Cultural Studies

This book is based on many years of research and practical pedagogical experiences around cross-cultural and multidisciplinary design for healthy ageing.  It provides important insight into origins, design, implementation, and impact of cross-cultural design student study tours, and takes an original approach by foregrounding pedagogical practice for exploring healthy ageing solutions.

The populations of Australia and many other countries in the Asia Pacific region are ageing. The next few decade will see up to half of the population in many countries represented by the over 65s. The impact of this change in population balance will be profound and it represents a potential global shift in design for society. This will challenge designers, planners and health care professionals to develop solutions to better meet the needs and harness the capacity of our growing and diversifying populations of older citizens, in relation to housing, community interaction and co-operation, health and well-being, and the integration new technologies. Different disciplinary and cultural perspectives can be a means to create new ideas and approaches that provide a deeper understanding of the needs of the global ageing population.

This book examines some of the challenges associated with ageing in multi-cultural societies. We explore some of the major issues facing society in the area of ‘healthy ageing’ and propose a method of working with cross-disciplinary groups of health practitioners, designers, architects and cultural practitioners. Through case-studies of a series of workshops run in China and Singapore with Australian, Chinese and Singaporean students, we review the benefits of this approach and provide a framework for engaging designers, planners and health professionals in the process of creating new design solutions for the growing global ageing population.

This book is especially useful for academics and educators in the design and health areas. Design professionals in urban, architectural, interior, industrial, graphic, multimedia, fashion, interaction, service and user-experience design will find many useful ideas. Health professionals across the range of disciplines, including medical practitioners, nurses, physiotherapists, other allied health professionals and carers practising in different settings such as aged-care facilities, government offices and others will also find it useful.

It also provides insights and ideas for innovators, businesses and everybody interested in exploring design and innovation for an ageing population, which has been identified as a growing market. It may also be useful to anyone who wants to understand how to provide care for ageing members of the family and friends, or for anyone who wants to better understand issues around their own ageing.

Although there are many articles and books on social design, there has been very little work on the methods to combine the discipline areas of Health and Design in the creation of concepts and artefacts around design for healthy ageing. There is also very little on the understanding of ‘Cross-cultural Empathy’ in design. This book takes an original approach to ‘Design for Healthy Ageing’ by combining not only a varied discipline group of practitioners from design and health but also presenting cross-cultural methods to deal with issues associated with the social cause.

The primary readership will include professionals and academics in the areas of cross-cultural design, health, ageing and related policies, government institutions and gerontologists.  It will also be of interest to tutors and lecturers across design practice internationally, and the case studies are useful for those with a specific geographical interest (Australia, Singapore, China), including clinicians, carers and other health professionals in those areas.

Connecting People, Place and Design examines the human relationship with place, how its significance has evolved over time and how contemporary systems for participation shape the places around us in our daily lives. Divided into three parts – place, people and participation – this interdisciplinary volume examines people, place and design across the fields of architecture, design, cultural studies, sociology, political science and philosophy.

Part I, on place, considers the cultural, political and philosophical shifts in our historical relationship to place. Part II, on people, considers movement and migration and how it affects place relations. Part III, on participation, examines forms of public engagement and cultural systems for collaborative contribution to the design and creation of place. Improving people’s relationships with place requires connection, and in Connecting People, Place and Design, Edmonds demonstrates the importance of connection, underscoring that working together to nurture and sustain places that celebrate the diversity of our human species is one of the most critical issues of our time.

This edited collection explores the notion of agency by tracing the role and activities of consumers from the pre-Internet age into the possible future. Using an overview of the historical creation of consumer identity, Consumer Identities demonstrates that active consumption is not merely a product of the digital age; it has always been a means by which a person can develop identity. Grounded in the acknowledgement that identity is a constructed and contested space, the authors analyse emerging dynamics in contemporary consumerism, ongoing tensions of structure and agency in consumer identities and the ways in which identity construction could be influenced in the future. By exploring consumer identity through examples in popular culture, the authors have created a scholarly work that will appeal to industry professionals as well as academics.

