This paper argues that the concept of soap-opera realism, as developed in some of the recent critical writing on soap opera, is central to the understanding of this form of television drama. However, in its present form, this concept is insufficiently nuanced. In developing the concept, the work of Raymond Williams is drawn upon to delineate three sub-types of soap-opera realism: soap-opera realism in the subjunctive mode, soap-opera realism in the indicative mode, and soap-opera (...) naturalism. The latter is then discussed in detail with particular attention being paid to Coronation Street. In the course of this analysis, two key naturalistic elements in Coronation Street are considered: the nature of living spaces and the connection of character to environment. (shrink)

The article presents a methodological update on the lexical profile of informal spoken English with the emphasis on movies, television programs, and soap operas. The study analyzed Mark Davies’s mega-corpora with data containing approximately 625 million words and employed Paul Nation’s comprehensive and up-to-date British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English wordlists. Data from the analyses showed that viewers would need a vocabulary knowledge at 3,000 and 5,000 words frequency levels to understand 95 and 98% of the words (...) in scripted dialogs, respectively. Soap operas were found to be less lexically demanding compared to TV programs and movies. Findings are expected to fill in the methodological gaps between vocabulary assessment and vocabulary profiling research. (shrink)

Sexual depictions were analyzed in 139 episodes of seven drama serials on British mainstream television over a four-week period in November–December 2006. Scenes that depicted sexual behavior and talk about sexual matters were counted separately. Further distinctions were made on the basis of the levels of intimacy and the graphic nature of portrayals. A total of 506 sexual scenes were found that occurred at the rate of 6.5 per hour across the seven soaps, but this figure was inflated by one (...) late-night serial that averaged 16.0 scenes per hourly episode. Nearly two-thirds of these scenes were restricted to talk about sexual matters, while the others contained overt depictions of sexual behavior. Sexual intercourse was relatively rare and restricted in terms of overt depictions to the late-night serial. Passionate kissing was far more prevalent throughout these programs regardless of the time of day the program was transmitted. When sexual intercourse was featured, this was generally in the context of loss of virginity or of infidelity. (shrink)

This chapter, “Values in the Political Soap Opera,” delves into the intricate interplay between values, politics, and society, examining the fluid and dynamic nature of values in the context of contemporary political discourse. Using examples from Angela Merkel’s refugee policy to the aftermath of terrorist attacks, the chapter explores the paradoxes and ambiguities inherent in political discussions about values. It questions the fixation on preserving static values in a rapidly changing world and highlights the importance of multiple perspectives and (...) adaptability. The chapter critiques the tendency to frame values as rigid and universally binding, arguing instead for a more nuanced understanding that embraces irony, indifference, and a diverse range of viewpoints. Ultimately, it suggests that an ironically leavened solidarity, coupled with a healthy dose of indifference, may offer a more effective approach to navigating the complexities of values in politics and society. (shrink)

Do soap opera fans deserve their reputation as lonely people, hopeless losers, or bored housewives? No, according to C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby. These authors—soap fans themselves—argue that soap fans are normal individuals who translate their soap watching into a broad range of public and private experience. People who cut across all categories of age, gender, race, ethnicity, income, education, and ideology incorporate a love of the soaps into their day-to-day leisure activities. Interviews with (...) soap opera viewers, actors, writers, producers, directors, the daytime press, and fan club staff members reveal fascinating details about the inside world of fandom and the multitude of outlets for fan expression—clubs, newsletters, electronic bulletin boards, and public events. Numerous examples illustrate the pleasure fans derive from critiquing characters, speculating on plot twists, and swapping memorabilia. Examining the experiences that shape fan culture, Harrington and Bielby analyze the narrative structure and various aspects of the production of the soaps. Their examination reveals that the "meaning" of soaps is complex, individualized, and not simply a reflection of the narrative content of the stories. The authors show fans who actively contemplate what it means to be a fan, and who adjust their level of involvement accordingly. (shrink)

