::fc-announce:: M/C Journal: 'street' Issue Now Available

[M/C - Media and Culture]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 25 July 2006

                         M/C - Media and Culture
             is proud to present issue three in volume nine of

                               M/C Journal
                  http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

                'street' - Edited by Kate Oakley & Jina Tay

Street in its most conventional sense represents the link between physical
places, but more than that, they are spaces where cultural negotiations are
made. They are everyday spaces where the informal meets the formal, and the
public meets the private. In other words, they are spaces where
unanticipated, sudden encounters may take place, or where ordinary space
may be made special. Their utilitarian purpose may be subverted and they
become spaces for Formula 1 races, charity runs, street parties,
revolutions, protests, and markets. They may be formal sites known for
consumption, entertainment, and recreation or where drugs, sex and gambling
are found behind closed doors. 

Streets are not accidents, they are shaped by social and economic change
and in popular media are often seen as shorthand for class and lifestyle
differentiation - think Coronation Street, Sesame Street, 42nd Street,
Wisteria Lane (Desperate Housewives), or Ramsey Street (Neighbours). They
are sites of social inclusion and exclusion - loitering on the street,
street kids, living on the street, wrong side of the street, and graffiti
on the street all present conflicting notions surrounding shared city
spaces. 

Yet, knowing your back streets distinguishes one as a local from the
outsider. Being street wise is integral to top selling computer games like
Grand Theft Auto, Gangland or Sim City, where the strategy lies in
competent negotiation of streets. Street credibility is the badge of
acceptance for the privileged outsider.

The papers in this issue address this diversity of meanings and range from
discussions of everyday activities to seeing the street as a site for
events, conflicts and the possibility of new learning. They explore a
range of social meanings and cultural ramifications engaged in/on/off and
around the notion of street.

  Feature Article
"Where Ordinary Activities Lead to War: Street Politics in Seth Tobocman's
War in the Neighborhood" 
  - Vanessa Raney

Vanessa Raney's piece deals with the street as a site of potential
political and social conflict. In this case, she describes elements of the
urban experience of New York as represented in Seth Tobocman's graphic
novel War in the Neighbourhood. This centres on the relationships between
squatters, the police, politicians and the media in a classic conflict
about gentrification or the uses and ownership of urban space. Raney
compares the representation of this battle in the novel, with historical
and current conflicts about urban space and the place that street plays as
a site for these conflicts. Street is not community in the sense beloved of
current politicians - a banal consensus about law and order - but the site
for contestation and in a few cases, resolution.

  Articles
"Vigilant Citizens: Statecraft and Exclusion in Dubbo City"
  - Cameron Muir

"The Romantic and Dangerous Stranger"
  - Irina Gendelman

"Imagining King Street in the Gay/Lesbian Media"
  - Andrew Gorman-Murray

"A Bodily Sign of 'Doing Nothing': Loitering or the Silence before the
Storm"
  - Sebnem Timur and Melike Turkan Bagli

"Urban Free Flow: A Poetics of Parkour"
  - Paula Geyh

"Code of the Streets: Videogames and the City"
  - Robert Sweeny

"Street Smarts/Smart Streets: Public Pedagogies and the Streetscape"
  - Andrew Hickey

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Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2006:

'free':    article deadline 26 June 2006,    release date 13 September 2006
'filth':   article deadline 21 August 2006,  release date 1 November 2006
'jam':     article deadline 16 October 2006, release date 20 December 2006


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M/C Journal 9.3 is now online: <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>.
Previous issues of M/C Journal on various topics are also still available.
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Visit all three M/C publications at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>.
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All contributors are available for media contacts: mc at media-culture.org.au.
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end


-- 
Dr Axel Bruns, General Editor                 editor at media-culture.org.au
M/C - Media and Culture                  http://www.media-culture.org.au/