Mobile Cultures

by Berry, Chris; Martin, Fran; Yue, Audrey; Spigel, Lynn

• ISBN13: 9780822330875
• ISBN10: 0822330873
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Mobile Cultures provides much needed, empirically grounded studies of the connections between new media technologies, the globalization of sexual cultures, and the rise of queer Asia. The availability and use of new media - fax machines, mobile phones, the Internet, electronic message boards, pagers, and global television - have grown exponentially in Asia over the past decade. This explosion of information technology has sparked a revolution, transforming lives and lifestyles, enabling the creation of communities and the expression of sexual identities in a region notorious for the regulation of both information and sexual conduct. Whether looking at the hanging of toy cartoon characters like "Hello Kitty" from mobile phones to signify queer identity in Japan or the development of queer identities in Indonesia or Singapore, the essays collected here emphasize the enormous variance in the appeal and uses of new media from one locale to another. Scholars, artists, and activists from a range of countries, the contributors chronicle the different ways new media galvanize Asian queer communities in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, India, and around the world. They consider phenomena such as the uses of the Internet among gay, lesbian, or queer individuals in Taiwan and South Korea; the international popularization of Japanese queer pop culture products such as YAOI manga; and a Thai website's reading of a scientific tract on gay genetics in light of Buddhist beliefs. Essays also explore the politically subversive possibilities opened up by the proliferation of media technologies, examining, for instance, the use of Cyberjaya - Malaysia's government-backed online portal - to form online communities in the face of strict antigay laws. Contributors. Chris Berry, Tom Boellstorff, Larissa Hjorth, Katrien Jacobs, Olivia Khoo, Fran Martin, Mark McLelland, David Mullaly, Baden Offord, Sandip Roy, Veruska Sabucco, Audrey Yue

Table of Contents

Introduction: Beep--Click--Link	p. 1
Interfaces: Global/Local Intersections
I Knew It Was Me: Mass Media, "Globalization," and Lesbian and Gay Indonesians	p. 21
Japanese Queerscapes: Global/Local Intersections on the Internet	p. 52
Guided Fan Fiction: Western "Readings" of Japanese Homosexual-Themed Texts	p. 70
Syncretism and Synchronicity: Queer'n'Asian Cyberspace in 1990s Taiwan and Korea	p. 87
Queerly Embodying the Good and the Normal	p. 115
Mobile Sites: New Screens, New Scenes
Singaporean Queering of the Internet: Toward a New Form of Cultural Transmission of Rights Discourse	p. 133
Pop and ma: The Landscape of Japanese Commodity Characters and Subjectivity	p. 158
From Khush List to Gay Bombay: Virtual Webs of Real People	p. 180
Circuits: Regional Zones
Queer Voyeurism and the Pussy-Matrix in Shu Lea Cheang's Japanese Pornography	p. 201
Sexing the City: Malaysia's New "Cyberlaws" and Cyberjaya's Queer Success	p. 222
Paging "New Asia": Sambal Is a Feedback Loop, Coconut Is a Code, Rice Is a System	p. 245
Bibliography	p. 267
Contributors	p. 293
Index	p. 297
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