As a fan of EastEnders the purpose of the author's dissertation was to examine current thinking on Gender and Cultural Identity in Northern Ireland through a literature review and some small scal/e research into the viewing of the soap opera.The author explored the issues with a group of eighteen Protestant and Catholic women. There were few significant differences in usage across age, class and cultural background. All of the women were capable of resistive readings as well as deep involvement (...) and there was a spread of opinion about some of the more controversial issues dealt with. Attitudes to identity were more complex than often seems apparent in a simplistic reference to 'Two Communities'.The clearest division carne on the issue of the feasibility of a local soap opera. Middle class women rejected this idea whilst the working class women welcomed it as an opportunity to explore contentious issues through afamiliar medium which has a particular relevance to women. (shrink)

This essay begins with a discussion of the primacy of the nuclear family in American drama. Our best playwrights have been strikingly preoccupied with domestic life, consistently portraying the family as a dream of solidarity and a nightmare of enmeshment. Daytime serial dramas are also stories about American domestic life, privileging a conservatively defined nuclear family and imaging conflicting hopes and fears around it. In serious as well as popular drama, illness is frequently the catalyst for familial destruction and restoration. (...) The middle portion of the essay is devoted to a definition and history of American soap opera, providing readers with a knowledge base for the final portion, a descriptive survey of the representation of medical and social issues on daytime drama. (shrink)

À la une du Soap opera digest daté du 8 mars 2011, cinq photographies barrées d’un titre composé en capitales italiques, rouges et oranges, qui se détachent sur un fin halo blanc: « SHOCKING CAST SWITCHES! » (« CHANGEMENTS CHOQUANTS DE DISTRIBUTION! »). Sur la rangée supérieure, à gauche du titre bleu cyan, l’image d’une femme, Natalia Livingston, jouxte celle d’une autre, Tamara Braun – reliées l’une à l’autre par le laconique verdict « Replaced ! » (« Remplacée ! (...) ») que surplombe la mention.. (shrink)

A selection of essays written by one of the leading critics of film over the last two decades, this volume examines theoretical aspects of film and television through penetrating analyses of such genres as soap opera, documentary, comedy, and such topics as 'sight gags', film metaphor, point-of-view editing, and movie music. Throughout, individual films are considered in depth. Carroll's essays, moreover, represent the cognitivist turn in film studies, containing in-depth criticism of existing approaches to film theory, and heralding a (...) new approach. (shrink)

When queer characters are erased or denied closure on screen, fans mobilise not only for representation but to reconfigure memory and rehearse queer world‑making. This article develops the concept of mnemonic fan labour, theorising it as queer fan practices through which grief, endurance and creativity contest heteronormative rhythms of media storytelling, as exemplified by collective activist interventions. Drawing on memory studies, queer theory and fan studies scholarship, I foreground queer fandom as a potent site of vernacular memory‑making. A tripartite framework (...) is developed to theorise queer fandom as mnemonic labour: (1) chrono‑affective labour, manifested through collective endurance in waiting rituals that anchor fans in global queer histories of resilience; (2) transmedia‑memetic labour, exemplifying remediation as fans remix tropes and circulate hybrid archives of memory across platforms and cultures; and (3) speculative labour, exemplifying pre-mediation, as fan‑made alternative endings and utopian world‑making rehearse futures beyond unsatisfying narrative closures. These modalities are exemplified in the ‘YaoTing’ fandom of the long-running Taigi soap opera Sè-kan-tsîng (世間情; 2013–2015). Through a digital ethnography and qualitative analysis of 3199 fan‑generated threads posted between 2014 and 2015 on PTT, Taiwan’s largest online forum, the article traces how audiences enact mnemonic practices to resist queer erasure and forge new queer memories. Therefore, theorising fan labour as mnemonic labour opens imaginative pathways towards queer belonging and futures. The article theorises that fans’ mnemonic labour emerges as radical world‑making: a queer memory practice reclaiming time, remaking genre and rendering queer life liveable, again and anew. (shrink)

