News from the Collective – Page 37 – Radical Open Access Collective

INC

Going Online: Metaphors, Strategies, and Experiences of Translating Cultural Events to the Internet

A Series of Conversations with Designers, Curators, and Program Makers

The start of this new decade has not turned out the way many expected or hoped for. In an increasingly globalized world, a sudden halt to mobility seemed unimaginable. From ‘the world is your oyster’ to being forced to stay confined in small bedrooms for months on end, a lot has changed overnight. The pandemic has forced people to suddenly move their whole life – work, dinners, celebrations, relationships, and cultural activities – online. As a culture professional with a fascination for media arts and online exhibitions, I the roads the cultural sector travels in transforming their programs to online. formats with open eyes It’s a road full of technical bumps, many forks that need apt decision making, and some U-turns ending up back in the 90s. From exhibitions, panel discussions, lectures, workshops to entire festivals, what was once a sector that took place mostly in exhibition spaces, conference halls, and event locations, now is confined to the two-dimensional screen.

We are still in the middle (or at the beginning, who can tell), of these developments. Once the pandemic has come to an end, the initiatives might get lost in the endlessness of content online. Maybe we will come together and laugh at the time that our lives were spent online, telling anecdotes of our experiences in confinement – only to conclude: never again. Yet, there is much to learn from what is happening as we speak. More likely than not, online or hybrid events will stay around for a longer time, during and after the coronacrisis.

What are the possibilities of Going Online? Giving digital formats a quick thought might result in a range of possibilities – fewer costs for production, spaces, and storage leads to endless amounts of content that can be available for an infinite amount of time, reaching a global audience effortlessly at the click of a button. Particular possibilities are heightened, such as zooming into an artwork in Google’s Art & Culture. A guard would have already told you to keep the appropriate distance to the artwork in a museum. When it comes to digital formats, is the sky the limit?

Exploring HD artworks with Google Arts & Culture, zoom level 75% into Vermeer’s Gezicht op Delft.

Simultaneously, doubts arise. Content is one aspect, but what about the liveness of digital formats? How can an online event feel as lively as its physical counterpart used to be? Does drinking a beer at home alone behind your device taste as good as in the event’s bar? How can communities come together and participate when, more than 1.5 meters apart, they have to bridge new distances? Roommates or partners in the background of the call, classic Zoom fatigue, and the ever problematic attention span that comes with knowing you could be doing anything and everything else while joining into a digital format – there is a lot of distraction.

Metaphors

These digital event formats often borrow metaphors from older technologies or physical spaces. In her publication, Marianna van der Boomen investigates the metaphors of digital software, functions, and concepts with which we interact in our daily lives in her publication ‘Transcoding the digital, how metaphors matter in new media’. From e-mail ‘mailboxes’ to application ‘windows’, she follows the traces of metaphors as actors. Discussing the complex systems which shape and are shaped by metaphors, she says

I consider digital-symbolical objects as an onto-epistemological riddle because they are neither pure objects, nor pure symbolic forms, nor pure digital patterns. They are hybrids of computation, algorithms, and language – artifacts cut out of arbitrarily assigned numbers, processed by machines and humans, represented, symbolized, ontologized, and incorporated in the social texture. The riddle then is: how do such composites of numbers and language, of algorithms and discourse, of computer code and cultural code, come about and get stabilized? – Marianne van der Boomen[1]

What metaphors do organizations use to translate cultural formats to virtual ones, how are they shaped, and how do they shape the formats in turn?

A recurring metaphor is the television one, as a lot of these digital events manifest as live streams on a screen. The basics are nearly the same for everybody: video and audio are (live)streamed, the audience can ask questions in a chat or by dial-in, a moderator or host guides the speakers, a team of technicians makes sure everything runs smoothly. Television has been doing this for years and years already – cultural organizations (not always equipped with the right space, technology, technical expertise, or budget) have to adapt quickly.

Strategies

How to meaningfully translate content online is almost a trick question. With limits to time, budget, and technical expertise, only so much is possible. The alternative would be not to have a cultural sector at all and wait until the lockdown is over. Is not showing something a better alternative than showing something imperfectly? More than a question about ideals, it’s a practical reality. How about the fees of the people involved, creatives and freelancers who have to pay the bills? Organizations can not shy away from this social responsibility. As has been pointed out repeatedly in the past months, a lockdown wouldn’t be any fun without music to listen to, books to read, and films to watch. Culture is urgently needed, maybe even more so nowadays.

Going Online is a matter of necessity for some organizations, a way to reach their publics who are confined to their houses. It is not something desirable. Never meant to substitute the real event, it is a forced solution to seek ways of bringing the work of artists, designers, and thinkers to its audiences. For others, the pandemic has only emphasized the need for Going Online, a strategy that was already on the agenda for a longer time. Specifically for media (arts) organizations, it makes sense to (also) present their programs convincingly on the internet, and in doing so reach new global audiences.

These processes of making new content and translating existing content are by no means homogenous ones. Similar to how these events have tailored to their specific audiences and have worked based on their own expertise and vision, their online afterlives are as different and varying as their pre-pandemic counterparts. Not one solution fits all.

A quick look at the productions of cultural events in the Netherlands in the past year gives a breath of different strategies. A selection of events: Dutch Design Week ‘went online’, resulting in 3D Viewing Rooms, 360 degrees museum walkthroughs, and DDW TV. IMPAKT Festival provided lectures, panels, workshops, and films from their self-made web portal. Framer Framed teamed up with Amsterdam Museum for the online exhibition Corona in de Stad, an ongoing collection of photos, videos, texts, and audio fragments about the experiences of the coronacrisis period of people in Amsterdam. MU’s exhibition Self Design Academy took place in hybrid formats, in which online work complemented the physical exhibition. The Hmm set out to find the best platform for online events – Jitsi, Zoom, Twitch?. Varia’s Century 21 Calling – Party Line – Stream discussed the history of the videochat tracing it back to the 19^th century. Of course, the past year showed many more events that in format and content reflected on the quick shift to the world wide web.

Varia tells it like it is on the event page of Century 21 Calling – Party Line – Stream.

Some strategies anticipated on an online or hybrid character. Others had to adapt quickly to new measures and were more reactive. What were the aims of these different events? How can the strategies and processes of Going Online become sustainable? Which choices were made along the way and why? Can and should the content stay available afterward? And if so, how do you create an archive that is lively and interesting?

Experiences

Next to metaphors and strategies, this series questions the experiences of digital events. Whereas the first corona wave still saw people excited about coming together online, much of the enthusiasm has died after months and months of online social lives. The other day a friend apologized for not texting me back. She told me that the joy of meeting up with a person and spending time with them to catch up fades out once social contact become a selection of ‘hey how are you’ messages back and forth at a continuous yet constantly disrupted pace. Similarly, the social aspects of cultural events changed, and there is a need to look for new forms.

These events can turn out to be very fun and playful, but also lonely. What are exciting ways to connect? How can visitors interact? How can an organization maintain a community online or add new audiences to their existing community? What are ways to keep up the energy level during an online event, both for the ones presenting as the ones watching?

Going Online

These and other questions will be posed, reflected upon, and answered throughout the upcoming blog series. The title, Going Online, refers to the phrase we’ve been surrounded with lately, stating ‘X is Going Online this year’. It also refers to the act of connecting to the internet as an audience, what used to be referred to as ‘surfing the web’ (yet another metaphor that speaks to the imagination while evoking imagery of the internet as an endless ocean).

