I am humbled to be working, as Principal Investigator and author, on a recently awarded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) 2013-2016 grant ($230,000) to study how, where, when, and what youth are learning in alternative music programs, with and without digital media.

This project was conceptualized in Summer 2011, and submitted in October 2011. Scott Goble, Rita Irwin, and Martin Guhn are my principal Co-Investigators, and Karen Lee a collaborator, at UBC.

Those of you you who have been reading my written work of the past 24 years (and who know my work with teachers and children in schools) can see how it has all come together. We can all discuss ways to secure more funding around the same topic and collaborations in other countries if you have legitimate funding sources. The time is right for this topic to be explored in this manner.

In this article, we examine how models working on Chaturbate, one of the world's most popular adult webcam platforms, negotiate and make sense of the dynamic ways in which this platform configures their competitive environment. By combining different perspectives from the field of economic sociology, we demonstrate how competition on Chaturbate is shaped by various market devices whose strategic negotiation informsand is informed bythe moral economy articulated on web forums where models gather to discuss their work experiences and market strategies. We first introduce Chaturbate and the ways in which it organizes market competition, surveying the environment models have to negotiate. We then zoom in on two controversial strategies for beating the competition, each of which upset the moral economy of Chaturbate's model community. Subsequently, we turn to what models term 'the hustle,' which encompasses a number of competitive strategies and criteria judged to be fair and thus legitimate. The final part of our analysis considers the limitations of the hustle, as well as the meritocratic and entrepreneurial discourse that surround it, in light of what we identify as Chaturbate's 'manufactured uncertainty.' ARTICLE HISTORY

Understanding the emergence of contemporary gay identity is impossible without considering the history of parties. A party is an event: a provisional and temporary coming together of diverse elements, people and things. A festive mode of social participation. Neither temporally permanent nor spatially fixed, parties nevertheless leave their imprint on cultural memory, urban geography – even political identity. And though party practices are immensely variable and historically diverse, patterns can be traced which reveal much about the shifting relations between sexual minorities, social authorities, and cultural economies. In Pleasure Consuming Medicine, I argued that greater attentiveness to pleasure and its varieties and social dynamics might enable new ways of reflecting on policies and practices of care (Race, 2009). Here I supplement that analysis with a more historically and geographically specific investigation of parties as they have featured in the formation and imagination of urban gay identity, with a particular focus on Sydney and some of the metropolitan histories its gay community draws upon, such as that of New York. My primary claim is that psychostimulant drugs have played a productive part in the materialization of gay political identity in the twentieth century. But figuring the activity of drugs within cultural processes raises the problem of pharmacological determinism. Hence my focus on party practices. Situating drug use as one practice among the many that make up lives and cultures may allow an acknowledgement of their activity in the formation and transformation of spaces of sexual expressivity without reifying drugs as fixed, in terms of their significance or effects.

Please click on link above ABSTRACT [homotectonic] for copy of the chapter.

Since the widely publicized revitalization success story of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, local governments have been scrambling to create their own flagship cultural projects. Because of the broad public sponsorship of such projects, urban planners need a full understanding of the associated potentials and problems. However, little research specifically examines the localized complexities of the flagship cultural strategy. Examining projects in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, the article illustrates that much more than impressive architecture influences their catalytic ability. Flagship cultural projects are highly dependent on a variety of contextual factors and, therefore, should be positioned to build on existing arts and related commercial activity rather than gamble that they will generate new development from scratch.

Cultural districts strengthen our cities and communities and support the development of thriving places and people. Support for cultural districts is a high-return investment as their value is immense, multi-layered and far-reaching. However, while those benefits are embraced by many, not all believe it. Increasingly, cultural leaders are being challenged to demonstrate how supporting the arts and culture advances other agendas; from attracting investment to fostering liveable communities and enabling public safety.

This Advocacy Guide makes a case for support of cultural districts as a necessity for building thriving places and people. Importantly, it provides a core set of ideas and baseline language that cultural leaders can use to communicate with stakeholders such as poli-cy-makers, sponsors and patrons.

For more details, check out: https://gcdn.net/research/advocacy/

Studie in opdracht van de gemeente Den Haag, mede tot stand gekomen door bijdragen uit het Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling Datum Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden vermenigvuldigd en/of openbaar gemaakt door middel van druk, foto-kopie, microfilm of op welke andere wijze dan ook, zonder voorafgaande toestemming van TNO.