Science fiction has been an inexhaustible source for the creation of technoscientific imaginary that has marked certain historical periods and influenced the production of subjectivity. This imaginary evokes complex ontological, epistemological, political, social, environmental and existential questions on the present and the future. The aim of this study was to identify and characterize the cultural productions accessed by the public to form an opinion about the genetic manipulation of human beings. A survey about sources of information that influence opinions on (...) the genetic manipulation of human beings was applied to 360 medical students (70.8% female). Movies were the most commonly mentioned source of information, followed by books, documentaries, news programs, television series, informational videos, soap operas and videogames. Science fiction was the most frequent genre and dystopian views of the future of humanity predominated. (shrink)

Proclaimed the “greenest television programme in the world,” the award-winning soap opera Coronation Street is seen as an industry success story. This paper explores how the integration of carbon literacy training led to a widespread transformational change of practice within Coronation Street. Using the theoretical lens of Communities of Practice, this study examines the nature of social learning and the enablers and barriers to change within the organization. Specifically, how boundary spanning practices, objects and people led to the transformation (...) on both a personal and group level. Based on a qualitative analysis of 22 interviews with Heads of Departments and other staff, the paper argues that CLT is a boundary practice which has evolved into a boundary spanning CoP. The importance of infrastructures supporting boundary objects and practices is highlighted as reinforcers of the CLT, both as a boundary object and a community, with the “ultimate” boundary spanning object being the show. A significant enabler in social learning and change in practice is the creation of discursive and creative space, both within CoP and across the boundaries. Findings also highlight the role of “self” in the process of social learning and organizational change. Distinct patterns emerged in the relationship between self-identity, social learning and change across a range of boundary objects, practices and communities both in the CLT and CoP. This suggests that in a diverse social learning setting such as CLT there are different transformational catalysts within the CoP and these identities can influence how knowledge is translated into practice. (shrink)

