CMM2115, S2, 2008. Cultural Matrix – Simulations

October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 susanneahBaudrillard, Berman, During, Gilloch, Johnson, Merrin, simulations, Strinati, Stuart Hall, Walter BenjaminLeave a comment

Assessment 3, Essay 1: Question 2
Provide a detailed discussion of the modernist idea of the mass media and/or popular culture (Benjamin or Berman) and show how that differs to the postmodernist idea using Baudrillard’s concept of simulations.

This essay will attempt to provide some details of the history and key theories of modernism and post-modernism. In this detailed discussion, material from the course reader will be used, to provide the context in, and the paradigm with which, to try to link this history and theory with the way Walter Benjamin presents the mass media and popular culture, and with how his essentially modernist, structuralist view differs from later, post-modernist theory of mass media and the concept of simulations, as espoused by Baudrillard. While both theorists were convinced of the immense power and importance of mass media, Benjamin was generally positive, believing the relationship between the mass media and masses held the potential to effect political change. Baudrillard was deeply pessimistic, seeing modern mass media as a deadly and dangerous tool, which allowed the people virtually no chance of effective response to an all-enveloping, artificial and distorted environment, Using recent examples from mass media, the essay will also try to show that the theoretical propositions proposed, by both writers, can be found in examples from today’s mass media and popular culture.

The development and establishment of theories of modernism and post-modernism, and their components, sit within cultural studies. In the Introduction to The Cultural Studies Reader, During, as editor, says this subject “is the study of culture, or more particularly, the study of contemporary culture” (1993, p.1) and so “is not an academic discipline quite like others. It possesses neither a well-defined methodology nor clearly demarcated fields for investigation” (1993, p. 1). Johnson says “cultural studies is a process, a kind of alchemy for producing useful knowledge” (1996, p. 75).
(see appendix 1)

Sitting within this analytical and reflexive subject is modernity, which Berman says “is realism”, (1983, p. 14) an “era”, passing through three phases lasting over five hundred years; (p. 16) the third and current phase of the “‘modern’ [as] of our own time – [from] the beginning of the 21st C” ( p. 13). He gives us a theoretical definition and historical outline of the “vast” subject, (pp. 15, 16) saying it has “developed a rich history and a plenitude of its own”, (p. 16) and is one in which

the first thing we will notice is the highly-developed,
differentiated and dynamic new landscape in which
modern experience takes place. … automatic factories,
railroads, vast new industrial zones; of teeming cities
that have grown overnight, often with dreadful
human consequences; of daily newspapers, telegraphs,
telephones and other mass media, communicating on
an every wider scale
Berman, 1983, pp. 18-19
(see appendix 2)

Early in the twentieth century, during the beginning of what is termed the final stage of this virtual “maelstrom”, an array of device, “electronic media”, was invented, and quickly came into general use; the telephone, radio, photography, film and television. This led to an extraordinary expansion in the modes of both public expression, and private communication between individuals. At the same time important modernist theories in relation to mass media and popular culture were developed. An early major theorist was Walter Benjamin, who “aims to assess the effects of mass production and consumption, and modern technology, upon the status of the work of art, as well as their implications for contemporary popular arts or popular culture” (Strinati, 2004, p. 73).

Berman, another, later theorist described the mass media in the modern era as “systems of mass communication” … “dynamic in their development, enveloping and binding together the most diverse people and societies”, (Berman, 1983, p. 16) stating this applied “in painting and sculpture, in poetry and the novel, in theater and dance, in architecture and design, in a whole array of electronic media” ( p. 23).

One of the almost immediate consequences of the development and use of these new media was the boundaries between high and low art dissolved, a situation Raymond criticized, terming it the “uncoupling [of] culture from society, and high culture from ordinary culture” (as quoted by During, 1993, p. 2). This revolution in art and literature, in culture and everyday life, continues today. Benjamin describes it as

breaking down the barriers between “art” and other
human activities, such as commercial entertainment,
industrial technology, fashion and design, politics. It
also encouraged writers, painters, composers and flim
makers to break down the boundaries of their
specializations and work together on mixed-media
productions and performances that would create richer
and more multivalent arts
Benjamin, 1983, pp. 31-32

Traditionally “the work of art acquired an ‘aura’ which attested to its authority and uniquenss, it’s singularity in time and space, … once imbedded in this fabric of tradition, art retained its aura independently” (Strinati, 1995, p. 73). This situation continued from the religious, through the secularization of art. Key theories developed around the operation of the new tools of communication, and their effects on the masses, Benjamin’s theory being that although a work of art “has always been reproductible” …[in the modern,] mechanical reproduction … however represents something new” (Benjamin, 1970, p. 220).

Benjamin understood “historical change and transformation are always viewed from the perspective of a particular present instant and interest … and the disintegration of [the unique, authentic work of art] its accompanying aura, and the transpostion of art from the sphere of ritual and tradition to that of political practice … [in this process] the aura of the artwork is fleetingly recognizable only at the moment of its extinction, at last sight” (Gilloch, 2002, p. 181).

Strinati states Benjamin explored how, because of “the emergence of capitalist industrialization and the commercialization of [modern] culture there commenced and developed a “struggle for artistic autonomy” during the period of the Renaissance, regarding the preservation, or the shattering, of the “aura” of individual works of art (Strinati, 1995, p. 74) “and in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition … their most powerful agent is the film” (Benjamin, as quoted by Strinati, 1995, p. 74).

Benjamin defined the aura as “the unique phenomenon of distance however close an object may be” (Caygill, p. 135). He believed the aura was “contaminated” and then “transformed” by the new technology (Caygill, p. 137). Gilloch tells us of the development by Benjamin and also Krackauer of “two key themes [in their theory] … [of] the essential connection between film and photography, and … the intimate relationship between these media and memory, history and historiography” (Gilloch, 2002, p. 180). Benjamin stated that ” the sound film is superior in capturing reality” (as quoted by Strinati, 1995, p. 74) and that “not only do film and photography show us many things we may never have seen before or existed … they also change the conditions in which they are received” (Benjamin, as quoted by Strinati, 1995, p. 74).

Benjamin linked this to “notions of authenticity as well as the political use of images”, (Strinati, 1995, p. 73) saying “technical reproduction can put the copy of the original [photographs or phonograph records] into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself” (Benjamin, 1970. pp.222-223). “This holds – not only for the art work but also, for instance, … a landscape which passes in review before the spectator in a movie” (p. 223). Gilloch says Benjamin theorised photography was a “vital quest … is not whether it is an art form, but how, with the demise of aura, a new form of political practice can be constituted” (Gilloch, 2002, p. 180).

In this early third stage of modernism, theorists harboured positive views about the development of this new society, its new tools of communication, its speed of change, and Benjamin quotes Paul Valery

Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into
our houses from far off to satisy our needs in
response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied
with viual or auditory images, which will appear and
disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly
more than a sign (Benjamin,1970, p. 221).

Thus it appears Benjamin was positive about the potential outcome, saying “Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art”. While believing “Digital imaging problemmatises the idea of the ‘real’ or ‘authenticity’ of an image”, Benjamin at the same time put forward the rationale that, although the work of art “which is reproducible [now, in the modern] has lost its aura and autonomy, … [it has] become more available to more people” (Strinati, 1995, p. 74)

Williams acknowledged “it was through this uncoupling that modern culture acquires its particular energy, charm and capacity to inform” (as quoted by During, 1993, p. 2). The theorists had faith in the populace’s future ability to deal with the new situations and the rapid change, for example, Strinati defines Benjamin’s position as one that “stresses the democratic and participatory rather than the authoritarian and repressive potential of contemporary popular culture”(Strinati, 1995, p. 75). Berman says

These world-historical processes have nourished
an amazing variety of visions and ideas that aim to
make men and women the subjects as well as the
objects of modernization, to give them the power
to change the world that is changing them, to make
their way through the maelstrom and make it their
own.
Berman, 1983, p. 16.

Benjamin believed that the ordinary man could formulate “revolutionary demands in the politics of art” (Benjamin, 1970, p. 220). Berman stated, positively, “our century has produced an amazing plenitude of works and ideas of the highest quality … [that] give us a great deal to be proud of” (Berman, 1983, pp. 23-24).

The theorists held strong desires, to transmit this body of “ideas, that knowledge, through the intellectual function, to those who do not belong, professionally, in the intellectual class” (Hall, 2007, p. 39). Benjamin believed the sound film gave “the masses the opportunity to consider what it has captured”, (Strinati, 1995, p. 74) and said the “most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, … its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage” (Benjamin, 1970, p. 223).

The theorists believed, once the people properly understood the new situation and how to use these new tools, that the masses would be able to “participate in … [film] reception and appreciation. These views were linked to early cognizance of, within the development of the theory of cultural studies, that ” the cultural expression” and the belief in “the crucial importance of language and of the linguistic metaphor to any culture” developed within the theory (Hall, 2007, p. 41) also specifically applied to modern, western culture itself. This included

the expansion of the notion of text and textuality,
both as a source of meaning, and as that which
escapes and postpones meaning; the recognition
of the heterogeneity, of the multiplicity, of meanings,
of the struggle to close arbitrarily the infinite
semiosis beyond meaning; the acknowledgment
of textuality and cultural power, of representation
itself, as a site of power and regulation; of the
symbolic as a source of identity.
Hall, 2007, p. 41

As the period progressed into the post-modern, (see appendix 3) theory linked communication to “cultural anxiety” and “concern about increased social alienation and a sense of living at the edge of the abyss in the experience of the modern city” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001, p. 241). Baudrillard states “Our media involves more than
‘the simple transmission-reception of a message … our media, however, follow this model, constituting a ‘speech without response’ … locking us into a unilateral power relation. Thus no liberation of the media is possible” (as quoted by Merrin, 2005, p. 20)
He described as “the only real communication” during the May 1968 revolutionary student uprising in Paris that did not receive the media’s “mortal dose of publicity” as

the real revolutionary media was the walls and
their speech, the silkscreen posters and
hand-painted notices, as it was only there, in
that immediate, reciprocal and external space,
that ‘speech began and was exchanged’.
Transgressive, ephemeral, dualistic, both inviting
and producing a response, these graffiti breach
‘the fundamental rule of non-response enunciated
by all the media’. In … [this process’ Baudrillard says,
‘an immediate communication process is rediscovered’
Merrin quoting Baudrillard, 2005, p. 21

Merrin says that “for Baudrillard the only revolution ‘lies in restoring the possibility of a response’, allowing speech to ‘be able to exchange, give and repay itself.” Baudrillard thought this was unlikely, believing it would require a total and profound re-structuring of the media. (2005, p. 20). Baudrillard and Debord developed “a similar critique of the media’s unilaterality, [where] spectacular replacement of the real and production of ‘separation’ is seen” (p. 20). Starbucks coffee chain has recently teamed with The Good Sheet, producing “a weekly series breaking down an important issue to help make sense of the world around us”. Maybe this is an example of just the type of media restructure we need.

Today, mass media and popular culture abounds with examples of both Benjamin’s, and Baudrillard’s theories. Benjamin’s own concerns about the way the development of the mass media and popular culture are warped, perhaps in this way a forerunner of Baudrillard’s thoughts, are shown by his statements that “the film industry is trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations … film production under capitalism resurrects cultic distance and creates an ‘artificial’ aura (Gilloch, 2002, p. 187). The major Hollywood studios are often guilty of this crime, with many examples both historic and current; Breakfast at Tiffany’s being an early, patriarchal forerunner of the acceleration in consumerism, which also trivialized the modern female role. More recently Alexander (the Great), and other similar movies glorifying combat, and nationalism, were deliberately funded, produced and released – just prior to the spurious “Weapons of Mass Destruction” war in Iraq, and the associated tragic loss of young life. This comes back to what Baudrillard described as “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth … it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true” Baudrillard’s theory related to ‘the vanishing point of communication’. He said “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.

