Steven Mara
Biographic Data
| ID | 115622 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven Mara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Mara |
| SIGNATURE | MARA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Western Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8344-3912 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Anatomy of a film industry Redux
Using the Western Australian (WA) film industry as a case study, this article revisits the framework proposed by Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka in their anatomy of a film industry project. Acknowledging the power of Dermody and Jacka’s work, the article highlights a lack of detail surrounding the WA case. Drawing on the idea of an ‘imaginary’ industry as a key construct, it argues that a modified version of the framework is needed to account f…
Re-contextualising start-up communities as social learning systems
Start-up enterprises are perceived as key drivers of economic growth within a region and as a result have been subject to increased interest from governments and researchers. However, little research has focused on social learning within start-up communities and the broader start-up ecosystem. This study focuses on the start-up community in Perth, Western Australia. It has two research aims: firstly, to re-contextualise start-up communities as so…
Communication research and teaching
This article presents responses from a range of Australian scholars on communication research and teaching in the context of a roundtable in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Australian Communication Association (ACA), the precursor organisation to the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA). Emphasising the range and diversity of approaches and epistemologies in this field, the roundtable invited a 'situated' respon…
Refocusing Statutory Underpinning
In this article I revisit the debate around statutory underpinning in the context of the UK Leveson Inquiry of 2011–12 to refocus discussion on the conceptual distinctiveness of this term. Refusing the idea that it is simply a term of art for statutory control, I argue that statutory underpinning enables a strong articulation of the accountability relationship between the press and the public. The article discusses the concept and its operation i…
Revisiting the distinction between criticism and reviewing
In this article I revisit the distinction between criticism and reviewing in cultural and film studies. I focus on three attempts to tackle this distinction. The first comes from Colin McArthur, who published ‘British Film Reviewing: A Complaint’ in Screen in 1985. The second is from Meaghan Morris, and her seminal 1988 article, ‘Indigestion: A Rhetoric of Reviewing’. The third is from more recent work by Tom O’Regan and Huw Walmsley-Evans, which…
ANZCA at 25
In 2019, the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) celebrated its 25th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, the organisers of the 2019 annual ANZCA conference in Canberra, Australia, convened a panel of past presidents involved in the transition of the Australian Communication Association (ACA), founded in 1980, into ANZCA. This article presents an edited transcript of that panel, with a pre-amble situating the panel…
The Travelling Objectivity Norm
This study investigates the significance of Xu Baohuang's 1919 textbook Xin wen xue on the articulation of an objectivity norm in the early Republican era in China. It addresses issues raised by cross-cultural or comparative analysis of journalistic norms. It also considers the need to maintain awareness of differences in the political and journalistic field in Republican-era China. Following Michael Schudson's essay, “The Objectivity Norm in Ame…
Notes on a Genre to Come
This piece draws together two areas: screenwriting and film or video works (to be jointly referred to as ‘films’) that explicitly try to undertake a conceptual practice. Conceptual practice is to be understood here not within the exclusive framework of conceptual or abstract art, but of acts and interventions in theory of the kind that crossover between the academy and the broader culture. Interventions of this kind have (especially in the form o…
Social Capital Theory, Television, and Participation
In reaction to ‘Turn off a TV week’, popular cultural theorist and television studies academic Alan McKee put the following proposition to the Australian Broadcasting Commission radio audience: nam
Travelling with James W. Carey
James W. Carey's recent death provides an occasion to trace the reception and reworking of some of his ideas in Australia. A significant scholar, Carey made contributions to communication, cultural, media and journalism studies. Carey's work can be tackled in a number of ways, and this essay reflects upon his contribution to these fields, with a special focus on the Australian context. The essay approaches Carey's work thematically, through notio…
The problem of theory and practice
This article looks at the way the problem of theory and practice can be constructed in different ways. It develops a form of constitutive analysis in which the 'problem' is not assumed as a given, but seen as the product of particular ways of defining theory, practice, and their relation. In order to develop this approach I discuss several encounters between different conceptions of theory and practice, specifically Weddle's discussion of the mee…
The Communications Environment
This article discusses and evaluates different understandings of the term 'communications environment'. The article suggests that the term has a complex place in critical discourse, and is caught up within a process of media and communication theory rethinking its own ground. In the discussion that follows, I attempt to locate various uses of the term in relation to each other, and different traditions of communications research
