Cyberlife and Cyberharm: A Human Rights Approach

Introduction -

    The late twentieth century has seen what some commentators are referring to as the information revolution, allowing individuals around the world to interact with each other through the Internet.  These interactions form webs of personal relationships in and through cyberspace, which go to characterise cyberspace as a virtual community. While traditional societies are based on the idea of self as a fixed entity, virtual societies require us to reconceive of the self as "having multiple and contradictory identities, community affiliations and social interests" (Seidman 1992 cited in Jureidini et al.  1997:34) and recognise that there are numerous viewpoints and ways of organising social relations.  One question raised ....

The Convict Tattoo

Introduction -

    Early last century one in four British convicts wore a tattoo (Stewart and Bradley 1996: 3).  Despite the recent efforts of scholars and curators to liberate the convict voice, surprisingly few have sought to interpret perhaps the most "expressive" of convict traces.! And equally, while current studies into forced labour and banishment promise to place Australia's convict origins in a more useful global context, attempts to view convictism through the hearts and minds of its captive subjects remains strangely untried.  Surely enough, of all the ghosts in the cupboard of our current tattoo culture, the tattoo made in prison remains ....

Reading Mountain Bikes through Technoscience and the Cyborg

Introduction -

    This paper explores some of the connections between gender and technology, and the mountain bike (MtB). I argue that reading mountain biking through the lens of technoscience and the cyborg provides new possibilities for understanding, and intervening in how technologies, and the stories about them, shape gender, and gender relations. To explore this, I first outline the contribution of Donna Haraway to understanding social relations and technology (1991, 1997). I then provide some background to the culture of mountain biking and highlight some of the ways in which it marginalises women. I conclude with a discussion of some of the implications of this approach for how stories about mountain biking, and gender and technology more broadly, can be rethought so as to take into account the experiences of women.

Skateboarding: Disrupting the City

Introduction -

   We still get tickets for skating downtown, we get harassed by cops and security guards, chased by dogs, we session shitty curbs and spots, twist ankles and bruise palms and most of all get looked down upon by the general public. - Lance Dawes in Slap Magazine, April 1997, 6.4

    City space organises social relations in particular ways. This paper explores some of the connections between this space, consumption and skateboarding. We argue that skateboarding disrupts the consumptive logic of city space and obscures the boundaries which serve to differentiate consumers.  This is achieved by skateboarders reinventing the terrain of the city. We begin by outlining what is meant by "city space" and examine some of the ways in which individuals interact with/in this. Following this is an analysis of how particular skateboarding practices disrupt the spatial conventions of consumption.

Exploring Sexual Violence in the Dark Room

Introduction -

   Popular culture is not simply entertainment, as it generally reinforces but may also occasionally challenge the status quo. While the carnivalesque of popular culture pitted against "high" culture or the collapsing of high and low culture in postmodern writing may seem liberating, popular culture generally reinforces the status quo. This is certainly the case with genre fiction, relying as such fiction does on conformity to conventions for its reading pleasure, so that norms are reinforced along with expectations, and crime fiction is an especially conservative genre.

Conspiracy Theory, Pre-Millennium Tension and the X-files: Power and Belief

Introduction -

    This paper examines the phenomenon of popularised forms of conspiracy theory with specific reference to the commercial television program, the X-Files. We argue that conspiracy theory is a type of epistemology which provides a framework for an understanding of the world and one's place in it, and contend that this is the result of conditions peculiar to the present historical moment. In an era that has weathered the cultural dominance of the visual image - particularly evident in the ascendancy of television, the hyper-proliferation of knowledge and the rise to orthodoxy of postmodernism, conspiracy theory has emerged in popular culture
as a means of reconciling contradiction, and asserting an interpretive presence or perspective. We argue that conspiracy theory is an attempt to democratise or make available knowledge/information by divorcing it from power structures that manipulate it or homogenise potential versions.  Through engaging with these power structures and knowledges, the conspiracy theorist not only effects

From Margin to Centre?  Images of African-American Women in File

Introduction -

    Despite strides towards more realistic depictions of black womanhood in American cinema, much progress still needs to be made. This study will examine recent films such as The Color Purple, Waiting To Exhale and Jackie Brown to critique how motion pictures transmit memorable images with the power to alter or reinforce popular conceptions of black women. When these images are problematic or distortions of reality, it can have a detrimental effect on both the viewer and the individuals portrayed upon the screen.

"Advertising is the official art of advanced capitalism": mobile telephones and the interpellated subject

Introduction -

    This paper will analyse a series of television advertisements for mobile telephones and associated mobile telephony services, examining the representations of mobile telecommunications as they are constructed by the mass culture industries - in particular as they are constructed through television advertisements for mobile telephones and their attendant services. Working from David Harvey's aphorism that "advertising is the official art of capitalism" (1989:69), it will attempt to construct a composite sketch of the specific form of subjectivity constructed and enrolled by these advertisements. In a society in which mobile telephones have reached an extraordinary level of saturation, the subject inscribed by such mobile phone advertisements would appear to have successfully addressed a significant portion of Australian society. The intent of this paper therefore is to construct a description of the interpellated subject of mobile
telephony: that is, the subject that finds itself - not necessarily of its own choosing - addressed by and transcribed within the narrative spaces of the ....

Rave Cultures and the Academy

Introduction -

    Today, research into post-acid house, post-rave music cultures is at the forefront of contemporary research in the field of cultural studies. All this academic interest in "rave-derived" dance cultures poses the question: why do club cultures present themselves so readily as objectives for a cultural Studies gaze?  This paper will briefly elaborate upon the fact that the answer to this arguably lies in that, following on from the seminal work of Dick Hebdige (1979), rave culture can be seen and critiqued as the paradigmatic model of a lapsed subculture, redeemed via commodity co-option, under systems and processes of advanced capitalism.

A Balance of Interests

Introduction -

    Every now and then we hear the phrase the common good, a concept linked to another, the civil society. I first heard these explored on radio a few years ago and it was a relief to hear the speakers challenge the paradigm of corporate-speak in order to reassert some common sense. Along with common good and a civil society notions of common sense (as in "sound and prudent" rather than "unsophisticated"), as well as notions of ethical intelligence are being marginalised by the corporate paradigm currently dominating nearly all areas of life.  For this reason we need to stop and remind ourselves what these notions mean and how they function within a diverse and sophisticated society.