The list of digital events that I will discuss in this series is by no means exhaustive, as nearly every art institution and non-institution had to deal with the challenges of translating their programs into a digital version. Although I recognize that digital (art) events and experiments go back way further than the start of the pandemic around March 2020, this series focuses on festivals, events, and exhibitions that had to transfer their practices to online environments in the course of the last year. By having conversations with designers, curators, and program makers, I attempt to provide various perspectives on the topic of medium translations. Finally, these insights come together in a first attempt for ‘Towards a Toolbox for Going Online’.

References

[1] Marianne van der Boomen, Transcoding the digital, how metaphors matter in new media, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2014

Janneke Adema

Some limitations of DOAJ metadata for research purposes

by: Xuan Zhao, Luan Borges, & Heather Morrison

Abstract

The Directory of Open Access Journals http://doaj.org is an excellent service that fulfills many important functions, in particular facilitating access to a vetted collection of over 15,000 freely available peer-reviewed journals. The DOAJ search services and metadata download are very useful for researchers as well. The purpose of this post is to alert researchers to some of the limitations of the DOAJ metadata that researchers need to take into account to avoid drawing erroneous conclusions. First, when downloading DOAJ metadata, it is necessary to open the .csv file in Unicode in order to retain non-English characters. We open in Open Office for this reason, then save as an excel file. The nature of the metadata means that some data is inserted in the wrong column; clean-up, as discussed below, is necessary before data analysis. When journal editors or others working on their behalf enter metadata into DOAJ, research is not the primary purpose of this exercise; for this reason, in-depth assessment and corrections may be necessary before analysis. Below, we present publisher size analysis as an example of what researchers may encounter. Finally, because the main purpose of DOAJ is connecting readers with content, the metadata of interest to a particular research project may not be up to date. As demonstrated below, as of Jan. 5, 2021, only 30% of DOAJ journals have a “last update” date within the previous year (2020). We do not know whether the “last update” date reflects a full or partial metadata review. We illustrate the potential impact on research results with the example of the SKC longitudinal APC study. Of the 4,292 DOAJ journals that responded “yes” to the APC question, only 30% have a last update date of 2020 or 2021. Even with this 30% of journals, we have no way of knowing whether the APC status and/or amount per se was updated, or only other unrelated metadata. This means that if we compare 2019 prices obtained from publisher websites in 2019 with 2021 DOAJ APC metadata, we will almost certainly get incorrect results, for example falsely assuming that matching APC amounts means no change in the prices. DOAJ provides rich and useful metadata for the researcher and the research question “is this journal listed in DOAJ?” is of value in and of itself. For this reason, we intend to continue using DOAJ metadata in addition to data derived from other sources, particularly data derived directly from publisher websites.

Details

Correcting for displaced observations

As previously mentioned, the first step to confidently use the DOAJ metadata for analysis and research is identifying and correcting data inserted in the wrong column, herein also called displaced observations.

Below we can see an example of a displaced observation from the DOAJ metadata. Column BB has no assigned variable while containing some observations, apparently displaced one column to the right.

*Table 1 – An example of misplaced data from 2021 DOAJ metadata*

Users may follow different steps to correct for displaced data. Here we explain in more detail how we have identified these displacements and corrected them.

Before proceeding with any analysis, it is important to get familiarized with the DOAJ metadata first. We recommend users to read the DOAJ Guide to applying, available online, because the metadata reflects responses to questions asked in the application process. The DOAJ metadata, as of 5 Jan. 2021, possesses 53 variables ranging from Journal Title to Country to Most recent article added. It may be helpful to start correcting observations from variables with easily identifiable responses, such as « Country » or « Country of Publisher », or variables that allow only two types of answers (i.e Yes or No), such as Author holds copyright without restrictions and APC. It is recommended to create a pivot table to identify displaced observations, repeating this process until no observations are identified in a wrong column.

When cleaning-up the DOAJ metadata, users will notice that in some cases only one observation was displaced; in other cases, an entire row was displaced beginning on a specific variable. In the example highlighted in yellow below, all observations beginning at variable Publisher were displaced one column to the right.

*Table 2 – Line 36 illustrates an example of an entire row with displaced observations*

Data entry inconsistencies

When correcting for displaced observations, we have also identified some inconsistencies in the way observations are registered in the DOAJ metadata. The table below lists the main visible inconsistencies found for some variables. In the majority of instances, the inconsistencies will not impact DOAJ users looking up information for a particular journal. However, it is important to take into account these inconsistencies before proceeding to any automated statistical analysis. For example, DOAJ metadata as is can be used to identify the number of journals with persistent article identifiers, but automated counting of DOI v. ARK or other approaches would require some advance data manipulation.

Variable	Example
Alternative title	Some journals alternative titles may be registered as a number. Some examples are “2300-6633” and “0”.
Keywords	Some observations have some special characters as follows: 6. rheology, tribology, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, mechanics of structures, mechatronics.  water cycles, water environment, water treatment and reuse, water resource, water quality, hydrology • natural sciences, • environmental sciences, • social sciences, agricultural sciences, veterinary medicine, medical sciences
Copyright information URL	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an “h” at the beginning and an “l” at the end of the link. ttp://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/services/publishing/jiuc/authors.htm
Plagiarism information URL	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning and an « l » at the end of the link. ttp://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/services/publishing/jiuc/authors.htm
URL for journal’s instructions for authors	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning of the URL ttps://revistas.unasp.edu.br/LifestyleJournal/about/submissions
Other submission fees information URL	Some URLs have extra letters. The example below, for instance, has a letter « i » at the beginning of the URL ihttps://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/voebm/m/index Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning of the URL ttp://psr.ui.ac.id/index.php/journal/about/submissions#authorGuidelines ttps://www.karger.com/Journal/Guidelines/261897#sec62
Preservation Services	Preservation services can be registered as a name or a website
Preservation Service: national library	Preservation services – national library can be registered as a name or a website
Preservation information URL	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below, for instance, has a small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning of the URL tps://periodicos.uff.br/revistagenero/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope ttp://ejournal.stkip-pgri-sumbar.ac.id/index.php/economica
Deposit policy directory	Deposit policy directory can be registered as a name or a website
Persistent article identifiers	Persistent article identifiers can be registered as an acronym (UDC, DOI, ARK), but also as a website, such as dc.identifier.uri (DSpaceUnipr) or NBN http://www.depositolegale.it/national-bibliography-number/. Another example is the occurrences UDC and UDC (Universal decimal Classification), which are equivalents but were registered differently
URL for journal’s Open Access statement	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or at the end, or they have an extra h at the beginning of the URL. The example below has an extra letter « h » at the beginning of the URL. hhttp://www.revistas.usp.br/gestaodeprojetos/about

Table 3 – Visible inconsistencies identified in the DOAJ metadata

Publisher’s names duplicates investigation and clean-up

The purpose of this project is preparation to develop a rough picture of publisher size to compare with Solomon & Björk’s findings (2012). In order to better perform publisher size analysis, we have specifically investigated the publisher duplicates and corrected most of the obvious errors, such as small differences in punctuation and/or characters, extra spaces at the beginning and/or at the end, and minor differences in entering the publisher name when it is the same, etc. (Please see examples in Table 4 – Investigative Strategies – Publisher Names Duplicates).

The process of clean-up was divided into three stages. Firstly, we created a pivot table for the publisher column to identify the entries in rows which were slightly different but weren’t gathered. Secondly, when potential duplicates were found, we conducted an investigation to confirm duplicates and/or to decide which name to keep (in priority order: use the name with the most journal entries; correct name with obvious typo; use the first name listed). Please see the investigative strategies below:

*Table 4 – Investigative Strategies – Publisher Names Duplicates*

Thirdly, after identifying inconsistencies in publisher names, we created a table (please see Table 5 – Corrections Gathering – Publisher Names Duplicates) to register all the corrections on the variable Publisher. About 500 inconsistencies were corrected. Thus, the number of publishers in the pivot table has decreased from 7218 entries (data resource: pivot table based on DOAJ metadata) to 6804 entries (data resource: pivot table based on the cleaned-up version of database).

