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What is a libidinal economy? How are we psychically hooked into the circuits of the capitalist economy? The contributors to this book question the relevance of a concept that began reappearing in critiques and analyses of capitalist societies since the financial crisis of August 2007. The chapters stretch back to the term's introduction with Freud via Lyotard through to the ways online platforms put our psyches to work. »Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times« is a collection of essays by leading scholars about the connections between economies, pleasure, and desires.

A guided tour through the nuanced politics of architectural illusion, »The Vatican to Vegas« takes the reader from lavish Baroque fantasies of the seventeenth century to the Electronic Baroque of today. The >scripted spaces< described by Norman Klein are punctuated with devices widely used in special effects since 1500: shocks, surprise twists, grand fakes and copies. Since its publication 2004, »The Vatican To Vegas« has emerged as a classic across many fields, from media, architecture, to the fine arts and urban planning. Its timing was ironic: Klein assumed in 2004 that the future of scripted illusion was about to radically shift. This new edition brings the ironic story up to the present, and into the digitally overwhelmed >scripted spaces< of the future.

In recent years there has been a shift in how diversity and representation are discussed in the German cultural sector. The PostHeimat network, a three-year-long experiment in networked solidarity between major public German theatres and migrant actors and directors, discusses in this volume how to think about Heimat after migration. The contributions document the emergence, frictions, and difficulties in migrant theatre initiatives, being reflexive, research-based, and driven by cultural-policy-developing components. Emerging from encounters and plays, this study incorporates the critical perspectives of practitioners, scholars, activists, and artists from these initiatives and does not shy away from a frank reflection on failure and disappearance.

Berlin is increasingly emerging as a hub of Arab intellectual life in Europe. In this first study of Arab culture to zoom in on the thriving metropolis, the contributors shed light on the dynamics of transformation with Arabs as agents, subjects, and objects of change in the spheres of politics, society and history, gender, demographics and migration, media and culture, and education and research. The kaleidoscopic character of the collection, embracing academic articles, essays, interviews and photos, reflects critical encounters in Berlin. It brings together authors from inter- and multidisciplinary fields and backgrounds and invites the readers into a much-needed conversation on contemporary transformations.

The sustained expansion of the life span and the attendant demographic changes in the West have fuelled the production of cultural texts that explore alternative representations of aging and old age. The contributors to this volume show how artists in science-fiction, fantasy and the avant-garde develop visions of late life transformation, improvisation and adaptation to new circumstances. The studies particularly focus on perspectives on aging that challenge the predominant narratives of decline as well as fantasies of eternal youth, as defined by neoliberal notions of health, able-bodiedness, agency, self-improvement, progress, plasticity and productivity.

Against the background of the media commercialization reform since the 1990s in China and drawing on the case of »X-Change« (2006-2019), Wei Dong investigates the affective meaning-making mechanism in the multimodal text of Chinese reality TV. The focus lies on the ways in which emotions are appropriated and disciplined by regimes of power and identity, and the ways in which affect - in this case primarily kuqing (bitter emotions) communicated by the material and the body - have the potential to challenge or exceed existing relations of power in the mediascape. Wei Dong shows how Chinese reality TV provides a historical and theoretical opportunity for understanding the affective structures of contemporary China in the dynamic process of fracture and integration.

Metropolitan research requires multidisciplinary perspectives in order to do justice to the complexities of metropolitan regions. This volume provides a scholarly and accessible overview of key methods and approaches in metropolitan research from a uniquely broad range of disciplines including architectural history, art history, heritage conservation, literary and cultural studies, spatial planning and planning theory, geoinformatics, urban sociology, economic geography, operations research, technology studies, transport planning, aquatic ecosystems research and urban epidemiology. It is this scope of disciplinary - and increasingly also interdisciplinary - approaches that allows metropolitan research to address recent societal challenges of urban life, such as mobility, health, diversity or sustainability.

Who is meant when people talk about the citizens or the activists? Often, they are implied to mean the most privileged positionalities. Simultaneously, refugees and migrants tend to be seen through their (supposed) legal status. Thus, they are neither practically nor conceptually regarded as activists. The variety of intersecting positionings in migrant rights activism results in complex inequalities and power dynamics within activist groups. Solidarities are continually challenged, negotiated, and built. Lea Rzadtki develops a conceptual view on claims, challenges, and processes that activists experience and deal with. She moves beyond dichotomies and engages in transversal dialogue.

Since the 1990s, the concern to define areas of research in design has dominated academic debates. As a result, we are now facing a multitude of understandings. This is especially true for practice-based design research. Sandra Dittenberger, Hans Stefan Moritsch and Agnes Raschauer discuss how the concept of learning by research can be integrated into product design studio teaching. They show different international approaches for integrating research into teaching and contrast the areas of design research with scientific standards. The book features study results that helped generate both a general orientation for research in design education and guidelines for students of how to integrate research into their project work.

