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This paper discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focussing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach arises by paying close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, makes apps visible and accountable in a variety of unique ways. Engaging with and even staging these situations, therefore, allows for political-economic, social and cultural dynamics associated with apps and their infrastructures can be investigated through a style of research we describe as multi-situated app studies. The piece offers an overview of four different entry points of enquiry that are exemplary of this overarching framework, focussing on app stores, app interfaces, app packages and app connections. We conclude with nine propositions that develop out of these studies as prompts for further research.

Describes how cultural backgrounds, and extent of social cohesion and Catalonian and Basque assimilation within Spanish society affected mobilization efforts; compares Catalan use of language with Basque use of confrontational politics as unifying forces within their respective regions. Also available in French.

Abstract
Refugees spend an average of 17 years living in limbo. This time is usually seen by refugees and scholars as 'lost' or 'wasted' time. Pierre Bourdieu theorized time as critical in accumulating social and cultural capital; foundations of socio-economic status. Families with greater economic capital can provide their offspring with more 'time free from economic necessity', enabling activities that will enhance their status. Time and economic capital are often de-linked by refugee journeys, stripping refugees of economic capital, but leaving an over-abundance of time. This paper uses Bourdieu's work on time and capital to examine how refugees in one community use time during multi-year transit. Based on fieldwork with a single community, this paper argues that, rather than 'wasting' time, members of this community are using refugee time to accumulate social and cultural capital, which some then convert to migration capital and hasten their refugee journeys.

Nach zehn Jahren der gesellschaftlichen Transformation in der Ex-Sowjetunion bleibt die Vorläufigkeit Normalität. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Vielzahl von wirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten, die Frauen zur Sicherung ihres Lebensunterhalts betreiben. Basierend auf intensiver Feldforschung im städtischen Usbekistan werden die komplexen Arrangements analysiert, mit denen die Kleinunternehmerinnen ihr business, ihr Familienleben und ihr gesellschaftliches Umfeld gestalten. Durch die einfühlsame und detailreiche Darstellung des Lebensalltags dieser Frauen erschließt sich ein tieferes Verständnis des postsowjetischen Transformationsprozesses insgesamt, das weit über Usbekistan hinaus Gültigkeit beanspruchen kann.

Pop ist weit mehr als ein Kürzel für »populär«. Der Pop-Begriff führt gleich in mehrere Bereiche hinein, die für die Kultur der westlichen Welt von großer Bedeutung sind.Pop steht für die bunte, reizvolle Ästhetik des alltäglichen und medialen Konsums, Pop steht für wichtige Tendenzen im Unterhaltungssektor und in der modernen Kunst. Zudem wird unter dem Zeichen von Pop oft sogar für eine hedonistische Form der Gegenkultur gestritten.Die publizistischen und intellektuellen Debatten rund um die Popkultur, um Popmusik, Pop-art, Pop-Theorie und um Camp, Underground, New Journalism, Postmoderne und Lifestyle zeichnet »Pop. Geschichte eines Konzepts« erstmals international umfassend nach.Damit liegt nicht mehr und nicht weniger als ein Standard- und Nachschlagewerk zur Geschichte des Pop-Diskurses vor.

This study investigates the visual representation of ethnic minority groups in Chinese elementary social studies textbooks. The author conducts a content analysis to examine the extent to which ethnic minority groups are visually represented and to explore the ways in which they are portrayed in some of the most popular social studies textbooks in China. A total of 6075 visuals drawn from 36 books were electronically coded and analyzed using SPSS. The findings reveal the dearth of ethnic minority-related visuals and show that ethnic minority individuals are visually represented in significantly different ways in many important aspects than non-minority people in these textbooks. The author concludes that the visual representations of ethnic minority groups in these textbooks contributes to a binary understanding of minority and majority by limiting the images of ethnic minority groups to selected cultural markers.

Achterbahn, Karussell oder Riesenrad: Diese spannende soziologische Kulturgeschichte der Jahrmärkte und Vergnügungsparks stellt die dortigen Vergnügungsanlagen vor und geht der Frage nach, was genau den Reiz derartiger Volksbelustigungen ausmacht. Und sie zeigt: Diese technischen Attraktionen erzeugen transzendente Erfahrungen, die von den Rezipienten als Reflex auf eine ausdifferenzierte Moderne nachgefragt und abgerufen werden.

We conduct a 3-y study involving 11,662 respondents to map cultural tightness—the degree to which a society is characterized by rules and norms and the extent to which people are punished or sanctioned when they deviate from these rules and norms—across 31 provinces in China. Consistent with prior research, we find that culturally tight provinces are associated with increased governmental control, constraints in daily life, religious practices, and exposure to threats. Departing from previous findings that tighter states are more rural, conservative, less creative, and less happy, cultural tightness in China is associated with urbanization, economic growth, better health, greater tolerance toward the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community, and gender equality. Further, analyzing about 3.85 million granted patents in China (1990–2013), we find that provinces with tighter cultures have lower rates of substantive/radical innovations yet higher rates of incremental innovations; individuals from culturally tighter provinces reported higher levels of experienced happiness.