*Table 5 – Corrections Gathering* – *Publisher Names Duplicates*

As illustrated in the two tables above, there were different types of data inconsistencies. In order to respect metadata to the greatest extent, we acted prudently when making decisions. In some minor variation cases, we tried to click on the URLs to check publisher websites and to collect convincing evidence. However, we met some intricate complex challenges.

One of the challenges was the language. Due to the massiveness and the wide-range of publishers (124 countries, 80 languages, DOAJ, 7 Feb. 2021) [https://doaj.org/], we were unable to identify all of the sources of information. Besides, when there were invalid URLs or unmatched information, it was difficult to seek out any precision. What’s more, among 7218 entries of publisher names, some of the potential duplicates weren’t gathered because of their different beginning words. For example, “Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Eduem)” vs. “Eduem – Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá” and “Academica Brâncuşi” vs. “Editura Academica Brâncuşi”. They were usually far apart and hard to be detected. More details can be found in the Table 6 below:

Different beginning words (examples)

“Academica Brâncuşi” vs. “Editura Academica Brâncuşi”;
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi” vs. “Editura Universităţii ‘Alexandru Ioan Cuza’ Iaşi”;
“Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Eduem)” vs. “Eduem – Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá”

Table 6 – (1)

Unmatched publisher names (examples):

Original publisher names	Possible correct names	URLs
Canadian Society for the Study of Education.	The Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies	https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/index
Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Kesehatan	URL directs to a new web link: https://ejournal2.litbang.kemkes.go.id/index.php/jki/index whose publisher name is: Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembangan Biomedis dan Teknologi Dasar Kesehatan	http://ejournal.litbang.kemkes.go.id/index.php/jki
Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services	Kowsarmedical	http://journals.sbmu.ac.ir/jme

Table 6 – (2)

Invalid URLs (examples):

Original publisher names	Original URLs (invalid)
Alborz University of Medical Sciences (URLs wrongly directs to a website whose contents are meaningless; when we searched the journal title, we were directed to this website : https://enterpathog.abzums.ac.ir/)	http://enterpathog.com/?page=home ; https://jehe.abzums.ac.ir/index.php?slc_lang=en&sid=1
Instituto Nacional de Salud (INS)	http://revistas.ins.gov.py/index.php/rspp/
Instituto Superior de Ciências de Educação do Huambo	http://revista.isced-hbo.ed.ao/rop/index.php/ROP/index

Table 6 – (3)

Given the barriers and challenges mentioned above, we can draw a conclusion to the limitations of publisher names clean-up project. Precision is not possible in this project because the question “who is the publisher” is complex. Instead of making any definitive claims about publisher size, we are primarily interested in whether the long tail effect (a few big publishers, a few more middle-sized, most very small) reported by Solomon & Björk (2012) can still be observed in DOAJ in 2021.

DOAJ metadata update analysis

The following analysis was conducted to determine whether DOAJ metadata on article processing charges (APCs) – charging status and amount – would be sufficient for SKC’s longitudinal study on APC trends over time. The answer is clearly no. The metadata for the vast majority of journals in DOAJ (overall and APC charging) has not been updated for more than a year, and it is unknown whether the most recent update would have included an update to APC or other metadata. We will continue to use DOAJ metadata as it is rich and the question “is this journal listed in DOAJ” is of value in and of itself, however for price comparisons we cannot rely on this data as it would likely result in erroneous conclusions.

DOAJ journals by year of last update.

This chart illustrates the percentage of DOAJ journals last update by year. Detailed figures are in the table below. Note that just under half the journals were last updated 2 or more years ago (2018 or earlier).

DOAJ last update as of Jan. 5, 2021
Year	# journals last updated	% journals last updated
2015	294	2%
2016	1,469	9%
2017	2,864	18%
2018	2,951	19%
2019	3,412	22%
2020	4,662	30%
2021	39	0%
Total	15,691	100%

Table 7

DOAJ APC charging journals by year of last update

The chart above illustrates the percentage of journals that answered “yes” to the DOAJ question about charging APCs by year of last update. The table below provides the detailed figures. Note that only 30% of DOAJ journals that charge APCs were updated in the past year (2020 or 2021). It is also unknown whether in these cases the last update was a thorough review of the metadata, or might have been an update of non-APC data.

DOAJ last update APC journals only Jan. 5, 2021
Year of last udpate	# of journals last updated	% journals last updated
2015	47	1%
2016	238	6%
2017	499	12%
2018	930	22%
2019	1,286	30%
2020	1,276	30%
2021	16	0%
Total	4,292	100%

Table 8

References

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) online: https://doaj.org/

Solomon, D. J., & Björk, B. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1485–1495. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673

Open Book Publishers

Jane Austen in Covid

by Jane Stabler

Jane Austen has kept a lot of people company during the lockdowns of 2020-2021; Nora Bartlett’s book, Jane Austen: Reflections of a Reader, explains why. The book is a posthumous publication; Nora Bartlett died from a cancer of the oesophagus at the age of only sixty-seven. Editing her talks during lockdown, I was acutely aware—like everyone—of daily freedoms suddenly withdrawn: walking outdoors; travelling anywhere beyond the immediate locality; meeting friends and family members; face-to-face communication; shared meals; unmasked smiles; ungloved touch. Our newly circumscribed existence forced me to reappraise those aspects of Jane Austen’s world which used to govern the lives of her female characters alone. Jane Austen’s fiction recreates the claustrophobia and the long vistas of enforced waiting which defined the daily experience of nineteenth-century women. Covid has made all of us suddenly aware of a new set of social expectations and rules for conduct, together with a depressing sense of diminished expectations. For months now, many of us have been plunged into the listlessness of Catherine Morland when she is sent back to Fullerton at the end of Northanger Abbey before Henry Tilney unexpectedly arrives or we have felt our spirits quail along with Emma Woodhouse’s as she faces the challenge of how to get ‘tolerably through the evening’ at the beginning of Emma or we have experienced Fanny Price’s desperate wish in Mansfield Park to escape to read in peace in the spare room, despite its lack of heating.

Nora Bartlett first read Jane Austen when she was six years old and continued to read and re-read the novels for the next six decades. She discusses the way one’s reading experience of Austen changes over time, the way we never step into the same river or the same novel twice (although people watching re-runs of the 1995 Andrew Davies Pride and Prejudice probably are stepping into the same river twice). The paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice accompanied Nora to palliative chemotherapy sessions and a few days before she died, she fought through the fog of morphine to send an email: ‘Jane, this is idle in the extreme, but when you are back could you send me the quote from Maria Edgeworth about touch in ch. 9 in Persuasion—the letter to the friend saying something like, “could you not feel it?” I am sure it must be in X’s book, but weirdly I can't find that–penalty for lumping together books by size and not alphabetically by author, grrr (to self) wonder if it is in the Norton, hmmm....’. ‘Hmmm’ was one of Nora’s characteristic shorthand expressions for ‘this is worth pondering further’. All the things she singled out for attention were worth pondering further, and this was no exception: Edgeworth’s sentence moves by steps into the feelings of Anne Elliot: ‘Don’t you see Captain Wentworth, or rather don’t you in her place feel him taking the boisterous child off her back as she kneels by the sick boy on the sofa?’ ‘Don’t you in her place feel?’ goes to the heart of why Austen has been such a great escape through lockdown—her novels remind us of what it is to crave and finally to be granted the contact with the rest of the physical world.

