The key concepts of the book are media, class, poverty, and shaming. The contributors to this book examine how certain social relations and their cultural meanings in the media, namely class and poverty, are transformed into factual or moral attributes of people and situations. Class and poverty are not understood as certain things and actions, or concepts and numbers; both class and poverty are assumed to be, above all, particular social relationships or a set of relations between people, things and symbols.
Without denying that contempt for the destitute Other is an affect found throughout history and in various socioeconomic contexts, the chapters in this book – through their concern with the mediated gaze on class – narrate predominantly the challenges brought about by the media’s spectacular take on poverty and low status as they (at least) coincide with the neoliberal era.
This volume will be essential reading for the scholars specialising in the study of media and social inequalities form the vantage points of Media Studies, Sociology, Anthropology or European Studies.
Author(s): Irena Reifová, Martin Hájek
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 273
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
About the Book
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Perspectives on Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty in European Contexts
Intersections of the Study of Class and Media
A Socio-Cultural Approach to Class and Poverty
Shame and Shaming
The European Perspective of Class and Poverty as Objects of Shame
Chapter Overview
References
Chapter 2: ‘Benefits Scroungers’ and Stigma: Exploring the Abject-Grotesque in British Poverty Porn Programming
Broadcasting Benefits: An Explosion of ‘Poverty Porn’
Beyond the Borders: The Abject and the Grotesque
Methodology: Abject-Grotesque Frame Analysis
Animating the ‘Benefits Mum’
Internalising ‘Scrounger’ Stigma
Embodying Abjection
Us and Them, Self and Other: Maintaining the Boundaries
Transgressing Limits
Transferring or Reinforcing Stigma?
Conclusion: The ‘Benefits Scrounger’ as an Abject-Grotesque Figure
References
Chapter 3: Neural Attunement to Others: Shame, Social Status, and Rewarded Viewing in Reality Television in Sweden
Neuroscience and Media Engagement
Misconduct on Lyxfällan
Shame and Devaluation
The Work of Dis-identification: Feelings-in-Common
Scorn, Self-Worth, and Social Comparison
Emotional Memories: Neural Attunement to Others
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Shame, (Dis)empowerment and Resistance in Diasporic Media: Romanian Transnational Migrants’ Reclassification Struggles
Shame and Reclassification Struggles in Transnational Contexts
Shame and Reclassification Struggles in Public Culture and Discourses: Romanian ‘Badanti’ and ‘Strawberry Pickers’
Corpus and Analytical Framework
Findings and Discussion: Reactions to Shame as Forms of Empowerment and Resistance
Deprivation, Shame and Emigration
Resistance to Shame in the Host Country
Resistance to Shame in the Home Country
Conclusions
References
Chapter 5: Mediating Class in a Classless Society? Media and Social Inequalities in Socialist Eastern Europe
Class Inequalities, Middle-Class Values and Consumer Culture in State Socialist Societies
The Model Workers of State Socialist TV Fiction
Conclusions
References
Chapter 6: Invisibility or Inevitability: Performing Poverty in Czech Reality Television
Researching Poverty Performance in Reality Television
Inevitable Poverty Performed as Difference in Kind
Poverty Made Invisible—Performing the Magic of Disappearance
Poverty as Misdemeanour—Shaming in Reality Television
Discussion
References
Chapter 7: Shaming Working-Class People on Reality Television: Perspectives from Swedish Television Production
The Social Background and Position of Media Producers
Media Work as Interpretative Labour
Situating the Producers of Swedish Reality Television
Genre Interpretations of Reality Television
The Cultural Status of Reality Television
Casting and Editing Class
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Disparaging ‘the Assisted’: Shaming and Blaming Social Welfare Recipients in Romania and Hungary
Theoretical Background and the Local Context
Research Design and Methodology
Discursive Patterns of Disparaging ‘the Assisted’
Shaming Frames in Visual Content
Disparaging Discourses in Comments: Welfare as Referential Strategy and Shameful Attribute
From the Language of Welfare to Welfare as a Political Language
References
Chapter 9: Othering Without Blaming: Representing Poverty in Flemish Factual Entertainment
Media Representations of Poverty
Methodology: Studying Poverty in Contemporary Flemish Television
Televisual Approaches to Poverty
Underlying Explanatory Models
Production Rationale
Discussion and Conclusion
References
Chapter 10: Inter- and Intranational Mediated Shaming to Justify Austerity Measures: The Case of the ‘Greek Crisis’
Middle-Class Shaming
The Greek Crisis Publicity as a Class Shaming Practice
Data and Method of Analysis for the Shaming of Greece in the Media
Framing the Failed ‘Peer’
Affective Negations: Ridicule, Spite and Contempt
Shaming ‘Ourselves’: The Case of the Greek Liberal and Conservative Media
Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: Social Distances Through Scopic Practices: How Czech Reality Television Audiences Negotiate Social Inequalities
Scopic Practices and the Concept of Class in a Cultural and Relational Approach to Social Inequalities
Methodological Note
Foregrounding Class Attributes
Relational Analysis
Social Distance: Different from the Abnormal Them
Moral Condemnation: Different from the Torpid Passivity
Emotions of Distance and Proximity
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: Everybody Is a Fool: Rural Life, Social Order and Carnivalesque Marginalisation in a Hungarian Television Series
From Socialism to Post-socialism: Dismantling the Working Class and the Missing Middle
Focus on the Countryside
Representing and (Re)imagining the Rural
Laughing at/in the Village
A mi kis falunk and Domestic Disorder
Remoteness and Nostalgia
Hedonism, Sovereignty and Small Community
We Do It in Our Way
Ambivalent Representation of Gender Dynamics and Social Divisions
In the Critical Crossfire
Conclusion
References
Index
