What are the social conditions that enable depression to play a significant societal role in contemporary Western societies? This is the leading question of the dissertation. As an alternative to those who claim that contemporary depression is constructed by the exorbitant consumption of antidepressants, it is stated that both depression and the consumption of antidepressants is possible due to contemporary social conditions. Inspired by the analysis of modernity by Wagner, and on the basis of the theoretical concept of third modernity as proposed by Carleheden, it is claimed that an ethical conduct of life that demands authentic self-realization has been institutionalised in our historical epoch. By analysing how authentic self-realization is being realized in the new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello), it is being concluded that the socializing parameters of third modernity are those of being able to be active, flexible, polyvalent, adaptable, versatile etc. selves. Hence, authentic self-realization in imbued with these normative demands. In relation to the phenomenon of depression this is interesting, because contemporary depression can be understood, not as a subjective condition, but as a phenomenon of lack. What is being applauded in the society of today is just what depressive individuals lack, namely the ability to act in accordance with the normative claims of self-realization. Depressed individuals are in that sense failed selves (Ehrenberg) who represent and informs us about the “other side” of contemporary normative self-realization requirements. In other words: Within present-day society the institutionalized demands for authentic self-realization and depression have become each others antithesis. This socially demanded form of self-realization – which is put under the scrutiny of normative critique (Taylor) – is thus exactly what allows for depression to play such a significant role in present-day Western societies.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

This thesis is an examination of processes of the dealership regarding Aboriginal art and artists. I take the approach that the art dealership is situated at a nexus of relationships that contest and negotiate culturally informed values and categories of fine art, Aboriginality and commodities. I argue that dealers in Aboriginal art mediate categories of value through their particular practices of representation of the art and through the social relationships they foster with artists and buyers. Therefore, through the relationships formed in the exchange process, dealers both make and mark culture. In this study I acknowledge the agency of Aboriginal artists but approach the process of negotiation of cultural categories from the perspective of the non-Indigenous audience for which the art is intended. The research is specifically concentrated on a particular dealership, Fire-Works gallery in Brisbane. I begin with the premise that buyers are drawn to Aboriginal art for more than aesthetic reasons and that objects and artists’ cultural identities carry high value especially if judged authentically Aboriginal in the current art market. Both the art and the artists are made and marked as commodities in the art market; and while notions of authenticity are central to value, value is itself shifting and authenticity unstable. To establish the tensions and shifts in culture formation, I outline the historical biography of the acceptance of Aboriginal objects as fine art and the genesis of Fire-Works gallery within this socio-cultural and political milieu. In the latter chapters of the thesis I examine social relationships and situated practices chosen by the dealership to facilitate sales through the negotiation of valued cultural categories. The study provides an original examination of how shifting cultural categories are dynamically formed and reformed in the commoditisation of Aboriginal art by social agents.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-253) and index.

Thesis (M.A.T.) -- School for International Training, 2006. / Advisor --Bonnie Mennell Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-116).

En pojke på besök i Italien åt där pizza, men pizzan var inte italiensk pizza på riktigt, den smakade inte alls som den pizzan han hade fått i den stockholmsförort han var uppväxt i. Hur vi skildrar och uppfattar en destinations, eller en annan kulturs, måltid beror till stor del på vilka förutsättningar vi har för att utföra analysen. I den här uppsatsen så studeras begreppet autenticitet och hur det förhåller sig till Bourdieus teorier om habitus inom ramen för en måltidskontext. Studien har tagit avstamp ur netnografisk metod och naturligt förekommande data i form av reseskildringar som publicerats öppet på internet har använts för att analysera upplevd autenticitet i måltidskontext. Materialet har sedan analyserats med hjälp av kvalitativ innehållsanalys. I resultatet utkristalliseras tre huvudområden inom måltiden som förmedlare av autenticitet nämligen, mötet med den Andre, platsen och maten och drycken. Studien visar på att det kan finnas ett samband på hur vi upplever autenticiteten i en måltidskontext och hur våra förväntningar på måltiden möts av verkligheten. / When, as a young boy, I was consuming pizza, during a visit to Italy, I got the impression that the food I had didn’t taste like the pizza i was used to from my home in the suburbs of Stockholm, the pizza wasn’t genuine. How we interpret and perceive other cultures meals does largely depend on the understanding we have of the culture we are visiting. In this paper the term authenticity, within the context of a meal, was studied and how it related to the concept of habitus as described by Pierre Bourdieu. The methodology used to collect natural occurring data, to capture meal contexts, in the form of travel diaries, was netnography. The method of analysis used was qualitative content analysis. In the result, three categories were clearly identified, within the context of a meal, as carriers of authenticity. These categories were the food and drink, the meeting with the Other and the place. The study shows that there might be a connection between how we interpret authenticity in the context of a meal and how our expectations of the meal are met by reality.