‘Jane Austen’s novels are very often treated’, Nora Bartlett writes laughingly, ‘as though they were written by a brainy middle-aged spinster who was not much interested in bodies […] but even her later novels, concern themselves with the workings of the body—sick or well’. This new book highlights the deft touches with which Austen conveys our dependence on the tactile. Here, Nora illuminates, for example, Austen’s capture of the thrilling shock when Marianne Dashwood is lifted up by Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility:

He lifts her without hesitating (‘without farther delay’), despite her maidenly protests, and ‘doesn’t let go’ until he sees her safe. Here he shows a readiness to touch, to act, both strength and tenderness. He is going to turn out to be a cad in Volume II, but before we are distracted by that, we ought to note how much male nursing he seems capable of giving. The key seems to be the capacity for gentle, but unhesitating, action.

This extract is from ‘Courting and Nursing in Jane Austen’s novels’. It was written a long time before the pandemic, but with the timeless relevance of all really good literary criticism, Nora Bartlett goes on to show how Austen relays the physical actuality of the sickbed, the mental stamina required for nursing, and those steely, compassionate feats of repetition before which we all now stand in awe. Penetrating analysis tracks the crisis of Marianne’s fever, alert to the way that one long chapter watches Marianne, hour by hour, through Elinor’s eyes, and through the interventions of Mrs Jennings:

It is beautifully staged: Mrs. Jennings thinks that
Marianne will die and surely her expectation, withheld from Elinor
through an uncharacteristic tact, but communicated in her more usual
incontinent fashion to her maid, is part of the brilliant presentation of
Marianne’s illness, in which the steep rise of her suffering and delirium,
the depiction of Elinor’s terror when Marianne becomes irrational
and babbles incoherently about their mother and London all has to be
attended to closely by the reader, for whom after however many readings
Marianne’s recovery is always an achievement and a relief. And surely a
part of the technical production of that suspense, that uncertainty about
these events, even for the re-reader who has long known the outcome, is
the weight of Mrs. Jennings’s pessimism, Mrs. Jennings who has nursed
her husband in his last illness and perhaps has sat by many deathbeds.
This pessimism adds substance to the undeniable drama of this
episode, as the old lady’s unwise communication to the maidservant is
brought home to the waiting and exhausted Elinor through her second
sleepless night: ‘the servant […] tortured her more, with hints of what
her mistress had always thought’.

The insight about how indirectly information about a patient is often delivered is strikingly original, as is Nora Bartlett’s sensitivity to the way Austen’s prose recreates the hesitant perception that a very sick patient might have turned a corner:

This scene is so beautifully constructed that, though I have read
the novel many times and I know Marianne gets better, I cannot stop
reading until the night is over and the apothecary had made his second
visit in twelve hours (those were the days) and ‘About noon […] she
began—but with a caution—a dread of disappointment, which for some
time kept her silent, even to her friend—to fancy, to hope she could
perceive a slight amendment in her sister’s pulse’.

Nora Bartlett’s book casts new light on Austen’s ability to make touch come alive; she shows us exactly why Anne’s response to Captain Wentworth’s assistance with the clinging child is so tumultuous. Calling it a ‘whirling moment’ of physical intensity, Nora Bartlett traces Austen’s skill in building up Anne’s long years of sensory deprivation, the flickering hope that her self-imposed sentence is at an end, the agony of suspense before the pulse of her life begins again after an almost unbearable postponement. All these insights and more make this warm, funny, compelling book a remarkable companion to the companionship of Austen’s fiction.

Jane Austen: Reflections of a Reader by Nora Bartlett, edited by Jane Stabler is an Open Access title available to read and download for free or to purchase in paperback, hardback and various eBook formats here.

INC

The Hustler Mirage: Selling Toxic Productivity under the Guise of Coaching

“30 years. 18-hour days. Not 8-hour days, 10-hour days, 12-hour days, 18-hour days. If anybody thinks you can be successful without paying that price, you’re wrong.” – Grant Cardone

If you have an account on any of the most prominent social media platforms, you are already somewhat familiar with ‘hustlers’. Sure, you might have seen a relative promoting their side business or a distant friend sharing content about their start-up, but hustlers are something else. Think less personal and more marketable. In recent years, ex-life coaches, motivational speakers and business owners developed a habit of sharing their insights on being a successful entrepreneur – or ‘hustler’ – online.

The term ‘hustling’ was popularised two centuries ago, used both within and towards black communities in the US. Isabella Rosario explains that depending on the context, it either referred to demanding work conditions black people had to endure or was used in a derogatory sense to link black people’s labour to laziness. Then, “throughout the 20th century, hustle was used to describe the reality of what many poor black people had to do to make ends meet.”[1]

This version of ‘hustling’ recognises the inequality of the economic playing field, where engrained prejudice halts opportunities and access to better working conditions and better worker rights. Rosario notes that the term was eventually noticed by corporations like Uber in the mid-2010s when it was appropriated and slowly transformed into a label for a movement which worships the middle-aged white CEO. It rid itself of most race and class consciousness to give way for the contemporary digital hustler to form.

The hustler creates online content that matches the mannerisms and presentation of what we imagine a successful business owner may be. They provide life advice, share inspirational quotes and promise land of equal opportunity where anything is possible. The hustler is a capitalist hero. They observe the free market as it spontaneously evolves and harnesses its potential. How do I achieve anything I want? – you might ask the hustler. They provide answers: aim for constant productivity and dedicate most of your time to work. In short, you have to commit to the grind if you want to reach new heights. It’s like a digitized American Dream, repackaged into bite-sized shareable content. How does this dogma function online?

The Making of a Hustler

The hustler shudders at the thought of working a 9 to 5 job, ‘making someone else rich.’ They would rather make himself rich. If you do not succeed, well, you did not try hard enough. Inspirational entrepreneurial images and videos often rely on ‘masculine’ buzzwords and aspirations, inadvertently setting up an unrealistic standard for virtually everyone: those who aspire to live like this and those who don’t but are bombarded by the expectations anyway. Never give up, master your daily routine, work when they sleep, never look back, be your own boss, be confident, don’t you want this new watch or car? Don’t you want to provide financial security for your family? Working for someone else is not very masculine of you. You should take your future into your own hands.

“Pay the price today so you can pay any price in the future.” – Cardone

Take Grant Cardone, a real estate mogul who built his career in part providing entrepreneurial courses and life advice. As a hustler-influencer, he serves as a blueprint for other budding entrepreneurs and hustlers, showing up on social media feeds in a suit, showing off his lavish lifestyle, and promising you that you can do it too. In the same breath, he will claim that if you think life is too expensive, you are simply not making enough money. Do not stop to think why so many services are unattainable, sometimes for people who indeed work one, two, three jobs and still struggle to make ends meet. Structural issues and inequity dissolve in the eyes of the hustler-influencer. The identity of a hustler offers salvation from these dire circumstances, allowing entrance into a neoliberal haven where innovation and hard work always pay off, judged by the neutral gaze of the market.

In unscripted, chaotic news anchor-style videos accompanied by his wife Elena, Cardone rambles about what men should provide for women, cutting her off at every possible moment, and proclaiming authenticity is his best feature. He frames his derogatory and uneducated claims as something positive, unapologetic, masculine. Fellas, sometimes people will dislike you, and you just pay them no mind. “I’m just an authentic person. You either like me or you don’t,” he says, leaving no space for criticism or reflection, claiming they are distractions. And of course, his fans should follow if they want to stay focused on the things that matter; money, money, money.

