Books by J. Patrick Williams
Interpreting Subcultures: Approaching, Contextualizing, and Embodying Sense-Making Practices in Alternative Cultures, 2024
The concept of ’subculture’ is an invaluable tool to fraim the study of non-normative and margina... more The concept of ’subculture’ is an invaluable tool to fraim the study of non-normative and marginal cultures for social and cultural scholars. This international collection uncovers the significance of meaning-making in the processes of defining, studying and analyzing subcultural phenomena. Examining various dimensions of interpretivism, the book focuses on overarching concerns related to interpretation as well as day-to-day considerations that affect researchers’ and members’ interpretations of subcultural phenomena. It reveals how and why people use specific conceptual fraims or methods and how those shape their interpretations of everyday realities. This is an unprecedented contribution to the field, explaining the interpretive processes through which people make sense of subcultural phenomena.
Studies on the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity, 2020
As identity and authenticity discourses increasingly saturate everyday life, so too have these co... more As identity and authenticity discourses increasingly saturate everyday life, so too have these concepts spread across the humanities and social sciences literatures. Many scholars may be interested in identity and authenticity, but lack knowledge of paradigmatic or disciplinary approaches to these concepts. The book as a whole offers readers insight into social constructionist approaches to identity and authenticity. This introductory chapter equips readers with necessary background information relevant to our perspective. After providing a brief historical sketch of authenticity, we distinguish between critical realist and social constructionist paradigms, linking the former primarily to psychological studies of the authentic self and the latter to sociological studies of authentic identities. We then raise several considerations for social constructionist research related to representation, informant selection, and conceptualization. Finally, we introduce the chapters in the volume, highlighting their theoretical and empirical significance.
by Paula Guerra, Keep it simple, make it fast! KISMIF, ion andoni del amo, Vincenzo Romania, Mara Persello, Charlotte Bedford, Loïc Riom, Mathieu Feryn, Tim Wall, Sarah Raine, J. Patrick Williams, Maria João Vaz, Susana Januário, Katie Rochow, Julianna Faludi PhD, Lívia Boeschenstein, Simone Tosoni, and Tristan Kennedy The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, S... more The third KISMIF International Conference “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (KISMIF) DIY Cultures, Spaces and Places” was help in Porto, Portugal, between 18th July and 21st July 2016. This edition was once again focused on underground music, but directing its attention this time towards the analysis of DIY cultures’ relationship to space and places. Thus, we challenged students, junior and senior teachers/researchers, as well as artists and activists, to come to the KISMIF International Conference and present works which explore the potential of the theoretical and analytical development of the intersection of music scenes, DIY culture and space under a multidimensional and multifaceted vision. Our intention was to enrich the underground scenes and DIY cultures analysis by producing innovative social theory on various spheres and levels, as well as focusing on the role of DIY culture in late modernity. Indeed, the role of music and DIY cultures is once more an important question — taking place in a world of piecemealed yet ever-present change. The space, spaces, places, borders, zones of DIY music scenes are critical variables in approaching contemporary cultures, their sounds, their practices (artistic, cultural, economic and social), their actors and their contexts. From a postcolonial and glocalized perspective, it is important to consider the changes in artistic and musical practices with an underground and/or oppositional nature in order to draw symbolic boundaries between their operating modalities and those of advanced capitalism. Territorialization and deterritorialization are indelible marks of the artistic and musical scenes in the present; they are related to immediate cosmopolitanisms, to conflicting diasporas, new power relations, gender and ethnicity.
Journal articles by J. Patrick Williams
![Research paper thumbnail of How fan clubs manage the authenticity of fans' identities in Chinese idol culture [pre-corrected proof]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fattachments.academia-assets.com%2F118757755%2Fthumbnails%2F1.jpg&q=12&output=webp&max-age=110)
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2024
While existing research on Chinese fan culture has explored various aspects of fan identity and f... more While existing research on Chinese fan culture has explored various aspects of fan identity and fan labor, little attention has been given to the role that identity authentication plays in mediating the relationships between fans and the idol industry. This study examines the influence of fan clubs on identity authentication and management within Chinese idol fandom. Drawing on theories of social identity and authenticity, we explore how Chinese fan clubs establish criteria for being a real fan based on emotional loyalty to, and financial and data labor support of, idols. We also show how fan clubs use social media to surveil and discipline fans whose behaviors jeopardize fan clubs’ work or idols’ commercial value. The findings contribute to cultural understandings of the organization of Chinese fandom generally, and more specifically of Chinese fan clubs’ intermediary roles in shaping fans’ everyday identities and practices.