In New York, young models literally ‘three days from death’ are sought-after, plucked off the streets by major fashion designers, as they stumble by in a drug-fueled haze. Consider the why, and how, there is such demand for such models, or how used; the imagery composed in their likeness is only a simulacrum; there is no reality, only pictures showing a life impossible (apart from 3 days) to achieve. Starvation or death from overdose is the result, or the real nightmare of America, the over-weight. All of the fashionable and expensive images thus composed carry not life, not even the shadow of death, but death itself; starved-strange, drug-addled, or dramatically-dying, comes before any reality. What is portrayed, consumerised, commoditized, sold on the high-fashion streets, as life, justifies what Baudrillard believed – that modern society has lost much of the contact with the real and lives go on in the hyperreal.

Merrin says Baudrillard has an “extreme picture of human relations”, and there is a difficulty with his work in that he applies a “blanket rejection of all forms of mediation and of electronic media in particular” (p. 22).This can be compared how Strinati says Benjamin’s position is not “without problems of its own, which include the relationship between power and the new popular arts, historical accuracy and an exaggerated technological optimism” (Strinati, 1995, p. 75). In addition, many expensive fashion shoot locations are far away from any chance of comparison with the realities of life, in fabled or historic settings. Sometimes the emaciated models are even styled and dressed to reproduce figures in famous works of art, such as the Mona Lisa, or Girl With a Pearl Earring. Certainly Benjamin’s position on the extinguishment of the aura of an original work of art is clearly in evidence here.

Baudrillard has an “emphasis on unilaterality that appears to suggest a passive, receiving audience that is rejected by the dominant contemporary paradigms of media” (Merrin, quoting Baudrillard, p. 22). Reading Scott’s The New York Times article “A Genial Explorer of Literary Worlds”, posthumously describing the career of literary critic John Leonard, it seems that “passive, receiving audience” is nowhere in sight. Scott describes Leonard as “more than any other critic, was assisting in the cartography, pointing readers toward freshly liberated zones of imagination. He spoke no in the voice of disembodied authority, but of enthusiasm” (2008, November 8, p. C1).

Merrin points out that Baudrillard does “make us question the value of … [art, communications, and mass media] content; whether it actually constitutes communication or just a reduction and simplification of human expression and meaning” (Merrin, 2005, p. 23). This can be compared to how, as Gilloch explains “Benjamin observes on a number of occasions, cinema and the city have a special connection, an ‘elective affinity’ … he emphasizes the cinematic character of urban experience and space. He notes how film offers both a privileged proximity to the urban labyrinth and an incomparable insight into its secrets” (Gilloch, 2002, p. 182). Gilloch says “Moreover, film disenchants reality … just as photography promises to expel aura from the modern cityscape, so film penetrates and demystifies the world” (p. 186).

Merrin says Baudrillard, although extreme, does “have the merit of making the question of form and effects of media visible again in an original and provocative way – question whether electronic media necessarily add to human communication” (Merrin, p. 23). Today much of our media is taken up with valid examples. In The New York Times recent article, “Child’s Garden of Hip-Hop (for Mom to Love, Too), article writer Motoko Rich quotes editor and poet Nikki Giovanni, who “wanted to reach back to what she sees as the roots of hip-hop in older poems by mainly African-American poets, like Hughes, or Paul Laurence Dunbar, as well as to use the familiar vernacular of hip-hop, to lure children to more established literary voices” (2008, November 8, p. C1). It is difficult to see how such valid new developments might be what Baudrillard termed “merely replac[ing] it [speech] as quicker and more convenient, simplifying our effort and investment” (Merrin, p. 23). More likely as Benjamin said: “The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception” (Benjamin, 1970, 225).

Merrin also says of Baudrillard “he distinguishes human relations and ‘communication’, arguing that the latter is a ‘modern invention’ as ‘a new mode of production and circulation of speech, connected to the media and to the technology of the media’ … [where] neither the word or the concept existed. ‘People don’t need to communicate, because they just speak to one another'” (p. 22). The recent mass media New York Post November 3rd. article by Olsham, entitled “Touched by the handheld of God” (see appendix 5) describes specific use for the new “Jewberry” technology. A busy, modern-day user quoted in the article, says “it’s not our technology that informs civilizations; it is our values” (Olsham, 2008, November 3rd.) (Also see appendix 5). This is certainly an example of “reserved communication”, whereby a modern sub-culture “respond[ing] to the symbolic demand for communication by developing electronic technologies to rejoin their own isolated populations”. (Merrin, p. 21-22). While this effectively “circulates[s]” that “communication” it is questionable if the aim is to “promote [this established religion’s] stimulation” (p. 22).

It is interesting that Merrin goes onto quote a number of other experts who criticize Baudrillard, who base their “communication studies” and their focus upon the actual, what they term the “active audience”(p. 22). In comparison, Benjamin appears to have backed up his theories with research or events, as he talks about the importance of statistics, saying “manifest in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics” (Benjamin, 1970, 225). This is an all-important matter in our lives, because of the “contradictions that pervade modern life” (Berman, 1983, p. 14). Recently statistics informed the work that advised us “The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order” ( Reuters, 2008, October 27). (see appendix 4).

Benjamin and Baudrillard did not doubt the new and ever-increasing powers of the mass media and popular culture, and both were concerned by the close links between these elements of modern life, and both the economic base, and politics. Cultural studies deals with contemporary culture, so it is natural all theory is in a constant state of movement and flux, and due to the pressures of modernism, is now delivered and changed at very high speed.

Nonetheless cultural studies continues to benefit greatly from each of their different theoretical perspective, in the writings of both these important theorists. In the everyday of modern society, thousands upon thousands of objects of the mass media and popular culture are conceived, manufactured and portrayed, and commoditized, specifically as described by either Benjamin or Baudrillard. Benjamin held an essentially positive view of mass media in the modern period, as he believed in the real of modernism and of modern life. Baudrillard centred his work aroung the concept of similacra and simulations, delivering dark, negative views, believing all modern reality to be now so blurred, with no distinction between the hyperreal of the perceived world and the hazy simulacrum. He did not think there was a high probability that the masses would develop abilities that allowed them to analyse, be reflexive and then communicate, effectively and politically. Benjamin thought, once properly informed and educated about the profound developments of modernism, ordinary people would be able to understand, become reflexive, to engage, have the ability to reply or challenge and thus effect political change, to improve their circumstances and lives. In contrast, Baudrillard believed there was no way out of the modern abyss and deplored the use of all technological tools of communication and implicated the mass media totally. Benjamin was more concerned with techniques and politics, the how, or the what of the message or commodity as delivered. He developed important new ideas to demonstrate the striking changes in modernism, how the valuable, traditional aura of an original work of art irreversibly changed in modernism, yet still believed modernism contained positive tools for mankind. Both views, both theory, still valid today.

Reference

Baudrillard, J. (1983). The precession of simulacra. In Simulations (trans. Paul
Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman), (pp. 1-4, p. 153 & 23-26). U.S.A:
Simiotext[e].

Benjamin, Walter. (1970). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In H.
Arendt (ed.) (trans. H. Zohn) Illuminations: essays and reflection (pp. 219-226). London: Jonathan Cape.

Berman, Marshall. (1983). Introduction: modernity – yesterday, today and tomorrow. In
All that is solid melts into air: the experience of modernity (pp 15-36). London & New York: Verso.

Caygill, H. Coles, A. and Klimowski, A. 9eds) with Appignanesi (1998). History of the
aura. The decay of the aura. In Introducing Walter Benjamin (pp. 135-137). Cambridge: Icon Books.

During, S. (227). Introduction & Editors Introduction. (3rd. ed.) In S. During (Ed.),
The cultural studies reader (pp. 1-2, 36). Abingdon, UK: Routledge

Gilloch, Graeme. (2002). Reproduction and the afterlife aura. In Walter Benjamin:
critical constellations (pp. 180-188). Cambridge: Polity.

Good Sheet. (2008, October 23-29th). Does Your Vote Matter?No 007.
The Good Sheet.
http://www.good.is.http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/goodsheet/goodsheet007elections.html. Retrieved 2nd November, 2008.

Hall, S. (2007). Extract of Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies. (3rd. ed.) In
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Johnson, R. (1996). Extract of What is cultural studies anyway? In John Storey (Ed.),
What is cultural studies? (pp. 75-78). London: Hodder

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‘Those things not of God’. In Baudrillard and the media. (pp. 19-27, 34-38) Cambridge, UK: Polity

Olshan, G. (2008, November 3) Touched by the handheld of God. New York Post.
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Appendix

appendix 1

During explains the dynamic nature of this relatively new field of study by saying “to introduce the forms of analysis developed by [this] discipline, we can point to two features that characterized it when it first appeared in Great Britain in the 1950s. It studied culture in relation to individual experiences and lives … [and] it was an engaged form of analysis” (1993, pp. 1-2). Coming out of a form of Marxism, this new study, while concerned with the society in general, was, in the beginning particularly located within production and focused on the quality of ‘everyday’ historic and modern ‘working class’ life (p. 2). Johnson provides us with a framework to understand this theory by it is based upon

Procedures by which other traditions are approached
both for what they may yield and for what they inhibit.
Critique also involves stealing away the more useful
elements and rejecting the rest.
Johnson, 1996, p. 75

From the outset cultural studies was “a Marxian but not communist movement” (p. 2) and that “early cultural studies did not flinch from the fact that societies are structured unequally, that individuals are not all born [equal]. … In this it differed not only from the (apparently) objective social sciences but from the older forms of cultural criticism, especially literary criticism, which considered political questions as being of peripheral relevance to the appreciation of culture. ” (p. 2). The idea of “cultural capital” was developed and one the early aims were “to use the education system to distribute literary knowledge and appreciation more widely” (p. 2).

Analysing Hall’s writing in the Editor’s Introduction, During says cultural studies emerged out of the “disintegration of classical Marxism in its Eurocentrism and … [part of Hall’s] thesis was that the economic base has a determining effect on the cultural superstructure” and goes onto “acknowledge cultural studies must be formed in interruptions to its trajectories and perceived mission – notably, early on, by feminism and anti-racism” (1993, p. 36) which Hall explains happened in the 1970s (p. 37). Hall discusses the links between cultural studies, and the “radical displacement” of classical Marxism and briefly outlines the “substantial “superstructuralist mistranslations” which went on internally, when the “anti-theoreticism or resistance to the theory of cultural studies had been overcome”(p. 37. He states there were parts of the “theoretical framework” with remained “unresolved” (p. 37).

Hall admitted the non-existence of the “organic intellectual” Gramski hoped cultural studies would produce, who would work ” at the very forefront of intellectual theoretical work … to know more than traditional intellectuals do … [and who] cannot absolve himself or herself from the responsibility of transmitting those ideas … to those who do not belong … in the intellectual class” (pp. 38-39). On the one side there developed the “uncritical romance of machines, fused with their utter remoteness from people, … reincarnated in modes that would be less bizarre and longer-lived”. This included “the vision of the factory as an exemplary human being which men and women should take as a model for their lives” (Berman, 1983, pp. 26-27).This meant the “brilliant machines and mechanical systems [play] all the leading roles” (p.27).

appendix 2

At the same time Berman describes modernism as a unique period in the development of mankind, one in which

Environments and experiences cut across all
boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class
and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense,
modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a
paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into
a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal,
of struggle and contradiction of ambiguity and anguish.
Berman (1983) p. 15.

On the other side, he tells us the “great modern thinkers” of the 19th Century believed modern individuals had the capacity both to understand this fate and, once they understood it, to fight it.”. 20th Century thinkers, he says, “lack[ed] this empathy”, even to the point, in the 60s when a paradigm developed that “both Marx and Freud are obsolete: not only class and social struggles but also psychological conflicts and contradictions have been abolished by the modernist state of “total administration”.” (p. 28).

