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The NHL has a long-standing, problematic relationship with race. The North American sporting and racial climate have brought even more attention to this reality. A notable tactic to counter the accusation of reinforcing racism within sports corporations, including the NHL, is publicly associating themselves with minoritized organizations. This often occurs through formal partnerships or the acquisition of minoritized-founded entities, initiatives, and organizations. This paper considers how salient discourses of race and Blackness are articulated by the hosts and contributors of NHL Studio's Soul on Ice: The Podcast (SOIP) as an acquired NHL entity. The NHL aims to reposition itself on issues of race and the portrayal of Black members within hockey through SOIP. The podcast gives a platform to empower Black voices within White hockey culture but also problematically enmeshes the NHL within the commodification of Black culture and hardship. The acquisition of Soul on Ice: The Podcast by the NHL is used to sanitize and shield the league while reinforcing the normative Whiteness of hockey. Further, the consequences of the leagues' commodification of Blackness and the nuanced experiences of Black NHL players and community members shared via the podcast are unpacked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee commodification, or the use of refugee hosting to extract political and economic concessions, has attracted growing scholarly attention in recent years. Yet, studies tend to focus on its international component, neglecting the domestic political space and how these extractions impact domestic political dynamics. To address this gap, we ask: how does refugee commodification influence domestic politics? Our study focuses on the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Turkey, in order to assess the political implications of refugee commodification within domestic politics. Through a mixed qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with opposition politicians and an analysis of policy documents, we examine the nexus of international and domestic spheres, assessing how political actors beyond the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) engage in, react to, and employ refugee commodification strategies. The findings of this study have implications beyond Turkey, demonstrating the transformative effects of refugee commodification for domestic politics across Global South states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews four recent works examining the cultural politics of consumption. It explores the methodological and theoretical distinctions and commonalities between three works which share an historical focus. It notes the different emphases suggested by historians, sociologists, and literary critics but emphasises their shared concern with understanding the complex agency of consumption as it is can be found specifically in cultural representations. The essay also notes the persistence of the theoretical divide between these historical studies, which identify consumption as a site of ambivalent possibility and even resistance, and contemporary accounts that regard it as a site of commodification and expropriation of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the relationship between gentrification and the economic-gastronomic landscape in two neighborhoods in downtown Mexico City. The objective is to conceptually readjust these terms and to recognize the singularities of their manifestations in Latin America. To this end, a theoretical framework is constructed that outlines the three epistemological cores for the analysis of gentrification in the region and that articulates such concept with cultural commodification and gourmetization. Through a descriptive quantitative analysis, we examine the transformation of the food landscape through the presence and diversification of gastronomic and retail businesses in the Condesa and Santa María La Ribera neighborhoods. The results show that there is a trend towards an increase in commercial activity under the model of mini-supermarkets and other businesses that diversify and, at the same time, homogenize cultural and gastronomic offerings in these neighborhoods. However, the pandemic affected these neighborhoods in a particular way: while in Condesa the proliferation of these businesses slowed down, in Santa María La Ribera they increased their presence. It is concluded that this analytical argument offers a view that can strengthen the qualitative study of the effects developed by gentrification and its consequences in other areas of urban daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the eighteenth century, Newport, Rhode Island stood at the centre of the Transatlantic slave trade, producing commodities like rum to be traded for African captives from Senegambia, the Gold Coast, the Bight of Biafra, and the Bight of Benin. These captive men, women and children were then transported to South America, the West Indies, the Chesapeake, Charleston, and Savannah. Those who were not sold in these markets, were labelled as 'refuse,' and endured a second or third voyage to the north to be sold in markets in New York, Newport, or Boston. Through an examination of a court case between prominent Newport merchant, John Banister and wigmaker, David Cummings, this article queries the life of a sick African girl, bought by David Cummings, but rendered useless because of her rapidly declining health due to the 'great pox,' also known as yaws. What conditions allowed for her enslavement? How did she become ill and how was she treated? Lastly, how did the law commodify her bonded existence? By examining the mechanisms that allowed for her enslavement, a young life that was reduced to a monetary value, and the bare labour she was forced to provide, is brought to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encounters with loss and death are an inherent part of human existence and a significant element in the tapestry of leisure. This article concludes the special issue of Leisure Sciences on 'Leisure, Loss, and Death.' It reflects upon the submitted manuscripts and introduces temporal approaches to the study of