Ambiguous Goods, Ambiguous Societies： On the Precariousness of Meanings

The producers-especially industrial-of artifacts view them as conveying distinct meanings, and they surround them with discourses to support their representation （marketing, packaging, and advertising）. Yet, these superimposed meanings say nothing about what the objects signify for their users. How are the objects manipulated by those who use them？ Only when both the meanings assigned by the manufacturers and those attributed by the users are known is it possible to determine the difference or similarity between the meanings imposed on objects from above and those produced by their users. We, thus, shift from an economic conception of consumption to one which emphasizes the cultural and communicative roles essential for granting material objects their social protagonism, freeing them from subordination to their producers without imprisoning them passively in the network of meanings constructed by consumers. Emphasizing that things have biographies, which can be more or less fully reconstructed and recounted, is useful not only for understanding the role that material objects perform in determining social phenomena independently from the intentions of their producers, but also for demonstrating the mutable character of their social presence. Objects, therefore, should be considered, not as commodities, but as materials for the social construction of reality, as provisional and negotiable meanings. It is precisely the provisional and negotiable nature of objects that makes them ontologically ambiguous things which communicate their own values, points of view, and so on.

Political Economy Factors Shaping News Culture of Hyperlocal News Website www.ippodhu.com

In contemporary media ecosystem, media content is not only produced by employees rather it is also produced by its users in the form of curating stories, writing feedback, engaging in online discussions and at the same time disseminating the content through their personal online profiles. Keeping these views in mind, this paper critically examines the political economy of Ippodhu (Tamil Nadu based news website), a hyperlocal news application, in terms of digital labour, audience as participatory commodities and audience as producers, which Alvin Toffler terms as prosumer. Further, this paper explores how social media, analytics, or other analytical tools create value or anti-value for Ippodhu. The qualitative data obtained through in-depth interview reveals that readers/audiences of Ippodhu are commodified in two ways, first they consume the content of the website by spending their time, which will be sold to the advertisers and secondly by creating free content either in the writing stories, uploading photographs or even in the form of comment which will be consumed by other readers/audiences which result in the chain of production of values.

Transacting Memory in the Digital Age:Modernity, Fluidity and Immateriality

The incessant flow of,content and data through digital platforms implicates humanity to immaterial modes of transacting identity and memory.Through the image of the "Napalm Girl"this paper traces the ways in which iconic images and memory can be remediated through social media platforms and algorithms.The re-contextualisation of history and memory through a technological gaze implicates us within new forms of vulnerabilities.By reviewing the politics of looking and watching online in digital platforms,the paper invites us to ponder over the flattening of memory and history through algorithms and a "digital morality"and "mortality"encoded through "user agreements"and "community standards".The repressing of this moral gaze weaves us into a social media economy where morality and ethics are refashioned through a viral economy where images are circulated, altered and reframed through digital technologies.The wider implications of this "virality"for humanity,memory making and historicity are explored.

Planetary Urbanisation and the Built Heritage from a Non-Western Perspective: The Question of ‘How' We Should Protect the Past

The process of planetary urbanisation,which is currently affecting a large part of the world,impacts on the existing built environment in an unprecedented way.Its dramatic rapidity often implies the sudden disappearance of traditional urban and rural structures and the rapid transformation of local cultures.Contextually,as never before,attempts to protect culture in its tangible and intangible expressions are increasingly central to international agendas on sustainable urbanisation.However,this is by no means an easy task to achieve.The main reason for the controversy is that the consensus around the need to protect heritage and its tools,as formulated primarily in the Western world in the past,has changed.It has been challenged by alternative,non-Western,primarily non-materialistic views,or it has been delegitimised by the(often)exploitative practice of heritagisation,as a result of the process of protection itself.The main aim of this paper is to reflect on the implications of contemporary planetary urbanisation on the built heritage and its protection,considering that most of this process is taking place in fast-developing countries of Asia,Africa and South America and,at the same time,there is a redistribution of economic(and therefore cultural)power from the West to the East,and from the North to the South of the planet.