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The problems of politics in the postmodern were never made more clear to me than during a visit to Cambodia and Vietnam in 1990. The following is an autoethnographic tale of my struggles as a white, middle-class, female, political sociologist encountering these remains of the Vietnam War. I write about my problem of locating a stable place for political action in the antifoundationalist epistemology of postmodern thought and within the hyperreality of postmodern media culture. I juxtapose a journal I kept while in Cambodia with my subsequent reflections on this journal to explore the ironies of lines between the 'reality' of war and the 'unreality' of U.S. postmodern culture. Bringing the materiality of body, place, and time and the fictions and fantasies of desire into sociological writing may be a way of writing the political in a way that pursues social justice., Desires, fantasies, the Vietnam War, personal politics, and Cambodia have been explored in an autoethnography that searches for reality with meaning, dwelling on the feelings the body has of memories. Constructions of self and other and thoughts of how to construct a discourse of reality are explored. In writing there is a struggle with politics of authority vs reality. A guide in Cambodia stated that she had read Date Carnegie's self-help work, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, in order to get through horrible war experiences. That brought profound disunderstanding that shattered many ways of thinking about the real vs the unreal.

MTV: Music Television, the US music channel, has expanded its operations globally, launching derivative services in other regions, including MTV Europe, MTV Asia and MTV Latino. This expansion raises concerns about US cultural influence abroad since MTV's programs mostly play American and British artists or local acts that mimic US music styles. The history, operations and programming of MTV's various international services are surveyed. MTV seeks to foster and exploit an international youth culture. The part cooperative, part contentions relationship between MTV and transnational record companies is explored. Finally, alternatives to MTV like Canada's MuchMusic are considered. Keywords / MTV / music video / globalization / popular culture / music recording industry

Selling the World TO THE QUESTION 'Is there a global teenager?' the major consumer manufacturers answer, 'Definitely yes.' It is a significant issue for those who make things for kids. [...]