I use Nietzsche's work on theodicy to explore gendered valuation systems around women's bodies. The notion of theodicy provides a different entry point to questions of ideology, as it begins with an account of people's attempts to find meaning in their lives. Nietzsche traced humans' propensity to look for and create stories that give meaning to their lives, even when this meaning is one that may ultimately oppress them or celebrate something negative, such as suffering. For him it is not (...) the suffering that torments humans, but rather its meaninglessness. In the slums of Northeast Brazil, Afro-Brazilian women invest in the Christian glorification of suffering in a context where they experience their bodies in terms of loss, shame and alienation. I explore how, through a process of creative deception, this suffering comes to be experienced as pleasure. That is, the women reconstruct their bodies using two dominant stories to which they have access: Christianity and glamorous Brazilian soap operas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pleasures of FictionDenis DuttonHuman Beings Expend staggering amounts of time and resources on creating and experiencing art and entertainment—music, dancing, and static visual arts. Of all of the arts, however, it is the category of fictional story-telling that across the globe today is the most intense focus of what amounts to a virtual human addiction. A recent government study in Britain showed that if you add together annual (...) attendances in plays and cinema with hours watching television drama, the average Briton spends roughly 6% of all waking life watching dramatic performances. And that figure does not even include books and magazines: further vast numbers of hours spent reading short stories, bodice-rippers, mysteries, and thrillers, as well as so-called serious fictions, old and new.The origins of this obsession with comic and dramatic fictions are lost in remote prehistory, as lost as the origins of language itself. But like language, we know the obsession with fiction is universal: stories told, read, and dramatically or poetically performed are independently invented in all known cultures, literate or not, having advanced technologies or not. Wherever printing arrives, it is used to reproduce fictions. Whenever television appears in the world, soap operas soon show up on the schedule. Both the forms that fiction takes and the ideas, types of characters, and kinds of conflict that make up its content can be shown to be strikingly similar across cultures. It has specialist practitioners—rhapsodes, novelists, playwrights, actors—and is governed both informally with stylistic conventions and sometimes formally—for example, by censorship laws. A love of fiction is as universal as governance, marriage, jokes, religion, and the incest taboo. [End Page 453]The question for any general aesthetics is: Why? Joseph Carroll is a literary theorist who has applied his probing mind over the last decade to the origins, nature, and functions of literary experience. His new collection of essays and reviews, Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (Routledge, $85.00 boards, $23.95 paper) looks at literature and literary theory through the lens of evolutionary psychology. At the same time, Carroll's eye is that of an extremely perceptive literary critic. In fact, I would judge him to be one of the most acute and knowledgeable readers of fiction I've ever encountered. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that he is sometimes dubious, or even scathing, about evolutionary explanations of literature that have been offered up by writers whose grasp of psychology exceeds, in his opinion, their command of high literature. His complaints, however, are not to the fundamental notion that evolution by natural and sexual selection have made human beings into the story-loving animals they have become: his adjustments are intended to increase the accuracy and usefulness of Darwin's revolution. However critical he is of evolutionary psychologists, Carroll remains a Darwinian through and through.Carroll holds that the only way to attain a general theory of literature is through an account of human nature that builds from the ground up, from the most basic conditions for the evolution of the human species. A Darwinian literary theory first needs a Darwinian psychology. Once we have a basic Darwinian psychology in place, we can see that the narrative proclivities of human beings, far from being an incidental by-product of the evolved mind, are central to some of its most human functions. The structures of basic motives and dispositions are what would be appropriate for a species, as Carroll describes it, that "is highly social and mildly polygynous, that displays concealed ovulation, continuous female receptivity, and postmenopausal life expectancy corresponding to a uniquely extended period of childhood development, that has extraordinary aptitudes for technology, that has developed language and the capacity for peering into the minds of its conspecifics, and that displays a unique disposition for fabricating and consuming aesthetic and imaginative artifacts." Such a list alone, he contends, would make it impossible to imagine a blank-slate view of the mind, in which the mind evolves in a vacuum, goes onto produce culture, which then gives back to the mind all content and structure.Some of the mental processes that grow from... (shrink)

Guiding readers through major problems, issues and debates in aesthetics, this is a bias-free introduction for students studying the philosophy of art for the first time. Each chapter of the book begins by considering a particular work of art - from contemporary conceptual art, through literature to TV soap operas - to help students understand and explore key philosophical discussions and ideas. Introducing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art covers such topics as: definitions and the ontology of art; (...) interpretation and intention; aesthetic properties and evaluation; emotion and the arts; art and morality; natural, environmental, and everyday aesthetics. Chapter summaries and outlines help to navigate the major topics covered, while annotated guides to further reading and 'unresolved questions' sections help to encourage and animate study and discussion beyond the text. For those seeking to master the subject this is the most complete introduction available. (shrink)

In modern India, homosexuality has been considered a sin and a western import that corrupts the morals and character of men in general and youth in particular. Homosexuality in India entails stigma, harassment, discrimination, exploitation, and violenceViolence. The understanding implicit in contemporary Indian societySociety is that it is unnatural, antithetical to the traditions, and customs of the societySociety, a disease but curable, an anomaly which needs to be corrected and primarily has come from Videsh (Videsh means foreign) with its (...) class='Hi'>soap operas, jeans, junk food, and immoral western culture. Paul Boyce argues that homophobiaHomophobia is deeply entrenched in India. However, there are seemingly conflicting outlooks. He argues that in India, homosexuality is only latently tolerated, and there is enough social latitude for same-sexSame-sex practices to go unnoticed (Boyce, Feminist Review 83:79–98, 2006). (shrink)