A Semiotics of the Proxy
This paper approaches the stand-for relationship that is fundamental to semiotics from the point of view of a specific semiotic situation: that of relationships of proxy whereby a person is authorised to act for an absent party. I hope to open up the question of what a semiotics of the proxy might look like, but also make some observations about semiotics-in-general as a discipline reliant on proxy relationships. The paper makes special use of De…
The Film Script as Blueprint
This article discusses and evaluates the definition of the film script as a blueprint which has come to play a prominent role in organising the relations between different film workers, as well as the 'conceptual' and 'practical' aspects of production. The article examines the implications of this idea in thinking about the process of production, its planning and execution, and its collaborative dimension. First formulated in a period of centrali…
Philosophy in the age of megadisciplines
(1998). Philosophy in the age of megadisciplines. Continuum: Vol. 12, Philosophy and cultural studies, pp. 197-215
The Bergsonian Model of Actualization
Cet article s'attache a la question de l'actualisation (pensee par Bergson) afin de reflechir sur la question du virtuel dans ses contacts avec la theorie litteraire et la theorie cinematographique, et autour de la problematique de l'oeuvre d'art. L'A. montre comment le modele bergsonien peut etre utilise dans ce domaine de reflexion
Translating Le Dœuff's analytics
Baudrillard & deleuze
Arthur Kroker and David Cook, The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper‐Aesthetics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988)
The Travelling Objectivity Norm
This study investigates the significance of Xu Baohuang's 1919 textbook Xin wen xue on the articulation of an objectivity norm in the early Republican era in China. It addresses issues raised by cross-cultural or comparative analysis of journalistic norms. It also considers the need to maintain awareness of differences in the political and journalistic field in Republican-era China. Following Michael Schudson's essay, “The Objectivity Norm in Ame…
Social Capital Theory, Television, and Participation
In reaction to ‘Turn off a TV week’, popular cultural theorist and television studies academic Alan McKee put the following proposition to the Australian Broadcasting Commission radio audience: nam
ANZCA at 25
In 2019, the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) celebrated its 25th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, the organisers of the 2019 annual ANZCA conference in Canberra, Australia, convened a panel of past presidents involved in the transition of the Australian Communication Association (ACA), founded in 1980, into ANZCA. This article presents an edited transcript of that panel, with a pre-amble situating the panel…
Philosophy in the age of megadisciplines
(1998). Philosophy in the age of megadisciplines. Continuum: Vol. 12, Philosophy and cultural studies, pp. 197-215
A Semiotics of the Proxy
This paper approaches the stand-for relationship that is fundamental to semiotics from the point of view of a specific semiotic situation: that of relationships of proxy whereby a person is authorised to act for an absent party. I hope to open up the question of what a semiotics of the proxy might look like, but also make some observations about semiotics-in-general as a discipline reliant on proxy relationships. The paper makes special use of De…
The Bergsonian Model of Actualization
Cet article s'attache a la question de l'actualisation (pensee par Bergson) afin de reflechir sur la question du virtuel dans ses contacts avec la theorie litteraire et la theorie cinematographique, et autour de la problematique de l'oeuvre d'art. L'A. montre comment le modele bergsonien peut etre utilise dans ce domaine de reflexion
Baudrillard & deleuze
Arthur Kroker and David Cook, The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper‐Aesthetics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988)
Translating Le Dœuff's analytics
Philosophy in the age of megadisciplines
(1998). Philosophy in the age of megadisciplines. Continuum: Vol. 12, Philosophy and cultural studies, pp. 197-215
The Bergsonian Model of Actualization
Cet article s'attache a la question de l'actualisation (pensee par Bergson) afin de reflechir sur la question du virtuel dans ses contacts avec la theorie litteraire et la theorie cinematographique, et autour de la problematique de l'oeuvre d'art. L'A. montre comment le modele bergsonien peut etre utilise dans ce domaine de reflexion
The Film Script as Blueprint
This article discusses and evaluates the definition of the film script as a blueprint which has come to play a prominent role in organising the relations between different film workers, as well as the 'conceptual' and 'practical' aspects of production. The article examines the implications of this idea in thinking about the process of production, its planning and execution, and its collaborative dimension. First formulated in a period of centrali…
A Semiotics of the Proxy
This paper approaches the stand-for relationship that is fundamental to semiotics from the point of view of a specific semiotic situation: that of relationships of proxy whereby a person is authorised to act for an absent party. I hope to open up the question of what a semiotics of the proxy might look like, but also make some observations about semiotics-in-general as a discipline reliant on proxy relationships. The paper makes special use of De…
The Communications Environment