Berman goes onto say this in “volatile atmosphere” there developed what he saw as “a travesty … [to invoke the critical tradition of Hegel and Marx] while rejecting their vision of history as restless activity, dynamic contradiction, dialectical struggle and progress” (p. 29), but also a “large and vital body of thought and controversy over the ultimate meaning of modernity .. which [in the 60s could] be divided into three: affirmative, negative and withdrawn” (p. 29).

The general processes of modernism were broken and fractured, into many facets of literature and visual arts, all apparently in states of flux. For example, in what was then classified as the category of the “withdrawn” “the modern writer turns his back on society and confronts the world of objects without going through any of the forms of History or social life” and “the only legitimate concern of modernist art was art itself: … Modernism … the quest for the pure, self-referential art object” (Berman, 1983, p. 30).

As time went by, this definition was seen as too “arid, and lifeless” (Berman, 1983, p. 30). This particular theory of modernism then moved onto a more politicized form, where modernism was thought of as “‘seek[ing] the violent overthrow of all of our values, and car[ing] little about reconstructing the worlds it destroys” (p. 30). In turn, this line of theory was perceived as leaving out “the great romance of construction, a crucial force in modernism, … all the affirmative and life-sustaining force that in the greatest modernists is always interwoven with assault and revolt; the erotic joy, natural beauty and human tenderness” (pp. 30-31).

appendix 3

There was no clear division between the modern period and the commencement of post-modernism. Sturken & Cartwright state

Postmodernism has often been characterized as
a response to the conditions of late modernity
linked to late capitalism. But it is widely agreed that
there is no precise moment of rupture between the
modern and the postmodern. Rather, postmodern
intersects with and permeates late modernity, a
period during which modernist approaches continue
to be generated.
Sturken & Cartwright, 2001, p. 240

Throughout the most recent period of modernism, conflicting, cross-over situations constantly arose, such as with

the proliferation of images and image-
producing apparatuses like the cinema, video,
and digital imaging devices that can be
characterized as postmodern have been met
by criticism steeped in modernist ways of
thinking.
Sturken & Cartwright, 2001, p. 240

appendix 4

Posted on ZDNet News: Oct 27, 2008 5:04:29 AM
http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-243997.html

CANBERRA–The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.
Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.

But while technology can accelerate learning and boost creativity it can have drawbacks as it can create Internet addicts whose only friends are virtual and has sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses.

Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.

“We’re seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills,” Small told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“They will know when the best response to an email or Instant Message is to talk rather than sit and continue to email.”

In his newly released fourth book “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind,” Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.

Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA, said the brain was very sensitive to the changes in the environment such as those brought by technology.

He said a study of 24 adults as they used the Web found that experienced Internet users showed double the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as Internet beginners.

“The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others,” said Small.

“We are changing the environment. The average young person now spends nine hours a day exposing their brain to technology. Evolution is an advancement from moment to moment and what we are seeing is technology affecting our evolution.”

Small said this multi-tasking could cause problems.

He said the tech-savvy generation, whom he calls “digital natives,” are always scanning for the next bit of new information which can create stress and even damage neural networks.

“There is also the big problem of neglecting human contact skills and losing the ability to read emotional expressions and body language,” he said.

“But you can take steps to address this. It means taking time to cut back on technology, like having a family dinner, to find a balance. It is important to understand how technology is affecting our lives and our brains and take control of it.”

appendix 5

FAITH GOES WIRELESS
TOUCHED BY THE HANDHELD OF GOD
* Comments: 12

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By JEREMY OLSHAN
PEOPLE OF THE FACEBOOK: Tech-savvy worshippers can organize prayer groups and, like this man in Jerusalem over the weekend, recite prayers with a “JewBerry.”

Top of Form
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Last updated: 5:53 am
November 3, 2008
Posted: 5:02 am
November 3, 2008
Tech-savvy Orthodox Jews can now reach out for the handset of God.

Two entrepreneurs who attended Yeshiva University have written software that turns the BlackBerry from a device to check e-mail and stocks into a pray phone.

Dubbed “the JewBerry,” the $30 program replaces the traditional prayer book by providing all the Hebrew blessings observant Jews are required to say three times a day.

“Throughout the day, Jews gather in office-building stairwells and conference rooms to pray, and while sometimes you might not remember your prayer book, no one goes anywhere without their BlackBerry,” said co-creator Jonathan Bennett, 33, of Cedarhurst, LI.

Currently, JewBerry – which is not affiliated in any way with BlackBerry maker RIM – is a static program that does not take advantage of the device’s wireless capabilities.

But Bennett and Jerusalem-based partner Jonathan Kestenbaum hope their product will eventually become the Facebook of Moses followers.

Using GPS technology, for instance, the phone will one day enable Jews to create minyans – the minimum-10-member groups necessary for prayer.

“Say you’re in a place like Shea Stadium. You could post that you are looking for a minyan, pick a location, and other people signed up will be able to respond and meet up at the Carvel stand,” Bennett said.

Nearly 10,000 Jews from across the world have already purchased the software, and Bennett’s company, Promised Land Holdings, has been besieged with requests for new features, including mobile versions of the Talmud.

Yeshiva University President Richard Joel was among the device’s early users. “I love it, because now I can not only look how the market is doing, but I can also say my evening prayers,” he said. “A lot of breakthroughs are done trying to advance science or make a buck, but at the heart of what Yeshiva [University] is about is the notion that it’s not our technology that informs civilization; it is our values.”

The JewBerry has already caused some confusion during worship, but people who appear to be checking e-mail may in fact be immersed in prayer, Bennett said.

But he does not believe the technology will ever completely replace the prayer book itself.

“Personally, I still like the experience of holding a prayer book when I have one available, but I like that if I ever need [the JewBerry], it’s there,” he said. “Our goal is not to make the book obsolete but to take something as physically mundane as the BlackBerry and make it more spiritual.”

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com
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CANWA 2009 community consultation

October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 susanneahLeave a comment

Cultural Planning CAN WA Sept – Oct 09 Assessment Task 2: Theory

Question
1. Give a description of 3 different community consultation techniques and an appropriate situation which each might be employed

a. A community consultation technique is “World Cafe, or Cafe to Go!” Flexible, safe, hospitable, and relatively informal, this forum can be used for community members, including individuals who do not know each other, or who are from minority groups, or who may feel marginalised, to come together, to be informed, to contribute their opinions, and listen to others opinions, about one or more specific matters. World Cafe might be an appropriate way for an independent cultural worker identify if consensus can be reached, by the community members, for example, to identify whether community interest in public art projects exists.
b. Another community consultation technique is “Open Space Technology”, which is more of a short workshop when there are a diverse group of individuals who are participating because they care. It is good to create an atmosphere of equality, to inform the participants about complex matters, provide an environment where listening, discussion and swift feedback can occur. This might be appropriate when dealing with a controversial matter, such as to ask the community to contribute ideas about how to modify an important heritage-listed, community-owned, and community-use, property.
c. A third format is “21st. C. Town Meeting”, which seems especially suitable to developing awareness, and generating informed, in-community-discussion involving a common, large group of community members, working in smaller groups, in ‘on the day’ electronic information-processing, discussion and review, and voting-processes. This type of meeting might an initial step to gather relevant information with which to build a more detailed community cultural plan.

What are some steps you could take to ensure equity and inclusiveness in the consultation and participation process

Some steps to ensure equity and inclusiveness in the consultation and participation process of community consultation are:
• Give a lot of consideration to the process/es of recruitment of participants, be open to ideas and creative in this process, to pleasantly surprise, and encourage individual participation
• consultation processes to take place in hospitable, neutral environment
• welcome all participants with equal warmth and attention
• on the day make the process involved transparent i.e., gently request participation and cooperation and explain why information needed – some examples
o a decision is in the hands of the public
o advice on/provision of a number of solutions
o obtaining feedback, suggestions for alternatives
o to ensure the public’s view is heared/understood
• ensure all participants are equally informed, briefed and prepared both prior to and on the day on all matters, including timing/s
• clearly verbalise in non-threatening manner the aims and outcomes hoped for
• offer and explain how to request assistance during the day
• explain positive rationale of consultation etiquette and rationale/s
• make sure participants know extra copies of all information is available for them
• build into the process ways some elections to change seating and/or re-group
• encourage continuing contribution for whole period
• request all parties wear name tags
• ask each member to give a short 3-minute overview of themselves and their interest in the matter
• allow reasonable period for breaks, including the quirky:
o exercise
o refreshment and
o informal exchange
o stimulate impulsive artistry (ie, Sian)
o laughter
• build community confidence in the process and cut down cynicism by:
o providing a healthy level of feedback – the same level at the same time, to all participants
o keep all participants – informed of on-going process and any outcomes, even when the process takes a lot of time, even years
o acknowledge to general community groups and individuals who offered and contributed to the process –
o be transparent again and again
3. What requirements of Council may affect community consultation and cultural planning
Council may affect community consultation and cultural planning in the following ways:
• Insurance/risk analysis requirements
• Budget requirements
• Venue use
• May be subject to council vote
• Timing requirements
• Requirement to meet deadlines
• Council may be unable to provide all relevant, comprehensive and up-to-date information in a timely manner because of: (eg)
o Confidentiality constraints
o governance constraints
o planning restrictions

What type of resources (including information available and personnel involved) would you need to conduct a small community meeting
Resources required would probably be broken into stages, depending upon approval/s gained to proceed: Examples of the types of resources needed to conduct a small community meeting would be:
• Stage 1:
o Information about
▪ level of funding available
▪ timing issues
▪ desired outcomes
▪ welcome to country opportunities
▪ clear pathways to – All necessary permissions from relevant authority/ies
o 2/3 staff, several volunteers
o Ability to hire welcoming, safe, appropriate venue
o Tools to comply with all insurance/risk/h&S requirements
o Authority to proceed
o Intial petty cash funds
• Stage 2:
o Decision/approvals to proceed
o Time to build participant list and
▪ Access to any community demographics
▪ Time to analyse community composition
▪ Access to any other relevant community Information
▪ Access to information about the subject of the meeting
▪ Time to research and be informed about the subject
▪ Senior staff Sign-off on rationale of invitation list and authority to proceed
• Stage 3:
o Time, staff, funding and office space, access to equipment to:
Develop and build action plan, including
▪ venue, use of venue, map/s, location of parking,
special access, ramps, kitchen, toilets, h&s, etc
▪ Aim/s and outcome/s of event
▪ Timing
• Event
• Lead-up
• De-brief
• reporting
▪ Welcome to country format and party/ies
▪ Form of meeting:
• Time/date/period/length
• Seating
• Any photographs, media
• Consideration of any cultural requirements/formalities
• Allocation of roles and activities
• Data/information to be presented
• Questions/answers and
• collation/collection and retrieval
• invitation to any visitors
• reporting – how, who, where, when
▪ Time for discussion/decisions – relevant experts &/or presenters
• Invitations to presenters/experts
• To & fro: confirm timing/content/q&a,/processes, cost, travel
▪ Time and staff to analyse and prepare budget, costings and action chart:
• Staffing
• Cost of venue hire
• insurance
• Send letters of agreement/offer to presenters/experts – agree cost
• Information packages
• Postage
• Stationery
• Any equipment hire
• Office costs, fax, phone, internet
• Invitations/posters/advertising
• Catering, cleaning
• Cost of presenters, experts
• Preservation of information and images
• Other costs
▪ Set up, cleaning and final pack-up arrangements
▪ Information packages compilation format
▪ Review of all formats of
• presentation of all to authorities for sign-off
• venue, timing, risk, etc
• Preserving information – etc
• Budget finalisation and sign-off
• Double-check of insurance, risk, h&s, etc
• Stage 4:
o Time, staff, funding and office space, access to equipment to implement plan:
▪ Creation of all approved information packages
▪ Timing of posting of information and confirmations, etc
▪ Any press releases/media kits, etc and send out
▪ compile confirmation of attendance/ send out replies and information packages
▪ run check re attendance confirmed of experts/presenters/visitors. Coordinate all
▪ run and coordinate
• leadup
• prepare venue
• day/event
• Post event
• Stage 5:
o Time, staff, funding and office space, access to equipment to:
▪ send out to participants
▪ send out to expert/presenters
▪ visitors
• “thank you’s”
• outcomes
• next stage
• what to expect
• Stage 6:
o Time, staff, funding and office space, access to equipment to:
▪ de-brief – level of success, what can be done better
▪ press release/s
▪ creation of textbook/manual “for next event”
▪ preservation of records and images
What methods could you employ to record the proceedings of a community meeting