Occasionally, in fragments taken from longer motivational videos, Cardone shares a down-to-earth anecdote or past struggle on social media to ensure you know that successful businessmen are just like you. And you can be like him if you commit.

Cardone blends business advice with personal advice, a popular approach amongst hustler-influencers. It comes as no surprise since their version of reality sees the individual and their profession as inseparable entities, a brand which depends on being perceived as a success. Keep following his content to grow your chance of making it big. Increase his wealth just in case it leads to increasing yours. And if it doesn’t, well, it might be time to purchase another coaching course. The creation of the hustler continues; he should be like Action Man, built to optimise his performance in the workplace and inside a nuclear family unit. It screams 1950s, except now the hustler also exists in code, on marketable websites and on social media apps, where he waits for the algorithm to match him with users in need of a little entrepreneurial inspiration.

Why join the grind?

The aspiring hustler asks: What is the point in working so many hours just to make someone else up top richer? Why am I expected to work 40+ hours a week in a job I do not find useful or fulfilling? What’s in it for me? Hustler-influencers answer; you cannot let yourself be exploited by some big corporation (but look at my one, how successful!). Don’t you want to be like me? I don’t have to worry about living from paycheck to paycheck. I don’t have to meticulously budget my expenses, I just spend. And you can have it too.

The aspiring hustler gives into the equal-opportunity narrative. They embrace the grind, deciding to utilise the ‘free market’ they simultaneously fear and worship to become a business owner or a CEO. And they wish to find others who are on a similar journey. Online hustle culture awaits, inviting them to join like-minded hard workers and dreamers who are not like the rest. Sometimes, the hustler is still a teenager, worried about their prospects and searching for alternative ways of making money. They find #grindtok or #hustletok and they are inspired. Look at these people, working for themselves and earning so much, making it look so easy. I want what they have. And the algorithm provides, offering videos like “Ages 13-25 and wanting to make money online?” or “How to make $50/hour even if you are just 14 years old!”. The pressure builds – what’s your excuse?

Forget inherited wealth, unethical business practices, manipulative marketing tactics, and capitalising on others’ financial worries. Hustling is an equal-opportunity endeavour, remember? Many budding entrepreneurs online ignore the skeletons dwelling in the closets of these figures. Besides, if overworking yourself is so glamorous, then those who are the most successful must be working the hardest. Right? The hustler-influencer is a creature of conflictual ambiguities, preaching hard work but automating and outsourcing much of the labour he performs. Claiming authenticity is his best asset, but operating like a charlatan, lining his own pockets while he promises you wealth. He praises small business endeavours, but supports tactics and policies that crush their potential, and elevate already well-established conglomerates. As long as you believe the hustler-influencer’s act, he will continue to benefit from the attention.

We all want financial freedom and fulfilment. But when we dream of freedom, we do not dream of exploitation. Still, such is the root of many businesses that hustlers and budding entrepreneurs idolise. On his never-ending path to exorbitant wealth, the aspiring hustler becomes a target of exploitation. A self-inflicted unsustainable work ethic makes their journey all the more painful. It makes them depend more on continuing help from hustler-influencers. Don’t stop until you succeed. No matter how compelling, this cult of the self-made entrepreneur is showing cracks and has been for some time. Echoing the growing criticism of ‘the hustle’ and marketable workaholism, many TikTok users identify glamorisation of exhaustion, gentrification, and manipulation in comment sections of hustle videos. I invite them to dream bigger and consider how the near future would look if we transitioned away from toxic productivity towards something more beneficial.

How to Be Hustle-Free

Fernández-Herrería and Martínez-Rodríguez propose a deconstruction of the neoliberal entrepreneurial self. They believe it is possible through the embrace of the Internet as a tool for establishing communication paths focused on cooperation and collaboration, not on predatory competition. In this way, a new identity can emerge; one “far removed from the capitalist worldview, now establishing emerging entrepreneurial visions which feed on values and forms of collaborative commons.”[2] In an adjusted search for community, the online hustler could soon find alternative bonds through the Internet of Things: advice instead of pressure, support instead of guilt, and connection instead of rivalry.

In the meantime, the aspiring hustler should allow themselves leisure time, rest, and critical reflection away from hustler-influencers and their clickable life advice. This is the only way to start to minimise immense pressure to perform, which inevitably leads to exhaustion and burnout. We must create some distance between our work and self-worth. This task is daunting since the waves of glamorised workaholism seem to be crashing from all sides. But if we challenge this way of thinking, we will preserve our mental health and function better in the long run. What would our routines look like if we were able to separate ourselves from our labour? Here, we might find enjoyment in daily tasks, and grow to appreciate many aspects of our lives we are often too busy to notice.

Aspiring entrepreneurs deserve better than empty promises from millionaires who sell unachievable daily routines and convince them to take big financial risks in exchange for the promise of eventual monetary gain in the future. At the centre of this is the conviction that hard work is empowering and a one-way ticket to success. Understandably, many people want this to be true. In a sense, it would signal a meritocracy and an equal-opportunity society.

However, this mentality serves the continual protection of individuals who stockpile wealth and utilise it to dominate industries, keeping smaller businesses from flourishing and silencing workers who demand better conditions. To deconstruct hustle culture, we must make it clear that so many business owners who are put on pedestals as self-made geniuses came from generational wealth, which increased their chance of launching and maintaining businesses. This perspective should help the hustler realise that reaching heights of Bezos, Zuckerberg or Musk is unachievable for reasons other than a lack of determination or self-discipline. Billionaires might humour new entrepreneurs and aspiring hustlers with quotable tips and tricks about productivity and hard work. It is nothing but a mirage. They have no profitable reason to expose their pitfalls and collective efforts on which they rely to maintain their conglomerates. But if we start to shift attention away from big business owners and hustler-influencers, we will make space for more meaningful bonds with like-minded people who deserve real advice and support from more reliable sources.

Following a passion, pursuing a career or starting a business all require resources, education, and support. We do not achieve anything alone, and it is in our collective interest to recognise the value in networks of support and care. There is work to be done. Debunking the myth of the great self-made CEO demands many structural changes. We can start by gathering together online and using the Internet of Things to our advantage. It would no longer benefit an influencing and capitalising minority. If an online hustler shares his productive 5 am morning routine, but no one is there to hear him, did he make a sound?

References

[1] Isabella Rosario, When The Hustle Isn’t Enough (npr.org), https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/04/03/826015780/when-the-hustle-isnt-enough?t=1612350702554 [Accessed 20 Jan 2021].
[2] Alfonso Fernández-Herrería, Fransisco Miguel Martínez-Rodríguez, “Deconstructing the neoliberal Entrepreneurial Self: A critical perspective derived from a global “biophilic consciousness,” Policy Futures in Education, Vol. 14(3), pp. 314-326.

INC

Online Seminar: Engaging with Online Sex Work on February 10th

Many concepts ‘meet’ each other in the practices of online sex work; physical & digital, pleasure & power, intimacy & publicness, body & labour. Not to forget how gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality intersect in this type of work. How can we engage in meaningful ways with these complexities and entangled realities? INC member, artist and communication scholar Antonia Hernandez and writer, researcher, activist, and porn performer Lorelei Lee will discuss how art, writing, and play might provide methods for engagement with the multifaceted nature of online sex work. This online seminar is organized by the Global Digital Cultures Research Network/the University of Amsterdam (UvA).

Chair: Hanne Stegeman, Ph.D. student in the Markets, Morals, and Mass Intimacy project (NWO).

