IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies: Volume 9 – Issue 2
Editor-in-Chief: Holger Briel, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC), China
Published: December 31, 2025
ISSN: 2187-4905
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.9.2
'Publishing cutting-edge cultural research since 2016'
As 2024 is quickly winding down, many of us are involved in the final academic chores of the year, be that grading papers, examination boards, research reports or, indeed, taking finals. During all these hectic endeavours, it is good to pause once in a while and remember the pivotal moments the year had in store for us for us. Of course, these moments are very much location-dependent. If you were living in Gaza or on the front in the Ukraine, you will want to bring 2024 to a close as quickly as possible and hope for betterment and an end of the atrocities in the new year. Those of us living more privileged lives, we might remember elections having taking place around the globe, and also those that have not taken place, both outcomes perhaps equally worrisome. It is hoped that the current issue will give you the abovementioned pause, as the contributions to this issue strives to make a little bit more sense of our world and add to its knowledge bases.
Article 1
The issue opens with Muh Adnan Malewa’s text, Foucault in Sulawesi: Challenging the Roots of Ethnic Discourse in South Sulawesi. In his article, Malewa artfully and knowledgeably challenges the traditional view taken by many Indonesian historians that conflicts having taken place in Sulawesi hundreds of years ago can be traced to two ethnicities fighting each other for power. Employing Foucauldian power theories, he demonstrates that rather than ethnic differences, the struggle came from two political factions fighting for power, engaging two overlaying conflicts: that of Dutch colonization and the Muslim conquests. The lessons to be learned from these conflicts have a deep meaning for today’s continuing struggles in Sulawesi. Malewa cautions against using history as a divisive tool and, rather, to seek healing commonalities. False dichotomies only play into the hands of larger forces trying to instrumentalise the historic discourse, which itself needs to be pluralized.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.9.2.01
Article 2
The following text, The Home and the World: Analysing Socio-Spatial Dynamics and Identity-Formation in Indian Picturebooks by Aditi Bhardwaj and Devjani Ray, follows along the lines of cultural development, albeit this time, Indian children’s development. In their magisterial inquiry, they investigate a large number of Indian picture books regarding their ideological underpinnings. They find, perhaps to their own pleasant surprise, that especially recently, Indian children’s picturebooks have become rather enlightened and display to their childhood readers many desiderata of an equally enlightened 21st century. Not only do they treat similar themes as their international counterparts regarding gender relations and racism, they also localise their content for their particular readership and tell stories of fighting casteism and relating to the jungle many of them have grown up with, both topics not typically found in their western counterparts. Giving examples of the wonderful artwork on display in these picture books, they also comment on one of the main turns in cognition development – that from the linguistic turn to a pictorial one. For the longest time, many believed that picture books were something you graduated from to engage in written texts only, but Bhardwaj and Ray’s intervention amply demonstrates that it is exactly this multimodal and relational display of text and image that makes these picturebooks so valuable for the development of children, who in their later lives will continue to interact with image realms, be that in the memes they view or in the emojis they themselves will use.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.9.2.02
Article 3
If placemaking was already a topic in the preceding article, thematising (and fighting against) traditional spaces assigned to Indian men and women, in Placemaking through Sensory Engagement: Assessing Cultural Essence of Assi Ghat, Varanasi for Virtual Environments, Tejaswini Rai, Suruchi Modi, and Neena Zutshi take this topic to the next level and explore the space of Assi Ghat, the steps leading down to the Ganges river in Varanasi. They present a thick description of the multisensory atmosphere created during various times of the day in this place and in a further step discuss how such a placemaking can or cannot be transferred into the virtual realm. Citing examples from other places of deep meaning making in China and other Indian cities, they provide a roadmap for such digitalisation, making their readers ponder the general bifurcations between virtual and not so virtual spaces and places.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.9.2.03
Article 4
Moving further into the virtual realm is Weinan Yuan’s Online News, Public Health and Misinformation: Their Impact on Foreign News Consumers Living in China. As this editor knows too well, living in China brings with it its own special challenges – a very difficult language, a very low take-up of English even in urban space, and a tight control of the internet, with more than 60% of internet webpages underlying some kind of restriction. While this does make daily life difficult, living under the further restrictions of COVID conditions was especially arduous. Interviewing a number of non-Chinese Key Informers living in China, Yuan shows how these individuals nevertheless were able to gain information for their daily lives and thus stayed up-to-date on the relevant issues, especially these they needed during these special times. The text is an homage to the power of the internet as it helps us see things from different perspectives. Given the results of the COVID infection, it becomes clear that while restrictions might stop us from getting information on things, it also protects us from getting fake news, thereby fostering further critical engagement with this still recent phenomenon.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.9.2.04
Article 5
Lastly, Jakob Jurisch’s David Lynch’s Los Angeles: Control and Liberation through the Cinematic Image takes us on a virtual tour of Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of David Lynch. This is no easy tour to, say, the Bel Air Houses of the rich and famous, but rather a tour de force of the down-and-out spaces and their inhabitants. Based on his expert reading of Lynch’s L.A. trilogy, Jurisch demonstrates how Lynch interweaves the locale with its virtual-visual representations and how he, ever so slightly but insistently so tilts realities until they (and we) become their virtual other. Disconcerting, but certainly not far from the virtual cinematic truth.
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.9.2.05
Do enjoy this issue!
Holger Briel
Editor-in-Chief, IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies
December 2024