If budget would allow, it would be advantageous to record the proceedings of a community meeting by a combination of several methods. In creating a plan for the proposed community meeting, it would good to make decisions at the outset, especially about the type of information sought and the optimum type/s of format/s, so that the method would allow the convenors to achieve that information available outcome, at the end of the process. This would then dictate, to some extent or another, the type/s of recording employed, eg:
– For a small (or small budget) community meeting:
1. At outset of meeting to advise participants of the type/s of recording taking place and request their assistance with the recording processes
2. Ask each individual to also take writing materials to each group, to jot down personal notes of each session they attend and advise at end of each session, each person to provide 6 key points they personally got out of that session, or felt most important in session, each point in a 1-line format
3. In addition, each table/group of participants/groups to nominate 2 record-keepers, each to record half the session.
4. Materials per group or table. Butchers paper seems to work well, with a large bulldog clip to keep sheets together. Plus a set of good quality coloured Textas.
– For larger, or bigger budget meeting, perhaps record-keeping could incorporate
5. audio- Recording of all presentations
6. audio- Recording of all Q&A sessions
7. Each table/group could be provided with individual, second-hand PC for record-keepers to use to record the group’s perceptions, as this would considerably reduce the requirement for transcription by staff

How would you communicate the outcomes of a community consultation back to the stakeholders
Ways to communicate the outcomes would be a combination of:
a. An invitation to stakeholders to attend a traditional Australian “morning tea” between the hours of 10am. – 12.30, to thank participants for their participation and to verbally present the outcome/s to them, with a short q&a thereafter.
b. Provide a short summary, Included in a letter of thanks, composed and sent to stakeholders after the finalisation of internal reporting and consideration
c. An offer to stakeholders to acquire a detailed, comprehensive copy of the outcomes – for a cost to them – of the cost of photocopying, binding and postage

As there would probably be budget considerations to take into account, and this may put some constraints on the form the communication of outcomes were conveyed back to stakeholders. This reporting should be considered and budgeted for at the outset. I would advise stakeholders/participants of the format at the commencement of proceedings.

How would you deal with someone involved in a consultation process who complains about other issues not directly related to the consultation in hand
If a participant complained about other issues not directly related, I would:
• listen carefully to what they are complaining about to ascertain whether there is any overlap.
• If there is no overlap, take some careful notes and check with them to make sure I have correctly recorded what they are complaining about
• Explain politely to them I do not think their complaints form part of the current procedure, and why.
• try to find and provide the correct contact for them to report their complaint to
What do we mean by ’cultural mapping’ and what is its purpose
Hawkes says: “Sustainable development and the flourishing of culture are interdependent” (p. 12, handout). Cultural mapping is a positive process that can assist culture to flourish, as it is primarily undertaken to help community have a positive view of cultural diversity within their own environment, the environment that they occupy. An aspiration of community mapping is to encourage an optimistic view of the wider community, by community members and groups. Community cultural mapping is underpinned by a community’s cultural resources, both everyday and unique. Cultural mapping is also the way those resources are correctly identified and properly recorded.
There may be many, diverse reasons for carrying cultural mapping. A selection is:
• To identify, preserve and make available local knowledge and history, including historic and recent oral knowledge
• To combat lethargy and inertia in smaller, or less strong elements in the community, by recognising they are important and positively acknowledging their value, and thus empowering them
• To identify ,record and make available the facets of a community, including those not generally identified or acknowledged
• To encourage community esteem, harmony and well-being by providing the community with knowledge about the different groups and parts of their community
• to encourage younger generations to take an interest in their community and surroundings – by building a community map which defines their community, including in ways accessible to them.
• To provide community with an essential tool that allows them to begin to identify ways they may choose to enhance and develop their own community and its well-being, such as
o Improve the environment the community occupies
o Understand the community possesses unique assets. These assets could be such as diverse language skills. These assets may lead to:
▪ Opportunities for the knowledge to be spread through the community
▪ Development of high-quality tourism opportunities
▪ Increase in high-quality, unexpected, and possibly higher-return employment opportunities
o Provide needed community resources such as museums or other cultural venues
o Making the history of the community live, and be accessible to the community
What are some specific creative methods you could employ to engage community members in cultural mapping.
Cultural mapping can be structured to utilise all and any type of community project, artistic or otherwise. There are infinite ways to collect cultural mapping data

– Some examples of the types of event cultural mapping could be aligned to:
o the building of a local school garden, wall, path or mural
o the development of a large visual artform (mural, quilt, banner/s) to celebrate the local town anniversary
o collection and recording of the community oral history, of all types
o event or celebration at local library, i.e. book readings of local authors, children’s activities centred around local knowledge or history
o KAB busy bee to clean and beautify the local communal environment
o National Science Week events
o Charitable events, i.e., collection of local funds, ie for orphans, famine, refugees
o Church celebrations of many types, ie St. Luke’s Day, which is a day of hospitality for all
o Indigenous events, i.e., NAIDOC, reconciliation events
o Events run by local ethnic organisations, i.e. an Italian, or Hellenic Club,
o Events run by local social organisations, i.e. the Race Club
o Language events, i.e., the cafes run by Alliance François
o Eco-events, i.e., the 350 event at Government House this weekend
o Gay events, women’s events, men’s events, children’s events
o Local Annual Agricultural Show
Information from all of the above could be fruitfully used in cultural mapping

What is the purpose of a cultural plan

The main purpose of a cultural plan as defined by the City of Gosnells in their Cultural Plan 2007 – 2010 is: “a strategic process which highlights the values of a community in a way which informs City’s thinking policies and programmes”. Personally it seems there are, or could be, many other purposes of a cultural plan, depending upon who commissions the plan and how the outcomes sought might be.

What council policies or planning documents could you utilise in developing a cultural plan

The council policies or documents that might be employed could include:
o The WA Local Government Cultural Planning Programme
o Council strategic plan
o Council planning bylaws
o community demographics the local council may have available
o Historic and heritage records held by council
o Any/all statistics held by council on previous or existing cultural events: festivals, exhibitions, other annual events
o Details of parks and other community resources, buildings, swimming pools etc
o Details and/or records of local art galleries, libraries, museums
o List of all existing cultural or artistic initiatives currently operating or planned
o Lists of community organisations, such as ethnic clubs, churches, charitable organisations
o Contact details for any of the above

How could you communicate the plan to all stakeholders
Communicating the plan to all stakeholders prior to the process commencing would be possible by;
providing information in the form of flyers, posters containing a full outline and with detailed contact information. These could be sent out to the following groups, with a press release requesting assistance to distribute the opportunity to the public.

o all local organisations of all types, ie churches, indigenous groups, social groups, ethnic groups
o The offices of local federal, state, regional and local government
o The local telecentre
o The local hospital
o The local police station
o The local mines department office
o Local businesses
o Local charitable organisations
o Local radio stations
o Local television stations
o SBS TV and radio (with a request to provide the information in other languages)
o
In addition, an electronic blog or notice board, or website could be set up, details of which could appear on the handouts and posters.

Susanne HarfordPage 1 of 9

The Uncommon Un-Heritage of Man-Unkind. A 2013 letter.

October 9, 2015October 9, 2015 susanneahAlbert Memmi, common heritage, Douglas Randall, mankind, Manuel Castells, Mark Nolan, prLeave a comment

20 April 2013.
Dear Mr Harrison,

This communication is a PR tale of ECU study I respectfully present to you.

In semester 2, 2013, I studied my first editing unit, WRT3123, Production, Editing and Design.

Assessment 2 Activity 8 was to copy-edit, format, and proofread approximately five pages of manuscript to be published in 2013 as a book, The Common Heritage of Mankind.

Unit WRT3123 was complicated and convoluted. PR, and its valuable pro-active role did not feature in the unit.

The ethnicity of the author, Douglas Randall, was not disclosed. Marketing and readership was not disclosed.

The lack of PR in WRT3123 particularly concerned me.

The Common Heritage of Mankind manuscript was an approach to some extremely important, complicated, diverse – and sensitive – concepts.

If fully realised, these concepts will extend infinitely into the future and their reality will ultimately concern every human.

This author also attempted to apply these sophisticated concepts to a huge body of extremely important natural, and cultural, artefacts, of many types. Each unique artefact is of inestimable value.

The writing appeared startlingly limited, dated and colonial, uncaring, non-inclusive, deeply superficial, trivial and lacking in empathy.

It seemed possible that the author’s work was at a formative stage and not ready for publishing.

From a PR point of view, it seemed to me, as student studying to gain a PR major:

• the author might not have considered any PR-consequences of his handling of the subject matter

• the author may not be conscious of the vitality and sensitivity of the material

• the author may not perceive how in diverse ways the concepts and subjects were important – to diverse people.

• the subject of the manuscript, and the written language of the manuscript, separately and together, carried potential for substantial and negative, even angry, reader-response

• The Common Heritage of Mankind author Douglas Randall’s ideas, if carefully presented, may be of real interest and enduring value to many readers

Douglas Randall’s manuscript may eventually be published, may thus become a public communication, possibly, as Tomlinson (cited in Pickering, 2001, p. 51) describes, a “cultural transmission [that] involves an interactive process of negotiation, incorporation and resistance”.

Writings of Jonathon Pickering kept coming back to mind, along with other writers, such as Mark Nolan and Kim Rubenstein, who, in 2009, described relevant issues including “the relationship of mutual influence” between “citizenship law and psychological identity” (p. 39).

One primary focus of Nolan and Rubenstein’s 2009 paper is the production of “a strong sense of who we are”. This seems to have a strong relationship to the subjects of The Common Heritage of Mankind manuscript, especially as Nolan and Rubenstein explain the “psychological experience of blended identities can often be in tension” (p. 39).

Yet currently The Common Heritage of Mankind manuscript could be described, using other words of Nolan and Rubenstein’s, as “a suffocating… parochial cultural paradigm” (2009, p. 40).

Exposure to the work of Nolan and Rubenstein, and other theorists like Pickering (2001), who then analyses some effects of globalisation, may assist Douglas Randall develop effective tone and style tools.

For example, by considering Nolan & Rubensteins’ 2009 discussion of how individual “relevant self-definitions [are] shaping social existence and belonging… [and how] single national identification sits uneasily… in diverse societies” (p. 29), Douglas Randall may find ways, say, to give to his writing a more sensitive, attuned rhythm to today’s diverse global society.

Thus, in describing his complex subjects this author may be guided by Nolan and Rubenstein, together with Pickering, who cites Tomlinson in saying “there are many aspects of culture that remain highly resistant” (cited in Pickering, 2001, p. 51).

From a ECU-learned PR-perspective, with theoretical assistance the author might consider how in The Common Heritage of Mankind manuscript the massive subject is set – within and between two major and “contradictory” characteristics of globalisation, as described by Manuel Castells (2004, p. xv).

These characteristics are globalisation’s “cultural identity” and “programmed networks”. Castells and other writers may assist the author perceive how, as presented, the subject of his proposed book, and also his manuscript, may separately and together actually be capable of creating substantial conflict.

The short, sad and cautionary book by Albert Memmi,(1990), may also provide to Douglas Randall, for his consideration, a powerful and relevant image of colonisation’s “unbearable relationship”.

Also useful may be the introduction of Memmi’s book. There Liam O’Dowd describes Memmi as issuing challenges to “collective amnesia” and the associated dangers of “global interdependence”.

In addition, by reading Flavia Monceri’s 2003 philosophical paper “The Transculturing Self”, in conjunction with Memmi’s book, Douglas Randall may perceive some of the dangers in the current form of his The Common Heritage of Mankind manuscript.

