frugal Australian childhood dinners: creations of his mother’s use of manufactured, canned, and bottled substitutes-for-the-real, including Gravox and Dessert Whip (1). From his travel-based international culinary education in handmade, agrarian food, he describes "a head of buffalo mozzarella stuffed with ricotta and studded with white truffles" as "sheer beauty", "ambrosial flavour" and "edible white 'terrazzo'." The consonants b, s, t, d, and r are picked up and repeated, as are the vowels e, a, and o. Notice, too, the comparison of classic Italian food to an equally classic Italian artefact. Later, in an interactive text, questions are posed: "Who could now imagine life without this peppery salad green?" (23). Moran uses the expected action verbs of peel, mince, toss, etc.: "A bucket of tiny clams needs a good tumble under the running tap" (92). But he also uses the unexpected hug, nab, snuggle, waltz, "wave of garlic" and "raining rice." Milan and Corney display a metaphoric-language play too: the bubbles of a sparkling wine matching red meat become "the little red broom […] sweep[ing] away the […] cloying richness" (114). In contrast, Lamont’s cookbook can seem flat, lacking distinctiveness. But with a title like Wine and Food, perhaps you are not expecting much more than information, plain directness. Moran delivers recipes as reproducible with ease and care. An image of a restaurant blackboard menu with the word "chook" forestalls intimidation. Good quality, basic ingredients and knowledge of their source and season carry weight. The message is that food and drink are due respect, and that cooking is neither a stressful, grandiose nor competitive activity. While both Moran and Lamont have recipes for Duck Liver Pâté—with the exception that Lamont’s is (disturbingly, for this cook) "Parfait", Moran also has Lentil Patties, a granola, and a number of breads. Lamont has Brioche (but, granted, without the yeast, seeming much easier to make). Powell’s Plateless Pork is "mud pies for grown-ups", and you are asked to cook a "vat" of sauce. This communal meal is "a great way to spread communicable diseases", but "fun." But his passionately delivered historical information mixed with the laconic attitude of a larrikin (legendary Australian again) transform him into a sage, a step up from the monastery (Powell is photographed in dress-up friar’s habit). Again, the obvious is noteworthy in Milan and Corney’s statement that Rosé "possesses qualities of both red and white wines" (116). "On a hot summery afternoon, sitting in the sun overlooking the view … what could be better?" (116). The interactive questioning also feeds in useful information: "there is a huge range of styles" for Rosé so "[g]rape variety is usually a good guide", and "increasingly we are seeing […] even […] Chambourcin" (116). Rosé is set next to a Bouillabaisse recipe, and, empathetically, Milan and Corney acknowledge that the traditional fish soup "can be intimidating" (116). Succinctly incorporated into the recipes are simple greyscale graphs of grape "Flavour Profiles" delineating the strength on the front and back palate and tongue (103).Imaging and DesigningThe cover of Moran’s cookbook in its first edition reproduces the colours of 1930–1940's beach towels, umbrellas or sunshades in matt stripes of blue, yellow, red, and green (Australian beaches traditionally have a grass verge; and, I am told (Costello), these were the colours of his restaurant Panoroma’s original upholstery). A second edition has the same back cover but a generic front cover shifting from the location of his restaurant to the food in a new subtitle: "From Bush to Beach and onto Your Plate". The front endpapers are Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach where Panoroma restaurant is embedded on the lower wall of an old building of flats, ubiquitous in Bondi, like a halved avocado, or a small shallow elliptic cave in one of the sandstone cliff-faces. The cookbook’s back endpapers are his bush-shack country. Surfaces, cooking equipment, table linen, crockery, cutlery and glassware are not ostentatious, but simple and subdued, in the colours and textures of nature/culture: ivory, bone, ecru, and cream; and linen, wire, wood, and cardboard. The mundane, such as a colander, is highlighted: humbleness elevated, hands at work, cooking as an embodied activity. Moran is photographed throughout engaged in cooking, quietly fetching in his slim, clean-cut, short-haired, altar-boyish good-looks, dressed casually in plain bone apron, t-shirt (most often plain white), and jeans. While some recipes are traditionally constructed, with the headnote, the list of ingredients and the discursive instructions for cooking, on occasion this is done by a double-page spread of continuous prose, inviting you into the story-telling. The typeface of Simmer varies to include a hand-written lookalike. The book also has a varied layout. Notes and small images sit on selected pages, as often as not at an asymmetric angle, with faux tape, as if stuck there as an afterthought—but an excited and enthusiastic afterthought—and to signal that what is informally known is as valuable as professional knowledge/skill and the tried, tested, and formally presented.Lamont’s publishers have laid out recipe instructions on the right-hand side (traditional English-language Western reading is top down, left to right). But when the recipe requires more than one item to be cooked, there is no repeated title; the spacing and line-up are not necessarily clear; and some immediate, albeit temporary, confusion occurs. Her recipes, alongside images of classic fine dining, carry