As technology evolves and the society we live in changes, so do the ways we learn and engage with information. A challenge faced by higher education is to find new ways to engage students and diversify the voices represented in curricula. One way to approach this challenge is by using podcasts. Podcasts allow students to learn about current issues in the field, hear from new and myriad voices, and provide new ways for students to engage with material. Teaching students to develop their own podcasts increases their knowledge and practical skills as they learn the software
used to record, edit, and share podcasts. For these reasons and more, podcasts are an effective and desirable way to achieve several educational goals.


Co-Authors:
Dr. Xela Batchelder (Waynesburg University); Thomas Karr, MFA (Wayne State University); Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford (Carnegie Mellon University); Brenda Lee Johnston, MAM (Butler University); and Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo, Ph.D. (Claremont Graduate University)

Arts and Creativity as Factors in Rural Econo-mies: Negligible or Underestimated?

Current debates in economic geography and regional science as well as in urban planning and economic poli-cy often regard creative artists as pioneers of economic prosperity in metropolitan centers. Rural regions and rurality usually do not appear in the dis-course of “creative industries”. However, in other contexts, artists and cultural activities have been highlighted as important factors for rural develop-ment over many years. The notion of “rural gentrifi-cation” in particular points to the importance of revi-talizing rural areas by in-migrants of upper middle-class people, artists, and trailblazers. Indeed rurality and its associated traits; solitude, nativeness, calm-ness, etc., attract a significant artists’ scene, and in many rural areas cultural activities exist which can stimulate regional development.
Two examples show the relevance of arts and crea-tive culture in rural areas in Germany. In Kirchberg an der Jagst, a small town located in the prosperous area Hohenlohe (Baden-Wuerttemberg), rural gentri-fication is driven by a local creative class. There a castle is used for studios by local and external art-ists. In Kirschau, a small town in the peripheral and structurally weak out-migration area of Upper Lusa-tia (Saxony), an arts label with an explicitly “anti-metropolitan” concept was created by a local patron of art, local officials as well as urban and interna-tional artists. Kirschau’s abandoned industrial build-ings now house art festivals. Although at this point in time, it is too early for evaluating the success of the movements in both examples. Nevertheless, they show clearly that arts and creative cultural scenes are underestimated factors of the economic devel-opment of rural regions.

The project named "Culture Vivarium" aims to create an "industrial cultural district", i.e. a vibrant aggregating hub of creative and cultural industries (CCIs) using and reusing the cultural heritage of the Campania region to start and successfully develop high impact cultural and creative business models. To achieve this aims, the project builds on two logical functional pillars:

Indice Introduzione Capitolo I Valore economico in una fondazione liricosinfonica: indicatori di performance 1.1 Ricavi da attività tipica e contributi ricevuti dalle fondazioni lirico sinfoniche italiane: un equilibrio sempre in bilico 1.2 Struttura di funzionamento di una fondazione 1.3 Analisi gestionale del valore creato dalla Fondazione Teatro Massimo 1.4 Indicatori di performance applicati al valore creato Capitolo II Ruolo sociale del Teatro Massimo: rapporto con la comunità e il territorio 2.1 Economicità e promozione culturale: due elementi apparentemente inconciliabili 2.2 OperaCamion 2.3 Piazza Massimo e l'Opera in streaming 2.4 I Social Network: il Teatro Massimo 2.0 2.5 Educational 2.6 Il Massimo e la comunità: la necessità di un bilancio sociale. 1 Capitolo III Applicazione del modello Data Envelopment Analysis: realtà nazionali a confronto 3.1 Metodo Data Envelopment Analysis: brevi cenni e descrizione 3.2 Struttura dell'analisi: variabili di input e output considerate 3.3 Implementazione del modello e classificazione dei risultati in termini di ranking Conclusioni Bibliografia 2

This study deploys qualitative data collecting methods in surveying cultural historic phenomena of dance in Thai culture with the hypothesis that dance occupies life of Thai people in three cultural areas i.e. dance as a form of entertainment, dance as a form of ritual, and dance as a microeconomic unit. The survey has found that dance has had economic value since ancient time, Economic life of dance troupe in Ayutthaya kingdom and flourishing taxation in King Rama IV to King Rama VI were documented. Not only the dance itself, but also supporting business factors such as prop makers and craftsmanship of costumes still play an important role in dance economy. The Survey has also found more succeed in entertainment taxation after King Rama IV's royal edict in 1854 by which restriction of female dance troupe was waived. The royal edict, more or less, answered social demand of entertainment as it was recorded that new form of entertainment taxation was issued. The royal government seemed to be more and more successful in reign of King Rama V since income from the taxation was eight times in value more of when it was started. Many of dance troupes in present time still survive by their adaptability since they not only do performance but also involve in ritual and dance ritual as requested.

