Public Culture, Latest Articles

On Target: Aura, Affect, and the Rhetoric of “Design Democracy”

2010-01-05T22:23:00-05:00

In 1963

If once we lived in a “system of objects,” today we live in a world of things. The era of mass consumption, awash in cheaply made gadgets and gizmos, has given way to a world in which every object is more than merely an object: each has become or has the potential to become a “thing.”

From Consumer to Prosumer to Produser: Who Keeps Shifting My Paradigm? (We Do!)

2010-01-05T22:09:00-05:00

In 1963

Less than ten years after going mainstream, the Web returns to its roots as a read/write tool while entering a new, more social and participatory phase. Many interactive features of the Web have merged into a trend many now are calling Web 2.0 — “a new and improved Web.” Yet what exactly is Web 2.0?

The Park Pass: Peopling and Civilizing a New Old Beijing

2010-01-05T13:28:00-05:00

In 1963

The gates of Beijing’s famous parks open at daybreak. The largest crowds of park visitors stream through them between 5:00 and 8:00 a.m., a bit later in the coldest winter months. Though the gatehouses where admission tickets are collected are usually staffed at these hours, ticket sellers and ticket takers have little to do. Almost everyone going through the gates at these early hours has an annual park pass.

Virtual Museums of Forbidden Memories: Hu Jie’s Documentary Films on the Cultural Revolution

2010-01-05T13:15:00-05:00

In 1963

The day after Bian Zhongyun, vice principal of a girls’ middle school in Beijing, was beaten to death by her students on August 5, 1966, her husband, Wang Jingyao, bought a camera and took pictures of her bruised, distended, and naked body.

Secular Populism and the Semiotics of the Crowd in Turkey

2010-01-05T12:54:00-05:00

In 1963

Over the past several decades, commentators on Middle Eastern politics have been alternately surprised, scandalized, and seduced by the seemingly unexpected and contradictory relationship between secularism and popular politics.

Complexio Oppositorum: Notes on the Left in Neoliberal Italy

2010-01-05T12:18:00-05:00

In 1963

What keeps the social order from dissolving into chaos,” wrote Pierre Bourdieu about neoliberalism, “is the continuity or survival of those very institutions and representatives of the old order that [are] in the process of being dismantled, and all the work of all the categories of social workers, as well as all the forms of social solidarity, familial or otherwise.” Embedded in his account are two assumptions.

“We’re Mexican Too”: Publicity and Status at the International Line

2010-01-05T11:20:00-05:00

In 1963

In Tijuana the “International Line” is not the border per se. Rather, la Línea refers to San Ysidro, the city’s main port of entry between Mexico and the United States, and to the area just south. It refers to the area that borders on the border, where the line forms to cross north.

Remembering Benjamin from South of the Pyrenees: The Two-Gauge Problem

2010-01-04T12:26:00-05:00

In 1963

Walter Benjamin died on September 27, 1940, in the Hotel de Francia, in the Catalan border town of Port Bou. Like many other Europeans, Benjamin had been driven away from several homes in the 1930s: from Berlin to Paris, from Paris to southern France, and from Vichy France into Spain. Having managed to hike along an unofficial route into Spain, only to encounter fresh difficulties with visas and other papers, he took an overdose of morphine.

Editor’s Letter

2010-01-04T12:10:00-05:00

In 1963

This issue concludes my five-year term as editor of Public Culture. During these years we have introduced a number of innovations, beginning with the journal’s redesign; the addition of an editorial section, Doxa at Large, and of the Arts in Circulation section; and an increased commitment to publishing high-quality images both on the cover of and inside the journal, as well as the exploration of new strategies of translation and the development of a state-of-the-art Web site at www.publicculture.org. Readers and authors have responded enthusiastically to these changes. Today Public Culture is one of the most widely read, most respected, and most cited journals in the fields of anthropology, communications, and cultural studies. Our site gets tens of thousands of visitors, and we receive superior-quality submissions in greater numbers and from a wider range of places than ever before.

Phantom of the Forever War: Fazul Abdullah Muhammad and the Terrorist Imaginary

2010-01-04T07:46:00-05:00

In 1963

In 1998 al Qaeda operative Fazul Abdullah Muhammad became an apparition. In the years that followed, intelligence and media sources claimed that he was born in 1973, 1974, and 1975 and that he is Kenyan and Egyptian. He was presumed dead in Kandahar and later in southern Somalia.