Celebrity Culture

Although the idea of a celebrity has been around for a long time, its mutation into an important cultural force is a relatively recent development. In recent decades the meaning of a celebrity has altered and is now often applied to those who are famous for being famous. The ascendancy of the celebrity has been fuelled by society’s uneasy relationship with the question of authority. Often celebrity provides an alternative source of validation. The tendency to outsource authority to the celebrity represents an attempt to bypass the problem of legitimacy by politicians and other figures.     

Selling Politics

ABSTRACT

Parents, the press and political scientists have increasingly shown interest in the influence of the entertainment media on young adults' political beliefs. This research examines the impact of celebrities' endorsements of certain political beliefs on the attitudes on young Americans, and finds that young people are significantly more likely to agree with a position when it is endorsed by a celebrity. Causes and candidates are cautioned to select celebrity endorsers carefully, because not all celebrities are created equal when it comes to influencing public opinion, with the evidence suggesting celebrity status in and of itself may not be most important factor, but credibility and appropriate match-up between idea and endorser matter as well.     

Political Star Power and Political Parties

Abstract

Political parties, and more specifically public interest groups, budget extensive amounts of time and money to use celebrity endorsers for their candidate. Do celebrities bring forth enough value to warrant the time, effort, and money expended to make their endorsements public? Using a sample of first-time voters from the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, the authors examine the extent to which celebrities influence voting while specifically assessing whether celebrity influence is greater for Republicans or Democrats. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Celebrity Ancient and Modern

Popular belief to the contrary, celebrity has a very long history. Many of the indications of a celebrity culture were already in place in classical antiquity. By drawing on examples from the rich literary tradition of Greece and Rome we can better understand and analyze what is very likely to have been a perennial aspect of the human psyche in all developed societies the world over.     

PUBLIC SECTOR CULTURE MANAGERIALISM OR MULTICULTURALISM?

Abstract: Despite dramatic change in the Australian public sector, little attention has been paid to organisational culture. With the importation of private sector strategies and structures the traditional values of public administration have been eroded. Public organisations and their members have experienced consequences of "culture shock", even "cultural revolution". Managerialism is an introduced culture which has been criticised by some academics and public servants. It is seen as inappropriate to the distinctive values and operating context of the public domain, as purporting to value-free technique while in effect operating as the mystifying ideology of a dominant elite. Managerialism has been constructed, it is argued, on simplistic and now superseded concepts of rational "management man", goal setting and planning. While managerialism is not the culture which will endow public organisations with new meaning and propel them to excellence, it can expect to increase its hold in the absence of the development of new models of the culture of public organisation. While new public sector cultures will need to be organisation-specific, to accommodate the differentiation between and within public organisations, an overarching framework of public sector values and principles will be required. One of the distinctive features of most public sector organisations is die number and diversity of their stakeholders. A multi-cultural model of public sector culture is proposed, which construes this diversity of subcultures as an instrument of strategic flexibility.     

Educational economies

Contemporary public discussion of and policy formation with respect to higher education pay scant attention to the history and structure of the modern university. In part this is forgivable, since educational historians deal almost exclusively with schooling to the neglect of any wider assessment of formal education within the public sphere. Nonetheless, personal ‘experience’, much less sheer prejudice, is no substitute for an understanding of ‘higher learning’. This review essay considers the outline history provided by Robert Stevens’ From University to Uni and suggests that we are now entering an era of a ‘postmodern’ university whose purposes are both incoherent and implausible.     

Conceptualizing “Everyday Humanitarianism”: Ethics,Affects, and Practices of Contemporary Global Helping

ABSTRACT

Humanitarianism has become increasingly widespread in our public life— from celebrity culture to Twitter messaging and from Christmas shopping to concert-going. This Special Issue introduces the concept of “Everyday Humanitarianism” for understanding an expanded series of practices in the lives of citizens that purport to make a difference outside the traditional boundaries of professional humanitarian activity. The term can also refer to the quotidian practices of humanitarian workers as they negotiate within the boundaries of formal structures. Everyday humanitarianism can be found in shopping malls and international organizations alike, and the struggles over its ethics and politics are consistent. Key questions arise: What does helping look like in the age of market-driven, digital media-based action? What are the implications of such practices for the ethics and politics of contemporary compassion? The contributions to this Special Issue examine everyday humanitarianism and provide unconventional, interdisciplinary approaches to understanding selected aspects of this civic and organizational benevolence.     

