Tania Lewis

Lifestyling Asia? Shaping modernity and selfhood on life-advice programming

This article discusses the early findings of a research project examining the role of lifestyle television in Asia. Life-advice programming in East Asia includes a range of ‘popular factual’ formats from cooking and health shows to makeover and consumer advice shows. A growing body of Anglo-American scholarship emphasizes the cultural importance of lifestyle programming, suggesting that the explosion of lifestyle formats at this particular cultural-historical moment connects to broader transformations in western neoliberal states, especially the rise of individualized, consumer-based models of identity and citizenship. Focusing on Singapore, China and Taiwan, this article offers a discussion of the potential of such arguments in these contexts, in light of our findings about the forms of life-advice programming prevalent in these three television industries. In particular, it explores the relevance (or not) of Anglo-American theories of neoliberal selfhood in these sites as read through the lens of lifestyle television.

A revolution in an eggcup? Supermarket wars, celebrity chefs, and ethical consumption

Abstract This article examines the role of celebrity chefs and other non-state actors in the heated and highly politicized environment of ethical and sustainable consumption. Focusing on the media campaigns of the two major supermarkets and their attempt to rebrand themselves through ethical associations with celebrity chefs and animal welfare groups, the article discusses the complex entanglement between food politics, discourses of branding, the media and supermarkets in Australia. We suggest that the mainstreaming of ethical concerns cannot be understood simply as a consumer movement or indeed purely as an extension of market logics; rather, it is articulated to and implicated in broader changes in relation to the political and social role and status of corporate players, non-state actors and questions of lifestyle politics in shaping the future of food systems, policy and regulation.

‘There grows the neighbourhood’: Green citizenship, creativity and life politics on eco-TV

A range of green practices is emerging in the streets, homes and gardens of suburban neighbourhoods around the world. From community gardens and permablitzing to the rise of ‘sustainability streets’ and ‘voluntary simplicity’ networks, individuals and community groups in advanced consumer societies are looking for innovative approaches to living more ethically and sustainably. In this article I examine the way that such trends are starting to make their way onto our TV screens, and in particular into the life-changing narratives of lifestyle programming. While traditionally seen as vehicles for the promotion of the latest consumer products and services, lifestyle shows are also increasingly concerned with teaching audiences how to adopt ‘ethical’ ways of living. This article examines a range of ‘eco-lifestyle’ formats as sites of creative experimentation around green living, citizenship and the question of how to live ‘the good life’ today.

Making resilience: everyday affect and global affiliation in Australian Slow Cities

Resilience is becoming a key representational concept across academic, policy and planning literatures, creating a need to explore fully how experienced forms of resilience emerge. In this article we respond to this by analyzing how locality-based resilience is made, in the example of the emergent Slow City movement in Australia. Through their activities and narratives Australian Slow City leaders expressed their relationship to the (broadly sustainability-oriented) goals of the movement’s framework in relation to the maintaining and making of local specialness and recovery. To understand this we go beyond the binarisms connoted by a concept of resistance through contestation or reterritorialization, to suggest such resilience is made through the relationality of things, narratives, flows and processes that traverse the local-global in between.

Learning modernity: lifestyle advice television in Australia, Taiwan and Singapore

This article examines the role of lifestyle advice television programming in Australia, Taiwan and Singapore. Lifestyle television in the Asia-Pacific region includes a range of ‘popular factual’ formats from cooking and health shows to reality-style make-over shows and consumer advice programmes. What unites these shows, from Singapores highly popular Home Décor Survivor to Taiwans Lifestyle Experts and Australias Better Homes and Gardens is their concern with instructing their audiences in everyday life skills while showcasing the latest consumer products and services. In this article we argue that, in inducting ordinary viewers into the ‘art of living’ these increasingly ubiquitous forms of advice television are playing a significant role in shaping social identities, consumer practices and personal lifestyles in the region. The lifestyle format takes on particular significance in Asia with the emergence of ‘new’ formations of consumer-oriented middle classes characterised by lifestyle aspirations that are shaped in complex ways by national, regional and global influences. Drawing upon a ‘multiple modernities’ approach, this article examines the pedagogical role of lifestyle TV in three different cultural contexts, foregrounding the way in which it negotiates varied global and local formations of lifestyle culture and consumption.

