Minding the Gap!

Feminist Interventions in International Communication: Minding the Gap, edited by Katharine Sarikakis and Leslie Regan Shade. Rowman and Littlefield, September 2007.

International communication research has badly needed a collection such as this one for a very long time. If any book is likely to give the field a much-needed shot in the arm, this is it. The variety of its contents and the freshness of the analyses are genuinely stimulating. It will probably set off new research initiatives globally. John Downing, Southern Illinois University

When feminist categories of analysis are brought to bear on the world of the new information technologies the result can be exciting and unfamiliar. Sarikakis and Shade have brought together a highly diverse group of such scholars and given us one of the more extraordinary texts I have seen on the new technologies. Together these authors open up the field with their original studies and deborder established propositions with gusto and brio. Saskia Sassen, Columbia University; author, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages

Feminist Interventions in International Communication is exactly what we all need right now. Together, these smart editors and authors reveal the connections between media’s representation of women, women as workers in this burgeoning industry, and the structural trends of global media. They show us all what a feminist curiosity about global media can reveal. Cynthia Enloe, Clark University; author, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire.

This cutting-edge work critiques today’s global mediascape through feminist perspectives, highlighting concerns of policy, power, labor, and technology. Starting with the general state of international communications, the book uses feminist political-economic and policy analyses to explore the globalization of media industries, including questions about women’s employment and media content that is globally produced and consumed. A top-notch group of authors covers cases on online news, pornography and explicit material, political participation and democracy, policies for women’s development, violence against women, labor practices and information workers, print media and publishing, public “telecentres,” media coverage of HIV/AIDS, and more. Providing fresh feminist insights into international communication, this essential book shows the important strides taken toward women’s justice in these areas and how far there is yet to go.

List of Contributors, TOC, and Acknowledgments (below)

I. REVISITING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS STUDIES

1. Revisiting International Communication: Approach of the Curious Feminist
Katharine Sarikakis and Leslie Regan Shade

2. Feminist Issues and the Global Media System
Margaret Gallagher

3. Public/Private: The Hidden Dimension of International Communications
Gillian Youngs

4. Women, Participation and Democracy in the Information Society
Ursula Huws

II GENDERING POLICY REGIMES

5. The Expediency of Women
Alison Beale

6. Gender Sensitive Communications Policies for Women’s Development: Issues and Challenges
Kiran Prasad

7. The Spectral Politics of Mobile Communication Technologies: A Feminist Analysis of International Policies
Barbara Crow and Kim Sawchuk

8. The Global Structures and Cultures of Pornography: The Global Brothel
Katharine Sarikakis and Zeenia Shaukut

III. MEDIATING MEANINGS-MEDIATING REGIMES OF POWER

9. Mediations of Domination: Gendered Violence Within and Across Borders
Yasmin Jiwani

10. From Religious Fundamentalism to Pornography? The Female Body as Text in Arabic Song Video
Salam Al-Mahadin

11. Female Faces in the Millennium Development Goals: Reflections in the Mirrors of Media
Nancy Van Leuven, C. Anthony Giffard, Sheryl Cunningham, Danielle Newton

12. Deadly Synergies: Gender Inequality, HIV/AIDs, and the Media
Patricia Made

13. Online News: Setting New Gender Agendas
Jayne Rodgers

IV LABOURING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

14. Convergences: Elements of a Feminist Political Economy of Labor and Communication
Vincent Mosco, Catherine McKercher, and Andrew Stevens

15. Women, Information Work, and the Corporatization of Development
Lisa McLaughlin

16. Empire and Sweatshop Girlhoods: The Two Faces of the Global Culture Industry
Leslie Regan Shade and Nikki Porter

V. GLOCALIZING MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGIES

17. Feminist Print Cultures in the Digital Era
Simone Murray

18. Communication and Women in Eastern Europe: Challenges in Reshaping the Democratic Sphere
Valentina Marinescu

19. ‘GodZone’? NZ’s Classification of Explicit Material in an Era of Global Fundamentalism
Mary Griffiths

20. Grounding Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) for Telecenters: The Experiences of Ecuador and the Philippines
Claire Bur

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