The Monceri (2003) theories may show the WRT3123 manuscript author, how, in today’s Western culture, “the ‘Other’ is [still] needed to properly define the ‘Self’ (p. 108). In particular, Monceri describes how the ‘Self’, as ‘subject’, views the ‘object’.

In the case of The Common Heritage of Mankind the ‘objects’ are the natural and cultural artefacts Douglas Randall discusses and deals with. Monceri’s (2003) description may provide knowledge of how the ‘Self’, in viewing the ‘object’ ” explicitly individuate[s the ‘object’] in the reconstruction and explanation of the ‘truth of the object’… attempt[ing] to grasp… [the ‘object’s’] essential nature once and for all” (p. 108).

With assistance of access to these theorists and others, and professional PR guidance, Douglas Randall’s ideas and short manuscript may be a grand scale, on-going with extendable vitality.

Below are further, related, PR thoughts

• The author may see benefit in the Nolan and Rubenstein thesis; “that true recognition of blended identity may sometimes reduce social tension” (2009, p. 39)

• the manuscript’s author could construct and present his subjects to the public, the community, in ways that create “stronger awareness of the cultural ties that bind humanity together” (Pickering, 2001, p. 55)

• An actively positive aspect to the author’s work may be achieved by considering and exploring how Nolan and Rubenstein say “true celebration of blended identity could create stability in a diverse society” (p. 39)

• Perhaps this author’s ideas could become a major and positive project, one that may be capable of achieving what John Urry describes as “seem[ing] to take the ‘whole world’ into a different dimension” (2002, p. 57)

• Douglas Randall’s manuscript is already involved in the “global complexities” of John Urry’s “‘material worlds’ implicated in the apparent ‘globalisation’ of economic, social, political, cultural and environmental relationships” (2002, p. 58)

• Perhaps in turning the manuscript into a larger project positive metaphors could be sought – of the type Urry (2002) discusses – so the community may examine, in a uplifting framework, what is in effect a truly global undertaking

From the Australian-born, white, English-as-native-language, old, female student perspective.

Yours truly
Susanne Harford
Your M35 Batchelor of Communications student number 10043898
Reference

Castells, M. (2009). The Information Age: Economy, Society & Culture. Vol. 11. The power of identity. (2nd. Ed. ). Maldon, USA: Blackwell Publishing.

Commonwealth of Australia. (2002). Style manual. (6th. Ed.). Canberra: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

Memmi, A. (1990). The Coloniser and the Colonized. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd.

Monceri, F. (2003). The Transculturing Self: A Philosophical Approach, Language and Intercultural Communication, 3: 2, 108-114
DOI: 10. 1080/1470847038668094

Nolan, M. and Rubenstein, K. (2009). Citizenship and Identity in Diverse Societies. Humanities Research Vol XV. No. 1. 2009

Pickering, J. (2001). Globalisation: A threat to Australian culture? Globalisation and Australian culture. pp. 46-59.
Journal of Australian Political Economy No. 48

Urry, J. (2002). The Global Complexities of September 11th. Theory Culture Society 2002: 19:57-69
DOI: 10. 1177/0263276402019004004
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Student 10043898 Susanne Harford

We have a goal …

October 9, 2015 susanneahLeave a comment

Source: We have a goal …

Week 6 no 1

October 4, 2015October 11, 2015 susanneahevents, imc, interactivity, online tools, partnerships, pr1 Comment

SUSANNE LORRAINE HARFORD

ECU PRN2124 off-campus, S2, 2015

Journal Entry 9

Week 6 Assignment Task
Complete the following task in your online journal.

EVENT PR AND NEW TECHNOLOGY
Consider your potential online and new media tools that could be used for your event communication plan.What stakeholder groups are you targeting with each tool?What level and type of interactivity can you implement?

How did they add to the value to the stakeholder groups?

What links and/or partnerships/sponsorships can be included?

How could you differentiate for various target markets?

……………………………………………………………………………..

SUSANNE LORRAINE HARFORD

Journal Entry no. 9.

Week 6 Assignment Task

“PR arguably the most critical component of event communications… understanding via knowledge”

(ECU PRN2124 off- campus, S2, 2015 BB Week 5 lecture and activities notes).

………………………………………..

More data will be generated in the next five years than in the entire history of human endeavour.

At the same time, the challenges facedby society in the 21st Century are growing ever more complex, and demand research that is bigger in scale, and more collaborative and multi-disciplinary than ever before.

By Lawrence Mupofo, (April-May, 2009, From: http://lawrenceampofo.co.uk/new-book-chapter-published/ Mupofo, , Above is From:

“Innovations in Research Methods”, edited by Rob Proctor and Peter Halfpenny.

BUILD ON YOUR KNOWLEDGE

What – what stakeholder groups are you targeting with each tool
What – what level and type of interactivity can you implement?
How – how did they add to the value to the stakeholder
What – what links and/or partnerships/sponsorships can be included?
How – how could you differentiate for various target markets?

*new media – SOME 2014 EXAMPLES:

What stakeholder groups are you targeting with each tool?

Last Year/This year Event –

2014: A difficult year economically for the State and for Perth –
However, in 2014:
The first Perth, WA Seniors Expo was a success
American Seniors Expo provided template free
event brought more 70,000+ visitors into the city
ran over 3 days
visitors from many different ethnic backgrounds
like experiential and feel-good activities
Murray Street Mall excellent venue, is again available

………………………………………………………………………………………………

During and post-Seniors Expo 2014.

Stakeholders – Traders – Online tools
Well-established twice-weekly email exchange – with all important stakeholders. To keep them, and us, fully informed – worked well
100 traders registered online via email initial expressions of interest (for free places). 50 traders were chosen.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
SOME 2015 EXAMPLES
Pre- period and during-Seniors Expo 2015. Stakeholders – Traders
48 traders request online via email to return in 2015
700 further expressions of 2015 interest online via email
500 of these accepted for 2015 confirmed via email
LINKS/PARTNERSHIPS/SPONSORSHIPS
FEE: Each received individual email advice of $75 dollar fee
in 2015
this contribution is towards
all necessary insurance (acknowleged in releases)
all ambulance services (acknowleged in releases)
ensures their free, hard copy mentions & links
on *PCC website – free advertising
in online press releases
diaily by the Seniors Expos on-site blogger
YouTube releases
online daily West Australian photo-journalism and on-site blog
Well-established twice-weekly email exchange – with all important stakeholders to keep them, and us, fully informed and working
* PCC – Perth City Council
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

During, post-2014/pre – and NOW, pre- and during Seniors Expo 2015:

Stakeholders – Partners
As the 2014 Seniors Expo event was such a substantial success for the city, the 4 major in-kind Seniors Expo partners have agreed to participate again, and contribute further, in 2015.
Well-established twice-weekly email exchange in place – with all these important stakeholders – worked well.
2015
LINKS/PARTNERSHIPS/SPONSORSHIPS
All these generous stakeholders provide in-kind contributions.
They are acknowleged each day – in the Seniors Expo on-site blog, in hard-copy and online news.

Office of the Premier

WILL Fully fund
Design, distribute online on Premier’s website, and hard copy, for 6-months prior to and during event:
awareness-raising online advertising support
global
national
statewide
local

Murray Street Mall

Ø Management
Shared cost
Arrange and manage
All necessary insurances
o Online emergency cover service
Permits
o Online notices
All-hours on-site, staffed ambulance service
o Online call service
Rubbish management and removal
o Online call service
WILL Fully fund
Specific designated contact individuals
use of area
power, water, security
office
Collect in electronic format visitor numbers
Provide online data and feedback information

Perth of City

Mayor’s Office
Mayor agreed to be Seniors Expo Patron
Mayor to open the Seniors Expo and Parade
Shared cost
in-city parking at flat rate – $2 per half-day – for online record on-the-day temporary tattoo – bar code *new media
½ -fund, design and arrange distribution points
for colourful information booklets with maps – online/hard copy
WILL Fully fund
design, arrange and fund banners and posters throughout the city, beginning 6 months in advance
on all major roads, including from the airport.
on major bus and train stations
all avenues into the city
daily peak-hour radio mentions
provide online data and feedback information
post-event remove posters and other information as needed
City of Perth (PCC) website
WILL Fully fund
a designated area on their website
design and manage this website area
collect & deliver data online
Department of Transport
Head Offiice
Part-fund
½- fund colourful information booklets with maps in hard copy and online on website/s.
Fully-fund for Seniors Expo
colourful, informational posters hard copy, on website
designate specific contact individuals phone /msg-text
provide crowd control if necessary
Online emergency line/text msg
arrange traffic diverts, personnel if necessary
broadcast divert information online website
free bike-on-train/bus to & from Seniors Expo for online record on-dail tattoo-bar code*new media
distribute/&post-event remove booklets, posters hard copy and online at all:
Major city Train stations
Major city Bus and ferry stations
Distribute the posters at
City parking stations
distribute the posters on all
city Trains
city Buses and ferries
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
EXAMPLES:
What– what level and type of interactivity can you implement?
KNOWLEDGE
On-site – give to the major target audience – the seniors.
(WIFM – POSITIVE PR FACTOR)– to a highly independent and capable group.
-Teach the seniors fashionistas and others how to: DO ONLINE
SHOW SENIORS HOW TO be creative ONLINE:
use Instagram creatively, as here in:
http://www.countryroad.com.au/instagram
(Images CR1 & CR2)
At Seniors Expo entry gates, ask each visitor for $2.
Say the money is for *new media

Seniors Expo postcards – with their Instagram photo on them –
a chance to win a holiday in the Canary Islands for 3 people for 8 days.
A free Gelati of their choice of flavour

All given out at the “Authentic Italian Gelati” Lounge-parlour –
Stamp each with temporary wrist-tattoos with bar code.
Give each person a map of the expo
Point out where the “Authentic Italian Gelati” Lounge-parlour is.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
combine Instagram pics and video – with their Facebook, such as at:
Grafitti Blue: 5 videos in 5 days – https://www.facebook.com/events/463085240540237/
(Image graffitti bleu)
Show the seniors how to link an image or video to an ‘event’
Show how they can link their Instagram image and their Facebook to Seniors Expo event
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
– The target is any senior, anywhere – because Australia is socially multi-cultural.
So there are diverse nationalities and many at-home language/s.
Show senior
dog (or cat, horse-lover seniors) world-wide, how to socialise online, via
how to barkbox-join up online, as with: *new media
http://edge.uncubed.com/course/barkbox-social/?utm_source=wakefield%20daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fashion%20%20social
(Image Bark Box)
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Show senior who want to find new activities and meet new like-minded other seniors
how to meetup-join up online *new media –
meet others – anywhere inthe world & do specific things in any language
http://www.meetup.com/find/?a=mw1_fnd&gj=ej32e
(Image MeetUp)
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
an important group in Australian society
– still may write that killer novel
how to use dropbox – on their devices *new media
– for all types of files
https://www.dropbox.com/mobile
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Look at the graph in the attached image “Picture Clipping” (ABS, 2014).
This graph shows us just one of the important ways in which Australia’s common demographic now changing.
If visiting Chinese, and other different ethnicity-seniors know how to use Google Translate
see (https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/google-translate/id414706506?mt=8)
on their mobile phones and other devicecs, then they will to get the most out of visiting Seniors Expo.
So, show seniors how to use Google Translate.
*new media IDEA & LINKS/PARTNERSHIPS/SPONSORSHIPS
High-potential attendees, yet –
Diverse factors lessen the seniors group’s importance today
offer seniors ‘involvement’
Show seniors how to learn online skills –
in areas of interest to them
seniors will do heaps of research on areas of interest
the ‘Over 60’s are ONLY age-similar:
– diverse.
– contains every imaginable sub-groups –
– Except those under 60 years of age.
Some of those identified sub-groups are:
all gender-designations
high proportion of fe-male and male
married, partnered and single
advanced age
diverse special needs
all religions, including atheist, agnostic, lapsed
drivers and non-drivers
bike riders, walkers
extrovert, introvert
dog lovers, cat lovers, horse lovers
car enthusiasts, old and new
smokers, non-smokers
drinkers, non-drinkers
criminal conviction and no criminal conviction
upper, middle and working class
retirees, pensioners
all income levels, no income
musicians, artists, poets, writers, potters, photographers
all types of occupation including military and ex-military
still-at-work, consultants, those without work
homeless
chefs, farmers, seamen-wo.men
grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents
country and city dwellers, local, state, national and global
Baby Boomers
Hippies
Greenies
Eco-Warriors
Battlers
Singles
Leaners (Hockey, n.d.)
Volunteers
Carers
with families, without families
students, at all levels of education and continuing education
#INNOVATE – *NEW MEDIA: To closely consider the groups’ diversity when creating communications with this age-homogeneous-only target group.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
REFERENCE:
Ampofo, L. (April-May, 2009). Proving PR success in digital media. Communication World. In my opinion. p. 48.
Barns, M. (07-03-2014). 6 graphs and tables taken from: Global Trends: Uncommon Sense that will affect us all. On-line
Nielson.http://www.nielsen.com/id/en/insights/news/2014/uncommon-sense-global-trends-that-will-affect-us-all.html
ECU PRN2124 off-campus, S2, 2015, BB Week 5/6 lecture and activities notes.
APPENDIX
NOTES – PR TOOLS:
KNOWN BACKGROUND/CONTEXT
The current and wider communications environment
Today, in the modern world, online communications operate as the major mass, global communications systems – at the moment
The online communications system is ever-expanding and changing
To effectively incorporate the online medium is not easy.
To set up systems that continue to work in the way envisaged requires considerable time, thought, effort – and management
# INNOVATE – NEW MEDIA: In this IMC for Perth, WA Seniors Expo 2015 effective online communication is not a ‘potential’ optional.
It’s mandatory.
KNOWLEDGE