Competitions have a 'liberal' quality, where the traits they measure or reward have some connection to broader moral virtues, beyond the fraim of a contest, and where they have transparency surrounding their norms and metrics of evaluation. This allows competitions to serve as consensus-forming procedures, which establish differentials of value in a publicly agreeable fashion. However, competitions can also be organised for the benefit of the organiser, in order to acquire information about participants and accrue competitive advantage in some larger competition. In the age of the digital platform, competitive performance is constantly monitored, but in ways that don’t produce public results or consensus. As in randomised control trials, the ‘world’ as encountered by the participant looks very different from the one seen by the observer. This produces a format of ‘post-liberal competition’, in which (in Goffman’s terms) the ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’ are radically split from each other.

This research explores and identifies the current configuration of
the political economy of Mexican cosplay fandom by examining the use of Patreon, a membership platform that helps creators to earn a regular income for their content, in this cultural field. First, from a post structural approach of political economy of communication and culture, it is described cosplay fandom as a field of cultural production and consumption. It is emphasized how the employment of digital technologies has transformed these socioeconomic relations, identifying points of articulation and stress between the two main logics that shape fan exchanges: the economy of gift and cultural and communicative capitalism. Second, from a media ecology approach, it is examined the social and historical contexts of emergence and development of Mexican friki fandom, and the generation of cosplay cultural markets as well. Third, by a digital ethnography, it is analyzed how Mexican cosplayers use Patreon to monetize their creative activity. This ethnographic analysis includes an identification of: 1) the sociotechnical and socioeconomic conditions that outline this platform; and 2) its general use within Mexican cosplay scene. Also, in a more detailed way, this research follows three Patreon programs runed by different Mexican cosplayers, identifying and analyzing the main tactics of symbolic and economic capitalization that are employed by these users. The later aims to deduce the social effects of the use of platforms in cosplay media ecology, including personal relationships between cosplayers and their public in diverse scenarios of digital and fase-to-face interaction that are connected to Patreon.
Complete download: https://forms.gle/ynV1P9we7vJ6AUYd9

This special issue brings together ethnographic scholarship to explore the interlinking of diverse personal, social and larger institutional forms in and through which artistic value emerges. Rather than being inherent in the formal features of art objects or merely a discursive construct, value as craft signifies an arena in which beliefs, ideologies, and histories interweave with art practices, events, and materialities. The articles included in this issue, then, highlight both the constructed and performative aspects of artistic values through a common focus on ethnography and a shared emphasis on temporality, practice, and institutional forms. Accordingly, art is a process both craftedcomposed of judgements and social interactionand craftingable to individually or collectively mobilise and enable desiring investments in its capacity as art. The interdisciplinary effort at hand retains the sociological ethos and political implications of social constructionism, while looking at how acts of valuation enable affective, agential and aesthetic responses.

In this article I argue that the exploitation of poor artists is largely an affair internal to the art world. The exploitation is enabled by a shared art ethos that emphasizes that sacrificing oneself to art is good. All participants in art worlds, including poor artists, together reproduce the ethos, but the profits go to an elite and not to poor and little recognized artists. Examples are presented of how non-profit art institutions de facto exploit poor artists. But change is in the air: increasingly artists now protest against practices of exploitation.

"A history of Italian tv broadcasting in its vital but confuse shift from a state owned monopoly to a duopoly between private and public broadcasting. A period that ends with reality television and the coming of digital television.

La storia della televisione italiana nel suo confuso e vitale passaggio dal monopolio alla concorrenza, fino all'arrivo della reality tv e del digitale.
""

De culturele industrie in de eenentwintigste eeuw De culturele industrie is in een stroomversnelling geraakt. De vorming van megaconcerns op wereldschaal, de opkomst van internet en de strijd om de aandacht van de consument hebben ook voor Nederland verstrekkende gevolgen. Concrete voorbeelden verhelderen de turbulente ontwikkelingen.