Speakers:

Lorelei Lee (they/she) is a writer, porn performer, sex worker activist, organizer, juris doctor, Justice Catalyst Fellow, co-founder of the Disabled Sex Workers Coalition, and researcher with Hacking//Hustling. Their writing appears in n+1, The Establishment, $pread, Denver Quarterly, The Feminist Porn Book, Coming Out Like a Porn Star, We Too, Hustling Verse, and elsewhere. Their book, ‘Anything of Value,’ looking at sex work through legal history, memoir, and cultural criticism, is anticipated from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2023. https://twitter.com/MissLoreleiLee
Antonia Hernández is a communication studies scholar from Concordia University Montreal and artist who has engaged with the complexity of online sex work both scholarly writing and artistic projects. Through the artwork and research project ‘Maintenance Pornography / Sexcams in a Dollhouse’, she investigated platforms, value creation, and the domestic in online sex work. https://www.hernandez.com/

Date: 10 February 2021
Time: 17:00-18:00 CET/11:00-12:00 EST
Where: online
More information + registration: https://globaldigitalcultures.uva.nl/content/events/events/2021/02/engaging-with-online-sex-work.html?origin=GU1z7Jn%2FRXKfJ6jqcqgEaQ&cb

INC

Streaming series @ Aksioma: (re)programming: strategies for self-renewal

(re)programming is a season of close encounters with world-class thinkers debating key issues, from infrastructure and energy to community and AI, hosted by the Spanish author Marta Peirano and live-streamed every third Monday of the month.

Concept

As a growing population is sharing an ever-shrinking planet, we have found ourselves at an existential crossroads: do we bring the mistakes of the enlightenment and industrialization to their logical conclusion or should we develop a capacity to reprogram ourselves as a species, in order to survive? Some of the solutions might be technical but most of the obstacles are not.

Through surveillance, manipulation and escapism, multinationals and foreign governments are using the powerful tools that could help us manage the climate emergency to manage us instead. The apocalyptic narratives of destruction, natural selection and space colonization distract us from the urgent need to manage our resources and mitigate a disaster.

Politically, the principles of liberal democracy have been put to test. Pre-fascist leaders are democratically elected, from Narendra Modi in India to Victor Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey. Following his refusal to engage in climate action and his brutal backlash against migrants and refugees, Donald Trump became the presidential candidate who won the second most votes in US history, beaten only by Joe Biden.

Aksioma’s Reprogramming series will aim to respond to the following two questions: what will it take for humanity to change its course and build a responsible future for the generations to come, and what can really be accomplished when we finally do this? The series will focus on solutions, finding tools, words or visions across the different disciplines, from energy and infrastructure to community building and AI.

We will analyse the strategies used by successful communities and proposed by social and scientific institutions to help us reset and find the way back. Not to the way it was, but to the way it should have been: an engaged community that encompasses all living beings on this planet.

The curator

Marta Peirano is a journalist specialized in technology and power. She works for main Spanish media outlets, including El Pais, La Sexta TV, Muy Interesante and Radio Nacional de España. She is a well-known public speaker and long-time advocate of free software, digital privacy and the radical decentralization of the critical infrastructure.

Program

See the full program here

15-02-2021: Trigger (with Kim Stanley Robinson)

15-03-2021: Infrastructure

19-04-2021: Energy

17-05-2021: Interdependence

21-06-2021: AI

20-09-2021: Data

18-10-2021: Community

15-011-2021: Accountability

INC

OUT NOW: TOD#40 Covid-19 From The Margins

Theory on Demand #40
COVID-19 from the Margins.
Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society
Edited by Stefania Milan, Emiliano Treré and Silvia Masiero

COVID-19 from the Margins: Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society stems from the blog ‘COVID-19 from the Margins’, launched in May 2020 to amplify the multilingual voices of social groups and individuals silenced in the overly-quantified narrative of the pandemic. Featuring contributions in five idioms, the anthology explores five core themes of the first pandemic of the datafied society seen from the perspective of the disempowered: human invisibilities and the politics of counting; perpetuated vulnerabilities and inequalities; datafied social policies; technological reconfigurations in the datafied pandemic; and pandemic solidarities and resistance from below. The five themes offer a snapshot of the social costs of the pandemic in countries as diverse as South Africa, China, Peru, Iran, Spain, New Zealand, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia—and counting. It gives voice to the untold stories of communities struggling to survive in the crisis, such as gig workers, indigenous groups, domestic violence survivors, impoverished families and vulnerable people, racialized individuals, migrants, rural dwellers, and the LGBTQ+ community.

‘COVID-19 from the Margins caringly and thoughtfully demonstrates why the multiplicity we call “the poor” is more than ever at the receiving end of the worst effects of globalized, patriarchal/colonial racist capitalism. But they are not passive victims, for their everyday forms of activism and re-existence, including their daily tweaking of the digital for purposes of community, care, and survival, has incredible insights about design and digital justice that this book takes to heart as we strive to undo the lethal effects of “the first pandemic of the datafied society”,’ wrote anthropologist Arturo Escobar (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill & Universidad de Caldas, Manizales) commenting on the book.

The book is a multilingual conversation that celebrates linguistic and cultural diversity but also de-centers dominant ways of being and knowing while contributing a decolonial approach to the narration of the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, it brings researchers, activists, practitioners, and communities on the ground into dialogue to offer timely, critical reflections in near-real time and in an accessible language. The result is a heterogeneous, polycentric and pluriversal narration, which invites the reader to enact and experience the “Big data from the South(s)” approach as an interpretive lens to read the pandemic.

Order and download to the book HERE

Janneke Adema

Preservation of Digital Blog-Posts

A Literature Review, January 2021

The goal of this literature review was to gain an understanding of the current status of research on the topic of digital blog preservation. After conducting a series of searching within the database LISTA (Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts), one can determine that there are little to no recent developments in technology or research specifically for the access/preservation of digital blog posts.

Unsurprisingly, much of the scholarly conversation about blog/microblog preservation took place between 2002 and 2010.

Thoughts on Blog Preservation

Despite the varying opinions that blogs are either easier or more difficult to preserve than other digital communications, scholars agree that blogs and microblogs have unique qualities that deserve scholarly discussion.

According to Patsy Baudoin, many blogging websites utilize software that automatically preserves the sequencing of posts (2008). This innate quality of the software supports the archiving principles of “original order” and “provenance”. However intelligent the blogging software appears to be, blogs and other user-generated content are especially vulnerable to link rot (Banks, 2010).

Blogs can become complex to preserve because they may contain various file formats, media, or have several owners (Baudoin, 2008). To add to this sentiment, Grimard (2005) states that the variety of formats adds to the “opaqueness” of digital records (opaqueness referring to the unnatural structure of electronic information that is only computer-readable).

To maintain the integrity of the blog during the preservation process, the digital archivist would have to consider preserving the additional external links within the original blog post. Furthermore, copyright can be an issue in certain blog preservation circumstances, as there have been several cases brought to the US Supreme Court (Chen, 2005).

Preservation Technology

Open-source technologic advancements in blog preservation have been disappointing at best. According to Caroline Young, there have been several programs for blog preservation that have essentially failed soon after conception (2013).

Some examples are PANDORA by the National Library of Australia, and ArchivePress by the University of London’s Computer Centre and British Library Digital Preservation department. Young mentions a developing blog preservation software called BlogForever, which was still in development in 2013. Now, it seems to be available for use and claims to be a new system to harvest, preserve, manage and reuse blog content.

Young (2013), Banks (2010), Rosenthal (2016), and Chen (2010) all highlight the impact made by the introduction of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine has simproved the landscape of digital preservation of grey literature like bog posts; however, it is not without its challenges. Much like other archiving software, it has difficulty with images and audio files.

