In this article, I examine how transnational mixed families give and receive love through using Skype webcam technology to communicate. Many studies of transnational families have focused on the separation that families experience and how they are increasingly using technology (mobile phones, social networking or email) to bridge that socio-spatial distance. The increasing speed of communications and relatively cheap broadband access has meant that digital video communication (webcam, most popularly, Skype) is growing rapidly and in some instances replacing landline and mobile phone communication for many transnational families (Miller and Sinanan 2014). How and why are webcams used in practices of transconnectivity? And how do they shape emotional relationships over distance and time?By interviewing transnational families residing in Ireland with one Irish partner and a core partner from a different country, I examine the practices and embodied
Beauty queens are symbolic representations of collective cultural indentities and beauty pageants are fields of active ‘cultural production’. This article surveys the growing literature on beauty pageants to better understand how culture is produced within the contexts of pageants. To do so, the article examines how beauty pageants operate as sites of commodification and consumption in a world increasingly influenced by global markets and media institutions. It also illustrates how culture is produced in beauty pageants by examining beauty pageants as sites of oppression, sites to articulate cultural agency, and sites of ethnic, gender, cultural, and sexual identity production.
This article examines the relationship between K-pop boybands and their fandoms in the West as mediated by digital streaming performances. It investigates the socio-emotional organization of online interaction orders in K-pop fan communities, the emotional forms of expression, and the social assessment of their authenticity. The article asks two questions. First, how is the loyalty of fans elicited through the emotional experiences of fandom online? Second, how are these emotions validated by fans as “authentic”? The article argues that the experience of “liveness” is central to the process through which fans feel emotionally close to their K-pop idols and this facilitates investment by fans in emotional interactions “in real life” with other fans. Fans also rely on “corroborated authenticity.” This corroboration of internal interactions comes from two sources: (1) the presence of related/similar content on the other digital platforms and (2) the connection of the apparently “placeless” digital platforms to a particular ethnic place, Korea.
Mixed-race people can be caught in a web of stereotypesbeing pathologised as tragically 'mixed up' or heralded as the precursors of a 'rainbow nation'. Many of these stereotypes have come primarily from research and popular cultural images in the US and the UK. Recently, within Critical Mixed-Race Studies, there is a call to study mixed-race people outside of these stereotypes, particularly those living outside the US and UK. Ireland is a unique place to look at mixed-race experiences. As a post-colonial nation within Europe with a strongly racialised past (non-white to white) and a global history of emigration, Ireland is actively grappling with contemporary rapid migration and racial/ethnic change from the 2000s to today and is now possibly becoming less white. This paper examines the historical and contemporary contexts of being mixed-race in Ireland to analyse the potential political and social meanings of mixed-race Irishness today. It begins with a demographic snapshot of racial/ethnic changes in Ireland and examines the role of symbolic representations of mixed-race in Ireland. Through indicative qualitative interviews, it concludes with some tentative ideas about how understandings of mixed-race may be shifting within Ireland today.
Within the field of transnationalism and globalization, studies have tended to focus on the flow of people, ideas and goods ( Giddens 2003 , Beck 2011 , Fitzgerald 2008 ). Within the field of migration this has meant importantly an increasing focus on studies of gender, migration and emotion ( Brooks and Simpson 2013 ; Svasek and Skrbis 2007 , Baldassar 2008 ). However, these studies tend to focus on the context of migration and how that shapes decisions around migration and belonging without focusing on the effect of migration on emotions themselves. Through ethnographic narrative interviews with 36 mixed transnational couples, this article analyses how the emotion of love is understood and practiced within some ‘global families’ ( Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014 ). The article finds that for the mixed intercultural couples interviewed here, distance played a role in defining and confirming love (love at a distance) and was often seen as a reason to migrate or move (crossing distance for love) as a test or proof that love was real. These different cultural meanings of love show how distance could increasingly play a role in how we define and practice love today.
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