Perth, WA Seniors Expo 2015 communications environment.

Australia is going through a substantial, sustained and severe economic downturn (fact).
The Seniors Expo is a fictitious annual 1-week event.
At the moment in Perth, WA, in 2015 no direct competitor events exist.
The value of this ‘special event’ – as an effective communications device may be useful, but limited.
Re short-span communications environments – consider the Guinness Festival (Case Study, ECU PRN2124 off-campus, lectures and notes).
The budget set by the parent organization is extremely modest.
It will not cover costs to set up, nor oversee and manage complicated, ongoing, online communications systems.
The parent organization of Perth, WA Seniors Expo will not engage full-time and/or year-to-year personnel for this event.
Communication management bridges must be constructed between parent organization and this ‘special event’, and within the event, and between the event and all its publics.
#INNOVATE – NEW MEDIA: It is necessary to acquire initial funding.
To create, operate and preserve this particular Perth WA Seniors Expo 2015 communications system.
Cost – again
The online environment is costly and so a serious consideration on this very small budget.
In addition, the number of possible applications now available on the Internet/Web is, like the amount of data available, simply beyond the understanding of the homo sapiens masses. So:
#: INNOVATE – NEW MEDIA: The value in gathered online and other data will endure.
Create a small but efficient communications system with a strong focus on the value of information.
This document is only a first step to identify and establish online tools
to properly identify, gather, store, access and analyse information online.
pictures 1 & 2: Instagram
Country Road, from:
http://www.countryroad.com.au/instagram
picture 3: Instagram & Facebook combined
from “5 Days” by Graffitti Bleu:
https://www.com/events/463085240540237/
picture 4: Barkbox new media
from: http://edge.uncubed.com/course/barkbox-social/?utm_source=wakefield%20daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fashion%20%20social
picture 5: Meetup new media
from: http://www.meetup.com/find/
2.5 million people live in Western Australia with approximately 1.6 million of those living in the Perth metropolitan area
and the [rest] spread throughout the regional areas of the State. 27% of the population is overseas born, so migrants and
visitors will feel welcome in our multicultural State.
http://www.migration.wa.gov.au/LIVING/AUSTRALIA_WESTERNAUSTRALIA/Pages/AustraliaAndWesternAustralia.aspx
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – to year ended 30 June 2011
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – to year ended 30 June 2011
in Greater Perth area
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – Average Wage and salary income (expressed in $dollars) = 58 180.7
—
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – Total Wage and salary income (expressed in TOTAL $millions) = $50 403.5
—
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – Wage and salary earners (total INDIVIDUAL salary earners in number) = 866 313
—
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – Average Own unincorporated business income (expressed in $dollars) = 30 581.4
—
ESTIMATES OF PERSONAL INCOME – Total Ow

CMM1101 Reading Media Texts – the nexus between Western-world mass culture & Ameri/Euro-centric popular culture-mass media

October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 susanneahAdorno, Berman, cultural spheres, democracy, Hodge & Kees, Hoffstead, Hoggart, Lowenthal, mass culture, mass media., Montaigne, nationalism, Pascal, popular culture, social control, StrinatiLeave a comment

CMM1101 Reading Media Texts 500 Words – Tutorial Week 2. Susanne Harford

The fascinating connections between Western-world mass culture, and Ameri/Euro-centric popular culture and the mass media, first described in the 1920s and 1930s, are sketched out by Strinati in (1995, p. 2). In this writing, although acknowledging the whole matter may have commenced much earlier in Europe, even as far back as ancient Rome (1995, p. 2), Strinati concentrates on three major streams (1995, p.3).

The three streams Strinati deals with are firstly; what or who determines popular culture, a matter still of great mystery and interest today; secondly, the emergence of culture in commodity forms , which probably means criteria such as ensuring profitability or marketability (within not only media product, but flowing through to the production of cultural artefacts, all the way through to all parts of everyday life) take precedence over maintaining quality, artistry, integrity and intellectual challenge within those influential fields. This leads Strinati to the question of whether there are intolerable levels of influence of commercialisation and industrialisation upon popular culture. The third point Strinati makes concerns the ideological role of popular culture. There are famous and well-known examples of this, such as the Nazi regime, and use of popular culture. (1995, p.3). Within those three major streams there are many interesting major points, and all the points are multi-faceted.

One point Strinati deals with when quoting Williams’ work is how in the 19^th. C, popular culture underwent a radical ‘shift’, to allow the adoption into culture of the viewpoint of the common masses, where previously all historic, traditional cultural spheres were under the total control, one way or another, of distanced, elite groups. Strinati provides background to this development, with a brief and interesting outline with how the European positions, detailed in the 16th. and 17^th. C by writers such as Pascal and Montaigne, noted types of connection to the development of a “market economy” (Lowenthal, as quoted by Strinati, 1995, p.2). Strinati explains a very interesting section of this theory; that the continuing development of Western-world mass culture may possibly be connected with the rise of nationalism in 18^th. C Europe, by incorporating the work of Burke (as quoted by Strinati, 1995, p. 2).

Another interesting point is: Strinati stresses that, although clothed in all types of disguises this situation has been exposed from time to time, particularly by respected, learned – also by demoralised and disaffected writers, this situation has continued unabated. Strinati’s position seems shared, during and after the Second World War in particular, by modern writers such as Hoffstead and Adorno, and later Hoggart, as quoted by Strinati, (p. 31). It appears they began the essential work of analysing this situation. These writers generally considered mass culture, popular culture and mass media this as a controlled and oppressive triangle of power. Developing ideas such as those of Hodge and Kees, (1991), who state “social control rests on control over the representation of reality”. Strinati says: “it is clear that mass culture theory can and has accommodated the idea that democracy and education have been harmful developments because they have contributed to the pathological constitution of a mass society” (reader. p. 7). However, there are other writers who see a more positive view, such as Berman.

A further interesting point is: Strinati seems to be of the view that in the modern or post-modern Western world of today, the whole concept of ‘public virtue’ is virtually unknown, yet barely a hundred years ago, was it one of the major moral thrusts of patriarchal European thought, and to hold ‘popular culture and mass culture largely responsible. While Strinati appears to think this the case in our affluent, privileged, still-patriarchal society today, how can that be so, when the reality many Western citizens are still very concerned with, and involved in trying to better the status of mankind generally ?

Strinati, D. (1995). Mass Culture and Popular Culture: An introduction to theories of popular culture. London: Routledge. Found in CMM1101 Reading Media Texts Book of Readings

Edith Cowan University Mt Lawley. Semester 1, 2010. Tutor Dr. J. Burton Page 2 of 2

Strategic Event Event Plan – Executive Summary 2014

October 4, 2015 susanneahe-business, imc, integrated plan, objectives, online campaign, Perth, pr, primary target market, strategic event planLeave a comment

Executive Summary 小美女 – Xiǎo měin (XM)

This Strategic Event Plan is to hold an Australian launch of women’s apparel designed by 小美女Xiǎo měin (XM). XM is Chinese and her business works from Shanghai, and online. As the briefing paper’s objective is to “make inroads into the Australian fashion market… beginning 2015” and the budget is small a compact and integrated mainly-online campaign will be run by two paid publicists. The event goal is to establish XM in the growing Australian fashion marketplace. Current research did not reveal any Chinese women’s fashion designer with an established presence in Australia today.

The communication goal is to incentivise individuals from the target audiences sufficiently “during and after the launch, [to visit] XM’s website… [to place] internet orders… directly from Shanghai”.

Demographics demonstrate a potential primary target audience pool of around 63,000 girl and lady customers, between 18 and 35 years of age, in the greater Perth region. A key secondary

audience is the Australian online shopper. This is a booming market, and is good as this IMC objective-based mainly-online campaign is based around XM’s already-successful, global e-business site.

So creating pre, during, and post-event environments for external and internal target audience members to exchange information about XM, and mingle with internal publics of key stakeholders; staff, volunteers, consultants, sponsors, and partners. The key stakeholder groups contain key secondary audiences: Chinese-Australian residents and visitors, fashion, design, media and drama students, etc.

The event concept, is that XM’s Australian launch, a photo-shoot at sunrise & sunset, will also work to welcome Chinese New Year (19 February 2015). At the second of the world’s top 10 beaches, Cottesloe Beach, WA, and regardless of on-the-day weather paid professionals, a beach and design

specialist photographer and a fashion photo stylist, will create a uniquely outdoor-Australian beach tableau, to showcase the designer’s recent garments and accessories, across several seasons.

Event planning was constrained by the small initial budget of $15,000 AUD cash. This figure was increased to $30,400 by in-kind contributions of $15,400: ECU equipment-lend, $400, S’Vow PR’s services $5,000 and $10,000 marketing communication assistance, primarily by ECU,, The WA Chinese Consul office, Town of Cottesloe Council and Surf Life Savers. By November 2014, the publicists will create XM’s Australia Facebook, Flickr & Wiki sites aiming for fifty Australian 3rd-party Facebook visits and fashion blogger 3rd-party entries between 17 November 2014 and 17 March 2015. Regular press releases will be sent to general media publics, and important stakeholders who issue newsletters – ECU, the Chinese Consul office, Cottesloe Shire Council and Surf Life Savers.

Sponsor Edith Cowan University (ECU) will gain exclusive 2014/5 online and physical, badging/branding and total media rights to create, own, use media, and digital recording pre, on-day and post-event. ECU’s substantial communication network will inform their global student body about XM’s event and run the competition where students participate. ECU CareerHub will advertise for the publicists.

To begin inter-action with the Australian community, and create good-will, XM will sponsorCottesloe Surf Life Savers. For an initial period between November 2014 and Chinese New Year February 2016., XM will contribute to Cottesloe Surf Life Savers 10% of profit of online Australian sales and promote this worthy group on her Facebook & website. Only small twice-weekly ads will run in The West Australian. As this newspaper is another, major Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club sponsor it may be possible to request some editorial about the XM’s event and her sponsoring of the Club.

