[Nettime-bold] M/C: New Issue Now Online: 'work' / Issue Topics for 2002

["M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture" <mc@media-culture.org.au>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 17 December 2001

                       M/C has a new email address:
             from now on, please direct all correspondence to 
                         mc@media-culture.org.au
                         -----------------------

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   The Media and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Queensland
    is proud to present issue five in volume four of the award-winning

                   M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture
                     http://www.media-culture.org.au/

            PLEASE NOTE THE NEW ADDRESS: UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS!

                'work' - Edited by Axel Bruns & Greg Hearn

Invested capital demands growth. Growth is possible through the expansion
of markets or through finding new products to sell, that is, by creating
new markets. Thus, we have seen, over the last one hundred years, the
commodification of more and more aspects of human life. However, what
superficially looks like an ever increasing array of different products
turns out to be, in essence, the commodification of just one human need,
that is, the need for identity. Awareness of mind engenders the 'I/me'
split. The 'I' is a knower, the 'me' is the known. The stuff that the 'me'
is made of is discursive in nature. Stories are therefore the industrial
engines of the identity economy and they are deployed all around us in
print, in media, at work. As well they are encoded into material artifacts
or into the social practices which are enacted via our access to identity
services (be it travel, media, or latte). Perhaps these questions aren't
even as recent as they appear to be.

Most of us now work in the identity economy and indeed work out our
identity in the process of helping others commodify theirs. Consider the
following advertisement for Compaq computers. "A whole new Compaq what's in
it for me and me and me and me and me and me... a lot. We're here to help
you get the most out of computing, whether you use one PC or run a vast
global enterprise network". Current deflation aside, the Internet may turn
out to be the ultimate domain for commodification of human identity. Not
only is any desire available to be vicariously satisfied at any time of the
day (thus extending the market in time) but the domain of desire is global
in its reach, thus rendering possible the vicarious experience of
omniscience also. As the recent add for the Iridium network proclaimed,
"Welcome to your new office, it measures 510,228,030 square kilometers"
omniscience in a packet. 

The contributors to this issue of M/C dissect the work of identity in
various ways:

  "Memory-Work: The Labourers of Social Memory within Capitalist Media"
Patricia Leavy investigates how common identities, shared by people within
the same subcultures or national societies as such, are strengthened and
maintained to a significant degree through shared, collective memories,
which require unconscious work.

  "The Work of Consumption: Why Aren't We Paid?"
In our feature article for this issue, Lelia Green describes identity
construction as a major consumer project using raw materials provided by
the mass media, but one which remains considered a voluntary activity.
 
  "That Obstinate Yet Elastic Natural Barrier: Work and the Figure of Man
  in Capitalism"
Warwick Mules aims to open out Marx a little by investigating the changed
nature of the worker in early twenty-first century capitalism. The
increasing interest in shares and stocks is only one sign of the fact that
workers now invest in their own lives and in the process become
'dividualised', motivated by a desire to become their future selves. 

  "Media Is Driving Work: Broadcast, New Media and Stressed Leisure"
Frederick Wasser examines this point further by problematising the division
between work and free leisure, especially in the light of convergent new
media technologies which are used for both in equal measure. Does the
quality of our leisure time suffer as the opportunity, perhaps the
reminder, to do some more work remains ever-present? 
 
  "Work and Masculine Identity in Kevin Smith's New Jersey Trilogy"
Andrew M. Butler looks at the effects of being a 'slacker' on one's own
masculine identity. Characters in Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy appear
to find it hard to escape from capitalist ideology, from the societal
imperative to work: the man without work is cast adrift, still in search of
an identity.
 
  "The Promotion of a Secular Work Ethic"
Sharon Beder traces the history of work ethics beyond the protestant
emphasis on work as a religious calling, through a study of selected self-
help texts and children's books of the time. 
 
  "Corporatising Character: Turning the Heart into Corporate Capital"
Caroline Hatcher notes that beyond the hokey new-age exercises which have
been thrust upon workforces in the last decades, staff motivation does
constitute a crucial factor in commercial success and effectiveness, and so
emotion, and passion, as heightened emotion, have come to play a newly
understood role in our work lives. 
 
  "Women and Work: Gender Disparity in Australian Universities"
Jennifer Ellis-Newman investigates gender disparities in Australian
universities, and finds subtle processes that continue to operate in some
higher education institutions to prevent women from reaching their full
potential as academics, because of their perceived identity as women first,
and academics second.
 
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                   M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture
                    <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>

                          Call for Contributors

The University of Queensland's award-winning journal of media and culture,
M/C, is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between
the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal.

To see what M/C is all about, check out our Website, which contains all the
issues released so far, at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. To find out
how and in what format to contribute your work, visit
<http://www.media-culture.org.au/contribute.html>. 

These are our issue topics for 2002:

'fear'        (deadline 21 Jan. / release 13 Feb.)
'urban'       (deadline 11 Mar. / release 10 Apr.)
'colour'      (deadline  6 May  / release  5 June)
'loop'        (deadline  1 July / release 31 July)
'self'        (deadline 26 Aug. / release 25 Sep.)
'love'        (deadline 21 Oct. / release 20 Nov.)

We're looking forward to your articles !


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M/C issue five, vol. four is now online: <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>
Previous issues of M/C on various topics are also still available online.
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M/C Reviews is now available at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/>.
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All contributors are available for media contacts: mc@media-culture.org.au
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end

                                                     Axel Bruns

-- 
 M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture            mc@media-culture.org.au
 The University of Queensland           http://www.media-culture.org.au/

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