This contribution presents the fundamentals of an amazement laboratory as a methodological means of transforming an object of disappointment into an object of desire for the researcher. First, the authors report on a Spinozist reading of their affects caused by their confrontation with a foreign material to the field of psychology, a docu-soap opera about school dropout entitled « Les persévérants » (Ferron & Baer, 2014). They consider astonishment as an affect to renew the interest of the researcher for (...) his research subject. Then they examine its conditions of emergence. Finally, the conditions for setting up an amazement laboratory are illustrated by examples drawn from the literature and the authors practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Brian Boyd responds:In responding to my critical discussion, Lisa Zunshine restates the argument of Why We Read Fiction at some length but replies to none of my specific criticisms. These criticisms are all based on the evidence of the texts that she offers as case studies, especially Mrs Dalloway and Lolita. Although I—and the textual evidence—contradict her claims, she provides no answers to the criticisms.Let me respond to two (...) restatements. First: "Fictional narratives endlessly experiment with rather than automatically execute our evolved cognitive adaptations" (p. 190). This is often, but almost tautologically, true in the case of experimental fiction, as the work of Richardson, Woolf, and Nabokov (to cite Zunshine's key examples) was in their time. It is not necessarily true in the sense Zunshine especially means it—that authors give us a demanding cognitive workout of our capacity for Theory of Mind by incorporating multiple embedding, A's thoughts of B's thoughts of C's thoughts of D's thoughts of E—even in the case of fictional experimenters like Defoe, Tolstoy, or Joyce, and it is not true of the vast bulk of fiction, from folk tale or jokes to soap operas or pulp [End Page 196] novels, and it cannot therefore be an explanation for "why we read fiction," though it may explain why some of us read some fiction. And to identify overloaded embedding when it is not present, as Zunshine does in discussing Mrs Dalloway, constitutes a simple misreading.Second: "Our Theory of Mind makes literature as we know it possible" (p. 191). Granted, without Theory of Mind we would not have fiction. But nor would we have fiction without many other features of human nature: without sociality, episodic memory, language, childhood pretend play, empathy, the brain's inhibitory mechanisms, folk physics, our mental databases for individuals, and much, much more. An evolutionary and cognitive understanding of fiction needs to take into account many aspects of our capacity for understanding events and stories, not just one.Apart from one three-word phrase, Zunshine's sole quotation from my review is this: "To what extent has Zunshine benefited from the methodology, rather than results, of science?" (I refer to "the results of science" here because I note that although, for instance, she relies most heavily on Simon Baron-Cohen among Theory of Mind researchers, while ignoring major figures in the field like Janet Astington or Josef Perner, she does not even cite the book or any of the more than twenty papers of which Baron-Cohen has been primary author since his 1995 Mindblindness.) Her quotation from my review continues: "Alas, she appears to have learned less than one would have hoped.... Her formulations are often weak and indecisive, hedgings, rather than strong testable hypotheses. Rather than apply scientific stringency to her literary analysis, she seems more interested in exploiting than testing what she can find." She confesses herself puzzled by this charge. Let me explain one simple point.Science's core methodological principle is that claims should be subjected to the test of evidence, and accepted or rejected on the basis of their compatibility with the relevant evidence. Leo Spitzer long ago pointed out that good reading follows scientific method: we read, we make hypotheses about the text, and we either confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses according to what we find in the text, and search for ampler hypotheses when previous ones have been discredited.1 Literary scholarship has long been vitiated by a far flabbier methodology, by the naïve assumption that evidence for a proposition suffices: "I see a and b in the text, therefore my claim C is a valid interpretation." But if reading or interpretation C is incompatible with counter-evidence d and e in the text, it is a falsified hypothesis and needs to yield to a better [End Page 197] reading, an interpretation that can incorporate this counter-evidence. I showed that Zunshine's claims about her prime examples were not compatible with evidence in the texts. She does not challenge the textual counter-evidence I provide, but just ignores it. That is where literary criticism most urgently needs to learn from scientific... (shrink)