loss, highlighting distinctions between planning for and anticipating loss, the commodification and festivalization of loss, and the ways in which leisure can contribute to the recovery from loss and death. The article underscores that, by contemplating the event of loss and the temporal/experiential milieus before and after, numerous promising avenues for further inquiry emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the creation and capture of surplus value in the voluntary carbon markets to show the importance of narratives and networks in justifying price. Rather than a push towards commensurability in carbon markets, it points to the emergence of profitable business models based on the enrichment of credits. Enrichment focuses not on processes of standardisation associated with commodity production, but on the creation of difference, uniqueness, and provenance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and the marketing of a REDD+ project in San Martín, Peru, the article argues that the creation of surplus value in the voluntary market lies chiefly in the ability of vendors to create, manage, and sell narratives. A focus on the enrichment of carbon‐as‐an‐asset thus shows that narratives and networks go beyond performativity but are central to value construction, privileging certain actors and forms of labour and highlighting emerging forms of exploitation in green markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the indigenization of language in hiplife becomes a marker of authenticity and, at the same time, a project of transnational commodification to "sell our culture". Recently, language and global marketability have become a focus of debate in the Ghanaian entertainment industry. Here, indigenization becomes central to how some Ghanaian performers want their music and identity to circulate globally. I argue that the global music industry can be regarded as an authenticating mechanism legitimizing musics in a way that can define the horizons of musical possibility in local contexts. De article dey examine how the indigenization of language for hiplife dey become marker of authenticity, wey at de same time e be transnational commodification project to "sell our culture". Recently, language den global marketability come turn focus of debate for the Ghanaian entertainment industry. For here, indigenization dey become central to de way Ghanaian artists dey want make dema music then identity go international. I dey argue say de global music industry be some authenticating mechanism wey e dey legitimize local music by de way e dey determine what be musically possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's low fertility rate has been a concern for over thirty years. Despite a vast literature on the topic, numerous policies and measures to boost the country's fertility rate, and the will of Japanese people to have a family, Japan seems powerless to remedy the problem commonly called shôshika in Japanese. Yet, Southern parts of Japan show that it does not equally affect the archipelago. Remote islands in Japan have an exceptionally high fertility rate compared to other developed countries. The paper aims to understand the reasons for their high fertility rate by focusing on late and lifelong singlehood (bankonka and mikonka) as a critical factor of the shôshika. It will particularly pay attention to the perception of love and romance in one of those remote islands: Tokunoshima. It will argue that the absence of commodification in romantic intercourse facilitates matchmaking that would result in the creation of a family. People are more likely to meet someone with whom they will have a family when the dating process is not embedded with commodified gestures. On another note, although their view of dating is similar to individuals in other developed countries, the practice of dating takes alternative forms that force them not to rely on the commodification of romance, which increases their chances of matchmaking. As a result, inhabitants of Tokunoshima quickly find a marriage partner, which contributes to the absence of late and lifelong singlehood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the linguistic landscape of refurbished historical streets to reveal the semiotic construction of antiquity and commodification of heritage. Based on signage data collected from four historical blocs in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Ningbo in East China, this study reveals how Chinese semiotic artifacts contribute to stylizing antiquity and reinvigorating the space of consumption. Results suggest that the fabricated historical streets sustain the tourism rhetoric of cultural pride and commercial profit by appealing to history, tradition, exoticism, and nostalgia. The study problematizes orchestrated heritage tourism and points to the use of English as potentially subversive in the Chinese linguistic landscape. • History is refabricated and commodified to satiate tourist desires. • Traditional Chinese language serves to authenticate ancient Chineseness. • Access to history-saturated semiotic resources is unequally distributed. • English potentially counteracts the spatial hegemony of historicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The works of Polanyi and Gramsci, taken together, help us to disentangle the multiple understands of and politics around social protection. Despite Gramsci's convincing analysis of hegemony as the organization of class struggle within limits of capitalism, he does not have a theory of counterhegemony. Polanyi, meanwhile, does not focus attention on the power of capitalist hegemony, yet his displacement of experience from production to exchange creates the grounds for a potential counterhegemony. The article analyzes how, despite apparent efforts to de-commodify labor and social protections, precarity has become more deeply engrained among the laboring poor. While precarity is not necessarily new to populations across the South, the way in which commodification has become hegemonic is, and the objective of the article is to better understand the role of social protection in shaping workers' experiences, and consider potential strategic directions to advance universal social protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some animal defenders are committed to complete abstinence from animal products. However the strongest arguments for adopting veganism only seem to require that one avoid using animal products, where use or procurement of these products will harm sentient animals. As such, there is seemingly a gap between our intuition and our argument. In this article I attempt to defend the more comprehensive claim that we have a moral reason to avoid using animal products, regardless of the method of procurement. I argue that animal bodies give rise to properties which grant sentient animals' moral status and in light of this, animal bodies possess final value in themselves. This final value gives us a moral reason not to commodify animal bodies, which means we have a defeasible reason to abstain from using animal products in almost all circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nietzsche invites us to turn our focus to how subjects seek out what is average rather than what is authentically independent. For marketing theory, this means recognising that while the desire for autonomy and self-determination functions as a seductive and collective narrative for consumer culture generally, it inevitably becomes denatured and delimited to what each individual consumer finds to be most convenient, credible, and practical. Using a Nietzschean toolbox, this paper diagnoses a contemporary malaise in the process of 'commodified self-overcoming', whereby subjects are fed the mass-mediated fantasy that they can overcome the symbolic similitude of the majority while remaining comfortably part of the social 'herd'. We discuss this process using three illustrative archetypes: the inhuman 'BIG Zombie', the transhuman 'Cyborg', and the all-too-human 'Slacktivist'. These archetypes reveal how the prospect of overcoming the self and all of its human trappings functions as a core fantasy for consumers, albeit one that is paradoxically produced and supplied by market mechanisms that perpetuate a lasting humanism. We explore the notion of ante -humanism and conclude with implications for the nascent tradition of Terminal Marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMany Filipina care workers are subrogated to the position of mothers in the more affluent states of Asia. As a consequence, they oftentimes play as the unofficial teachers of the children. In this article, I analyse the process of global subrogation, which often end in what I call an inverted odyssey of the Filipina domestic helper. Using the concept of invertedness in commodity fetishism, this article reads Jose Dalisay’s Soledad’s Sister as an inverted odyssey which views the migration of Filipina care workers as an adventure but without the heroic homecoming. The novel represents the adventure as a dialectic of systems of carelessness and selfcare that is symbolically resolved within the narrative through the recurring image of the ‘woman in the box’. Thus, the article argues that unlike Odysseus’ triumphant nostos (homecoming), the heroine of this inverted odyssey falls victim to her own erotic drives, drowns in a far-flung kingdom, returns home in a box, and drowns again in the hands of thieves. The novel weaves a counter-narrative on the Filipina care worker that challenges prevailing Philippine state discourses on its overseas work force, thereby problematizing both the limitations of the heroine’s selfcare and the systemic carelessness of the states that make the subrogation possible. Ultimately, the inverted Odyssey as symbolized by the novel’s central image of ‘the woman in the box’ shatters appearances and unveils the tragic position of the unrecognized ‘teachers’ in the global feminization and commodification of care work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms are becoming an important factor in the process of reconfiguration and commodification of social reproduction during the neoliberal phase of capitalism. Developing a theoretical framework merging social reproduction theory and migrant labour regimes, this article argues that the introduction of digital platforms in the care sector is facilitating the expansion of precarised commodification of reproductive activities in a context of social care crisis. Through a mixed-method analysis, combining desk-based research with in-depth interviews of digital care platform work in Spain, the study examines the migrant labour regime of digital care platforms and how they take advantage of the international division of labour and global care chains to further exploit a highly precarious, informalised, feminised and racialised workforce. Our findings reveal that platforms use technology to rapidly access a reserve labour army, thus extracting more surplus value by restricting access to information, controlling the intermediation process and further fragmenting the workforce in reproductive activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of price increases on the one hand and strong tenement regulations in Vienna's historic housing stock on the other, this article analyses the actors and strategies of commodification. Following a mixed-methods approach, this case study analyses 90 historic tenement buildings in nine neighbourhoods. Our analysis reveals the increasing relevance of institutional actors as (co-)owners, which goes hand in hand with declining holding periods. As local actors are highly diverse, we have identified five types of actors and four commodification strategies, pointing towards a spatially differentiated division of labour. This actor constellation, dominated by micro actors, suggests that the specific situation and regulation of a market brings different types of actors to the fore. Most of the identified actors, and particularly the funding of their projects, have no relation to financial markets and sources; from this perspective, the concept of commodification provides greater insight into the dynamic of this specific housing market segment than the lens of financialisation does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After two decades of implementing top-down grassland restoration projects focused on reducing livestock numbers and pastoralist populations, the