In a neighbourhood facing massive redevelopment, racialized residents speak about stigma, social mixing, and what the island community means to them. Based on rich interviews, photographs, and archival research, Julie Chamberlain rejects the usual silence in German urban studies around racialization and examines how constructing some groups as »not belonging« has shaped Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg's past and present. For racialized long-time residents, it is Heimat, a space of belonging in the context of exclusion. As social mix policy threatens that belonging, residents explore their hopes and their fears for the future of an urban space where gentrification looms.

The museum and heritage sector has been shaken by debates over how to address colonialism, migration, Islamophobia, LGBTI+ and multiple other forms of difference. This major multi-researcher ethnography of museums and heritage in Berlin provides new insight into how >diversity< is understood and put into action in museums and heritage. Exploring new initiatives and approaches, the book shows how these work - or do not - in practice. By doing so, it highlights ways forward - for research and action - for the future. The fieldwork locations on which this book is based include the Humboldt Forum, the Museum of Islamic Art, the Museum für Naturkunde, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, as well as Berlin streets and protests.

How do participatory museum projects with forced migrants impact both the museum and the participants? What happens during these projects and what is left of them afterwards? Based on interviews with museum practitioners, facilitators and project participants, Susanne Boersma brings together unique insights into museum work with forced migrants. Her study of participatory projects in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK reveals museums' limiting infrastructures, the shortcomings of their ethical frameworks, and the problems of addressing forced migrants as 'communities'. Outlining the diverging objectives, experiences and outcomes of participatory projects, she suggests how these might be united in practice.

The rise of China is ever-present in debates on globalisation and ongoing power shifts. In a time of rising international tensions, understanding the interdependencies between China's course and the world economy is ever more important. Often, the economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping after 1978 are emphasised. They initiated dramatic changes in China's economy and contributed to its ascent as a world power. In contrast, less attention has been given to the context in which these reforms were implemented. Philippe Lionnet analyses important adjustments in China's agricultural, industrial and foreign trade policies in the course of the 1970s as well as their origins. He shows how policy experiments and their limits shaped the path of the socialist state.

In September 2021 a very special academic conference took place: T2051MCC - The 2051 Munich Climate Conference. Researchers from across the academic spectrum assembled to discuss climate change. What made it special was that everyone held their lecture as if it took place in an imagined year 2051. The theatre collective Büro Grandezza had released an open call for contributions to a conference in Munich. Almost 50 researchers wrote papers on climate narratives, geoengineering, coastal adaptation and other topics. This particular framework allowed them to break out of the constraints of the current discourse without neglecting methodology or thematic sharpness.

Ties to the homeland have always been a central focus of global diaspora and migration studies. How and why do the descendants of migrants maintain their attachment to the ancestral homeland? To what extent do emotional ties bind second and later generations of migrants to that place? Tsypylma Darieva examines various actors, channels and sites of transnational Armenian engagement that generate new pathways of diasporic >roots< mobility. Drawing on long-term ethnographic observations in Armenia and in the USA, she examines transnational flows of people, money and ideas to show the social and political significance that roots mobility acquires when the mythical >homeland< becomes a real place.

What does it mean to be called an >Outsider Marion Scherr investigates structural inequalities and the myth of the Other in Western art history, examining the role of >Outsider Art< in contemporary art worlds in the UK. By shifting the focus from art world professionals to those labelled >Outsider Artists

How did American cities change throughout the 20th and early 21st century? This timely publication integrates research from American Literary and Cultural Studies, Urban Studies and History. The essays range from negotiations of the ethnic city in US literature and media, to studies of recent urban phenomena and their representations: gentrification, re-appropriation and conversion of urban spaces in the USA.These interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives on American cities provide unique points of access for studying the complex narratives of urban transformation.

Newsreel cinema and television not only served as an important tool in the shaping of political spheres and the construction of national and cultural identities up to the 1960s. Today's potent televisual forms were furthermore developed in and strongly influenced by newsreels, and much of the archived newsreel footage is repeatedly used to both illustrate and re-stage past events and their significance.This book addresses newsreel cinema and television as a medium serving the formation of cultural identities in a variety of national contexts after 1945, its role in forming audiovisual narratives of a biopic of the nation and the technical, aesthetical, and political challenges of archiving and restaging cinematic and televisual newsreel.

(Dis)Orientation appears to be a phenomenon that is connected to media in numerous respects: today, finding your way in the world often means finding your way with the help of as well as within media, which in turn creates new virtual realms of (dis)orientation. This book deals with recent media technologies and structures (navigation devices, databases, transmediality) and unconventional narrative patterns (narrative complexity, plot twists, non-linearity), using the ambivalent concept of (dis)orientation as a shared focus to analyse various phenomena of contemporary media, thereby raising overarching questions about current mediascapes.

The binary construction of young and old, which is based on a biogerontological model of aging as decline, can be redefined as the ambiguity of aging from a cultural studies perspective. This concept enables an analysis of the social functions of images of aging with the aim of providing a basis for interdisciplinary exchange on gerontological research.The articles in this publication conceive the relationship between living and aging as a productive antagonism which focuses on the interplay between continuity and change as a marker of life course identity: aging and growing older are processes which cannot be reduced to the chronology of years but which are shaped by the individual's interaction with the changing circumstances of life.