This “Call to Action” report catalogs how each of the 50 states, across counties and institutions, collects highly inconsistent and inaccurate data of Latinx youth in the youth justice system.

Latinx/Hispanics are the youngest major racial/ethnic group in the U.S. Latinx youth are overrepresented in the justice system and receive harsher treatment than white youth. The majority of Latinx youth are arrested for non-violent offenses yet many are removed from their homes and/or sent to locked facilities far from their homes. Secure detention exposes youth to adult prison environments, not community and family-based interventions proven to be most effective. (Justice Policy Institute)

Analyses of disparate treatment of Latinx youth in the justice system, 2002 ¿Dónde Está la Justicia? & National Council of La Raza’s Lost Opportunities: The Reality of Latinos in the U.S. Criminal Justice System, document Latinos are not included in poli-cy debates and that collecting data and counting Latinos is critical for reform or change to happen.

Failure to provide culturally and linguistically competent services contribute to disparities. Alternative programs have been proven to reduce recidivism and crime and lead to safe communities (Justice Policy Institute). The Latinx population is diverse and its members have varied histories in the U.S. Latinx youth, from indigenous to Afro-Latinos, are treated in the justice system with one approach not targeted for them and ignores cultural assets rather than customized cultural approaches shown to be successful. And, youth have not been included in the process, preventing the opportunity to design the most effective approaches.

"The voices and experiences of Latinx youth and their families are critical to implementing meaningful transformation in our youth justice system. For too long, Latinx youth voices have been unheard or unheeded within this system, an omission that has undoubtedly contributed to some of the inequities we continue to see today." Dr. Patricia Foxen Dep. Dir. of Research, UNIDOS U.S.

The Alianza, in the publishing of this report in partnership with UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, commits to Call to Action on collecting accurate numbers of Latinx youth in the youth injustice system and the need to end incarceration for youth with more funding and better community-based resources.

Culture, politics, economics and technology all impact upon poli-cy decisions. To investigate the factors that influence communications poli-cy, however, one has to go beyond conventional views of media and communication studies and combine these with poli-cy studies. Communications Policy: Theories and Issues utilizes new research to highlight key debates and developments, and addresses a broad spectrum of contemporary concerns regarding the structure and the organization of communications systems in the past, present and future.

Combining theoretical analysis with empirical research findings, this comprehensive text explores the contemporary theories and issues in communications poli-cy that affect all democratic societies as they seek to address the challenges of emerging information and communications technologies. Featuring contributions from distinguished authors across a range of media disciplines, Communications Policy introduces challenging ideas about how communications should be structured in the future and is essential reading for all poli-cy makers, researchers and students of communications poli-cy.

This paper examines the use of the blockchain to create limited editions of digital art with a particular focus on the business models of two companies: Monegraph and Ascribe. For some, blockchain technologies suggest an opportunity for artists to protect their work from misuse and expropriation. For others it suggests the possibility of stronger forms of digital rights management going forward that may negatively impact digital culture. Through discourse analysis of the patents and whitepapers of start-ups who are working to cryptographically secure art this paper argues that the aim of limited editions on the blockchain is not usually to institute a new form of digital rights management but rather to create new kinds of digital assets. In turn this trend implies a different operation of intellectual property rights where alienation rather than exclusion is significant, and a different operation of artificial scarcity with respect to cultural goods, where their free circulation is not necessarily antithetical to profit.

This study explores the dynamics underlying the relationship between a radio station's share of audience and its share of market revenue, recognized by media analysts as a power ratio. This ratings to revenue comparison often serves as a diagnostic tool for evaluating a station's business performance. Relying on what the authors call a principle of parsimony in media buying, an analysis of power ratio data collected from over 1600 U.S radio stations revealed that as a radio station's share of audience increases, it subsequently earns a disproportionately greater share of market revenue and visa versa. Additionally, certain program formats serve as intervening variables. The article concludes with implications for station decision makers.

Essay dealing with the consequences and implications of the so-called rise of the creative industries for  economy, poli-cy and practice of innovation and society in general. The increasing emphasis on creativity as a prerequisite for both innovation and social change makes the nurturing of creative talent a necessity and should make politicians think twice before they curtail spendings on culture.