No description available.

This thesis explores the afterlife of Raymond Carver in relation to a number of important writers and artists that claim Carver as an influence and who are working within countries or cultures that have recently made, or are in the process of making, the transition from embedded liberalism to neoliberalism. This project argues that while Carver's influence has been conventionally limited to what critic A.O. Scott calls 'a briefly fashionable school of experimental fiction', in recent years his writing has come to represent a 'return' to a more 'real' form of literature, one that, his advocates would argue, is more 'authentic' than other kinds of recent writing. Carver's 'authenticity' is closely tied to the idea that his fiction is a response to his own working-class experience and is seen to be more broadly synecdochic of the socioeconomic struggles faced by many other Americans during this period. Given the cultural and aesthetic differences between Carver's life and work, and those studied in the main chapters of this thesis - Jay McInerney, Haruki Murakami and Alejandro González Iñárritu - I argue that Carver's afterlife is best viewed as being a social phenomenon, born out of the social relations, historical circumstances and economic forms that resulted from the US's move to neoliberalism in the late-1970s. My introduction historicizes this transition and argues that while Carver may have struggled to make productive sense of his socioeconomic circumstance, it affected his life in very pointed and particular ways, trapping him between the conventional American dream of individual freedom and equal opportunity and the reality of inequality and social immobility. For those who claim Carver as an influence, his fiction represents a zone where the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience is explored and embodies a model of how to negotiate, for better or worse, the complex and shifting foundations of this recent political transition. My introduction then continues to argue that of equal importance to Carver's afterlife is the fact that, in his late-writing in particular, Carver's work represents a 'retreat' from the shortterm, competition-based notions of neoliberal labour towards a non-incorporated residual alternative that has particular artisanal tenets associated with craftsmanship. Carver's texts operate beyond their initial cultural and historical moment by becoming distinctive sites of resistance to the hegemonic norms of late-capitalism. In this way, I argue, Carver's 'authenticity' combines with a consolatory craftsmanship to become a coping mechanism that offers other writers and artists working in neoliberalism a way of navigating a world which seems to exceed the frame of conceptual mapping. By working through a series of short case studies on Stuart Evers, Denis Johnson and Ray Lawrence, and then moving on to more detailed explorations in my three central chapters, this thesis will consider how this is the case in relation to a number of important artists who claim Carver as an influence. Chapter one utilises my archival research to historicize the relationship between Carver and McInerney and argues that Carver's pedagogy pushed McInerney towards the idea that the writing process is connected to residual narratives of American craft. It also contends that many of the orthodox ideas that Carver held about literature proved particularly enabling for McInerney's novel Brightness Falls, which, through parody and satire, signals a retreat from postmodern experimentation towards a more 'Carveresque' realism. Chapter two similarly chronicles Carver's relationship with Murakami and argues that, for Murakami, Carver's fiction is an important example of writing that explores the difference between hegemonic narratives and lived experience. The chapter moves on to argue that what some critics view as Carver's reformed post-alcoholic fiction helped facilitate Murakami's own unorthodox spiritual response to the twin tragedies of the Kobe earthquake and Tokyo gas attack in 1995. Chapter three proceeds on slightly different lines in that it considers Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and argues that while Iñárritu uses Carver as the foundation for his film, the film is particularly interesting because it is, itself, a study of Carver's afterlife. My final chapter suggests that while there is merit in viewing Carver as an 'authentic' artist (a kind of model for negotiating neoliberal culture), the totality of that solution is more ambivalent than his advocates might initially suggest.