Digital collaboration has been established in higher education for many years. But when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, digital learning and virtual mobility became of utmost importance for higher education.In the international project »Digital and International Virtual Academic Cooperation« (DIVA), scholars from Israel, Australia, and Germany focused on intercultural learning and online collaboration. Based on their findings, they show how digital arrangements can be used in higher education, how digital teaching can be theorized, and what potential can be gained for post-pandemic teaching.

How is a new intranet involved in an ongoing merger integration process? Katja Schönian analyses internal communication and branding strategies in connection with the implementation of a new company intranet. Based on qualitative data, the study contrasts managerial expectations and everyday usage of the intranet in distinct work settings. Relying on social practice theories and research in Science & Technology Studies, Katja Schönian unpacks the different logics the intranet brings together and, furthermore, interrogates the characteristics that make an (un)workable technology. The book sheds light on the informal practices and politics surrounding the technology implementation process. It provides readers with new insights into the dynamics of a merger integration process, the production of worker subjectivity, and the increasing involvement of technologies in contemporary knowledge work.

Scale matters. When conducting research and writing, scholars upscale and downscale. So do the subjects of their work - we scale, they scale. Although scaling is an integrant part of research, we rarely reflect on scaling as a practice and what happens when we engage with it in scholarly work. The contributors aim to change this: they explore the pitfalls and potentials of scaling in an interdisciplinary dialogue. The volume brings together scholars from diverse fields, working on different geographical areas and time periods, to engage with scale-conscious questions regarding human sociality, culture, and evolution.With contributions by Nurit Bird-David, Robert L. Kelly, Charlotte Damm, Andreas Maier, Brian Codding, Elspeth Ready, Bram Tucker, Graeme Warren and others.

The ubiquitous »cultural turn« of the 1990s did not spare the thinkers of economics - however, at the same time, economic topics have gained a new importance in cultural studies. This volume focuses on cultures of economy in regions of former Yugoslavia as part of South-Eastern Europe, supported by theoretical perspectives. It examines narratives and poetics of economy in literature, film, and art, as well as in public discourse. The contributors spotlight different historical periods: the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, Socialist Yugoslavia and the transitional and neoliberal period since the 1990s.

In an age of immediate and global exchange of information, the ability to theorize about political conditions remains largely an elite, technocratic, and esoteric enterprise. In this timely intervention, Dean Caivano and Sarah Naumes argue that storytelling in the form of narrative and autoethnography creates an emancipatory potential through its ability to theorize from below, welcoming marginalized and excluded voices. Drawing from the disciplines of political studies, philosophy and literary studies, this volume offers a new assessment of political texts through the lens of the sublime as a fertile terrain to challenge who can write and disseminate political ideas - and how.

Is it possible to work with sound in sociology rather than being about sound? Can there be a »sonic sociology«? Rémy Bocquillon reflects on the process-oriented character of sociology as an experimental science by including aesthetic practices of sounding and listening as constitutive for the making of sociological theory. Following new materialist and speculative philosophies, this study is thus a combination of sociological theory, philosophical thought and aesthetic practices, not understood as discrete fields of inquiry, but co-constituting each other. It also features an audio chapter, »feeding-back« the sonic experimentations at the core of the research in new and engaging ways.

What does »creativity« mean in the context of IT and what happens when IT acts in its name? Jan Sebastian Zipp examines the concept of creativity in large IT companies in times of digital change, including new ways of working or potential artificial creativity with no human interaction. Drawing on constitutive elements like Silicon Valley or its connection to counterculture, his analysis of the representation and organisation of creativity as a social practice provides insights into the inherent logic of the creativity narrative of IT. This study contributes vital foundations for a critical engagement with today's prevailing understanding of the concept of creativity.

What if James T. Kirk and Spock had a baby, left the Enterprise and moved to New Vulcan to live happily ever after?Fan fiction plots like this are a strong testament of fans' endless creativity. Not only do the authors invent their own storylines but they have developed a generic definition of content across fandoms according to the relationship present in the text. Classification is therefore profoundly related to gender and sexuality. Julia Elena Goldmann examines these generic structures and formulaic patterns comparatively in Star Trek and Supernatural fan fiction. She also focuses on the interplay of the concepts of gender, sexuality, relationships and depictions of family in these texts.

How do humans, their needs, and technology interact in society? Marcel Siegler explores the dialectical relationship between human needs and desires, the demands and requirements of the built world, and the forms of organization that hold both humans and the built world together. He argues that complex societal constellations emerge from the actions individuals perform with the technological means at hand to satisfy their needs and desires in the short and long run. Based on a novel, complementary reading of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the study develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the intricate machinations of sociotechnical systems from a perspective on situated human-technology interaction.

While aging and the life-course appear to be normalized processes, the complex construction of age at the intersection of biology, society, and culture remains opaque. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of age(ing) by exploring its construction through the analysis of extraordinary cases. Focusing on life narratives of centenarians and children with progeria, Julia Velten analyzes the way in which these people experience age(ing) and shows how these experiences can contribute to our understanding of age. Situated at the intersection of aging studies and medical humanities, the study explores what extraordinary age(ing) can tell us about aging processes in general.