Solutions to the Preservation Problem

Though an older article, Grimard (2005) offers some solutions to digital preservation that are still relevant. One important recommendation is to standardize the format of the information. The recommendation is echoed by Young (2013). Both authors emphasize the importance of converting files to the most usable format. Since file formats are simply a set of conventions that software developers can change and alter, they may become obsolete. Young describes the universal XML format as being hierarchical and organized logically.

LOCKSS is a blog preservation software mentioned in both Leroy (2018) and Rosenthal (2016). It is an open-source software designed with libraries in mind. It also claims to preserve animations, data sets, images, audio, and text content.

Conclusion

The scholarly conversation on the preservation and conservation of blog content has slowed in the past decade. This could be because the options currently available are adequate for the need of blog preservation.

Blogs and microblogs are comprised of various formats that can contribute to the challenges in digital preservation. According to research in the early 2010s, images, animations, and audio files, which blogs usually contain, are difficult to preserve with the Wayback Machine. This may have improved in the more recent years.

There are also preservation software options like the LOCKSS and BlogForever that seems to be more targeted toward archiving blog content than the Wayback Machine is.

Reference List

Chen, X. (2010). Blog Archiving Issues: A Look at Blogs on Major Events and Popular Blogs. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 15(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875300903529571

Baudoin, P. (2008). On Preserving Blogs for Future Generations. The Serials Librarian, 53(4), 59–61. https://doi.org/10.1300/J123v53n04_04

Farace, D., & Schöpfel, J. (Eds.). (2010). Chapter 14. Blog Posts and Tweets: The Next Frontier for Grey Literature. In Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies (pp. 217–226). K. G. Saur. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783598441493.2.217

Grimard, J. (2005). Managing the Long-term Preservation of Electronic Archives or Preserving the Medium and the Message. Archivaria, 153–167.

Leroy, A. (2018). LOCKSS Distributed Digital Preservation Networks. Université libre de Bruxelles. Belgium. ISSN, 9. https://nusl.techlib.cz/en/conference/conference-proceedings

Rosenthal, D. S. H. (2017). The medium-term prospects for long-term storage systems. Library Hi Tech, 35(1), 11–31. http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/10.1108/LHT-11-2016-0128

Young, C. (2013). Oh My Blawg! Who Will Save the Legal Blogs? Law Library Journal, 105(4), 493–503.

INC

Cottagecore as a budding anti-capitalist movement

Among many online subcultures and communities, there is an online space which rejects Internet-era aesthetics in exchange for the soft glow and calm reminiscent of romantic paintings. Rustic picnics, flowing garments, embroidery tutorials and tours of cosy homes await on the cottagecore tag on TikTok, the uber-popular social media app that lets users edit, share, watch, and interact with short videos.

While it seems nothing more than a meeting place for users with common interests in baking, nature and vintage fashion, a closer look at this aesthetic movement reveals many surprising facets. The potentially transformative effects it may have on young people’s pace of life, their perception of labour, success, and the relationship with the natural world are just a few of the most promising ones.

Popularisation

main page of cottagecore tag on TikTok showing six videos

Even though the cottagecore aesthetic seems to have originated on Tumblr around 2017, it noticeably gained popularity on TikTok in early 2020, attracting over 5 billion views under its hashtag. It comes as no surprise that in 2020, COVID-19-induced lockdowns made cottagecore very appealing, allowing users to experience the great outdoors from the comfort of their own homes, and learn how to do a variety of indoor-friendly activities. It may not be a coincidence that the early-2020 craze of sourdough baking happened just as cottagecore rose up the ranks of popular Internet gen-z aesthetics. However, cottagecore is not just another distraction from real-life struggles, nor a fleeting hobby for young people to perform. Somewhere amongst the well-timed crochet transitions, uplifting classical music scores and tonnes of vintage lace sits a revolutionary idea; one of domestic labour that exists outside of the oppressive forces of both the patriarchy and late capitalism.

In cottagecore imaginaries, men rarely make an appearance. Most social media users appearing in cottagecore corners of the Internet are young women – especially non-heteronormative ones – and non-binary people, both as content creators and those who interact with the content. This link cannot be incidental and has been noted already, framing cottagecore as an aesthetic that offers an escape from patriarchal hierarchies, facilitating a dream of a wholesome life with a loved one away from homophobia and misogyny. The term ‘cottagecore lesbian’ is coined, and it is as charming as indicatory of unfavourable conditions so many queer women endure, either in total invisibility or as subjects of rampant sexualisation. In cottagecore imaginaries, queer couples are free to be together in private and public spaces. There is no shame or scapegoating, just a comfortable, happy life.

TikTok screenshot of a field of white flowers and an outstretched hand

However, the reality of being queer outside of the city is much less accommodating. Perhaps the line between daydreaming and escapism is rather thin, and the movement did gain some criticism for its escapist and romanticising tendencies. VOX writer Rebecca Jennings points out the cottagecore paradox of longing for a modest life in the countryside: “Indeed, cottagecore ignores the fact that rural areas have always been unattainable for some and inescapable for others.” Still, participating in the cottagecore community, not unlike other aesthetic online movements, rarely leads to drastic changes IRL. Their appeal lies in the ease with which one can participate and quit; all it takes is to swipe into another TikTok community, or close the app. On top of that, it would be counter-productive to discard a community for offering temporary online refuge from real-life oppression. As long as it does not lead to propagating other types of (less conscious, perhaps) oppression, cottagecore has the capabilities to allow for a re-imagination of community bonds and ways of life in a more collective and less exploitative future. At its best, community-building is one of the Internet’s few assets, but it is a two-sided coin, and some users do utilise it for malicious causes.

Darker side

It may be surprising that a queer-friendly and anti-patriarchy online movement/aesthetic crosses paths with something much more sinister; namely, the TradWife community (which stands for Traditional Wife). On her blog, writer Shannon McNamara notes that the two may enjoy some similar imagery, but present wildly different sets of values. TradWife online communities propagate the blood-and-soil narrative of white supremacy, imagining a return to the days of female servitude and unpaid, oppressive domestic labour performed under the guise of fulfilling the ‘natural order’ of gender roles. Images of plaid-haired blonde women in flowy dresses tending to domestic activities indoors and cultivating the land align perfectly with fascist and white supremacist fantasies of male domination and a return to a pre-modern and pre-industrial way of life; of course, at the high cost of personal liberty and freedom of marginalised groups.

Set against this oppressive dystopian landscape of servitude and exploitation, cottagecore emerges as a much brighter image of diverse and progressive countryside life where individuals need not serve an individual or profit-making structures that exhibit discriminatory viewpoints and promote different types of violence. Here, activities which are considered traditionally feminine matter because they can bring enjoyment, not because they are useful to, or expected from, a patriarchal figure. The misogynistic connotations connected to activities like cooking, crocheting or sewing are actively rejected. Here, there is the freedom to enjoy these tasks and not be mocked for them or associated with a certain type of femininity. Cottagecore imagines a space where women and gender-nonconforming people can experiment with signifiers of traditional femininity with no strings attached and no consequences. This approach stands in stark contrast to the controlling TradWife narrative that fulfils a white supremacist fantasy. In order to not be complicit in this small yet problematic overlap of aesthetics, cottagecore enthusiasts must remain vigilant not to promote or share content originating from TradWife social media accounts, and speak out against the continuing shadow-banning people of colour – especially black people – experience on TikTok. At its best, cottagecore can be a pro-LGBTQ+ and anti-racist community. Further education on anti-racism and anti-colonialism can help to achieve this goal; this, too, can be found on the app, and users often recommend further offline reading, encouraging individuals to continue learning.