Chinese government's well-funded efforts have not significantly reversed grassland degradation. This study reviews the institutional changes in grassland management over the past forty years, highlighting the Livestock and Grassland Double Contract Household Responsibility System of the early 1980s and the Grassland Ecological Reward and Compensation Policy introduced in 2011. It demonstrates how these institutional transformations have shaped pastoralists' evolving understanding of grassland value and reveals that commodifying grassland's economic and ecological value has led to the capitalization of nature, disembedding husbandry from grassland production, and undermining the effectiveness of conservation projects. This article also showcases the development of grassland ecology research in China, noting its increasing detachment from a holistic understanding of ecosystems and the interdisciplinary needs of management practices. The disjunction between grassland ecology research and practical management has resulted in a lack of techniques aligned with local ecological and socioeconomic contexts. This article champions active engagement with and protection of pastoralist communities to reintegrate grasslands' true economic and ecological value into management practices, thereby effectively restoring degraded grasslands and achieving sustainable management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the existing structure of Indonesian regulations for constructing bureaucrats' cognitive behavior by carrying out budget ratcheting and praxis. It then analyses the dominant factors influencing Indonesia's Bureaucracy's decision to adopt the ratchet principle. It underlines that the Indonesian bureaucracy prefers praxis due to national styles and regulations. Furthermore, the authors reveal that the Indonesian bureaucrats preserve their outcome to save face by leniently ratcheting the budget for this current one. This article uses a post-structuralist methodology demonstrating that praxis is nested in bureaucrat behavior. Then, we conduct in-depth interviews to capture the thinking behind the Indonesian bureaucrats' cognition. We found four factors influencing the Indonesian bureaucracy's choice to use praxis: commodification, regulatory ambivalence, undecidability, and expediency. Therefore, this study highlights that budget executors never produce optimum performances due to a misalignment between the budgetary measurements and the execution. In short, the budget's executors conduct praxis in their cognitive behavior because they have no other choice. This study's findings have consequences for the political economy, meaning Indonesia's government must re-engineer most budgetary regulations to control all the behavioral agents. Simultaneously, this re-engineering could drive and empower the bureaucrats' behavior by transforming their readiness and commitment to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among housing observers, Vienna is typically treated as a posterchild of decommodification, showcasing the power of politics to tame the profit motive in housing. We argue that this view requires nuance. In the regulated private rental market, which accounts for one-fifth of all housing units in the city, commodification has become a trait of Vienna’s housing system over the last three decades. Based on policy analysis and transaction data we trace the state promoted intensification of commodification and the rise of corporate owners. We show how, together, they substantially transformed regulated private renting by opening and exploiting regulatory loopholes to maximize returns. We then demonstrate, based on survey data, how this was accompanied by improved housing quality in the sector, yet also by rising rents, affordability burdens, and housing insecurity. The paper balances existing accounts of Vienna’s housing system, while also speaking to debates around the revival of private renting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how and why, in the digital age of interconnectivity, the Toraja funeral ceremony known as Rambu Solo (or ‘descending smoke’) has become increasingly mediatised. Prominently featured on Instagram and Facebook, Toraja content creators emphasise its luxury over its cultural values, epitomising the contemporary mediatisation of ceremonial practices. By depicting it so elaborately, these creators may inadvertently reinforce the perception of a luxurious funeral as an obligation for all social classes in Toraja, potentially leading to significant and enduring socioeconomic implications for individuals and the broader Toraja community. By demonstrating how content creators exploit social media to commodify public fascination with the distinctive Rambu Solo ceremony for economic and political gain, this article challenges the assumption of both Indonesian and Western scholars that the exposure of traditions on social media invariably supports cultural preservation. Instead, it reveals complex dynamics whereby the intersection of mediatisation and social media can simultaneously act as agents of both cultural commodification and redefinition. These findings offer a new perspective in this field, highlighting its ambivalence and prompting a re-evaluation of how we perceive the preservation and promotion of cultural tradition in the age of social media’s transformative power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary art is in a state of value collapse, which is the result of different factors: the process of art and reality becoming one, the influence of information technologies, globalization, and commoditization. On the one hand, the globalizing world finds it increasingly difficult to find intersections, which makes it impossible to establish collective and shared values and norms, and on the other hand, voluntary living in simulated informational realities breaks the connection with reality, leading to living instead in the giant simulacrum of hyperreality. The universal commoditization and the turning of art into a fetish create an anti-cultural situation in which there are no areas left outside of monetary exchange. All these factors influence the erosion of artistic values. The final stage of this