Adriana N. Helbig: Hip-Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration (2014)
Filed under book | Tags: · africa, african american culture, black people, blackness, ethnomusicology, gender, hip hop, identity, immigration, music, race, rap, soviet union, uganda, ukraine
“In Hip Hop Ukraine, we enter a world of urban music and dance competitions, hip hop parties, and recording studio culture to explore unique sites of interracial encounters among African students, African immigrants, and local populations in eastern Ukraine. Adriana N. Helbig combines ethnographic research with music, media, and policy analysis to examine how localized forms of hip hop create social and political spaces where an interracial youth culture can speak to issues of human rights and racial equality. She maps the complex trajectories of musical influence—African, Soviet, American—to show how hip hop has become a site of social protest in post-socialist society and a vehicle for social change.”
Publisher Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2014
ISBN 9780253012043, 025301204X
xix+233 pages
Interview with author: Amanda Jeanne Swain (New Books Network, 2014, podcast).
Reviews: Kevin C. Holt (Current Musicology, 2014), Michael C. Thornton (Slavonic and East European Review, 2015), Mark Alan Rhodes II (Social & Cultural Geography, 2015), Anna Oldfield (Popular Music and Society, 2015), Tony Mitchell (Slavic Review, 2016), Kendra Salois (Ethnomusicology, 2017).
Christina Dunbar-Hester: Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (2020)
Filed under book | Tags: · care, community, computing, diversity, diy, ethnicity, feminism, floss, gender, hacker culture, hackerspace, hacking, identity, open source, openness, participation, politics, queer, race, technology, women
“A firsthand look at efforts to improve diversity in software and hackerspace communities.
Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in industry and academia. Hacking Diversity investigates the activists engaged in free and open-source software to understand why, despite their efforts, they fail to achieve the diversity that their ideals support.
Christina Dunbar-Hester shows that within this well-meaning volunteer world, beyond the sway of human resource departments and equal opportunity legislation, members of underrepresented groups face unique challenges. She brings together more than five years of firsthand research: attending software conferences and training events, working on message boards and listservs, and frequenting North American hackerspaces. She explores who participates in voluntaristic technology cultures, to what ends, and with what consequences. Digging deep into the fundamental assumptions underpinning STEM-oriented societies, Dunbar-Hester demonstrates that while the preferred solutions of tech enthusiasts—their “hacks” of projects and cultures—can ameliorate some of the “bugs” within their own communities, these methods come up short for issues of unequal social and economic power. Distributing “diversity” in technical production is not equal to generating justice.
Hacking Diversity reframes questions of diversity advocacy to consider what interventions might appropriately broaden inclusion and participation in the hacking world and beyond.”
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2020
Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology series
ISBN 9780691182070, 0691182078
xi+271 pages
Reviews: Jenna P. Carpenter (Tech & Society, 2021), Rebecca Ortenberg (Lady Science, 2020), Samantha Shorey (International Journal of Communication, 2020).
EPUB (updated on 2022-8-29)
PDF (added on 2022-12-12)
David M. Halperin, Valerie Traub (eds.): Gay Shame (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · identity, lgbtq, queer, queer theory, theory
“Ever since the 1969 Stonewall Riots, “gay pride” has been the rallying cry of the gay rights movement and the political force behind the emergence of the field of lesbian and gay studies. But has something been lost, forgotten, or buried beneath the drive to transform homosexuality from a perversion to a proud social identity? Have the political requirements of gay pride repressed discussion of the more uncomfortable or undignified aspects of homosexuality?
Gay Shame seeks to lift this unofficial ban on the investigation of homosexuality and shame by presenting critical work from the most vibrant frontier in contemporary queer studies. An esteemed list of contributors tackles a range of issues—questions of emotion, disreputable sexual histories, dissident gender identities, and embarrassing figures and moments in gay history—as they explore the possibility of reclaiming shame as a new, even productive, way to examine lesbian and gay culture.”
Publisher Chicago University Press, 2009
ISBN 9780226314372, 0226314375
x+395 pages
via Flux
Reviews: Victor Stepien (Journal of Homosexuality, 2012), Karsten Schubert (hugs&kisses, 2012, DE).
PDF (6 MB, updated on 2021-1-10)
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