Ch 3 & 6 part i
- 1. C h a p t e r s 3 & 6 PA RT I Globalizing the Body Politics & Jamming Media and Popular Culture
- 2. CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY • To understand how our bodies are sites where categories of social difference (race, gender, etc.) are marked and negotiated • To understand that “race” is a social construct that was “invented” historically to serve economic and political ends • To introduce a process of “reading” body politics to reveal the social, economic and political implications of the meanings we attach to “difference” • To learn how we, as intercultural communicators, can resist and transform socially constructed categories that maintain hierarchies of difference
- 3. CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY • To understand the impact of media and popular culture on intercultural communication in the context of globalization • To examine how global and regional flows of media and popular culture influence intercultural communication and cultural identities • To understand the role of power and hegemony in mediated intercultural communication and the representation of non-dominant groups • To gain skills and strategies to critically consume, resist and produce media
- 4. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IS AN EMBODIED EXPERIENCE People make meaning about each other through our physical bodies and appearances • i.e. skin color, facial features, facial expressions, gesture Our Communication With Others Is Mediated Through Our Bodies People communicate meaning and perform identities through their bodies – i.e. clothing, hair style, tattoos.
- 5. BODY How is power written and performed symbolically and POLITICS materially on and through the body? Refers to the practices and Our bodies are sites where policies through categories of social which power is difference are constructed marked, regulated and (i.e. gender, race, religion, class, sexual orientation, etc.) negotiated on and through the body.
- 6. TYPES OF CULTURE FOLK CULTURE HIGH CULTURE Cultural practices that are Cultural activities that are often enacted for the sole purpose of the domain of the elite or the people within a particular place. rich. **Traditional & nonmainstream cultural activities that are NOT – Ballet financially driven. ** • Storytelling – Theatre • Traditional Dance – Opera • Graffitti – Fine art • Spoken Word – Symphony
- 7. WHAT IS POPULAR CULTURE? Systems and artifacts that the general populous or broad masses within a society share or about which most people have some understanding.
- 8. Popular Culture Generates profit. Produces social norms. Creates social identities or sense of who we are. Maintains social boundaries. Produces a sense of belonging and membership. Enables social change and resistance.
- 9. POP CULTURE IS PRODUCED BY CULTURAL INDUSTRIES. POP CULTURE CULTURAL INDUSTRIES ARE DEFINED AS: FULFILLS A SOCIAL Industries that mass produce FUNCTION. standardized cultural goods Economic Growth – Culture as – Normalize dominant capitalist ideologies Product – Marketing of – Create social practices that are uniform and Ideas & Images homogeneous among people Representations of Self & Others – Easily manipulate the masses into docile and – Generate Knowledge of passive consumers Others – Reaffirm Institutions that generate Social, Cultural and Political Aspects of Self/Cultural thought through ideas and images. Identities
- 10. G LO BALIZ ATI O N MEDIA & POPULAR CULTURE: is shaped by the • Facilitates communication advances in across cultures communication • Frame global issues and technologies, global normalizing particular cultural ideologies media, and the spread • Fragment and disrupt of popular culture. national and cultural identities • Forge hybrid transnational cultural identities
- 11. Media, Popular Culture & Globalization Three elements of the media: Media: Technology Institution The modes, means Cultural form or channels through which messages are communicated. Network Media
- 12. Popular Culture, ICC and Globalization Cultural corruption: Cultural homogenization: The perceived and The convergence towards experienced alteration of a common cultural values and culture in negative or practices as a result of detrimental ways through global integration the influence of other cultures.
- 13. Popular Culture, ICC and Globalization Cultural Imperialism: Fragmegration: The domination of one culture over others through cultural forms such as Describes the dual and popular culture, media, and simultaneous dynamic of cultural products. integration and fragmentation that has emerged in the context of globalization.
- 14. POP CULTURE, REPRESENTATION, QUESTION & IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION Cultural texts may or may not “represent” the identities they target. A. True B. False
- 15. Many people perceive other cultural groups to be as they are portrayed on popular television shows. People often learn about other cultures through the lens of popular culture. Popular culture plays a powerful role in how we think about and understand other groups as well as one’s own group’s representation. STEREOTYPING Pop culture represents stereotypes that are connected to social judgments of others People tend to remember negative portrayals of other groups These reinforce negative stereotypes UNIQUE ASPECT OF POPULAR CULTURE Audiences may experience the private lives of people they do not know, in ways that they never could as tourists.