process is sacralization through destruction and immortalization through the annihilation of the work of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the concept of freedom has been appropriated by the far right to impose a number of authoritarian policies designed to dismantle the critical functions of public and higher education. It explores, in particular, the ways in which Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has used an appeal to freedom to punish critics, wage a war on trans people, misrepresent the history of slavery, and impose a new version of McCarthyism on higher education. It challenges what it terms neoliberal and fascist notions of freedom by making clear that democracy and capitalism are incompatible, and that any viable notion of freedom must address not only personal and political rights but also economic rights. Freedom from domination must be matched by a freedom to live in a world marked by the principles of justice, equality, and dignity. There is no freedom in the midst of massive inequalities in wealth, power, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the burgeoning interest in cultural tourism in Botswana, its effect on traditional practices has been seldom understood. This study examined the effects of tourism development on traditional basket weaving in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Semi-structured interviews and in-depth interviews were conducted. Data was analysed through descriptive statistics and thematically. The results depict a gradual transformation in basketry – from being a domestic utilitarian product to being a most sought after product in the tourism market. Although change was inevitable, local communities are urged to strike a balance between satisfying market demands and preserving the cultural significance of basketry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Faroe Islands is one of the world's smallest countries but has in recent years become increasingly noticed in the global tourism market. Using the notion of "destination branding", this article investigates how the official tourist board of the Faroe Islands, Visit Faroe Islands (VFI), brands the destination to tourists on their Facebook page. The data consists of VFI's Facebook posts from 1/9–2020 to 31/8–2021; these are analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, namely corpus-based analysis, grounded theory categorisation, and multimodal analysis. Through the analyses, it is concluded that VFI promises unique and authentic experiences by turning the Faroe Islands' unspoiled and unexplored nature and unpredictable weather into tourist commodities. The Faroese destination brand includes a dichotomic relationship between elements of convenience and inconvenience – between accessibility and inaccessibility – that both emphasise the destination's extremeness and, on the other hand, mitigate it. • Nature experiences are used to stand out in the competitive tourism market. • Unspoiled nature and unpredictable weather are turned into tourist commodities. • Focus on bad weather has as an authenticating function in the destination branding. • The Faroese destination brand includes elements of convenience and inconvenience. • The use of visitor anecdotes is regarded as an "experience-sharing strategy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author responds to commentaries about his book "The Commodification Gap: Gentrification and Public Policy in London, Berlin and St. Petersburg." He examines several features of the commentaries, such as preserving or overcoming gentrification as a concept, the status of the commodification gap as a concept and as a tool for empirical research, as well as the impact of housing financialization. He discusses the significance of the commentaries to urban studies.

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Feminist porn can be defined as pornography that is infused with feminist values and ideals when it comes to what the product looks like, how it is produced, and also consumed. Still, as a segment of the pornography industry, feminist porn is a cultural product made for profit. In this paper, focusing on feminist pornographers, we expand on limited discussions of pornography in management and organization studies by exploring how the inclusion of feminist ideals in pornography practices might be reconciled with the constraints of operating in a for-profit market. At the intersection of business ethics and the sociology of morality we ask: What morality do feminist pornographers construct for their practice? To answer this question, we analyze a media data corpus consisting of articles, podcasts, and videos where feminist pornographers are interviewed, alongside supplementary interviews and archival data. On this basis, we reconstruct three evaluative norms that constitute a morality of feminist porn: (1) Enabling diversity and difference; (2) Ensuring quality and care; and (3) Connecting values and valuation. We show the variations and tensions in these and discuss the implications for a feminist (re)organizing of pornography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football games are presented in a hypercommercialized manner by television broadcast networks through the targeted use of in-game graphics and corporatized content. While commercialized FBS football broadcast components have been analyzed within the frameworks of a hypercommercialized National Collegiate Athletic Association and media institutional logics, an analysis of commentator language has yet to be examined within the larger institutional field of FBS football broadcasts. Utilizing agenda setting and media framing as frameworks, this case study examined the manner in which commentators frame FBS football players as professionals in a hypercommercialized institutional setting. From a sample of 18 FBS bowl games during the 2019–20 season, discourse and thematic analysis reveal that commentators frame FBS football players in the context of their future professional opportunities (i.e., National Football League). The framing of FBS football players as professionals aligns with extant literature examining the broader institutional field of broadcast media and logics pervasive