Through autoethnographic performance, I examine how hearing J Medeiros' hip-hop song “Consta... more Through autoethnographic performance, I examine how hearing J Medeiros' hip-hop song “Constance,” about a thirteen year-old girl in the Philippines who is sold and raped to produce internet pornography, prompted me to question the stability of my identity. While ...
Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility
Abstract This chapter examines the increase in global demand for quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd... more Abstract This chapter examines the increase in global demand for quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) and considers the impact of such demand on the Peruvian and Bolivian farmers who produce it. Specifically, it analyzes the social media marketing of U.S. based I Heart Keenwah (IHK) and considers the role of “storied food” with respect to corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in a Web 2.0 context. This chapter reports the results of textual, rhetorical, and cultural analyses of the digital marketing materials IHK deploys, and considers IHK’s use of Web 2.0 tools to mobilize discourses of socially responsible marketing, and implications of industrial quinoa production on Andean biodiversity and indigenous culture. This chapter principally concludes that the social media and digital marketing materials that IHK deploys obfuscate the social, economic, and ecological complexities surrounding the quinoa industries in Peru and Bolivia. This chapter provides evidence of new tendencies in capitalist commodification, and demonstrates how the traditional and indigenous protectors of the quinoa plant species are being denied their agricultural and cultural heritages. Further more, it demonstrates how the language of corporate social responsibility is abused in the service of less sustainable, branded, and extractive imaginaries and corporate profit. Given the significant rise in international quinoa demand, IHK’s explosive economic success, and IHK’s reliance on Andean quinoa, this case study provides unique insights into global food capitalism in the age of social media.
Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-h... more Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-hop in the United States College classroom. Dialogue fosters a spirit of collaboration that generates more reflective responses and can spark new ideas that would be difficult to think of individually. Previous scholarship has also argued that hip-hop is itself inherently dialogic in that it constantly converses with the world at large. Thus, through dialogue, the authors debate pedagogy as it intersects with hip-hop culture. First, they discuss specific strategies for integrating hip-hop into the classroom, using examples from a range of previously taught classes. Second, they discuss some of the challenges they have faced in teaching with and about hip-hop, particularly as it pertains to the social locations of teachers and students. Finally, they explore whether hip-hop pedagogies are inherently critical, liberatory, or radical.
Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-h... more Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-hop in the United States College classroom. Dialogue fosters a spirit of collaboration that generates more reflective responses and can spark new ideas that would be difficult to think of individually. Previous scholarship has also argued that hip-hop is itself inherently dialogic in that it constantly converses with the world at large. Thus, through dialogue, the authors debate pedagogy as it intersects with hip-hop culture. First, they discuss specific strategies for integrating hip-hop into the classroom, using examples from a range of previously taught classes. Second, they discuss some of the challenges they have faced in teaching with and about hip-hop, particularly as it pertains to the social locations of teachers and students. Finally, they explore whether hip-hop pedagogies are inherently critical, liberatory, or radical.
In this dissertation, I examine the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s as it emerged onto t... more In this dissertation, I examine the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s as it emerged onto the national stage of American popular culture. Using Articulation Theory, I weave together an argument explaining how and why hip-hop went from being articulated as a set of multicultural and inclusive practices, organized around breaking, graffiti, and DJing, to being articulated to a violent, misogynistic, and homophobic hypermasculine representation of blackness as essentially rap music culture. In doing so I also argue that there are real political, social, racial, cultural, and ideological implications to this shift in articulation; that something is at stake in defining hip-hop as both black and rap music culture. I put forward this argument by making three distinct steps over the course of this dissertation. First, I identify a change in how hip-hop was represented and thus articulated in popular media. Through an intertextual analysis of the hip-hopsploitation genre films I show that early hip-hop was being represented primarily as a set of cultural practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and DJing rather than the now dominant articulation as rap music culture. Next I set forth one possible reason for this shift within the limiting conditions set by the available media technologies and means of commodification. The visual nature of hip-hop's early articulation coupled with the economic inaccessibility of consumer home video made breaking and graffiti difficult to commodify compared to rapping as an aural element. Using "technological determinist" theorists like McLuhan, Innis, and Kittler, I argue that understanding how hip-hop as been historically constructed requires analyzing the limiting effect that the material conditions of media technologies have on the production of hip-hop. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my family, friends, colleagues, mentors, teachers, and students, both at the University of Iowa and beyond. I consider myself lucky to have found a rich intellectual community in which to embed myself no matter where I've lived. Winters and tornadoes aside, Iowa has treated me well, and I appreciate the patience it's shown this California boy. Of course this dissertation could not have been written without the incredible help of many people, most notably my advisor Kembrew and committee members Aimee, Murray, Tim and Vershawn. Materially speaking, this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support of the University of Iowa Graduate College's Seashore-Ballard Dissertation Fellowship, which allowed me to dedicate the past year to fulltime work on the project.
