Poverty Porn: Reinforcing the Imperialist Gaze

There was an interesting post on Sociological Images (introduced to me by Katharine) about the “Slumdog Shooting technique.” I responded to it because I feel rather strongly that the postcolonial response to imperialist representations in modern media has taken a hypersensitized and cynical turn with the critical response to Slumdog Millionaire which originated the term [...]

Internet as Playground and Factory a Success, Sort of

Yes, it is the rather pitiful truth that after swearing off doing mass amounts of free labor post two internships and countless other volunteer projects, the project that broke down my resolve to never again work for free was a labor conference.
Every free moment I’ve had for the past month has been consumed by planning [...]

Museums, Academically Speaking

Starting at the Cité de l’Immigration and moving on to the Musée du Quai Branly provides a route to understanding how the role of “primitive” art in France has changed over the past couple of decades. Originally the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens (and where much of the collection for the new Musée du [...]

Decolonization

I’ve only really just encountered the term “decolonization.” Wikipedia says it refers to “the undoing of colonization” or “the achievement of independence by the various Western colonies and protectorates in Asia and Africa following World War II.”
I’ve read a lot of post-colonial literature, and to me, decolonization is a fondly conceived dream which most of [...]

Colbert in Iraq, Obama on the Screen

President Obama gave the order, and Stephen Colbert obeyed:

Two years, I would never have imagined so many of the even remotely progressive things that have happened in America this year! That we can have an intelligent president, not just an intelligent comedian, is a remarkable thing. Still walking on air, politically speaking, and not all [...]

NYT Edits Comments

The New York Times has a set of blogs with commenting enabled, with some having a limited time window for response, and some unlimited. I often read posts, and for the first time, was prompted to respond to this one this week. It was, for the most part, an interesting response by Robert Mackey to [...]

“Clean” and “Coal”: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Campaign to Rebrand Coal

What exactly is clean coal? The term refers to coal produced by new technologies for capturing and sequestering coal by-products that reduces the harmful impacts of coal on the environment. Does clean coal exist? No. The emerging technologies referred to have not moved from concept to reality, despite billions of dollars of investment since 2001 [...]

Tempest Rising

This whole tea party thing looks highly dangerous. Even though estimates of how many turned out for the tea party protests are relatively modest, it’s still a significant number, and the whole event could spiral into a much larger movement through media mishandling.

Amazon Disappears Gays and Lesbians

From Minal Hajratwala, author of the recently released and well-received Leaving India:
“I noticed the other day that my Amazon sales ranking had disappeared. Now I know why: all books labeled as having “gay and lesbian” content have been stripped of rankings and searchability. The main entry for my book no longer shows up under either [...]

AIDS in Africa / Paranoia. Slaves in Dubai / Myopia.

Thanks to Charlotte and Joumana for posting these links.
Read a remarkable piece of investigative journalism by Ben Goldacre about vitamin pill (snake oil) salesman Matthew Rath and how he’s been responsible for the death of millions of Africans, yet no one has made any real attempt to stop him. One of the themes that leapt [...]

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed by Deepthi Welaratna under Creative Commons.

Zip It Wordpress theme by Small Potato




Blog Directory - Blogged