in the National Collegiate Athletic Association as an organization. The commodification of FBS football players as integral components to strategic programmatic content promoting future broadcast programming is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some feminists hold that surrogacy contracts should be unenforceable or illegal because they contribute to and perpetuate unjust gender inequalities. I argue that in developed countries, surrogacy contracts either wouldn't have these negative effects or that these effects could be mitigated via regulation. Furthermore, the existence of a regulated surrogacy market is preferable on consequentialist grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic study seeks to position Turkish women within the lucrative global bridal industry, which is today heavily influenced by the style, aesthetics and consumer values of the American wedding. It will add to the existing literature by examining Turkish brides' participation in transnational networks that promote the commodification of weddings in Turkey – a country where, for many, weddings were until quite recently low-budget affairs designed to maximize newlywed profits. We will explore how such networks establish and reinforce bridal rules and codes through wedding props such as gowns, cakes, jewellery, flatware, china and honeymoons. By unpacking the complexities, symbolism and meaning of the contemporary Turkish bride, we will move beyond simple binaries to examine how tradition and modernity overlap and intersect and how modernity is an intrinsic part of the evolution of traditional Turkish wedding practices. This study will also critique processes of (American) cultural assimilation and reveal how Turkish brides are negotiating western trends, influences and the 'wedding-industrial complex'. Through lifestyle marketing and other industry practices, these networks are prescribing how Turkish women – regardless of their socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, educational and class status and cultural and religious beliefs – should perform the bridal role. Moreover, because of its ties to aesthetics, style and fashion, the lavish American-style wedding has also become the ultimate platform for the display of purchasing power in Turkey – a way to replicate the conspicuous consumption of the wealthier, leisured classes that, for many Turks, has become synonymous with modernity and elevated social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the American Civil War was seen, known, and understood in society by examining how photographs of the war and its casualties were sold as a cultural commodity. Other topics include "The Dead at Antietam" exhibition at Brady's New York City gallery in the U.S., the sale of the photographs exhibited at the show, and the photographs of other conflicts like the Mexican-American War and the Crimean War.

This paper examines the significant agrarian transformations in India's Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is witnessing a rapid transition into commercial farming and, simultaneously, an increasing trend of deagrarianisation. The study uses a mixed-method approach to investigate why farmers adopt commercial farming in this region and how the processes of deagrarianisation, reconfiguration of land use, and deepening commodification have become inevitable for many small and medium-scale farmers as a result of this process. In the analysis, our empirically tested theoretical model confirms that institutional factors in terms of state support work as a significant driver toward commercialisation. We then argue that combined with the stimulus of the state, a vigorous process of neo-extractivism is being promoted, which renders the substantive changes in agrarian transitions by displacing the subsistence sector. The study highlights that this contemporary commercialisation is altering the social and physical landscape and driving broader forms of dispossession and consolidation of farmlands at micro-levels. Furthermore, it raises questions about the fundamental role of the Indian state's neo-extractivist policies in a politically contested region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of "sugar dating" websites, facilitating transactional relationships between a "sugar baby" and a "sugar daddy," raises new questions about the reconfigured relationship between intimacy and economy in the contemporary Global North. By encouraging people to approach sex and intimacy through a logic of exchange, sugar dating has been claimed to represent the culmination of a broader trend towards a "marketization" of intimacy. Based on semi-structured interviews, this article analyzes Swedish "sugar babies"' investment in a transactional approach to intimate interactions with men, focusing on the emotional rewards that they associate with the transactional setup of sugar dating. While the participants' transactional approach to intimacy is bolstered by the cultural dispersal of a neoliberal rationality into ever more domains of life, I argue that its deeper roots need to be sought in the precarious conditions of contemporary intimacy. Drawing in particular on the work of Eva Illouz, I claim that the women's embracement of a transactional approach to heterosexual sex and intimacy may be read as a defensive tactic of seeking to gain control over the flows of intimate interaction in light of the (gendered) insecurities and vulnerabilities of the contemporary market of intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Turkish cultural history, there is an uninterrupted continuity in the education of the Traditional Turkish Arts (TTA), with clear links to the Ottoman past and Islam. This article discusses how TTA were preserved and incorporated into the educational curriculum in the early Republican era, despite discourses that established a direct disengagement between the Republican nationalist project and the Ottoman past. Turning then to the dissemination of TTA under the AKP's rule as a reflection of neo-Ottomanism as a multi-faceted strategy, this article reveals their overlap with neo-liberal policies that bring about their commodification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]