Through autoethnographic performance, I examine how hearing J Medeiros' hip-hop song “Consta... more Through autoethnographic performance, I examine how hearing J Medeiros' hip-hop song “Constance,” about a thirteen year-old girl in the Philippines who is sold and raped to produce internet pornography, prompted me to question the stability of my identity. While ...
Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility
Abstract This chapter examines the increase in global demand for quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd... more Abstract This chapter examines the increase in global demand for quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) and considers the impact of such demand on the Peruvian and Bolivian farmers who produce it. Specifically, it analyzes the social media marketing of U.S. based I Heart Keenwah (IHK) and considers the role of “storied food” with respect to corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in a Web 2.0 context. This chapter reports the results of textual, rhetorical, and cultural analyses of the digital marketing materials IHK deploys, and considers IHK’s use of Web 2.0 tools to mobilize discourses of socially responsible marketing, and implications of industrial quinoa production on Andean biodiversity and indigenous culture. This chapter principally concludes that the social media and digital marketing materials that IHK deploys obfuscate the social, economic, and ecological complexities surrounding the quinoa industries in Peru and Bolivia. This chapter provides evidence of new tendencies in capitalist commodification, and demonstrates how the traditional and indigenous protectors of the quinoa plant species are being denied their agricultural and cultural heritages. Further more, it demonstrates how the language of corporate social responsibility is abused in the service of less sustainable, branded, and extractive imaginaries and corporate profit. Given the significant rise in international quinoa demand, IHK’s explosive economic success, and IHK’s reliance on Andean quinoa, this case study provides unique insights into global food capitalism in the age of social media.
Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-h... more Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-hop in the United States College classroom. Dialogue fosters a spirit of collaboration that generates more reflective responses and can spark new ideas that would be difficult to think of individually. Previous scholarship has also argued that hip-hop is itself inherently dialogic in that it constantly converses with the world at large. Thus, through dialogue, the authors debate pedagogy as it intersects with hip-hop culture. First, they discuss specific strategies for integrating hip-hop into the classroom, using examples from a range of previously taught classes. Second, they discuss some of the challenges they have faced in teaching with and about hip-hop, particularly as it pertains to the social locations of teachers and students. Finally, they explore whether hip-hop pedagogies are inherently critical, liberatory, or radical.
Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-h... more Abstract The authors utilise the format of a dialogue in this essay to explore the place of hip-hop in the United States College classroom. Dialogue fosters a spirit of collaboration that generates more reflective responses and can spark new ideas that would be difficult to think of individually. Previous scholarship has also argued that hip-hop is itself inherently dialogic in that it constantly converses with the world at large. Thus, through dialogue, the authors debate pedagogy as it intersects with hip-hop culture. First, they discuss specific strategies for integrating hip-hop into the classroom, using examples from a range of previously taught classes. Second, they discuss some of the challenges they have faced in teaching with and about hip-hop, particularly as it pertains to the social locations of teachers and students. Finally, they explore whether hip-hop pedagogies are inherently critical, liberatory, or radical.
In this dissertation, I examine the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s as it emerged onto t... more In this dissertation, I examine the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s as it emerged onto the national stage of American popular culture. Using Articulation Theory, I weave together an argument explaining how and why hip-hop went from being articulated as a set of multicultural and inclusive practices, organized around breaking, graffiti, and DJing, to being articulated to a violent, misogynistic, and homophobic hypermasculine representation of blackness as essentially rap music culture. In doing so I also argue that there are real political, social, racial, cultural, and ideological implications to this shift in articulation; that something is at stake in defining hip-hop as both black and rap music culture. I put forward this argument by making three distinct steps over the course of this dissertation. First, I identify a change in how hip-hop was represented and thus articulated in popular media. Through an intertextual analysis of the hip-hopsploitation genre films I show that early hip-hop was being represented primarily as a set of cultural practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and DJing rather than the now dominant articulation as rap music culture. Next I set forth one possible reason for this shift within the limiting conditions set by the available media technologies and means of commodification. The visual nature of hip-hop's early articulation coupled with the economic inaccessibility of consumer home video made breaking and graffiti difficult to commodify compared to rapping as an aural element. Using "technological determinist" theorists like McLuhan, Innis, and Kittler, I argue that understanding how hip-hop as been historically constructed requires analyzing the limiting effect that the material conditions of media technologies have on the production of hip-hop. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my family, friends, colleagues, mentors, teachers, and students, both at the University of Iowa and beyond. I consider myself lucky to have found a rich intellectual community in which to embed myself no matter where I've lived. Winters and tornadoes aside, Iowa has treated me well, and I appreciate the patience it's shown this California boy. Of course this dissertation could not have been written without the incredible help of many people, most notably my advisor Kembrew and committee members Aimee, Murray, Tim and Vershawn. Materially speaking, this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support of the University of Iowa Graduate College's Seashore-Ballard Dissertation Fellowship, which allowed me to dedicate the past year to fulltime work on the project.
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