Ethics briefings have previously drawn attention to ethical questions raised by the use of paternity testing in “true life” entertainment programmes, including where the proper limits to the use of medical procedures and information as entertainment might lie.1 From a public health perspective the relationship between entertainment media and health is complex and interesting. In April 2001, for example, a storyline opened in the UK television soap opera Coronation Street in which a central character, Alma, developed cervical cancer and, (...) within six weeks, died. Although the potential for entertainment media to promote positive health messages is recognised,2 the effects of this particular storyline have yet to be fully understood. While public health medicine can take advantage of the extraordinary reach of the entertainment media— Coronation Street is broadcast four times a week and regularly attracts 13 million viewers an episode—the effects of this influence need to be carefully considered, particularly when, as in this case, the story was not designed to deliver a particular health message. Researchers have estimated that an additional 14 000 cervical smears were performed in England’s North West as a result of the Coronation Street storyline, 21% more than the previous year.3 It may be argued that this presents an example of the positive influence of the media on health education and service uptake, although the reality is complicated. Of those estimated 14 000 additional smears, slightly less than 2500 were for women who were either overdue or had never had a smear test before.4 Although this resulted in a positive health benefit for the estimated 65 women who would otherwise not have had a “significant abnormality” detected, it did so at the cost of nearly 12 000 unnecessary or untimely smears. This increase in demand put considerable pressure on the service …. (shrink)

Many people gain much of their awareness of medicine and medical techniques from television. A regional survey in 1995, for example, indicated that local people primarily gained their understanding of postmortem examinations from television.1 The popularity of factual series based in hospitals and documentaries following an individual’s battle against illness illustrates the appeal of medicine as entertainment. But public knowledge does not come just from such serious portrayals. In the UK, fictional dramas and soap operas are increasingly seen (...) as a useful tool for raising public awareness of the human dilemmas involved—for example in coping with infertility or requests for euthanasia. Programme makers frequently turn to medical advisors to ensure that the scope and limitations of medicine are accurately reflected. Such collaboration between health and media professionals is generally perceived as positive. The medical dilemmas of fictional characters can contribute to better public understanding of conditions such as HIV. Ethical problems can arise, however, when real rather than fictitious cases are presented as entertainment and where some of those involved cannot consent. In June 2002, for example, the British Medical Association (BMA) complained about a sensationalist television chat show’s call for volunteers to undergo paternity testing as part of the entertainment. For one of the programmes in the series, Trisha Exposes Britain’s Biggest Love Rats (ITV, 17 Jun 2002) men who doubted their paternity of a young child were invited to air their concerns in front of an audience, with a paternity test being carried out either to confirm or deny their suspicion. Such use of genetic technology for entertainment is far from the responsible attitude espoused by the BMA and the Human Genetics Commission (HGC). Official guidance in the UK emphasises that paternity testing should only be carried out after careful consideration of the significance and possible irrevocable …. (shrink)

The commemorative edition of the 80th anniversary of Casa Grande & Senzala, the founding book of Brazilian modern sociology written by Gilberto Freyre and published in 2013, shows on its cover a glamorous ‘Casa Grande’, lit like an architectural landmark, ready to serve as the set for a film or a TV soap opera. What happened to the ‘Senzala’ that appeared on the covers of the dozens of previous editions? This paper investigates, following some changes in Brazilian Visual Culture (...) in the twentieth century, how such an astonishing disappearance could take place. The paper examines the image of the slave quarters as part of a racial trope: a foundational and colonial trope, one that is capable of institutionalizing subjects and producing a subaltern mode of subjectivity. It also explores connections between critical legal studies and visual and cultural studies to question how and why knowledge produced over the status, nature and function of images contributes to institute—and institutionalize subjectivity. In order to explain this disappearance we propose a legal-iconological experiment. We will enunciate, and attempt to enact, the Statute of Image-nation: the laws of the image that constitute subjectivity in Brazilian racial tropes. In doing so, we might be able to point out the ways in which law and image function together in institutionalizing subjectivity—and subjection. (shrink)