Reframing labour

The concept of exploitative labour seems to be non-existent from cottagecore fantasies. In these images and video clips, all labour is domestic and/or creative, and it is performed based on the needs of the individual(s) appearing in the content. There is no excess production exploitation of the natural environment, or aspiration to make financial gains. Cottagecore is anti-capitalist at its core, exchanging constant productivity, hustle culture and accumulation of private wealth for slow living, environmentally conscious practices and seeking value in actions and habits that do not generate an income. While the popularity of cottagecore aesthetics coincides with a combination of recent events like COVID-19 lockdowns, a boom in Victorian-stylised TV shows and Taylor Swift’s hit album evermore, it is also undoubtedly a reaction to an overstimulated and oversaturated life many young people are living. We resent some of our modern technologies but rely on them, nevertheless. We want to plan our futures but are facing an ecological disaster. The attention economy drains our vitality. Even though the irony of accessing cottagecore through the very same social media apps we critique is not lost on me, I do believe this aesthetic and its community can teach valuable lessons about slow living, the importance of offline hobbies, and the possibility to be fulfilled by things other than financial gain and material wealth. Cottagecore offers a glimpse into a future in which individuals are less concerned with their status, and more in tune with the intrinsic value of everyday tasks. Activities that may seem as mundane and even ‘unproductive’ in late capitalist modes of thinking become restorative and calming, serving as reminders that there is so much to appreciate in our ability to create, feed ourselves, and construct our living spaces.

On the other hand, we must be aware of the accidental consumer-oriented tone some cottagecore videos do fall into. Lavish tours of twee yet expertly renovated nineteenth-century homes, clothing hauls of sustainable/vintage collections and recipes shown in meticulously decorated rustic kitchens can all add up to make cottagecore a high-cost lifestyle. However, rather than focusing on the material aspects of some of the content, many cottagecore fans praise the movement for embracing low-waste and DIY practices. They insist that people should not feel pressured to purchase products to feel part of the community. Baking bread, embroidering a jumper, going for a nature walk or reading second-hand books are just a few examples of activities that fit into this aesthetic. Cottagecore content creator and baker, NY-based Noemie Serieux explains that cottagecore helps people find pockets of joy and peace, even in an otherwise fast-paced big city lifestyle. Serieux also compares cottagecore to her Caribbean upbringing, pointing out that both involve simple, sustainable living and DIY. Indeed, as long as individuals are aware of the consumerist potential of cottagecore, they will be able to participate in a way that matches their circumstances and monetary situation. In the end, breaking the bank ‘for the aesthetic’ would go against cottagecore’s homespun and upcycled essence.

It becomes clear that young people facing a kaleidoscope of uncertainties and worries find refuge in the romanticised microcosm of cottagecore, and can emerge from it more critical of systems that make this peaceful lifestyle so unattainable in the first place. Continuing the conversation about these aspects of cottagecore will make the community even more self-aware of this budding potential.

Open Book Publishers

Framing the Third Reich: A new approach to National Socialist photography

by Yinuo Meng

Can scholars take the Third Reich’s artistic legacy as a serious object of investigation, without losing sight of its sensitive and problematic origin?

For a long time, the answer seemed to be no. Tainted by their celebration of National Socialism’s racist ideology, Third Reich arts have been either glossed over or discussed solely pejoratively by art historians. However, 75 years after the collapse of Nazi Germany, OBP’s new Open Access essay collection seeks to offer a different answer. Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda invites us to revisit this question by zooming in on Third Reich photography with an inter-disciplinary approach.

This book takes a deep dive into the works of prominent photographers who embraced National Socialism during the Third Reich, such as Erna Lendvai-Dircksen and Erich Retzlaff. The contributors treat their photographs not only as historical documents, but also as artworks with styles and self-expressions that deserve formalist and aesthetic readings. Instead of shying away from photographs that celebrate National Socialism, they actively engage with them through a critical gaze.

Andrés Mario Zervigón’s discussion of Lendvai-Dircksen’s peasant portraits epitomises this methodology. Lendvai-Dircksen was a German photographer whose career flourished during the Third Reich. She was also a staunch believer in physiognomy, a pseudoscience preaching that ‘the face and body could be read like a book to reveal nature and character.’ It is easy to see why physiognomy was well-suited for the racial purity eugenics of National Socialism. Indeed, Lendvai-Dircksen’s portraits of German peasants symbolised this dangerous partnership. Zervigón brilliantly demonstrates how Lendvai-Dircksen exploited various modern photographic techniques to present peasants as the physiognomic embodiment of a pure ‘Germanic’ race. She removed her subjects from their everyday settings and placed them in front of professional photographic backgrounds to emphasise their timeless ‘Germanic’ qualities. She also believed that ‘...like an old tree that shows the peculiarity of its nature most precisely, so too the old human, who becomes the most pronounced type, who becomes the life history of his line.’ To this end, she highlighted her elderly subjects’ weathered features by combining an uncomfortably close lens with a sharp film stock and high print values. By scrutinising Lendvai-Dircksen’s formalist sophistication in detail, this chapter provides valuable insights into how she conveyed her racial and nationalistic messages.

A formalist reading of the works of German photographer Erich Retzlaff reveals similar proximity between National Socialism and physiognomy. Christopher Webster van Tonder examines Retzlaff’s application of physiognomy to portraits of German elites, most notably in his 1944 publication Das Gesicht des Geistes (The Face of the Spirit). Retzlaff’s use of colour accentuated his subjects’ ‘Aryan’ eye colours, hair colours and skin tones, thus their supposed racial purity. Due to the images’ ‘almost uncomfortable cinematic proximity’ and larger-than-life size, they are assertive and relentless in projecting the apparent superiority of the German leadership. Together, these chapters prove a powerful point that lies at the very centre of this book: reading Third Reich photographs as art reveals, rather obscures, their social and ideological functions in history.

On top of breaking new academic ground, Photography in the Third Reich urges readers from all backgrounds to question popular historical myths. In particular, the essays challenge a common misconception that Nazi Germany represented a sharp break with everything that came before and after. For instance, in chapter 1, Rolf Sachsse vividly illustrates the Weimar photography trends that continued to play a crucial role in National Socialist propaganda. One of the trends was the picture series, a format that became popular after the introduction of 35mm roll film to Germany around 1925. Far from sidelining the picture series, the National Socialist state enthusiastically employed it to make propaganda that personalised political content.

Neither did the photographs of the Third Reich vanish overnight in May 1945. In fact, many surviving images adapted surprisingly well to the postwar climate. The once ideologically charged photos of the ‘Germanic’ people were recontextualized for the tourist market. They now showcase the ‘a gemütlich(cosy) and nostalgic image of German life’ for visitors. This is the case for Hans Retzlaff’s photograph of a peasant woman in traditional German costume, which was reprinted after the war for a tourism publication Niedersachsen (1961). As the conclusion eloquently states, Third Reich photography ‘remainsa continuing manifestation of a political, ideological, esoteric, and Romantic mélange unique to its time.’

The significance of Photography in the Third Reich lies in both what it has achieved and what is yet to be achieved. Undoubtedly, it has the potential to inspire the next generation of researchers to study Third Reich photography seriously. Its pioneering approach is not only of interest to historians, but to anyone who seeks new reflections on the well-studied period of the Third Reich. Hopefully, this essay collection will mark the start of a burgeoning field.

Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda by Christopher Webster (ed.) is an Open Access title available to read and download for free as well as to purchase in paperback, hardback and in various e-Book editions at doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0202