'One city block at a time': Researching and cultivating green transformations

A growing interest in environmental issues within the community has seen suburban backyards, streets, houses and curbsides become sites of experimentation around sustainable lifestyle practices. Drawing upon research on various grassroots green initiatives around inner urban and suburban Melbourne, this article discusses what the rise of these kinds of lifestyle politics might mean for conceptualizing scale, citizenship, and social change in the contemporary moment. Drawing on social practice theory and its focus on the embodied, habitual and more-than-human elements of everyday practices, I argue that green suburban lifestyle initiatives such as ‘permablitzes’ are transformational in a number of ways and that they embody, materialize and perform broader sets of changes in people’s lives as they seek to switch from practices of consumption to a focus on self-sufficiency and making do. Video-ethnography and photography are some of the ways in which I have sought to capture such enactments and, in this article, I discuss the ways in which such combined media methods can enable researchers to both document and participate in the politics and practices of lifestyle transformation. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of how such a participatory research agenda might be translated into an environmental planning and policy approach that draws upon and enables the distributed agency, creativity and performative energies of community-led green practices.

The unsustainability of academic aeromobility in Australian universities

Abstract This article analyzes how certain forms of unsustainable hypermobility – primarily air travel – are embedded in the institutional orientations of Australian universities, and hence, into the professional practices of academics in the country. Academic air travel is commonly recognized as a key component of a scholar’s ability to cultivate and maintain international collaborations, achieve high-impact journal publications and win large research grants. Despite the environmental sustainability implications that regular international and domestic air travel entails, a normative system of ‘academic aeromobility’ has developed. We discuss the results of a qualitative textual analysis of Australian university-sustainability policies as well as research and internationalization strategies. We find that the ambitions of academic institutions to reduce carbon emissions from air travel are discordant with broader policies and strategic orientations around international mobility. These findings foreground the paradoxical relationship between many university-sustainability policies and the sector’s broader strategic aims of internationalization and mobility of staff and students, suggesting the limits to piecemeal approaches to organizational policy and practices pertaining to sustainability. We conclude by discussing the role of technology and ‘slow scholarship’ as a means to reduce academic aeromobility.

Adventures in love, risk and romance: Navigating post-traditional social relations on Indian dating shows

In recent years, Indian TV screens have seen a proliferation of reality shows focused on romance and dating. This essay examines a range of dating formats arguing that such shows offer rich insights into the ways in which contemporary Indian media culture is negotiating and promoting models of gendered individualism and ‘enterprising’ modes of selfhood. Drawing upon data from a study funded by the Australian Research Council on lifestyle and reality TV in South East Asia, our analysis focuses on the complex relationship between the ideals of aspirational modernity and choice-based selfhood promoted by these shows and the realities of ongoing gendered social and economic inequities and the continued cultural potency of religious and familial notions of duty.

A pinch of ethics and a soupçon of home cooking: Soft-selling supermarkets on food television

On 27 August 2013, Australian commercial broadcaster Network Ten screened a new reality show, Recipe to Riches, in a primetime slot. Based on a Canadian format of the same name, the show sees contestants — ordinary people with no formal training or food credentials — competing for the prize of having their homemade recipes recognised as worthy of being top-selling supermarket products. This chapter discusses the Australian version of this somewhat unusual reality show, situating the rise of the format in the broader contexts of the increasing politicisation and scrutiny of food production and provenance as well as the role of agribusiness and supermarket players in Australia and internationally. Reality-based food shows like MasterChef Australia (Network Ten 2009-) have proved to be highly successful commercial ventures, integrating ‘below-the-line’ advertising and commodities seamlessly into their format structure and content. Sponsored by major Australian supermarket chain, Woolworths, Recipe to Riches takes this commercial logic considerably further. Turning the recipes of ordinary Australians into mass products through a large-scale ‘batch up’ process in a (purportedly) commercial kitchen, the show’s narrative involves developing a branding strategy and a product launch, finally resulting in its temporary placement on Woolworth’s shelves, at which point viewers get to vote for their favourite product by buying it in-store or online.

Sustainability and academic air travel in Australian universities

Purpose Air travel is becoming increasingly recognized as a source of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. This is particularly relevant for the university sector, which relies heavily on staff air travel for domestic and international mobility. Design/methodology/approach Using a qualitative content and textual analysis of Australian university sustainability policies, documents and Web pages, this paper discusses the extent to which these organizations take the task of reducing emissions from flying seriously. Findings Universities fall into one of three groups in this regard. “Air Travel Ignorers” are organizations that either have no sustainability policy or none that recognize air travel as a source of greenhouse gas emissions. The second group – “Recognition without Intervention” – describes universities that do acknowledge the role of air travel in their carbon footprint, but do not propose any means to reduce the amount of flying they do. Third, “Air Travel Substituters” seek to substitute their air travel with a digital form of mobility, usually video conferencing. Research limitations/implications The authors then highlight the need to decrease and denormalize university air travel through shifting shared expectations of mobility for events such as conferences and meetings. Practical implications By way of a conclusion, the authors discuss the nature of air travel for Australian academia and the relationship between various forms of mobility, connectedness and co-presence. Originality/value This is the first comprehensive analysis of Australian university sustainability policies with respect to air travel.