Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the increase in online interaction between scenes of queer electronic music parties in São Paulo and Berlin, which was one of the adaptation strategies in pandemic times. Its virtual and translocal character gains more relevance, helping them to survive in the midst of tragedy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the increase in online interaction between participants of scenes of queer electronic music parties in the cities of São Paulo and Berlin, being them artists, party producers and ravers. The transposition of the events from physical to digital was one of the adaptation strategies for the scenes to maintain some kind of continuity and connection between their participants. On one hand, losing the material energy of the dancefloor was undeniably hard. On the other hand, the digital sphere enables bigger translocal exchanges, freed from constraints of geographical distance. The scenes have always been marked by its tripartite character (local, translocal, virtual). In the pandemic context, the virtual gains prominence, enabling new experiences of translocality and reinforcement of previous bonds. Therefore, the proliferating virtual parties, spaces where ravers interact with each other and with digitized music and visual arts, represent a relevant environment in the integrated structure of polymedia (MADIANOU & MILLER, 2013). This virtualization adds to the effort in build a physical transnational community of queer ravers that can be seen in initiatives such as the Whole - United Queer Festival, created by queer collectives from Berlin in 2017, currently reuniting twenty-nine collectives from different cities around the world, including São Paulo.

Reference: Madianou M. & Miller, D. Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication. International Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (2), 169-187, 2013.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ambivalences of transnational K-Pop consumption in Mizoram. I investigate the extent to which that consumption reflects K-Pop fans' cosmopolitan outlook, and the point at which consumers delimit their networks, identifying as being Mizo or as rooted in Northeast India.

Paper long abstract:

K-pop and K-drama are globally en vogue, and have played a major role in Indian youth culture since the start of the 2020s. Young women in particular have been becoming K-pop fans and binge-watching serials, entering or attending dance and song competitions, producing fan videos and circulating memes on social media. The situation in Mizoram is specific, as serials dubbed into Mizo have already been widely circulated among the older woman and family audiences by the regional cable TV infrastructure and dubbing studios for a decade.

I propose to identify examples of how the transnational consumption of popular Korean culture includes processes of cultural de-globalization. Against the background of not just the global rise of populisms, but also the pandemic and the Ukraine war, and in reference to case examples from Mizoram, I suggest that globalization and de-globalization are to be seen as two intertwined phenomena. In detail, I will examine the degree to which cosmopolitan Mizo indigeneity not only enables cultural boundary crossings but also becomes part of the way people set themselves apart from the conservative Other of mainstream India. Secondly, I will investigate the extent to which the consumption of transnational serials and music videos is part of aspiring to be better off, as well as drawing a distinction from those seen as of precarious status. Thirdly, I will analyse the degree to which the representation of Korean women - who are dubbed with loud, shrill voices in serials - serves as a counter-model to the concept of female modesty and the peacefulness of Mizo society.

Paper short abstract:

We draw on the experiences and imaginaries that shape transnationality in youth coming from “mixed-race” families in Catalonia, Spain. We focus on opportunities and obstacles attributed to their “transnationality”, paying a comparative attention to heterogeneity and inequalities within them.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on the experiences and imaginaries that shape transnationality in adolescents and youth coming from “mixed-race” families in Catalonia, Spain. We start from the premise that the internationalisation and intensification of immigration in recent decades in Spain has gone hand in hand with the significant increase in mixed unions between natives and immigrants and, therefore, also with the significant increase in the births of children from these unions. Qualitative studies in this regard have indicated that the experiences of being a descendant of a mixed union are very heterogeneous, and often unequal, depending on multiple factors, which include the geographical origin (ethnic-cultural) and the stereotypes associated with their ‘phenotype’. From this contextual landscape, we explore, through a qualitative lens focused on youths’ narratives, how all these conditionings and constrictions affect their ordinary experiences and visions of transnationality. We aim to shed light to their consciousness of being “transnational” and the kind of opportunities and also obstacles attributed to this “transnationality”, paying a comparative attention to heterogeneity and inequalities in relation to key factors such as cultural origin of the immigrant progenitor, social status, cultural capital and gender factors, among other possible in times of, as stated by the panel, increasing nationalism, populism, mediatisation and virtualisation.

Our data and results come from the R&D research project “MIXED YOUTH: Social Relations and Identity Processes of Children of Mixed Unions: Mixedness, Between Inclusion and Social Constraints” (CSO2015-63962-R, MINECO, 2016-2020).

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the emergence of trendy, alcohol-free halal restaurants in Rotterdam, with the aim to conceptualize how these restaurants provide opportunities for young Muslims to momentarily realize aspirations of cosmopolitanism, as well as piety, social mobility, and local belonging.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the recent emergence of trendy, Muslim-owned restaurants with a halal and alcohol-free menu in Rotterdam, as a material entry point to the study of vernacular cosmopolitanisms. Whereas these restaurants have been subject to controversy, with commentators arguing that they attract a "one-sided patronship", cosmopolitanism is fundamental to the allure of these restaurants. Serving Argentinian T-bone steaks, (veal) spareribs, wagyu beef burgers, sushi, or Tex-Mex food in a fashionable and comfortable setting, these restaurants provide consumers the opportunity to momentarily realize aspirations of cosmopolitanism, together with aspirations of piety, social mobility, and local belonging in a super-diverse city.

There is a growing scholarly consensus that cosmopolitanism is always rooted in specific, culturally committed loyalties and understandings (Pnina Werbner 2006). However, many contemporary discussions about cosmopolitanism seem to rely on a model of concentric circles of local and global belonging. The aim of this paper is to develop new conceptual tools that do better justice to the complex multidimensionality of the cosmopolitan aspirations that are materialized (though never completely fulfilled) in these restaurants, and to gain a better understanding of cosmopolitanism more generally.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines how a certain Argentine middle class – culturally globalist, anxious for “modernity”, superficially ecumenic - experienced Uber in Buenos Aires as an economic stranger king enabling them to partake in a transnational, unmarked, cosmopolitan community of consumers with a “right to choose” how to move around.

Paper long abstract:

April 12th, 2016, Uber arrived in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, by then one of the few large metropolises in the world left without any ride-sharing platform. A protracted conflict ensued, involving the city’s highly unionised taxi industry, lawyers, bureaucrats and the city’s population. Based on a year of fieldwork, I argue here that a segment of the latter – a culturally globalist, anxious for “modernity”, superficially ecumenic middle class – experienced Uber as an economic stranger king (Sahlins 2008): regardless of the company’s own reasons to launch its business in the city, these residents understood Uber as a line of flight from the allegedly indolent and corrupt taxi trade and towards a transnational, boundless, moral and moralised condition of consumers who choose how to move around. Analysing media debates and the company’s PR strategy, I show how this middle class leveraged Uber’s presence in “400 cities all over the world”, relentless news of Uber downloads in the city and a social media frenzy to provincialise and pathologise both resistance to the company and concerns with the production of movement, celebrating passengers, drivers and residents in general through an exalted focus on consumption, a shift all the more persuasive given the vagueness of what “consumption” means when purely understood as “choice”.