The Next Big Thing: Local Celebrity

In this essay I observe that, as the field of celebrity studies established itself in the academy, there is a need for a distinctly sociological and interactional approach to celebrity. In particular, I argue for a focus on the experiential and relational dynamics of celebrity from the point of view of celebrities themselves, something which has so far been difficult for researchers to achieve. One way to accomplish this goal is to move in the direction celebrity itself seems to be headed: toward local or subcultural celebrities and their smaller, more segmented audiences. Empirical research on the lived experiences of local celebrities provides a practical way to generate celebrity-level data and makes an important sociological contribution to broader theorizing about the cultural phenomenon of celebrity.     

公共精神：公共行政现代化的价值维度——一种基于和谐社会视角的分析

近代以来直至当前的和谐社会之诉求,现代化始终是萦绕在中国人心目中的一个实质性问题.然而,现代化又是一个全方位、多层次的系统工程,公共行政现代化是其应然维度之一.现代化从"器物"到"政制"直至社会精神文化和伦理价值观念这一结构性的深化历程,更昭示了公共精神正是公共行政现代化须臾不可"缺场"的价值向度.实际上,从公共行政自身发展的认识论与方法论双重维度去探究和反思公共行政的现代化现象,我们也发现公共精神不断地从边缘向中心位移,从"遮蔽"状态走向"解蔽".其中,公共行政现代化所涵摄的民主理念、公正理念、契约精神、公共服务精神以及和谐、科学的发展理念等公共精神既是公共行政现代化本身,也是构建和谐社会的精神骨核与价值引擎.一种多元宽容、诚信友爱、公平正义、和谐有序的社会公共生活能够得以形成和延续必须以发育良好的公共精神为其基本精神质料和社会价值支撑.我们需要从不断健全和完善市场经济体制,开新传统公共精神资源,大力培育公民社会、拓展公共治理的实践参与,加强公共意识教育、提升公共理性水平等几个方面努力来促进公共精神的化育与养成.     

Leeds on trial: soap opera,performativity and the racialization of sports-related violence

ABSTRACT

Several recent court cases involving the ‘off-field’ activities of professional sportsmen have revealed the ways in which the public performance, media representation and regulation of ‘crime’ is played out in the public imagination. Blackshaw and Crabbe explore how notions of ‘race’ are performatively staged and consumed through the spectacles of celebrity, and discuss the significance of the CCTV evidence used in such cases. In doing so they highlight the ways in which ‘race’ operates discursively to undermine the position of the racialized Other.     

Why the Celebrity Cult?

The celebrity cult has to be sharply distinguished from hero worship as its precondition is to be well known, no matter for what reason. It has been a product of American culture and is closely associated with modernity, individualism, egalitarianism and a moral, cultural and aesthetic relativism. It is part of popular culture and is also stimulated by the pervasive entertainment orientation of American society. Celebrity worship may provide vicarious gratification to people who seek to escape anonymity and believe that they do not get sufficient amounts of attention.     

Human Ecology and Public Policy: Overcoming the Hegemony of Economics

The thinking of those with the power to formulate and implement public policy is now almost totally dominated by the so-called science of economics. While efforts have been made to supplement or modify economics to make it less brutal or less environmentally blind, here it is suggested that economics is so fundamentally flawed and that it so completely dominates the culture of late modern capitalism (or postmodernity) that a new master human science is required to displace it and provide an alternative co-ordinating framework for research and for defining reality. This could then provide an alternative basis for formulating public policy. It is argued that if human ecology is to fill this role, it must be developed on consistently anti-reductionist foundations, and that such a social science would totally reorient public policy from a domain for power elites to a domain for genuinely democratic societies to define and control their destinies.     

Community Capacity Building: A Critical Evaluation of the Third Sector Approach

Throughout the advanced economies, public policy has become ever more deeply involved in developing the capacities of communities to help themselves. Until now, this has been pursued through facilitating the development of community-based groups. The aim of this paper, however, is to critically evaluate the implications and legitimacy of this public policy approach that views developing community-based groups and community capacity building as synonymous. Drawing upon empirical evidence from the United Kingdom, it is here revealed that this third sector approach of developing community-based groups privileges a culture of community involvement that relatively few engage in and is more characteristic of affluent populations, while disregarding informal acts of one-to-one engagement that are both a more popular form of community involvement and also more characteristic of the participatory culture of less affluent populations. The paper concludes by exploring how public policy might respond, especially with regard to the finding that less affluent populations have relatively informal cultures of engagement.     