This article discusses and evaluates different understandings of the term 'communications environment'. The article suggests that the term has a complex place in critical discourse, and is caught up within a process of media and communication theory rethinking its own ground. In the discussion that follows, I attempt to locate various uses of the term in relation to each other, and different traditions of communications research
The problem of theory and practice
This article looks at the way the problem of theory and practice can be constructed in different ways. It develops a form of constitutive analysis in which the 'problem' is not assumed as a given, but seen as the product of particular ways of defining theory, practice, and their relation. In order to develop this approach I discuss several encounters between different conceptions of theory and practice, specifically Weddle's discussion of the mee…
Social Capital Theory, Television, and Participation
In reaction to ‘Turn off a TV week’, popular cultural theorist and television studies academic Alan McKee put the following proposition to the Australian Broadcasting Commission radio audience: nam
Travelling with James W. Carey
James W. Carey's recent death provides an occasion to trace the reception and reworking of some of his ideas in Australia. A significant scholar, Carey made contributions to communication, cultural, media and journalism studies. Carey's work can be tackled in a number of ways, and this essay reflects upon his contribution to these fields, with a special focus on the Australian context. The essay approaches Carey's work thematically, through notio…
Notes on a Genre to Come
This piece draws together two areas: screenwriting and film or video works (to be jointly referred to as ‘films’) that explicitly try to undertake a conceptual practice. Conceptual practice is to be understood here not within the exclusive framework of conceptual or abstract art, but of acts and interventions in theory of the kind that crossover between the academy and the broader culture. Interventions of this kind have (especially in the form o…
The Travelling Objectivity Norm
This study investigates the significance of Xu Baohuang's 1919 textbook Xin wen xue on the articulation of an objectivity norm in the early Republican era in China. It addresses issues raised by cross-cultural or comparative analysis of journalistic norms. It also considers the need to maintain awareness of differences in the political and journalistic field in Republican-era China. Following Michael Schudson's essay, “The Objectivity Norm in Ame…
Refocusing Statutory Underpinning
In this article I revisit the debate around statutory underpinning in the context of the UK Leveson Inquiry of 2011–12 to refocus discussion on the conceptual distinctiveness of this term. Refusing the idea that it is simply a term of art for statutory control, I argue that statutory underpinning enables a strong articulation of the accountability relationship between the press and the public. The article discusses the concept and its operation i…
Revisiting the distinction between criticism and reviewing
In this article I revisit the distinction between criticism and reviewing in cultural and film studies. I focus on three attempts to tackle this distinction. The first comes from Colin McArthur, who published ‘British Film Reviewing: A Complaint’ in Screen in 1985. The second is from Meaghan Morris, and her seminal 1988 article, ‘Indigestion: A Rhetoric of Reviewing’. The third is from more recent work by Tom O’Regan and Huw Walmsley-Evans, which…
ANZCA at 25
In 2019, the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) celebrated its 25th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, the organisers of the 2019 annual ANZCA conference in Canberra, Australia, convened a panel of past presidents involved in the transition of the Australian Communication Association (ACA), founded in 1980, into ANZCA. This article presents an edited transcript of that panel, with a pre-amble situating the panel…
Re-contextualising start-up communities as social learning systems
Start-up enterprises are perceived as key drivers of economic growth within a region and as a result have been subject to increased interest from governments and researchers. However, little research has focused on social learning within start-up communities and the broader start-up ecosystem. This study focuses on the start-up community in Perth, Western Australia. It has two research aims: firstly, to re-contextualise start-up communities as so…
Communication research and teaching
This article presents responses from a range of Australian scholars on communication research and teaching in the context of a roundtable in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Australian Communication Association (ACA), the precursor organisation to the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA). Emphasising the range and diversity of approaches and epistemologies in this field, the roundtable invited a 'situated' respon…
Anatomy of a film industry Redux
Using the Western Australian (WA) film industry as a case study, this article revisits the framework proposed by Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka in their anatomy of a film industry project. Acknowledging the power of Dermody and Jacka’s work, the article highlights a lack of detail surrounding the WA case. Drawing on the idea of an ‘imaginary’ industry as a key construct, it argues that a modified version of the framework is needed to account f…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (10 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Media Studies and Communication (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Publishing (5 works) · Social science (5 works)