2 page Strategic Event Plan – Strategy Development 2014

October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 susanneahcommunication goals, event goals, key stakeholders, strategy, strategy development, target audiencesLeave a comment

Strategy Development 小美女 – Xiǎo měin (XM)

Your team is to develop a strategic event plan to guide the implementation of a special corporate event supporting the business goals of a corporate client. You will also develop a brief Sponsorship Proposal for an identified potential sponsor of this event.

Event and Communication Goals

Event Goal: The event goal for the Xiǎo měin 19 February 2015 launch event is to establish Xiǎo měin in the Australian physical and online fashion marketplace.

Xiǎo měin’s associated corporate goal is for her women’s fashion apparel business to be commercially successful in the burgeoning Australian physical and online marketplace.

Communication Goal: The communication goal is for Xiǎo měin’s cultural commodities to be understood, accepted and desired by the Australian physical and online marketplace.

Target Audiences and Key Stakeholders

Target Audiences: The Xiǎo měin event’s primary target audience is approximately 4 million middle-class Australian girls and ladies aged 18-35. Xiǎo měin is currently totally unknown in the Australian women’s fashion marketplace, so details and key features of this audience will emerge in time.

It is anticipated that this 2015 Perth event will generate interest in the approximately 60,000 members of that primary target audience who reside in the greater Perth region. In particular the key target market sectors of Chinese-Australians, students of fashion, design, media, and drama, humanities, and residents of the affluent suburbs that surround Cottesloe Beach, the area where the launch will be held. It may be possible to also attract affluent, in-bound Chinese fashion-loving travellers. Other key audiences are the media, and the huge, global, online audience, including via Wiki, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram and similar others.

Key Stakeholders: The key stakeholders of the Xiǎo měin are, firstly, Xiǎo měin herself, her business and those of her Shanghai business that become involved, her e-business site. In-coming sponsor ECU is important, and the student of ECU, both local and global, in particular all students who enter the competition and specifically the competition winners . Further key stakeholderss are Xiǎo měin’s personal sponsor-recipient the Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club, The Office of the Chinese Consul in Perth, the Cottesloe Council, the 2 publicists employed to rung this campiagn, the photographer and photographic stylist. The freighting office and insurance company Xiǎo měin decides to use, and any in-situ Council operatives that oversee Cottesloe Beach, including emergency, fire and police services.

Primary & Key Secondary audience demographics & psychographics

Primary & Key Secondary audience demographics & psychographics: Are analysed in the initial pitch document, thereafter in the second presentation document. Details of the source information can be found in Appendices 1 & 2.

Strategy Development 小美女 – Xiǎo měin (XM)

Event Concept

The event concept: Simply put, this event concept is create a gentle ‘tableau’ of garment design fusing with nature: to present Chinese women’s fashion designer Xiǎo měin to the Australian women’s fashion market on the iconic Cottesloe Beach, WA, on a Chinese festival date that is well-accepted by Australians, and to invite the Australians to participate. T

Event Planner; what, where, who, when and how (3-page format as provided)

CMM113 Week 3. Discursive Pillars

October 4, 2015 susanneahAnglo-Celt, australia, Croteau & Hoynes, Foucault, Hall & Geiben, Islam, migration, Stuart HallLeave a comment

In Western post-modern/modern society of Australia, Foucault’s model of discourse can be applied. One discursive pillar is provided by Australia’s powerful media. Australian government policy provides a second. The true intent is always hidden.

Foucault said western post-modern society created “discursive formations” to send highly structured, hidden messages to their populace. Hall’s definition of discourse is that which: “represent[s] the West, the Rest, and the relations between them”, and also “a particular kind of knowledge … [which] also limits the other ways in which the topic can be constructed” (Hall cited in Hall & Geiben Eds., 1992, p. 291).

Two media opinions, “School meals go halal in London” (Brown, The Australian, August 6, 2010. p. 11.) from The Times, London, describe firstly, the “forced adoption of foreign [Muslim food laws or ] religious practices” in certain London high-schools. The second, “Veil a relic of repressive culture” (Ali, The West Australian, August 6, 2010. p. 21), is a longer, critical analysis of some Muslim dress, stating: “Philosophically, Islamism is a revolt against modernism” This media creates Foucault’s ‘discursive formation’.

An outline of the writer, Dr Ameer Ali, is provided at the end of the article. The garments are described as:

the burqa and the niqab along with the male turban and long beard

are the representative symbols of this new threat, part of the “Islamist

intrusion… [whose] ultimate objective of establishing an Islamic world

order, [whereby] political Islam promotes the growth of parallel societies

in the West that are excluding Muslims from mixing with others ….

Dr. Ameer Ali is a former head of the Muslim Community Reference Group,

hand-picked after the London bombings to address Islamic extremism

and promote tolerance.

Although Dr. Ali concludes positively by challenging the ‘West’ to rise to the occasion and provide answers, the major tone of the article is ominous and negative.

Both dwell upon the spectre of the “Other” (Hall, 1996, p. 238). Currently Australian government –endorsed Muslim immigration, combined with the arrival of Muslim ‘boat people’, is a major negative form of ‘the Other’. Common collective knowledge includes threats of ‘Other’ to valued nationalist traditions, and associated freedoms. Policy caused conflict between already-established Anglo-Celts, and Italians, Yugoslavs. These were conflicts between Christians. Only small migrant numbers of other religions were allowed. By reporting new ‘Others’ may force change in areas as fundamentally important as freedom of choice – of food – and religion, the media become what Croteau and Hoynes calls “key sites where basic norms are articulated” (2003, p. 163).

Historically Anglo-Celt Australia has accommodated change, but not without anger and fear – and violence. Running important English-opinion at this time – clearly demonstrates the strong Anglo-Colonial power in Australia, but – perhaps since the ‘world global financial crisis, Australia has been sold off: the traditional Anglo-colonial control has changed. No longer the preferred Christian 53^rd American state, – now Muslim Saudi Arabian vassal.

Reference:

Ali, A. (Friday, August 6, 2010). Veil a relic of repressive culture: The burqa and niqab are the products of a misogynist and patriarchal tribal system. Opinion: The West Australian. p. 21.

Brown, D. (Friday, August 6, 2010). School meals go halal in London. The Australian. p. World 11.

Croteau, D. & Hoynes, W. (2003). Media Society: Industries, images and audiences. London: Sage

Hall, S. Ed. (1997) Difference: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.

Hall, S. & Gieben, B. Eds. (1992). Formations of modernity: The West and the rest: Discourses and power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

CMM113 Week 10 blog. Right where they began to erode our rights in earnest.

October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 susanneahDurkheim, Edward Said, free press, Giddens, individual rights, individual thought, Orient, the Other, Thompson & HaytkoLeave a comment

CMM1113. Tutor James Hall. Student 10043898 Susanne Harford. Blog 4, Week 10

The Twain Shall Meet. Part 11.

The Society and State that protect the rights of the individual to think and embody thought.

Just as Christianity followed the flag into the Orient during the colonial era, today political Islam is entering the Occident not only through its religious institutions such as the mosques and madras, but also through personalised symbols such as the female burqa and niqab and the male turban and long beard.

Ali, 2010, August 6, p. 21.

How then to recognize individuality and to reconcile it with its intelligent and by no means passive or merely dictatorial, general and hegemonic context?

Said, 1978, Introduction, p. 9.

Today’s Western societies learn much about themselves, about their western world, and about the East or Orient, via western mass media. The Western press is relatively free, and thus it is extremely easy, on any day, to find outstanding examples of major differences between East and West. This blog will concentrate on just one of the many, many underlying, key differences between today’s “West”, and one sector of the East, the world of Islam – the rights of the individual. This difference is a cornerstone of Western societies. This blog will specifically discuss some of the rights of the individual citizens currently living in Western society; freedom of speech, the right of legal representation, and freedom of dress. By subjecting the reading by Said and some current Australian mass media articles to the theories of Giddens, Durkheim, and Thompson & Haytko, and others, this blog will argue that although Said’s 1978 version of “The East, or Orientalism” is now somewhat dated, the East of Islam is still very different to the modern/postmodern Western world of Australia. The blog will argue there are countless differences between the two States, and as the number of Islamic people taking up permanent residence in Australia increases, this important dilemma must be properly, and continuously considered and discussed – by the State, the institutions and the public.

Said’s East, or Orient, is not “disappearing … it’s time is [not] over” (1978, Introduction, p. 1). On the contrary the Eastern world of Islam remains vitally real, to continue as “one of [the West’s] deepest and most recurring images of the Other” (Introduction, p. 1). Today, differences between the Western world and the Islamic East remain sharp. Islam continues as a real (as versus imagined) “contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Introduction, p. 2). When Giddens discusses some of Durkheim’s western political concepts, he says they “only come into being with the development of the modern form of society” (1986, Introduction, p. 1), Giddens is discussing a world different to that of Islam. The Giddens/Durkheim world-views contrast starkly with the snapshot put forward by Ali and reported in the western mass media; that “Philosophically, Islamism is a revolt against modernism” (2010, August 6, p. 21).

The articles and the theory discussed in this blog highlight the modern/postmodern Western path of profound change and “evolution … [that Western society is now on and how the West] embodies conflicting factors, simply because it has gradually emerged from a past form and is tending towards a future one” (Giddens, 1986, Introduction, p. 26). The writings used describe a major and fundamental difference between the West and Islam; as Ali states “For more than 1,000 years, the pulpit with the support of Muslim governments has ruled over the minds of Muslims unchallenged, and has singularly remained the chief obstacle to any religious reform and cultural change” (2010, August 6, p. 21).

Countless facets of this difference – between the dynamism of the West and the sedentary nature of Islam – show up by Western mass media – every day. Giddens uses Durkheim’s “political theories” to describe the West (Durkheim, 1986, Introduction, p. 1). Durkheim says the West has gradually moved, over time, from a ‘mechanical’ to an ‘organic’ … type of society” (p. 2), and the “latter [the organic] refers mainly to the large-scale, industrialized form of society characteristic of modern times” (p. 2).

A supporting media example in The Australian, August 6, 2010 article entitled “Stoning lawyer flees Iran” (p 11) updates the Western public about a tragic saga of great general interest to the populace. This story of an Iranian woman who has already received a legal, public punishment of 99 lashes, and is awaiting a death by either stoning or hanging is foreign. The male lawyer representing the woman fled from one Islamic society to another – he is currently in solitary confinement in an infamous prison. This vibrant story of the East, of Islam, one that is foreign to the West of today, signals caution to new-readers in Australia.

The caution comes about, because, although similar punishments were common in the West as late as several centuries ago, today the woman’s “alleged” crime – adultery – is no longer punishable in this modern world of the West No woman, no matter what she had done, can be stoned, or scoured, and nor be deprived of legal representation. In the West, lawyers cannot receive treatment like this from the authorities, no matter whom they represent. Today Australia regards most forms of capital punishment as horrifying and barbaric.

Recently in Australia the rights of the individual to continuing legal representation, and the role of the western State in this process has been considered and the situation has been amended to ensure this occurs. This review was mainly brought about by the case of David Hicks. Giddens provides some insight, when he explains Durkheim further: “the tyranny of the conscience collective, through the growth of organic solidarity, [has been, in the West] gradually dissolved in favour of a cooperative order” (1986, Introduction, p. 5).

Previously Western society was, as is Islam today – “mechanical … [and] individuals [were] dominated by the conscience collective – the set of collective beliefs and values upon which the continuity of social life depend[ed]” (p. 2). Western mass media regularly demonstrates how far Western society has moved onto the current “organic” postmodern Western position. The West no longer holds fast to many of its earlier collective beliefs and values of the “mechanical” order. It is unlikely any similar set of punishments would occur in the West, by any judiciary, for any crime, or the lawyer thus compromised.

Another supporting example is James Jeffery’s recent snippet/article for Strewth! The Weekend Australian (April 3-4, 2010, p. 8). Australia is still ostensibly a Christian society and Jeffery publicly defends atheist’s rights to their beliefs, against attack by two foremost Christian leaders. It is interesting to consider Jeffery’s article in the light of Giddens’ further explanation of Durkheim’s views; that the organic society “produces the progressive emancipation of individual thought and action from subordination to the conscience collective” (Giddens, Introduction, 1986, p. 2).