Offering a rare insight into the world of celebrity and media in China and beyond, Celebrity Culture and the Entertainment Industry in Asia deconstructs the dynamics of “stardom” and celebrity endorsement in East Asia, and examines its impact on marketing communications and media. Through first-hand interviews with celebrities and entertainment industry practitioners, the book discusses the social, cultural and economic influences of celebrity through topics such as self-identity, celebrity-driven consumer behaviour, gender and race stereotypes, idol worship, etc. Interviews with celebrities such as Kai-Wah Kwok, Bob Lam, Denise Ho, Hilary Tsui and Francis Mak present the reader with insider accounts of celebrity formation, management and marketing in Hong Kong and Mainland China, as well as South Korea and Taiwan. These untold inside stories of celebrity endorsement and advocacy will stimulate both academic and general readers’ interest in rethinking the economic and cultural implications of the phenomenon of stardom.

This book brings together contributors from a wide range of disciplines to explore the importance of cotton as a major resource for US fashion businesses. It is rooted in a lengthy investigative research project that deployed undergraduate and graduate students and faculty researchers to US fashion businesses that rely on cotton to make their garments – with the goal of better understanding how such a key resource is sourced, priced, transported, manipulated and, ultimately, sold on to the consumer as a stylish garment. The contributors focus in particular on the role of brands in the marketing of cotton goods, and the way that brand marketing creates distinctions, valuable in the marketplace, between various versions of what are at base similar items of clothing, like t-shirts and underclothes. The book also explores the importance of the 'Made in the USA' campaign, with its appeal to consumers concerned about local manufacturing employment, reduced resource use and social responsibility.

We live in a society that defines us by what we consume and how. Every day we make purchasing decisions that express our sense of belonging, our commitments to the environment and our systems of belief. We often choose to buy things, not necessarily because we need them, but because we believe that these things will help us express who we are – in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Whether we like it or not, consumerism is the prevalent ideology of our time. Led by Gjoko Muratovski, Consumer Culture is the ideal starting point for an investigation into the social construction of the global economy.

There is no question that celebrities these days are some of the most prominent faces of philanthropic activity – yet their participation raises questions about efficacy, motivations and activism overall. This book presents case studies of celebrity philanthropy from around the globe – including such figures as Shakira, Arundhati Roy, Zhang Ziyi, Bono and Madonna – looking at the tensions between celebrity activism and ground-level work and the relationship between celebrity philanthropy and cultural citizenship.

For most of the twentieth century, the private eye dominated crime fiction and film, a lone figure fighting for justice, often in opposition to the official representatives of law and order. More recently, however, the police have begun to take centre stage – as exemplified by the runaway success of TV police procedurals like Law and Order. In Crime Uncovered: Detective, Barry Forshaw offers an exploration of some of the most influential and popular fictional police detectives in the history of the genre.



Taking readers into the worlds of such beloved authors as P. D. James, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Ian Rankin and Håkan Nesser, this book zeroes in on the characteristics that define the iconic characters they created, discussing how they relate to their national and social settings, questions of class, and to the criminals they relentlessly pursue. Showing how the role of the authority figure has changed – and how each of these writers creates characters who work both within and against the strictures of official investigations – the book shows how creators cleverly subvert expectations of both police procedure and the crime genre itself.



Written by a leading expert in the field and drawn from interviews with the featured authors, Crime Uncovered: Detective will thrill the countless fans of Inspector Rebus, Harry Hole, Adam Dalgliesh and the other enduring police detectives who define the genre.

This is a study of media and cultural artifacts that constitute the remembrance of a tragic war as reflected in the stories of eight people who lived it. Using memoir, history and criticism, Crossing the Street in Hanoi is based on scholarly research, teaching and writing as well as extensive personal journals, interviews and exclusive primary source material. Each chapter uses a human story to frame an exploration in media and cultural criticism. What weaves these different threads into a whole cloth are the stories of the Vietnam War and the long shadow it casts over American and Vietnamese cultures.