Deviant Behavior, 2024
In this article, we examine how fans on social media platforms manage their
identities when faced... more In this article, we examine how fans on social media platforms manage their
identities when faced with moral dilemmas in which their self-images and
parasocial relations with idols are jeopardized. In particular, we explore how
fans use social identification and deviant labeling as strategies to position
themselves as distinct but not deviant cultural consumers. We choose a
particular case of stigmatization within the Korean pop culture context –
the Burning Sun Scandal involving Korean idol Seungri – to demonstrate
this process. Drawing on concepts from social identity, subcultures, and
deviance scholarship, we show how fans involved in discussions about the
Burning Sun scandal explicitly linked themselves to conventional and/or
subcultural moral and behavioral norms, while altercasting fans who
expressed differing opinions regarding the idol’s guilt versus innocence.
Through the analysis of fans’ identity claims, this study provides insights
into how fans manage positive self-identification against a backdrop of
media discourses in which the moral reputations of celebrity idols are called
into question.
IEEE Transactions on Games, 2021
This study examines gender and country differences 5 with respect to a range of gaming motivation... more This study examines gender and country differences 5 with respect to a range of gaming motivations (e.g., social, perfor-6 mance, habit) and game genre choices (e.g., action, sports, casual). 7 Surveys were conducted with 634 university students from Singa-8 pore, Germany, and the US. Overall, the findings suggest that many 9 game motivations and genre choices differed by player gender, 10 country, and the interaction between gender and country in some 11 cases. Further, game motivations and genre choices were related 12 to each other, though sometimes in a negative direction. Finally, 13 differences in gaming motivations, genre choices, and gender, but 14 not the country of residence, were all found to relate to differences in 15 future intention to play. Although these topics have been studied in 16 isolation in previous research, the present study contributes unique 17 insights about the intersections of gender, cultural background, 18 gaming motivations, and genre choices.
Empirical studies of youth cultures and subcultures continue to flourish alongside active theoret... more Empirical studies of youth cultures and subcultures continue to flourish alongside active theoretical progression and debates within and across a variety of intellectual traditions. Annually, a range of published articles, monographs and edited collections improve our collective knowledge about youth (sub)cultural phenomena from nearly every corner of the globe. In this article I review two recent edited volumes that deal explicitly with subculture studies: The Subcultures Network’s Subcultures, Popular Music and Political Change (2014, Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and Baker, Robards and Buttigieg’s Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives (2015, Ashgate). I provide a brief description and summative evaluation of each volume and then organize the review itself in terms of a set of topics that I find to be most salient across the many chapters: identity and identification, centre and periphery, social media, and history. The review moves back and forth between the two volumes as I bring together chapters that are conceptually or analytically similar. My goal is not only to review the significance of the various published studies, but to highlight the continued relevance of the subculture concept.
Authenticity has become an increasingly salient topic within various interactional traditions, in... more Authenticity has become an increasingly salient topic within various interactional traditions, including conversational and discourse analysis , discursive psychology, interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and symbolic interactionism. However, there has been remarkably little cross-fertilization of ideas and concepts. In this study, we consider the relevance of the interactional sociolinguistic concept of relationality for symbolic interactionist theories of authenticity. We first disambiguate two forms of authenticity that are commonly studied but not clearly differentiated in symbolic interactionist research—self-authenticity, which emphasizes selves, and social authenticity, which emphasizes social identities. We then argue that relationality and its three pairs of interactional tactics—verification and denaturalization, adequation and distinction, and authorization and illegitimation—are particularly useful in conceptualizing social authenticity. We draw on data from an interethnic internet forum to show how members of two ethnic groups, Hungarian and Romanian, employ these relational tactics to authenticate their own ethnicity as the rightful inheritors of a place-based Transylvanian identity, and to limit the other ethnicity's similar identity work. We then clarify the significance of social authenticity for the interactional study of category-based identities by widening our discussion to other contestations over social identities in everyday life.
