Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity

Published by Duke University Press 2014

Gendering the Recession

Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity

Edited by: Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822376538

Overview
Contents

About this book

This timely, necessary collection of essays provides feminist analyses of a recession-era media culture characterized by the reemergence and refashioning of familiar gender tropes, including crisis masculinity, coping women, and postfeminist self-renewal. Interpreting media forms as diverse as reality television, financial journalism, novels, lifestyle blogs, popular cinema, and advertising, the contributors reveal gendered narratives that recur across media forms too often considered in isolation from one another. They also show how, with a few notable exceptions, recession-era popular culture promotes affective normalcy and transformative individual enterprise under duress while avoiding meaningful critique of the privileged white male or the destructive aspects of Western capitalism. By acknowledging the contradictions between political rhetoric and popular culture, and between diverse screen fantasies and lived realities, Gendering the Recession helps to make sense of our postboom cultural moment.

Contributors. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Hamilton Carroll, Hannah Hamad, Anikó Imre, Suzanne Leonard, Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Sinéad Molony, Elizabeth Nathanson, Diane Negra, Tim Snelson, Yvonne Tasker, Pamela Thoma

Author / Editor information

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture and Head of Film Studies at University College Dublin.

Yvonne Tasker is Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of East Anglia.

Negra and Tasker are the coeditors of Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

“The new anthology Gendering the Recession offers a look at the marked resurgence of gender roles, assumptions, and imperatives that characterized this time, with smart analyses of how gender impacted branding and marketing…. The essays are united in their well-stated indictment of journalistic rhetoric that infantilizes the underemployed, particularly those who are male. While the timespan and subject matter covered by Gendering the Recession is severe and bleak, the writing here is far from it.”

-- Joshunda Sanders Bitch

" . . . the book, with its feminist analyses of a recession-era media culture, will be particularly useful to students and faculty interested in the sociology of media, gender studies, women's studies, and communication . . . Highly recommended."

-- S. Chaudhuri Choice

"On the whole, Gendering the Recession is a well-researched, well-edited and well-timed book that invites the reader to consider why women are still struggling economically compared to men....Diverse topic areas, focusing not only on different classes, but on different nations and ethnicities, give the study depth and relevance. This is particularly welcome as too often, questions of gender concern the socio-economic elite. The book is surprisingly readable and contains entertaining analyses of television shows."

-- Jessica Palmarozza Quadrapheme.com

“If it is not yet clear what a more economically minded, ‘anti-capitalist’ approach to the feminist analysis of popular media culture might look like, Gendering the Recession is of value both for the quality of the readings it collects and for the extent to which it crystallises the challenges that persist.”

-- Rebecca Bramall Feminist Review

“The significant contribution of this volume is that the authors are able to connect the various themes of gender and the recession across a variety of media sites. . . . It is a challenge in any edited volume to ensure that the chapters connect with each other to build and support a coherent argument, and this challenge was successfully met in this book. This volume will appeal to scholars and students alike—particularly advanced undergraduate and graduate classes across the social sciences and humanities.”

-- Mary Gatta Gender & Society

"This book is a must-read for all who are interested in gender studies as well as for economists, sociologists, and people from social sciences who are interested in the social and political effects of the ongoing recession and the rising economic inequality in the United States and Europe. It provides an important missing link between feminist economist and sociological analyses of the gendered causes as well as the gendered impact of the financial crisis and the recession…"

-- Margunn Bjornholt Women's Studies

“Gendering the Recession makes a clear, timely, and profound intervention into the field of feminist media studies. This collection remains useful to scholars critiquing the economic dimensions of media culture and those who utilize post-feminism and neoliberalism as frames of analysis. Negra and Tasker, with this publication, initiate an important conversation and establish a trajectory for scholarship that will continue to expand as the outcomes of 'Great Recession' continue to effect media culture.”

-- Lauren Weinzimmer Feminist Media Studies

“Gendering the Recession fills an important niche within feminist media studies by offering a gender critique of the recession-themed media that has sprouted up in recent years. This book will be invaluable to teachers and students studying contemporary representations of gender in a post-feminist neoliberal era.”

-- Natasha Patterson Canadian Journal of Communication

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction. Gender and Recessionary Culture Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One. Escaping the Recession? The New Vitality of the Woman Worker Suzanne Leonard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
Two. “Latina Wisdom” in “Postrace” Recession Media Isabel Molina-Guzmán Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Three. “We Are All Workers”: Economic Crisis, Masculinity, and the American Working Class Sarah Banet-Weiser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
Four. What Julia Knew: Domestic Labor in the Recession-Era Chick Flick Pamela Thoma Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Five. Dressed for Economic Distress: Blogging and the “New” Pleasures of Fashion Elizabeth Nathanson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
Six. The (Re)possession of the American Home: Negative Equity, Gender Inequality, and the Housing Crisis Horror Story Tim Snelson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Seven. House and Home: Structuring Absences in Post–Celtic Tiger Documentary Sinéad Molony Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Eight. “Stuck between Meanings”: Recession-Era Print Fictions of Crisis Masculinity Hamilton Carroll Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Nine. Fairy Jobmother to the Rescue: Postfeminism and the Recessionary Cultures of Reality TV Hannah Hamad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Ten. How Long Can the Party Last? Gendering the European Crisis on Reality TV Anikó Imre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	246
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Other: 24 photographs

eBook

Published: March 28, 2014
ISBN: 9780822376538