Ruxandra Trandafoiu

A Europe of Rights and Values? Public Debates on Sarkozy's Roma Affair in France, Bulgaria and Romania

This article analyses press coverage between July and October 2010 in three different European Union (EU) member states (France, Romania and Bulgaria) of the French governments expulsion of Roma in 2010. It asks what the international reaction to Frances actions tells us about the way in which Europe is deployed in debates over discrimination, minority rights and freedom of movement in national media. The article finds evidence in national public debates of a Europeanisation of normative discussions, thanks to a willingness by a range of actors to use the EU in an instrumental way for political gain. However, the representation of issues and actors by the press also demonstrates the ways in which the prominence of supposedly European norms, and the framing of the EUs role, can be associated with national political dynamics, both in relation to the political environment and contemporary narratives regarding national identity.

Eating cake at the European Round Table: Panem et Circenses in the mediation of the European Union's 50th anniversary by the British and the Irish Press

Abstract This article analyses the intersecting emotive expressions of nationalism, Euroscepticism, and Europeanness in Britain and Ireland during the European Unions 50th birthday festivities in March 2007. Such discursive manifestations in the Irish and British national press were occasioned by the display and public consumption of fifty-four national cakes at the Berlin Volkfest. The public, ritualistic, and convivial eating of national foods, represented a departure from the usual stale recipe of political summits, and was supposed to excite feelings of identity with the European Union project. Yet the event occasioned press, politicians, and public to delve into backward looking nationalist projections, the result of which was a media event riddled by fragmentation and diverging readings, which have to be interpreted via the multifarious relationships between globalization, national dishes and national identity.

Changing places: children of return migrants in Albania and their quest to belong

ABSTRACT This study examines the experiences of children of return migrants to Albania following the economic crisis in Europe. Adopting a longitudinal approach in which participants were followed-up after a year and employing participative qualitative research methods, the study investigates how perceptions of local and translocal spaces and social relations interact to shape children’s (aged 7–12 years) sense of belonging to their parents’ homeland. Findings suggest that the children’s initial positioning is influenced by a perceived lack of everyday places of play and unsettled local interactions with peers. The research indicates further that, over time, children actively seek to inhabit and identify with their new surroundings and that meaning-making is shaped by experiences that transcend multiple localities. It documents how children of return migrants attain a sense of belonging via interacting with different physical and social contexts in a complex process which appears simultaneously facilitated and impeded by adults. Overall, the findings of this research suggest that children’s sense of belonging is negotiated in relation to multiple temporal and spatial frames of reference to which children attribute meaning.

‘The World on a Plate’: Transformed Cosmopolitan Utopia in Food Blog Culture

The main aim of the chapter is not to discuss the relationship between media and cosmopolitanism, which is already outlined in much more detail in the introduction, nor to produce a historical excursion of the role of food in media and cultural theory, which can already be found elsewhere (see, for example, Mennell, Murcott and van Otterloo 1992). Instead, the chapter aims to discuss aspects of culinary cosmopolitanism as revealed by the rich and multifaceted world of food blogs.1 Food blogs are the ideal space where we can expect to trace examples of embedded cosmopolitanism or should conduct empirical research revealing cosmopolitan practices and identities. However, there are two qualified contributions that this chapter attempts in particular. Firstly, there is currently a lack of academic literature that addresses food blogs from a cosmopolitan perspective. Secondly, much of the existing literature about food and media chooses to focus on elite cosmopolitanism, or, as Craig Calhoun has so poignantly termed it, ‘frequent flyer’ cosmopolitanism (2002). Such texts, further discussed in this chapter, are correct to describe cosmopolitanism as wishful thinking, utopian and aspirational, insofar as cosmopolitanism idealizes our being with others in the world. However, I argue in this chapter that the cosmopolitan utopia has been transformed from the grassroots and has become naturalized and embedded in everyday practices, both at a private and public level. The chapter sketches a working definition of cosmopolitanism in relation to food culture, discusses the tensions that define existing theory related to food (blog) culture and conducts an empirical research of four food blogs located in Estonia, Spain, the United States and Israel.This collection of essays examines the relationship between the media and cosmopolitanism in an increasingly fragmented and globalizing world. This relationship is presented from multiple perspectives and the essays cover, amongst other themes, cosmopolitanization in everyday life, the mediation of suffering, trauma studies, and researching cosmopolitanism from a non-Western perspective. Some of the essays explore existing research and theory about cosmopolitanism and apply it to specific case studies; others attempt to extend this theoretical framework and engage in a dialogue with the broader disciplines of media and cultural studies. Overall, this variety of approaches generates valuable insights into the central issue of the book: the role played by the media, in its various forms, in either encouraging or discouraging cosmopolitanist identifications among its audiences.

Media and cosmopolitanism

The main aim of the chapter is not to discuss the relationship between media and cosmopolitanism, which is already outlined in much more detail in the introduction, nor to produce a historical excursion of the role of food in media and cultural theory, which can already be found elsewhere (see, for example, Mennell, Murcott and van Otterloo 1992). Instead, the chapter aims to discuss aspects of culinary cosmopolitanism as revealed by the rich and multifaceted world of food blogs.1 Food blogs are the ideal space where we can expect to trace examples of embedded cosmopolitanism or should conduct empirical research revealing cosmopolitan practices and identities. However, there are two qualified contributions that this chapter attempts in particular. Firstly, there is currently a lack of academic literature that addresses food blogs from a cosmopolitan perspective. Secondly, much of the existing literature about food and media chooses to focus on elite cosmopolitanism, or, as Craig Calhoun has so poignantly termed it, ‘frequent flyer’ cosmopolitanism (2002). Such texts, further discussed in this chapter, are correct to describe cosmopolitanism as wishful thinking, utopian and aspirational, insofar as cosmopolitanism idealizes our being with others in the world. However, I argue in this chapter that the cosmopolitan utopia has been transformed from the grassroots and has become naturalized and embedded in everyday practices, both at a private and public level. The chapter sketches a working definition of cosmopolitanism in relation to food culture, discusses the tensions that define existing theory related to food (blog) culture and conducts an empirical research of four food blogs located in Estonia, Spain, the United States and Israel.This collection of essays examines the relationship between the media and cosmopolitanism in an increasingly fragmented and globalizing world. This relationship is presented from multiple perspectives and the essays cover, amongst other themes, cosmopolitanization in everyday life, the mediation of suffering, trauma studies, and researching cosmopolitanism from a non-Western perspective. Some of the essays explore existing research and theory about cosmopolitanism and apply it to specific case studies; others attempt to extend this theoretical framework and engage in a dialogue with the broader disciplines of media and cultural studies. Overall, this variety of approaches generates valuable insights into the central issue of the book: the role played by the media, in its various forms, in either encouraging or discouraging cosmopolitanist identifications among its audiences.