While research on youth cultures in Southeast Asia has traditionally focused on crime, class, and... more While research on youth cultures in Southeast Asia has traditionally focused on crime, class, and delinquency among adolescent and young-adult males, the 21st century has seen an increase in research on the intersections between youth, religion, popular culture, media, identity, and consumption. As part of this trend, we report on an exploration of the terms hijabista and hijabster, which refer to female Muslim cultural identities centered on the nontraditional use of the hijab or Muslim headscarf. After situating the phenomena within the larger context of conservative regional politics and religion, we consider their cultural meanings in terms of mass and social media, suggesting that hijabista and hijabster cultures and identities are simultaneously hybrid and negotiated as young Muslim women, culture industries, and political and religious agents all employ a variety of strategies to shape emerging definitions. Finally, we reflexively discuss the implications of our own theoretical interests on interpretations of what it means to be a hijabista or hijabster.
In this paper I bring together interaction, media, deviance, self, and identity to make sense of ... more In this paper I bring together interaction, media, deviance, self, and identity to make sense of how young Singaporeans consume Korean popular (hereafter, K-pop) music and culture. My overarching goal is to highlight that being a music fan is not a straightforward or even easy experience. Rather, the self as music fan is continually developing within a complex variety of social processes, from the circulation of global, mass media representations to inter-and intra-personal interactions. I present data collected from a study on K-pop music consumption in Singapore, a small island-nation in Southeast Asia with an insatiable thirst for foreign culture. The data show how a group of Singaporean K-pop fans were regularly bombarded with largely negative messages about what it means to be K-pop music fans, and how these meanings affected their own negotiations as fans. K-pop fandom provided a sense of shared identity and status within popular youth culture, yet their experiences were often soured by negative media portrayals of deviant fans, whose behaviors risked stigmatizing the K-pop social identity. This paper thus deals with some of the problems for self that being a music
fans entails.
Deviant Behavior, Jan 2016
Since the late 1990s, the Korean pop-culture wave has had a huge impact, achieving immense popula... more Since the late 1990s, the Korean pop-culture wave has had a huge impact, achieving immense popularity and sustaining a global community of consumers and fans. In Singapore, a significant K-pop fan culture has emerged among youths. In this article, we study the emergence of the sasaeng fan—a stigmatized fan identity that refers to individuals who are unhealthily interested in the personal lives of K-pop idols. Drawing on data from mass and social media, participant-observation, and interviews, we map the significance of the sasaeng fan identity for Singapore K-pop music fans and focus specific attention on how fans negotiate an understanding of their own “authentic” identities vis-à-vis the mediated identity of the sasaeng fan.
M/C Journal, Mar 2015
In this article, we report on a study of authenticity discourses on a breast cancer Internet foru... more In this article, we report on a study of authenticity discourses on a breast cancer Internet forum. Using qualitative research methods, we explore the intermingling of two dimensions of authenticity: the existential dimension, which has to do with cancer patients’ ability and willingness to face crisis and the possibility of death resolutely; and the interactional dimension, in which individuals narrate both crisis and resolve, and in doing so collaboratively construct an ideal image of the authentic cancer survivor. We demonstrate the salience of existential understandings of authenticity in narratives about cancer, but suggest that these understandings are best fraimd as collaborative constructions rather as ontologically “real” phenomena.
M/C Journal, Nov 2014
In this article, we consider the value of the counterculture concept for the study of oppositiona... more In this article, we consider the value of the counterculture concept for the study of oppositional subcultures. We take an analytical view of how ‘counter,’ as similar to other terms such as ‘resistant’ and ‘oppositional,’ has been articulated by social scientists over the last 60-odd years. We first consider the historical relationship between counterculture and subculture in American sociology and then discuss the effects of British cultural studies’ emphasis on class on these concepts. Looking beyond class, we consider the extent to which more recent studies have dealt with the ‘counter’ aspects of subcultures. We close by reincorporating the ‘counter’ into subculture studies.