In the article, Jeffrey pours irony over the Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, and Anthony Fisher, the Catholic Bishop for Parramatta – for their verbal attacks on atheism. In the Australia of the past, Jeffrey’s words would have been considered a crime, both against the country’s religious leaders, and against Christian society. Returning to Giddens’ analysis of Durkheim helps explain why Jeffrey is able to openly criticise Christian leaders in the Australian press today. Giddens says: “The ‘normal’ tendency of the advancing complexity of society is to produce … a decline in the intensity of coercive sanctions” (1986, p. 5).

Thus, in modern/postmodern, Christian/secular Western-world Australia, the society dealing with Jeffrey is very differently to that punishing the woman in the current, Eastern world of Islam. Giddens words describe this difference:

a crime against strongly held collective values,

against ‘transcendent beings’; the same act which, when

it concerns an equal, [Jeffery versus the bishops]

is simply disapproved of, becomes blasphemous when it

relates to someone who is superior [as in the case of the woman]

the horror which it stimulates can only be assuaged by violent repression.

(1986, p. 6).

The regular Islamic “violent repressions” the Western mass media relay to the Western public are part of a process of preventing societal change. This is explained by Durkheim, who talks about how “the absolutist State is ‘closed in upon itself’, cut off from the people … [and how this situation in Islam] tends to inhibit the effective occurrence of change” (Giddens, 1986, Introduction, p. 7). Ali says that Muslim leaders of Islam are “prepared to accept the material products of modern science but reject the metaphysics that underpin this science … [and at the same time are engaged in] spread[ing] globalising political message of Islamism” (2010, August 6, p. 21). If Ali is correct, this goes against that which Said calls the enormous power and productivity that historically came about by close relations between the Occident (the West) and the Orient (Said, 1978, Introduction, p. 4).

Said describes the “relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (1978, Introduction, p. 5), and Giddens explains that the actions of “such States are indeed all-powerful against the individual” (1986, Introduction, p. 7). Actions like these bring the Islamic East into direct friction with the Australian West, where everyone is an individual, with individual rights. One major component of Islam’s entry into western societies is restrictions in the way its members dress. Ali calls this an “intrusion … confronting” and says that these modes of dress “represent a mindset … [and] create an “otherness” by the Islamists” (p. 21).

Thompson and Haytko state the absolute freedoms of dress of the West are all parts of a key way that Western individuals have the right to engage in “ongoing social dialogue … [via the] concrete issues of dress, clothing tastes, and public appearance” (1997, p. 15). These issues include “self-worth: the pursuit of individuality; the relation of appearance to deeper character traits; the dynamics of social relationships, gender roles, sexuality, standards of taste, economic equality, and social class standing” (p. 15). In addition, this individual right is a microcosm of how Said’s Orienatlism acts still acts as a counter-point to the way the West views itself, and as he says “Orientalism lives on academically through … doctrines and theses [originating in the West] about the Orient and the Oriental” (Introduction, p. 5).

Thompson and Haytko continue “consumers use … fashion discourse to address a series of tensions and paradoxes existing between their sense of individual agency (autonomy issues) and their sensitivity to sources of social prescription in their everyday lives (conformity issues) … in a number of creative and procreative ways that do not reproduce a single hegemonic outlook” (1997, p. 16). Thompson and Haytko’s words highlight how severely restricted forms of dress, especially public dress, such as in the Islamic world of the East, also restricts the individual’s freedoms.

In contrast, the right to choose how to dress, and the freedom to constantly change the appearance and the mode of dress allows the Western citizen to freely engage in and to develop “countervailing meanings manifest in complex ideological systems”. The Western citizen is thus able to “engage in novel juxtapositions and creative reworkings of dominant meanings” (Thomas and Haytko, 1997, p. 16). Thompson and Haytko state this freedom/s “run against the grain” of the prevailing mindsets and assist the society to consider many issues.

A “fashion discourse … [is an] intertextual affair (Scholes 1982) that incorporates a wide array of cultural viewpoints” (Thompson and Haytko, 1997, pp. 16, 17). Thus, many members of Western society may choose to engage in a hegemonic dialogue, can be involved in visually proposing change. These are key personal everyday freedoms that enable a Western individual to know they have some control over their own lives, and are “conscious of [them] it” (Giddens, 1986, Introduction, p. 9). This also provides positive reinforcement of the validity of their society – back to its individual members.

Ali points out that while “facial expressions are a means of communication and display the otherwise hidden character of one’s heart and mind”. In Islamic societies of the East insist on maintaining the strict imposition of specific modes of dress and appearance on individuals now forming part of Western societies, Muslims trying to integrate into Australia must “[deprive] not only themselves but also the rest of society an invaluable means of social communication and exchange”. (2010, August 6, p. 21). They will not allow their members to enter into the use of these “intertextual disjunctures” (Thompson and Haytko (1997, p. 17) that form key parts of the Western world, a society that Giddens and Durkheim see as

The State within a democratic polity is the main agency which

actively implements the values of moral individualism; it is the

institutional form which replaces that of the church in traditional

types of society” (1986, Introduction, p. 9).

Of relevance here also is Giddens’ statement:

the specific role of the democratic State is not to subordinate

the individual to itself, but in fact to provide for the individual’s

self-realization. The self-realization of the individual can only take place through

membership of a society in which the State guarantees and advances

the rights embodied in moral individualism.

(1986, Introduction, p. 9).

The current the Western world “guarantees and advances” (Giddens, 1986, p. 9) these rights of the individual. It provides ways and means to ensure this freedom occurs, even in the most difficult and controversial of cases, as with David Hicks. Conversely, the restrictions of the individual in Islamic societies do not appear to do the same, as in the case of the Iranian woman who received the flogging and now awaits the death sentence – without legal representation. Ali says that the maintenance by “political Islam” of strict dress codes is part of developing “parallel societies in the West” and that the Islamic societies “neither want to assimilate nor integrate” (2010, August 6, p. 21).

Australia is a Western society at the forefront of change, as discussed by Fisher and Sonn, who say The necessity to face up to major challenges, change that are entirely different”(2002, p. 599) is occurring as new arrivals are constantly arriving into Western society. Those arriving are considered different, and highlight their differences, and they still thus fill the role of what Hall describes as the Other of non-Western societies (1992, p. 291)

For new arrivals into Western societies like Australia to become accepted into that society, it is not only by the locals who must accommodate change. There must be generous assimilation and integration – by both the incoming and the established societies. Thompson and Haytko say:

Consumers interpretive uses of fashion discourses create emergent

meanings that reflect a dialogue between their personal goals, life

history, context-specific interests, and the multitude of countervailing

cultural meanings associated with fashion phenomena … [and

individuals use them to] transform, and in some cases, contest

conventional social categories, particularly those having strong

gender associations”

(1997, p. 17).

Vernon, in discussing empathy, says, “we are much more embedded in the social world of other people than we realise” (2010, September 24, p. 2). The mass media gives the societies of the Western world this ability, to decide, “how we will behave towards others” (p. 2). However, Vernon also goes onto say that, the modern concept of empathy can be ambivalent; that using empathy effectively “is a personal, political and moral challenge” (p. 2).

To arrive to live successfully in Western societies like Australia there must be generous assimilation and integration – by both the incoming and the established societies. Ali says that the maintenance by “political Islam” of strict dress codes is part of developing “parallel societies in the West” and that these societies “neither want to assimilate nor integrate” (2010, August 6, p. 21). Australia’s short history clearly shows the disasters that occur when one side or other does not accommodate change. The tragic result to the circumstances of the original indigenous Aboriginal people of Australia, the “inexcusable treatment of the original inhabitants” (Fisher and Sonn, 2002, p. 599), is a stark example. Their culture and their rights are only now – beginning – to be addressed by current Australian society-in-general.

Fisher and Sonn say: “Change in societies is one thing that cannot be avoided”(p. 598). That change to the plight of the Australian indigenous people can finally occur demonstrates the level of and the strength of the freedoms bestowed upon citizens of Western society, upon Australians. They say education and socialization (p. 604) provide major platforms for two-way assimilation, and that “Change may be slow and incremental, adaption to new environments, changing social mores (p. 598).

They are discussing” reformist rather than revolutionary” (p. 599), and are talking about personal freedoms. These freedoms contain certain responsibilities. Western individuals can, if they so wish, contribute to the ongoing hegemonic debate. They allow the individual the right to consider matters, challenge existing paradigms and established mores, and to personally represent ideas to the populace in general, and to the State – problems such as those presented by the entry of Islam into Western society.

The major way western societies learn about themselves, and others, is via the mass media. On any given day, countless examples are found in the free press. Today in Australia, each day the media deliver to the western masses messages that clearly display very important differences between the Islamic East and the West. This is because, as the 21^st Century begins, the West is firmly fixed (one hopes) within the modern/postmodern world. In that world change occurs constantly and at great speed.

At the top of this blog stands Said’s question. Said is of the East, and his question asks how, while continuing to resist change in its own world of the East, Islam can continue to repress the development of many individuals within its ranks. This is an especially relevant question in Australia, where, at this time, many of Islam’s members are physically entering the modern, Western world of the individual – as citizens. Giddens states the Western world continues to move on from its own historic base and Australia’s short history clearly shows the terrible results that occurred in the past, when major changes to a society did not properly allow for all types of humans within the populace. Recently in Western mass media Ali described how the still-current, traditional Islamic mindset rejects fundamental Western individual freedoms; freedom of speech – as used by all the writers of the articles discussed, and all the theorists; the right to legal representation, as discussed in the article picked up from London’s The Times (which did not contain the writer’s name); freedom of dress – as discussed by Ali and Thomspson and Haytko. Although not specifically discussed in this blog the right to equality of all citizens, regardless of religion, gender and race, age, and so on, underpins everything discussed. The individual in the West owns the right to personally act or not, to worship or not, how to dress, to live, to eat, to drink, to have a dog as family companion, as they alone decide. All individuals in the West also have the personal right to change their mind, over and over again, about all of these facets of their way of life, including their appearance, their religion, as they alone decide. These are key freedoms that play major roles in the ways Western individuals views themselves and their Western world. They form essential components in an on-going hegemonic debate – between the State and society’s institutions and the people, in Australia and must not be compromised. The State of Islam and the West as in Australia differ markedly on these freedoms. The West will continue to embrace change, but it must be change that moves Western society and individual freedoms towards the future, not back to the past, which is where Islam is currently stuck. The West can only continue to successfully embody what Giddens calls conflicting factors, and successfully operate as a multicultural society – if the freedom of the individual continues to flourish.

Reference
Ali, A. (2010, August 6). Veil a relic of repressive culture: the burqa and niqab are the products of a

misogynist and patriarchal tribal system. Opinion: The West Australian. p. 21.

Fisher, A. T. And Sonn, C. C. (2002). Psychological Sense of Community in Australia and the

challenges of Change. Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 40, No 6. Pp. 597-609.

Giddens, A. (Ed). (1986). Durkheim, E: Durkheim on Politics and the State. Oxford: Polity Press.

Hall, S. (1992). The West and the rest: Discourses and Power. In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds). Formations of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Jeffery, J. (2010, April 3-4). God squad hits out. Strewth! Focus. p. 8: The Weekend Australian.

Said, E. (1978). Introduction: In E. Said. Orientalism. (pp. 1-9). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

The Times. (2010, Friday August 6). Stoning lawyer flees Iran. World 11: The Australian.

Thompson, C. J., & Haytko, D. L. (1997). Speaking of Fashion Consumers Uses of Fashion Discourses

and the appropriation of countervailing cultural meanings. Journal of Consumer Research. Vol 24. Pp. 15-42.

Vernon, M. (2010, Friday September 24). What sets people apart. Review. p. 2: The Australian

Financial Review.

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