European Journal of Cultural Studies

The book Common Culture provides a wealth of examples of young people's use of cultural commodities and the cultural media. These uses can be classified under the categories of symbolic work, symbolic creativity, and symbolic extension; in sum amounting to the resources and practices of an emerging common culture. These categories, engaging analytically with common culture, produce further refinements of received notions of 'work', 'post-modernism' and 'aesthetics', which, in their turn, further sensitize us to, and help us understand, important dynamics of change within late modern 'lived culture'.

Queer theory has radicalized lesbian and gay studies by viewing the homosexual subject as performative, by insisting upon analyzing homosexuality in relation to heterosexuality, and by linking gay studies to the study of sexualities. It is, in short, a generalizing theoretical perspective. Yet, this paper argues that queer theory has been limited by its reliance on psychoanalytical theory and a narrow linguistic poststructural language of social analysis. The case for a sociological and cultural turn in queer theory is sketched in the context of a discussion of the 'closet' in lesbian and gay culture and literature.

While audience research, particularly reception studies, has successfully furthered the diverse traditions from which it developed, there now seems to be some uncertainty about the way forward: audience research is at a crossroads. This article argues that the future agenda should not restrict itself to repeating the cultural studies 'canon' of reception research, but should strengthen external relations between audience research and other domains of media and cultural studies, challenging the 'implied audience' - the ways in which audiences are theorized outside audience theory — within the realms of political, policy, technological, economic and social theory. It is further proposed that by developing a multi-level conception of audiences that analytically links the macro and the micro, several existing problems facing reception studies - particularly concerning the nature of audience activity and resistance - may be addressed.

This article argues that different acting techniques depend on different theories of the 'subject', and that consequently, every theory of acting is also a theory of subjectivity. Recent Oscar-winning performances emphasize roles where the actor must play someone supposedly incomplete, handicapped, in other words not 'an entirely autonomous' subject. However, it is argued that the acting technique used to realize these parts is in fact a decidedly humanist one, dependent on the early 20th-century theories of Konstantin Stanislavski. An early text of Stanislavski's is analysed closely to reveal its humanist presuppositions, and then contrasted with acting theories which are anti-humanist, particularly those of Bertolt Brecht, who is responsible for the Verfremdungseffekt.

The 'Total Balalaika Show', a rock concert of extraordinary proportions, was held in Helsinki in 1993. The audience numbered 80,000. This concert is analysed by reference to Bakhtin's explorations of carnival, highlighting the ambivalent nature of the event. Both the performers and the venue of the concert (the historical Senate Square in the centre of Helsinki) are characterized by the uncertainty of temporal and spatial categories. The concert is also interpreted as constituting an integral part of the new cultural situation in Finland: a situation in which this small country and its comparatively homogenous culture will increasingly have to see questions of identity pushed into the domains of reflexivity and uncertainty. The concert also provided an opportunity to negotiate the history of Finnish—Soviet relations and the problems involved in those relations.