School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemThe six faces of piracy: global media distribution from below(Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008)In current debates about media piracy, illegal copying either looms large as scourge and scandal or is talked up as the way of the future. This essay seeks to shift the focus away from the ethics of piracy and towards its broader contexts - its legal history, its economic functions, and its implications for information distribution on a global scale. Through a series of six different readings of piracy (piracy as theft, free enterprise, free speech, authorship, resistance, and access), I argue that we should understand it as, among other things, an alternative distribution system for media, one of considerable complexity and potential. Piracy's "cockroach capitalism" seeks out profits in markets untouched or underserviced by formal media institutions, providing in many cases the only available forms of film culture. From this perspective, piracy is not simply, or not only, a form of deviant behaviour but may also offer routes to development and cultural citizenship.
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ItemIntercultural performance in the context of cultural pluralism(Circus Oz and Monash University, Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies, 2001)In this paper I will provisionally argue for the possibility of localised intercultural relationships in the live performing arts as an effective and pluralist site of resistance to totalising forces associated with globalisation. There will be four themes to my argument and I apologise in advance that I will only briefly touch on each of them. They are: i.Defining globalisation ii.Cultural pluralism iii.Australia and Japan (the two sites of performance culture that I have expertise in and have been asked to address) iv.Live performing arts: the Gekidan Kaitaisha-NYID project.
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ItemSoftware industry, religious nationalism, and social movements in India: aspects of globalization?(Garamond Press, 2002)Most theories of globalization have as their point of reference experiences in the developed world, thereby confining the debates to time-space compression or distanciation for example, or to quarrels about whether the world is becoming homogenous or heterogeneous. Such theoretical efforts are indicative of both the reoccupations of metropolitan academia, and also the lack of a cohesive theoretical thrust from the leftist intellectuals which takes into account developments in contemporary forms of global capitalism. The sometimes contradictory ways in which the diverse effects globalization are experienced or utilized in different parts of the developed world have come to academic and theoretical attention only very recently. Considering that the majority of the established canon of literature on the subject has been written by academics in the West, this is perhaps not surprising. However as indicated in the assumption that globalization is merely an extension of Western norms of modernity to the developing world, the almost total absence of any attempt to tackle the longstanding relationship between the West and the rest is worth noting, as is the similar neglect of social movements in several parts of the contemporary world which question the values underpinning aspects of globalization, and by doing so challenge the legitimacy of Western dominance.
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ItemTV news titles: picturing the planet( 2006)The structures of globalization are insanely complex. The world's news media must at least try to make some sense of these structures visible. That is, the news must gratify the needs of an audience which requires an understanding of what causal systems are responsible for such felt effects as oil prices, currency fluctuations, and the migration of employment. Media professionals' ethics, peer pressure and pride in their craft impel them to make some effort towards educating the citizenry in the terms and conditions of participation in the global economy. And, in light of popular movements like the Live8 concerts in support of Bob Geldoff's "Make Poverty History" campaign, the news touches on the possibilities and challenges of global governance.
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ItemMedia Art Futures(Elsevier, 2007)
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ItemFrom citizenship to queer counterpublic: reading Taipei's New Park( 2000)This paper focuses on the ways in which official narratives of the 'global city' in 1990s Taipei project models of sexuality which are negotiated and contested by gay and lesbian (tongzhi) activist practices and discourses. Analysing the densely symbolic site of Taipei's New Park and particularly the Democratic Progressive Party City Government's plans for its redevelopment (1995-96), the paper considers the tense relation which the liberal male homosexual cruising which traditionally takes place in New Park and the surrounding city block. Examining the City Government's liberal rhetoric on homosexuality (tongxinglian), the paper contrasts this rhetoric with the more conservative and overtly homophobic sexual policies espoused by other regimes in the region. It also attempts to unpack the logic that enables such a self-consciously 'tongzhi-friendly' administration nevertheless to continue harshly to discipline men who practise homosex in the newly 'public' spaces of the park and the street. Finally, the paper discusses some critical responses by tongshi writers and activists to the City Government's rewriting of the 'public' and the 'private' for the new Taipei.