Spin: from tactic to tabloid

• Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning—it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury.
• Now it seems to embrace the whole process of communication, not only between election campaigners and the media, but also between a Government and its people, or between a public relations professional in any field, and his or her target publics.
• The development of Spin as a word has gone through a number of stages which will be addressed in the course of this paper. It now has widespread popular usage, which has arisen through two principal processes: The increasing celebrity status of the spin‐doctor role: and the usefulness of the word to tabloid sub‐editors.
• By 1997, when New Labour came into Government, the discourse of spin was firmly established.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中国服务型政府建构的路向分析

中国传统的政府管理模式是在计划经济体制下形成的,是政治、经济和行政长期一体化的结果,是在中国传统文化的土壤中产生的。由于这种政府管理模式是以权力为中心的,因此,可称为“权力行政模式”。中国是发展中国家,国内改革和参与解决全球问题的双重压力,给政府管理带来根本性的挑战。“权力行政模式”难以适应21世纪的政府管理要求。以“公共服务”为核心的是未来政府管理可选择的理想模式。     

The Curse of Sisyphus: Public Sector Audit Independence in an Age of Economic Rationalism

Consistent with the economic rationalist philosophy which now pervades the decisions and policies of all Australian governments, the persuasive aura of competitive markets has been used to justify the provision by the private sector of an increasing range of public services. Governments who have been consistently antagonised by the findings of the auditor-general are now attempting to use the arguments for competition in the public sector to diminish the stature and role of the auditor-general. In place of audit models which are based upon an auditor who is able to conduct audits on behalf of parliament, the auditor-general is to be increasingly isolated from the means to audit. This represents the onset of a radical interpretation of public sector audit which will usher in the last days of an independent public sector audit function.     

The glitterati government? Amateur celebrity candidates in American elections, 1928–2018

This paper examines amateur celebrity candidates in American elections from 1928 to 2018. Our central finding is that while not many celebrities run for public office, those who do usually win. We argue that the strategic-politician theory helps explain both why so few stars run for office and why those who do are generally successful. Besides name recognition, celebrities' most significant electoral advantage might be that they do not need a career in politics, which allows them to be picky about the races they enter. Although winning is not a foregone conclusion for celebrities, the most pertinent question seems to be not “can they win?” but “will they run?”     

I Blog Therefore I Am

Twenty-five years since the publication of Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity, this essay reflects on the extraordinary changes in the nature of celebrity, including its radical democratization by way of the internet. Such changes reflect old dilemmas and pose new challenges as the internet and publishing worlds begin to merge and print culture is left behind.     

Do Australian public sector employees have the type of culture they want in the era of new public management?

New public management theory proposes that public sector organisations should be managed more like private sector organisations. It is therefore expected that public sector managers will have preferences for an organisational culture that will reflect the culture of private sector organisations, with an external rather than internal orientation. The current research investigated the idea that managers' perceptions of ideal organisational culture would be different to the bureaucratic model of culture (internally oriented), which has traditionally been associated with public sector organisations. Responses to a competing values culture inventory were received from 925 public sector employees. Results indicated that the bureaucratic model is still pervasive; however, managers prefer a culture that is more external, and less control focussed, as expected. Lower level employees expressed a desire for a culture that emphasised human relations values.     

Caucuses in Collaborative Governance: Modeling the Effects of Structure,Power, and Problem Complexity

ABSTRACT

This article explores societal culture as an antecedent of public service motivation. Culture can be a major factor in developing an institution-based theory of public service motivation. In the field of organization theory, culture is considered a fundamental factor for explaining organization behavior. But our review of the literature reveals that culture has not been fully integrated into public service motivation theory or carefully investigated in this research stream. This study starts to fill this gap in the literature by using institutionalism and social-identity theory to predict how the sub-national Germanic and Latin cultures of Switzerland, which are measured through the mother tongues of public employees and the regional locations of public offices, affect their levels of public service motivation. Our analysis centers on two large data sets of federal and municipal employees, and produces evidence that culture has a consistent impact on public service motivation. The results show that Swiss German public employees have a significantly higher level of public service motivation on the whole, while Swiss French public employees have a significantly lower level overall. Implications for theory development and future research are discussed.