- 16. CONSUMING POPULAR CULTURE Meaning is never FIXED, but is always being CONSTRUCTED within various contexts through encoding and decoding. Decoded Encoded Message Message Faced with so many pop cultural Sender Receiver messages or “cultural texts,” Encoding cultural texts people negotiate ENCODING: the process of creating a message. their way through DECODING: the process of interpreting a message. popular culture in different ways. Various industries prepare reader profiles, portrayals of readership demographics, and respond to the cultural and political needs of cultural identities in a variety of ways.
- 17. SOCIAL Social constructs exist because people agree to follow certain CONSTRUCTION conventions and rules associated with the construct. An idea or phenomenon Examples: that has been “created,” Language “invented” or “constructed” by people in a particular Money society or culture through Gender communication Race Human beings participate in the creation of our own realities Our knowledge about ourselves, the world, and everyday reality is created through communication
- 18. SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO DIFFERENCE S E M I O T I C S : Developed in the late The study of the use of SIGNS in cultures 1800s by Swiss linguist FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE SIGNS CONSIST OF SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED Signifier Signified The Body The Idea Things or Actions Concept Images Example: “Go,” “Slow,” Words “Stop”
- 19. There Is An Arbitrary Relationship Between the SIGNIFIER and SIGNIFIED 1. There is NO natural or essential relationship between SIGNIFIER and SIGNIFIED 2. SIGNS belong to SYSTEMS and their meaning comes from their relationship to other SIGNS within the SYSTEM 3. The meaning of SIGNS is created through the marking of DIFFERENCE EXAMPLE: The colors red, yellow or green in a stop sign
- 20. The Power of Texts HIERARCHY OF DIFFERENCE: THE POWER OF TEXTS: System of classification of Texts construct, maintain, and people predicated on the legitimize systems of inequity and socially constructed idea of domination by creating authorized superior and inferior races and preferred versions of history and leaving out other perspectives, (can also apply to gender, ethnicity, culture, experiences and stories. religion, sexual orientation, etc.) Silenced Histories: The hidden or absent accounts of history that are suppressed or omitted from official or mainstream versions of history
- 21. POP CULTURE, REPRESENTATION, QUESTION & IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION Cultural texts may or may not “represent” the identities they target. A. TRUE B. False
- 22. BUT… People also use popular culture to reaffirm their own cultural identities.
- 23. GENDER DIFFERENCE Physical differences in human bodies are used to construct two mutually exclusive gender categories: WOMEN & MEN. Gender differences are constructed in binary opposites: MASCULINE: strong, How is gender marked through communication? rational, significant What purpose does this binary system serve? FEMININE: weak, emotional, and
- 24. IS GENDER A NECESSARILY BINARY? Alternatives To The Gender Binary THIRD GENDER: TRANSGENDER: People who live across, between or People whose gender identities differ outside of the socially constructed from the social norms and expectations two-gender system of categorization. associated with their biological sex. THE TWO-GENDER SYSTEM REFLECTS & MAINTAINS RELATIONSHIPS OF POWER Gender difference shapes and impacts intercultural communication in the global context EXAMPLE: Assumptions about feminine passivity, submissiveness and subservience leads to the global exploitation of women Who benefits from the gendered construction and performance of unequal power relations?
- 25. POP CULTURE & CULTURAL SPACES Some forms of popular culture (e.g., magazines, newspapers, internet sites) may function like cultural spaces. People construct their relationships with their cultural identities through popular culture Cultural texts are presented in products such as TV shows, movies, magazines, music, toys, and video games
- 26. RESISTING POPULAR CULTURE Sometimes due to a conflict in culture values and cultural identities, people actively resist certain popular culture texts. Much of the resistance stems from concerns about the representation of various social groups.
Editor's Notes
- #10: Cultural Industries: News Outlets that produce print Newspapers, such as New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today & Magazines like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Online News Engines that now feature credible blogs operated by their print counterparts. Also talking about Broadcast Networks such as CNN, MTV, HBO, Film Producers like Warner Bro’s, Lionsgate, Disney, Nickelodeon, Pixar, Paramount.