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"In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as 'the tranquillized decade', America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of 'spectacular' events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the 'spectacular gaze', a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history"--

Gone are the days of enjoying life's simple pleasures for pleasure's sake. Twenty-first-century Americans are on a mission to cram every second of their earthly existence with significant accomplishments and momentous events. Even the most mundane undertaking must be approached with zeal, gusto, and expertise, or so the media persuade us to believe. Are we capable of doing anything casually anymore? In this first book-length treatment of media's obsession with triviality, cultural critic Ronald Bishop calls into focus the role of media in the demise of scale-the amount of effo

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface and acknowledgements -- Notes on contributors -- Introduction: The whole world is watching - death in a spectacular age -- Death in life -- The ambivalence of death -- The age of 'spectacular death' -- About this book -- References -- Chapter 1 If death is the spectacle, big tech is the lens: How social media frame an age of 'spectacular death' -- Introduction -- Mediatisation - contacting death and the dead through social media -- Commercialisation - social media as the new funeral directors -- Re-ritualisation - the dilemma of memorialisation on social media -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 2 Resisting the grave: Value and the productive celebrity dead -- Introduction -- The age of mediated spectacle and spectacular death -- Value, 'traces' and the productive dead -- Dead famous, dead successful, dead productive: Marilyn Monroe -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 3 Touring heaven and hell: Spectacular encounters by celebrities in near-death experiences -- Introduction -- Near-death experiences -- Methodology -- Subjects -- Results -- The near-death experience -- The aftermath -- Summary -- Discussion -- Conclusion -- References -- Bibliography of study subjects -- Chapter 4 The proliferation of skulls in popular culture: A case study of how the traditional symbol of mortality was rendered meaningless -- Introduction -- A brief history of skull meanings in art and popular culture -- The morphing of vanitas art from the sacred to the profane -- 20th-century skull symbolisations of war, pogroms and protest -- The rise of the commercialised and commodified skull -- Deep cultural trends underlying the skull proliferation in the early 21st century -- Transplantation of the Latin death system with immigration -- Apocalyptic chic.

In Rio de Janeiro's favelas, traffickers assert power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous armored cars called "big skulls." Images of these spectacles circulate constantly in local, national, and global media, masking everyday forms of violence, prejudice, and inequality. The Spectacular Favela offers a rich ethnographic examination of the political economy of spectacular violence in Rocinha, Rio's largest favela. Based on more than two years of residence in the community, the book explores how entangled forms of violence shape everyday life and how that violence is, in turn, connected to the market economy. Erika Robb Larkins shows how favela violence is produced as a marketable global brand. While this violence is projected in disembodied form through media, the favela is also sold as an embodied experience through the popular practice of favela tourism. The commodification of the favela becomes a form of violence itself; favela violence is transformed into a commercially viable byproduct of a profit-driven war on drugs, which serves to keep the poor marginalized. This book tells the story of how traffickers, police, cameras, tourists, and even anthropologists come together to create what the author calls the "spectacular favela."

As entire island nations slip beneath rising seas, how can we reimagine a political future where the effects of climate change are already in full force? In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that there is a fundamental lack of legal protections for those fleeing environmental degradation and the effects of global sea level rise. This lack of protection is felt particularly strongly in the Pacific region, where many communities are faced with existential threats to their way of life and self-determination. However, despite this historic lack of support from the international community, the Pacific Islands states have continuously pushed their climate-forward agenda in debates leading up to the landmark 2015 Paris Accords, even going so far as earning themselves multiple mentions in the text of the Accords. In January of 2020, Pacific actors even pressured a landmark UN decision granting international protection to a new class of "climate refugees"--a distinction that had no legal value until this monumental agreement. How did such tiny, geo-politically distant actors create such dramatic movement in a global forum dominated by industrial superpowers? The answer to this puzzle lies within the creative, multifaceted, and sometimes bizarre strategies of Pacific Island leaders in gaining international attention and sympathy towards their cause. Through a collaboration between state and non-state actors, these Pacific Island delegates effectively pushed their climate agenda with a variety of different tactics; namely the dramatic and spectacular performances of Pacific diplomats and the direct incorporation of NGOs into international debate. The case of Pacific Island climate diplomacy challenges our assumptions about the roles of small nation states, grassroots advocacy groups, and media outlets, all while effectively redefining what it means to be a "victim" of global climate change.

"This book examines the political economy of violence in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Rocinha. Based on over two years of research and residence in the community, it offers an ethnographic account of how entangled forms of violence become essential forces shaping everyday social relations in the favela. The first part of the book shows how armed actors--drug traffickers and police--use spectacle to perform power. Yet despite the prevalence of physical violence, the favela has itself become a valuable global brand, consumed in disembodied fashion through media and in embodied fashion through tourism. Exploring media and favela tourism, the second part of the book demonstrates how the social relationships that arise from ongoing favela violence have a direct relationship to the market economy"--Provided by publisher