This article notes the significance of the contribution that literary researchers - who must see themselves as `researchers-as-artists' - make in the area of policy and politics. The `researcher-as-artist' chooses words aesthetically to tell stories that construct new stages for debate and discussion, and that inspire governments and policy-makers, They push intellectual boundaries; they challenge; they stimulate and confer visibility on creative ideas; they provoke - artistically, educationally and morally; and make connections. They encourage new ways of looking and seeing. (...) Thus, for example, they can contribute to discussions of soap operas and connect them to folk-tales - tales of the folk, endlessly repeated variations on common themes. Using a literary optic in this way demonstrates not only the evolutionary powers of literature, but the vital role of literary researchers and of the stories they tell. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar reflexões sobre o núcleo muçulmano da telenovela O Clone , que foi exibido entre outubro de 2001 e junho de 2002, na Rede Globo de Televisão, tendo sua reprise iniciada em janeiro de 2011. Telenovela escrita por Gloria Perez autora conhecida pelos temas “étnicos” e de cunho social, tais como, ciganos, muçulmanos, indianos, transplante de órgãos, alcoolismo, imigração ilegal, clonagem humana. O argumento que sustento é que a novela “salvou” a comunidade islâmica brasileira da (...) “invisibilidade” e trouxe para dentro das casas brasileiras um pouco da cultura árabe-islâmica, que embora estereotipados, contribuíram significativamente para revelar à nossa sociedade quem são os muçulmanos e em que eles acreditam. Ao escrever o artigo me deparei com outro tipo de “invisibilidade”, os quase inexistentes trabalhos em antropologia visual que contemplam análise de imagens de telenovelas. Neste sentido, este texto busca contribuir com outros modos de ver a televisão, em particular, a telenovela. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates the importance of “first movers,” trendsetters who are ready to bear a cost to initiate change. The chapter identifies the conditions that make someone a trendsetter: low risk sensitivity, low risk perception, low allegiance to the standing norm, high autonomy, and high perceived self-efficacy. It studies how trendsetters can spearhead change, by looking at the structure of the network of social relations in which trendsetters operate. Taking examples from the American Civil Rights Movement to Indian radio (...) class='Hi'>soap operas, the chapter furthermore illustrates how trendsetters can be groups or fictitious characters. It concludes with a discussion of how to identify them for better interventions. (shrink)

The chapter discusses which tools can be employed to bring about norm change. It examines the limits of legislative interventions and economic incentives. It thereafter explores the role of the media and collective deliberation in initiating norm change. It identifies the marks of a successful intervention both within media and community deliberation. Along the way, it questions the purported utility of economic incentives for norm change, showing how incentives can backfire. Against the background of this critique, the chapter argues for (...) the centrality of involving the target community in understanding the reasons for abandoning a traditional norm. However, it also raises cautionary flags about the use of deliberative practices in effecting norm change. An integrated approach, operating at the level of media, legal, and communal discussions, is recommended. (shrink)

The Gestalt Bubble model describes a subjective phenomenal experience (what is seen) without taking into account the extraphenomenal constraints of perceptual experience (why it is seen as it is). If it intends to be an explanatory model, then it has to include either stimulus or neural constraints, or both.

This paper critically examines the pervasive colonial myth that associates whiteness with cleanliness and blackness with dirtiness, a myth often perpetuated through media, especially soap advertisements. Through an analysis of Frantz Fanon’s contributions to psychoanalysis and phenomenology, the paper elucidates how racial constructs are sociogenically constructed and internalized, shaping the collective unconscious. Focusing on Fanon’s phenomenological exploration of the white gaze, the paper highlights its role in overdetermining the black man, reducing them to an object embodying racial myths. The (...) paper demonstrates the enduring influence these entrenched myths have on racialized habits of perception and advocates for their disruption. The ongoing presence of colonial mythologies in modern soap advertising demonstrates the need for a concerted effort to dismantle these sedimented habits. The conclusion focuses specifically on challenging the myth of whiwhiteness as cleanliness as it continues to operate. (shrink)