the implication of chefing rather than cooking. She is photographed as a professional, with a chef’s familiar striped apron, and if she is not wearing a chef’s jacket, tunic or shirt, her staff are. The food is beautiful to look at and imagine, but tackling it in the home kitchen becomes a secondary thought. The left-hand section divider pages are meant to signal the wines, with the appropriate colour, and repetitive pattern of circles; but I understood this belatedly, mistaking them for retro wallpaper bemusedly. On the other hand, Powell’s bog-in-don’t-wait everyday heartiness of a communal stewed dinner at a medieval inn (Peasy Lamb looks exactly like this) may be overcooked, and, without sensuousness, uninviting. Images in Lamont’s book tend toward the predictable and anonymous (broad sweep of grape-vined landscape; large groups of people with eating and drinking utensils). The Lamont family run a vineyard, and up-market restaurants, one photographed on Perth’s river dockside. But Sean's Panoroma has a specificity about it; it hasn’t lost its local flavour in the mix with the global. (Admittedly, Moran’s bush "shack", the origin of much Panoroma produce and the destination of Panoroma compost, looks architect-designed.) Powell’s book, given "rump" and "rough" in the title, stridently plays down glitz (large type size, minimum spacing, rustic surface imagery, full-page portraits of a chicken, rump, and cabbage etc). While not over-glam, the photography in Balance may at first appear unsubtle. Images fill whole pages. But their beautifully coloured and intriguing shapes—the yellow lime of a white-wine bottle base or a sparkling wine cork beneath its cage—shift them into hyperreality. White wine in a glass becomes the edge of a desert lake; an open fig, the jaws of an alien; the flesh of a lemon after squeezing, a sea anemone. The minimal number of images is a judicious choice. ConclusionReading can be immersive, but it can also hover critically at a meta level, especially if the writer foregrounds process. A conversation starts in this exchange, the reader imagining for themselves the worlds written about. Writers read as writers, to acquire a sense of what good writing is, who writing colleagues are, where writing is being published, and, comparably, to learn to judge their own writing. Writing is produced from a combination of passion and the discipline of everyday work. To be a writer in the world is to observe and remember/record, to be conscious of aiming to see the narrative potential in an array of experiences, events, and images, or, to put it another way, "to develop the habit of art" (Jolley 20). Photography makes significant whatever is photographed. The image is immobile in a literal sense but, because of its referential nature, evocative. Design, too, is about communication through aesthetics as a sensuous visual code for ideas or concepts. (There is a large amount of scholarship on the workings of image combined with text. Roland Barthes is a place to begin, particularly about photography. There are also textbooks dealing with visual literacy or culture, only one example being Shirato and Webb.) It is reasonable to think about why there is so much interest in food in this moment. Food has become folded into celebrity culture, but, naturally, obviously, food is about our security and survival, physically and emotionally. Given that our planet is under threat from global warming which is also driving climate change, and we are facing peak oil, and alternative forms of energy are still not taken seriously in a widespread manner, then food production is under threat. Food supply and production are also linked to the growing gap between poverty and wealth, and the movement of whole populations: food is about being at home. Creativity is associated with mastery of a discipline, openness to new experiences, and persistence and courage, among other things. We read, write, photograph, and design to argue and critique, to use the imagination, to shape and transform, to transmit ideas, to celebrate living and to live more fully.References Allen, Max. The Future Makers: Australian Wines for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2010. Barratt, Virginia. “verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice.” Assignment, ENG10022 Writing from the Edge. Lismore: Southern Cross U, 2009. [lower case in the title is the author's proclivity, and subsequently published in Carson and Dettori. Eds. Banquet: A Feast of New Writing and Arts by Queer Women]Costello, Patricia. Personal conversation. 31 May 2012. Curti, Lidia. Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. UK: Macmillan, 1998.Derrida, Jacques. "Fifty-Two Aphorisms for a Foreword." Deconstruction: Omnibus Volume. Eds. Andreas Apadakis, Catherine Cook, and Andrew Benjamin. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.Halliday, James. “An Artist’s Spirit.” The Weekend Australian: The Weekend Australian Magazine 13-14 Feb. (2010): 31.Jolley, Elizabeth. Central Mischief. Ringwood: Viking/Penguin 1992. Lamont, Kate. Wine and Food. Perth: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Milan, Lyndey, and Corney, Colin. Balance: Matching Food and Wine: What Works and Why. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2005. Moran, Sean. Let It Simmer. Camberwell: Lantern/Penguin, 2006. Ostmann, Barbara Gibbs, and Jane L. Baker. The Recipe Writer's Handbook. Canada: John Wiley, 2001.Powell, Greg Duncan. Rump and a Rough Red. Millers Point: Murdoch, 2010. Shirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. Reading the Visual. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004.