This research problematizes the rapid growth of beauty blogs, investigating how this process has been shaped and accelerated by gender discourses, platform labor, and the beauty industry, each of... Show moreThis research problematizes the rapid growth of beauty blogs, investigating how this process has been shaped and accelerated by gender discourses, platform labor, and the beauty industry, each of which is rooted in the broader context of China’s social transformation. It offers an integral frame to understand the drivers and effects of beauty bloggers and the wanghong economy in China. It reveals that the explosive development of beauty blogging in China is a result of connections and cooperation among heterogeneous actors at a specific historical conjuncture. Gendered beauty has played an indispensable role in China’s economic reform in that the former has driven and strengthened the latter and vice versa. Platforms worked in tandem with changing beauty discourses and promoted their expansion through beauty blogs. In the meantime, the rise of beauty blogging in China is an embodiment of global capitalism, which has strong ties with the beauty industry’s pre-digital system of mass production. Show less
In central sudanic Africa, the seventeenth century was a period of upheaval and major social change. Relations of power shifted, as did trade-routes and the meaning of Islam for ruling elites.... Show moreIn central sudanic Africa, the seventeenth century was a period of upheaval and major social change. Relations of power shifted, as did trade-routes and the meaning of Islam for ruling elites. Islam spread from royal courts to rural communities, leading to new identities, new boundaries and new tasks for experts of the religion. In theology two movements stand out: one that gave priority to a return to scriptural sources and the verification of knowledge, another of the increasing importance in the region of Sufism. In this context, the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī acquired an exceptional reputation because his work addressed issues that were apparently important to his audience. Combining approaches from intellectual history, philology and the study of Arabic manuscripts, this study places al-Wālī within his intellectual environment on the one hand, and it portrays him as someone who responded to the concerns of ordinary Muslims around him on the other. It shows that scholars like al-Wālī, on the geographical margins of the Muslim world, participated in the theological debates in the metropolitan centres of Muslim learning of the time, but did so on their own terms. At the same time, al-Wālī’s work sheds additional light on a century in the Islamic history of West Africa that has received little scholarly attention. Show less
__More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as Ballads and Libels__. This is how the lawyer and scholar John Selden (1584__1654) described an important characteristic of the... Show more__More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as Ballads and Libels__. This is how the lawyer and scholar John Selden (1584__1654) described an important characteristic of the songs that he collected in printed form, the so-called broadside ballads. This study is an examination of an aspect of popular culture that reached its zenith in the mid-seventeenth century. Among the issues under discussion are the ways in which broadside ballads acted almost as a subversive subculture, with writers, engravers and printers drawing on a shared and allusive body of subject matter. Thus, while the broadside ballad may be a popular and unsophisticated form of literature, it is not a simple and straightforward song. Its message is often shaped to a considerable extent by allusions and references to other broadside ballads, and the seventeenth-century ballad audience was apparently expected t o be familiar with a wide range of ballads in order to be able to interpret the __ sometimes subversive __ references to ballad literature. Issues such as the choice of a tune, and the printers__ decisions on illustrations and layout are of great importance in this respect as they may considerably influence the message of the political broadside ballad. Show less
Pop culture has become a major South Korean export. Only superlatives seem to apply to its popularity and sales in Asia. Superlatives also describe the scale on which illegal copies are sold, and... Show morePop culture has become a major South Korean export. Only superlatives seem to apply to its popularity and sales in Asia. Superlatives also describe the scale on which illegal copies are sold, and the speed with which they appear. Show less
