Transformations - 2003 Conference Session 5

Session 5: Bodies, Flirting and Sex
Chair: Cheryl-Ann Potgieter

Western Influences on Flirting Behaviour in African Cultures
Linda Venter & Franzel Du Plooy-Cilliers
Monash University, South Africa

Worldwide, interest in intercultural communication seems to be growing. Culture affects communication in subtle and profound ways since cultural perceptions and experiences help determine worldviews and influence the way in which people interact. Collaboration and internationalisation in the tertiary education sector further increase interest in intercultural relationships. Very little research has been conducted on the courtship and flirting behaviour of people from African cultures and the way in which their flirting behaviour has been influenced by Western cultures. Flirting is a universal and essential aspect of human interaction and anthropological research shows that flirting is to be found in all cultures and societies around the world. However, like all other forms of communication, it varies from culture to culture, and acceptable flirting behaviour in one culture might be seen as inappropriate in another. Thus, these patterns of behaviour are culture-specific and expressed through verbal and nonverbal communication.
For effective communication it is essential to increase knowledge about, and to share meanings with people from various racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Curricula on intercultural communication should include such information, however, usually they focus mostly on Western, Eastern and other cultural examples, but hardly on African perspectives.
This research paper provides a brief summary of the nonverbal flirting behaviour in African cultures, which is highly context-specific. African cultures stress the value of strict adherence to culturally defined social expectations and rules. The latter are shared conceptions of the desired ends of social life – a collective view of what is important and unimportant, suitable and unsuitable. Thus, the norms and rules of a culture specify the acceptable and unacceptable means for reaching the ends of social life. However, it is theorised that people from African cultures are exhibiting Western nonverbal flirting behaviour, possibly as a result of globalisation and cultural imperialism.
In order to gain insight into culture-specific views and opinions, this exploratory study utilises a qualitative research design in the form of focus group interviews with students from an African background. The aim is to explore the complex and dynamic interplay between different cultural groups with regard to accepted flirting behaviour, to determine traditional cultural differences with regard to the nonverbal international patterns of flirting behaviour, and to further investigate the ways in which Western culture influences African cultures.

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Sexual Simulacra
Albert de Plazaola
Georgetown University, Communication, Culture and Technology, Washington DC , USA

Pornography generates approximately $10 to $13 billion in revenue annually and permeates nearly every American media outlet available. Many figures within the porn industry have distinguished themselves in the pop culture lexicon. None however, have been as prolific and as visible as Jenna Jameson, deemed the leading female star in pornographic history by nearly every trade publication.
Jameson's success is partly due to her physical appeal, but more importantly, Jameson has self-authored an image composed of cinematic aesthetics and the projected desires of her audience. Jameson's image is a carefully crafted representation consisting of sexual simulation animated by the fantasies and desires of her loyal fans. Through various venues, Jameson accommodates her fan's shifting tastes and desires. The image has become economically autonomous to the extent that there is no longer any resemblance to the signified, if there ever was a signified. The image is real only in its ability to generate capital and accommodate the sexual desires of its consumers. These desires exist indefinitely as they are never really fulfilled, and therefore generate a self perpetuating Lacanian cycle of unfulfilled plentitude – ideal for the capitalistic appetite. The Jameson image is a sexual simulacrum.
If the status of Jamesons's image as simulacrum can be substantiated, then other discussions concerning conventional feminist theory may arise. If a Marxist critique is employed, it is possible to demonstrate how production and image are controlled by the same agency (Jameson) which was heretofore alienated and ultimately exploited in the worse of possible industries.
This presentation will proceed as follows. First, a brief introduction of the modern American pornographic milieu will be given. Second, the presentation will address Baudrillard's theory of simulacra in relation to the image. Third, the presentation will outline how Jameson, as a simulacrum, challenges theories of censorship, objectification and exploitation.

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Hypermasculine/Hyperlocal: Changing Patterns of Working-class Masculinity in the Deindustrialised City
Karen Lysaght
Centre for Social and Educational Research, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland

In private moments of honest appraisal, older members of the Loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland , the Ulster Volunteer Force, note that the calibre of their recruits has fallen over the years, with the younger membership tending to be more sectarian, less capable as soldiers and more interested in the material benefits of paramilitary membership than they are in the political goals underpinning the group. In fact, they contrast this situation with an earlier membership in the 1970s, describing these volunteers as politicised, secretive, risk-taking, disinterested in promoting themselves and their own material welfare, not interested in intimidating other people living in their community. Their self-depiction is one of a political engagement which was extra-local, engaged with an extended political network for a wider political cause/ideal. They observe that their organisation's more recent recruits are engaged in a highly public paramilitarism, displayed daily on the streets of their localities, on street corners, in bars and social clubs. Often this public display involves an implicit, if not explicit display of power and is intended to intimidate those for whom it is most obviously displayed. This display is not carried out for the benefit of those from opposing political groups, instead, the target of the public displays are fellow Protestant community members, and in particular non-combatant men of the home district. In addition to tense relationships between paramilitary members and non-members, tensions can also be found between various Loyalist paramilitary organizations, which have escalated at various junctures with the murder of group members by both parties to the feud.
In this paper I examine how various forms of masculinity available within the working-class community have related to one another over time, tracing the changes in these relationships from an occupational community with associated industrial base to a deindustrialised, redeveloped and high unemployment location located within sharp territorial boundaries and home to various illegal standing armies. Forms of masculinity associated with inner-city working-class Belfast are shown to have shifted from past associations with the industrial giants of shipbuilding and heavy engineering to much more locally defined forms of gendered performance. The traditional industries on which the Protestant working-class were so heavily dependent steadily closed for business in the period from the 1940s onward, with employment opportunities shifting toward out-of-town industrial estates. The period following the 2 nd World War witnessed a massive programme of slum clearance in inner-city Belfast , which resulted in the displacement of a significant proportion of the inner-city population toward new suburban housing estates. This population displacement was matched by a further upheaval in the inner-city, occasioned by the onset of violent inter-community conflict in the late 1960s. The result was that working-class inner-city districts became severely polarised, segregated into predominantly Protestant or Catholic districts. The boundaries of these districts became sharply defined through continuous acts of territorial display and violent re-enforcement. These districts have become heavily militarised over the course of the conflict, with the paramilitary groups recruiting their membership from the ranks of young men living in working-class districts. This paper shall illuminate the way in which an historical appreciation of the shifting nature of available masculinities can be used to gain a greater insight into the relationships which exist between those who are paramilitary members and those who are not, but also those between different feuding paramilitary groups within the same locality. As such, the paper illuminates the manner in which increasingly limited social horizons for young people in contemporary working-class communities can find expression within supposedly political organization and activity.