Introduction / Catherine Richardson -- The cultural significance of costume books in sixteenth century Europe / Ulrike Ilg -- A question of nation : foreign clothes on the English subject / Roze Hentschell -- Tomb effigies and archaic dress in sixteenth century Ireland / Elizabeth Wincott Heckett -- The formation of Russian women's costume at the time before the reforms of Peter the Great / Oksana Sekatcheva -- Clothing courtesans : fabrics, signals, and experiences / Tessa Storey -- Clothing the naked in late medieval East Kent / Sheila Sweetinburgh -- Dress, nudity, and Calvinist culture in sixteenth century France / Graeme Murdock -- Social fabric in Thynne's Debate between pride and lowliness / Claire Bartram -- Clothing distributions and social relations c. 1350-1500 / Joanna Crawford -- Fashion, finance, foreign politics, and the wardrobe of Henry VIII / Maria Hayward -- Reworked material : discourses of clothing culture in early sixteenth century Greenwich / Elisabeth Salter -- 'This one poore blacke gowne lined with white' : the clothing of the sixteenth century English book / Helen smith -- 'Havying nothing upon hym saving onely his sherte' : event, narrative, and material culture in early modern England / Catherine Richardson -- Rips and slits : the torn garment and the medieval self / Andrea Denny-Brown -- Speaking to reveal : the body and acts of 'exposure' in early modern popular discourse / Elizabeth Hallam

Die Arbeit präsentiert die Geschichte der modernen Wirtschaftswerbung in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts und zeigt, dass Werbung trotz kultureller Barrieren die Alltagswelten der Deutschen kolonialisierte und Einfluss auf die "deutsche Kultur" nahm. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass das Konstrukt der "deutschen Kultur" nicht ausschließlich durch die bürgerliche Hochkultur definiert wurde, sondern zunehmend auch durch Einflüsse der Konsumkultur bestimmt war. Die Bilderwelten der Werbung prägten nationale Ikonen, schufen (bspw. durch Leuchtwerbung) modifizierte "Oberflächen" und Raumwahrnehmungen, ebenso wie die Logik der Marktdifferenzierung und des Marketing soziale Interaktionen als auch die politische Kommunikation (Hitler als Marke) zu bestimmen begann. Diese Entwicklung verlief nicht konfliktfrei. Sowohl die Debatten über Werbung als auch die direkte Konfrontation zwischen Kulturkritikern und Werbern verdeutlichen den massiven Zusammenprall zweier Mentalitäten, die den Konflikt von traditionellem zünftigem Denken, hochkultureller Repräsentation sowie einer vermeintlich authentischen Ästhetik des Inhalts auf der einen Seite und einer "Welt des Scheins" und einer Ästhetik der äußeren Form auf der anderen Seite hervortreten ließ. In dieser Debatte spielte eine Frage eine zentrale Rolle: inwieweit Kapitalismus, Marktwirtschaft, Konsum und die Ästhetik der modernen Lebenswelt mit ihrer spezifischen (werblichen) Oberflächenstruktur mit Vorstellungen "des Deutschen" zu vereinbaren waren.

A heated scholarly debate rages over the 'culture wars thesis' in American politics. Drawing on the literature on mass opinion constraint and its sources, we propose a resolution to this debate: the culture wars influence mass political behaviour in special religious, policy and political contexts where logical, psychological, social and electoral sources of opinion constraint are in effect. Using data pooled from the 1992, 1996 and 2000 American National Election Studies, we find strong support for our argument. We conclude that the cultural wars are waged by limited religious troops on narrow policy fronts under special political leadership, and a broader cultural conflagration is largely a rumour.

Te Parapara Garden is the only complete pre-European-style Māori horticultural garden in the world. Historically inspired and empirically researched, it lies within the Hamilton Gardens on a young river terrace immediately adjacent to the Waikato River in Hamilton (Kirikiriroa), Aotearoa New Zealand. In this article, Wiremu Puke (Ngāti Wairere, Ngāti Porou) – a tohunga whakairo (master carver, including using pre-steel tools) and a tohunga whakapapa (genealogical expert on his tribal affiliations) of Ngāti Wairere (the mana whenua, or first people of the traditional ancestral tribal lands of Kirikiriroa) – describes the design and development of Te Parapara Garden from its initial concept in 2003 and the construction of its many features, including the waharoa (gateway), pou (carved pillars), pātaka (storehouse), whatarangi (small storehouse), taeapa (fencing) and rua kūmara (underground storage pit), and the sourcing and use of kōkōwai (red ochre). The garden was completed in 2010. Its ongoing functioning, including the annual planting and harvesting of traditional pre-European kūmara (sweet potato) using modified, mounded soils (puke or ahu), is also covered. The unique Te Parapara Garden is of great cultural importance and a source of pride, knowledge and understanding for national and international visitors and empirical and academic researchers.