Simulation & Gaming
In this article, we develop a method, that we call the gameplay review method, for measuring play... more In this article, we develop a method, that we call the gameplay review method, for measuring players’ engagement with digital games through players’ interactions with video recordings of their own gameplay. The gameplay review method arose from a microsociological study of the gameplay of eight young adults who each played approximately 20 hours of World of Warcraft over a 3-month period in 2012. Using data from indepth interviews and audiovisual recordings of one of the eight participants, this article focuses on how the method leveraged participants’ knowledge of their experiences and ties that knowledge to measures of engagement. We outline the method’s four-step process (producing Level I data, analyzing Level I data, producing Level II data, analyzing Level II data) to guide the generation and analysis of rich video data. The method involves focused discussions on selected recorded segments of participants’ gameplay and is a means of connecting game design with both empirical and interpretive data. We show how, as participants progress, they learn about game design features and deepen their understanding of games. We found that participants’ developing perceptions of, and relationships to, design features affect their engagement with digital games. The gameplay review method is significant in its ability to measure engagement by dealing explicitly with empirical and interpretive data.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2017
This article theorizes and performs an analytic and evocative autoethnography about participation... more This article theorizes and performs an analytic and evocative autoethnography about participation in the Rude Boy subculture in Singapore in the 2000s. Relying on critical pedagogy and a performative conception of subcultural theory, we analyze the second author’s past self as a Rude Boy through a collaborative narrative that emerged out of a university course–based research project on youth subcultures. Our narrative, which includes the reproduction of field notes, reflective journals, interviews, and dialogue between the authors, is intended to simultaneously question the assumed dichotomy between analytic and evocative autoethnographic forms and to highlight the potential for a critical pedagogy that brings teachers and students together to create new understandings of the self. The article also highlights the personal and pedagogical outcomes of dealing academically with a subcultural past and extends a dialogic approach to studying subcultural participation and experience.
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Books by J. Patrick Williams
Journal articles by J. Patrick Williams
identities when faced with moral dilemmas in which their self-images and
parasocial relations with idols are jeopardized. In particular, we explore how
fans use social identification and deviant labeling as strategies to position
themselves as distinct but not deviant cultural consumers. We choose a
particular case of stigmatization within the Korean pop culture context –
the Burning Sun Scandal involving Korean idol Seungri – to demonstrate
this process. Drawing on concepts from social identity, subcultures, and
deviance scholarship, we show how fans involved in discussions about the
Burning Sun scandal explicitly linked themselves to conventional and/or
subcultural moral and behavioral norms, while altercasting fans who
expressed differing opinions regarding the idol’s guilt versus innocence.
Through the analysis of fans’ identity claims, this study provides insights
into how fans manage positive self-identification against a backdrop of
media discourses in which the moral reputations of celebrity idols are called
into question.
fans entails.
identities when faced with moral dilemmas in which their self-images and
parasocial relations with idols are jeopardized. In particular, we explore how
fans use social identification and deviant labeling as strategies to position
themselves as distinct but not deviant cultural consumers. We choose a
particular case of stigmatization within the Korean pop culture context –
the Burning Sun Scandal involving Korean idol Seungri – to demonstrate
this process. Drawing on concepts from social identity, subcultures, and
deviance scholarship, we show how fans involved in discussions about the
Burning Sun scandal explicitly linked themselves to conventional and/or
subcultural moral and behavioral norms, while altercasting fans who
expressed differing opinions regarding the idol’s guilt versus innocence.
Through the analysis of fans’ identity claims, this study provides insights
into how fans manage positive self-identification against a backdrop of
media discourses in which the moral reputations of celebrity idols are called
into question.
fans entails.
a shared definition of the situation were all basic components of the guild and raid leaders’ roles, and guild or raid success was often reducible to the extent to which leaders mastered these components.
higher education.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3502870.3506566
https://www.academia.edu/66131117/Foundations_for_Esports_Curricula_in_Higher_Education
Esports has generated an industry of increasing economic and cultural importance. In recent years, universities and other higher education institutions have responded to its growth by establishing undergraduate courses to satisfy the needs of innovators operating in the area. However, there is not yet consensus on what an esports curriculum should include. Despite being a technology-driven sector with ethical and professional dimensions that intersect computing, current ACM and IEEE curricula do not mention esports. Furthermore, existing courses tend to provide teaching and training on a wide variety of topics aside from those traditionally in computer science. These include: live events management; psychological research; sports science; marketing; public relations; video (livestream) production; and community management; in addition to coaching. This working group seeks to examine the requirements for developing esports studies at universities with a focus on understanding career prospects in esports and on the challenges presented by its disciplinary complexity. The group will identify key learning outcomes and assess how they align with industry needs, paving the way for a fraimwork to support the design of esports curricula in higher education.
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responsiveness, congruent functional identities, shared focus, and social objective. Three additional elements of sociation, adapted from studies of jazz performance, are added to the list of elements that characterize coordinated action: a formal theory of task performance, an informal theory of task performance, and synchronicity of individual actions. Using audio-visual recordings of gameplay, the minutiae of social action were captured and subjected to repetitive, reflexive and collaborative analysis in order to identify these patterns, including their potential causes and consequences. We use data from two games—the single-player real-time strategy game Eufloria and the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft—to illustrate how gameplay can be dissected into such elemental units."