A M Cronin
Biographic Data
| ID | 9374 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A M Cronin |
| GIVEN NAMES | A M |
| FAMILY NAME | Cronin |
| SIGNATURE | CRONIN A M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lancaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3127-996X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Doing Crisis response digitally
Background: The Response for Vulnerable People (RVP) team evolved to support new migrants to ROI initially in the National Transit Centre and subsequently across over 70 geographic locations in Ireland aside from homeless settings. Supporting thousands of distributed migrants that are new to the country with limited access to primary care required a change of approach. Through remote working a small clinical workforce is supported by a larger soc…
The State of Cultural Studies Today – Challenges and Opportunities
Short articles with no abstracts
Reconceptualising Transparency in Journalism
This article re-examines debates about transparency in journalism by using a sociological framework that analyses how transparency is held in a dynamic tension with secrecy. I use a specific empirical case study as the grounding for my analysis and then proceed to expand its scope to consider significant developments in transparency in the media. I take as my case study the relationship between UK journalists and public relations (PR) practitione…
Resituating the political in cultural intermediary work
Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the…
Reputational capital in 'the PR University
Drawing on empirical data, this article identifies the emergence of the ‘PR University’ as an assemblage. Using a case study of university press officers’ work, I analyse how this form of media relations PR stages competition between UK universities through the media. A key form of this competition centres on the accumulation and circulation of what I term ‘reputational capital’. I focus on one core element of reputational capital – media stories…
Distant Friends, Mobility and Sensed Intimacy
This article draws on a qualitative, interview-based project to argue that emotionally close friendships at-a-distance can create distinctive spatial sensibilities of friendship. These sensibilities are formed when friends move apart geographically. In part, they are composed of the tangible forms of friendship practices (such as visiting), but their main constituent is the more intangible emotional bond between friends which can extend across co…
Domestic Friends
Based on a qualitative, interview-based study of friendship, this article examines the specificity of 'domestic friendships' between women. Forged from the particular experiences, emotions and challenges of motherhood, they are qualitatively different from most friendships which tend to be based on individualistic connection and self-expression. Domestic friendships facilitate a specific form of 'inclusive intimacy' and shape an expansive experie…
Gendering Friendship
This article draws on interview material to analyse the ways in which heterosexual 'couple practices' interface with friendship practices (outside the couple). Focusing on the qualitative detail of participants' experiences of friendship and of coupledom, I analyse the relationalities of gender, heterosexualities and friendship. Rather than focusing on gender as a variable in friendship variance, I examine the ways in which friendships 'do' gende…
Advertising, Commercial Spaces and the Urban
Introducing Commercial Spaces The Industry and the City: Knowledge Practices as Commercial Experiments Mobility, Market Research and Commercial Aesthetics The Commodity Rhythms of Urban Space Fabulating Commercial Spaces: Mediation, Texts, and Perception Perceiving Urban Change in Detroit and Manchester: Space, Time and the Virtual The Commercial Vernacular of Advertising: Public Space, Commercialisation and Public Address
Researching Urban Space, Reflecting on Advertising
This photo essay places into dialogue practices of photographing urban space and the market research practices of the U.K. outdoor advertising industry. It explores photography as a method for accessing understandings of cities, and it examines ways of analyzing the interplay between photographic practices and data gathered through ethnography. Through personal reflections on the research process, the essay considers the spatial practices of the …
Urban Spaces
Mobility and Market Research
This article explores the centrality of mobility in the practices of the outdoor advertising industry, analysing how commercial conceptualisations of mobility orient the production and sale of advertising space on roadside billboards, panels in pedestrian zones, on buses and taxis, and in train stations. I explore how the industry's market research practices conceive of urban space as mobility, and how understandings of mobility impact upon the d…
Gender in the making of commercial worlds
If capitalism is being increasingly understood as performative and processual, and if these understandings are being folded into capitalism's production of itself, what place does gender have in performing the commercial world? This article argues that the significance of gender as genre or type has been overlooked in the recent literature on the performance of the market or market relations. While the role of economic theories and management pra…
Rags and Refuse
This article asks what an analysis of nineteenth century English newspapers can tell us about the developing commodity culture, and what an understanding of the newspaper as commodity can reveal about the evolving nature of the newspaper. Using Walter Benjamin's work on commodities and temporality, and focusing on issues of empire, I argue that newspapers such as The Manchester Guardian constituted a 'technology of possession': alongside their st…
Advertising and the Metabolism of the City
In this paper I explore the role of outdoor advertising in organising city space and framing people's experience of that space. I examine how UK outdoor advertising companies remap that space, segmenting and pricing certain areas of cities, and routes to and around cities. I argue that, in this cartographic, taxonomising role, advertising constitutes one of the forces that continually makes and remakes city space. Using Lefebvre's concept of city…
Currencies of Commercial Exchange
Drawing on interviews with advertising practitioners, this article explores the circulation of understandings of research in the advertising process. These understandings flow between advertising practitioners, their clients, and academics, and function to constitute important power-knowledge formations. Focusing on agencies’ imperative for self-promotion in a competitive, unstable market, I argue that attention to this circulation of knowledges …
Regimes of mediation
This paper explores the status of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and uses that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy. Using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK, I explore how the circulation of rhetoric in the advertising industry functions as one form of mediation performed by advertising practition…
The substance of consumption
This article reconsiders the category of `commodity' by exploring its historical and contemporary articulation with the category of `drug' and the way in which both have been figured as transformative. I argue that ideas of substance, substance-dependency, willpower, structures of feeling and social struggles over power amass or materialize at particular moments in their cultural circulation. They coalesce temporarily into a structure conventiona…
Consumer rights/cultural rights
In an initiative by the World Commission on Culture and Development, the Council of Europe has produced a series of policy documents that aim to define Europe through a common `European culture'. This article explores the ideas of Europe, culture and consumerism that are used in the report to redefine the terms of European belonging and rights. I explore the gendered and racial interconnections in these definitions and the rhetorical use of cultu…
Temporalities of the Visual and Spaces of Knowledge
Regimes of mediation
This paper explores the status of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and uses that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy. Using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK, I explore how the circulation of rhetoric in the advertising industry functions as one form of mediation performed by advertising practition…
Advertising and the Metabolism of the City
In this paper I explore the role of outdoor advertising in organising city space and framing people's experience of that space. I examine how UK outdoor advertising companies remap that space, segmenting and pricing certain areas of cities, and routes to and around cities. I argue that, in this cartographic, taxonomising role, advertising constitutes one of the forces that continually makes and remakes city space. Using Lefebvre's concept of city…
Distant Friends, Mobility and Sensed Intimacy
This article draws on a qualitative, interview-based project to argue that emotionally close friendships at-a-distance can create distinctive spatial sensibilities of friendship. These sensibilities are formed when friends move apart geographically. In part, they are composed of the tangible forms of friendship practices (such as visiting), but their main constituent is the more intangible emotional bond between friends which can extend across co…
Gendering Friendship
This article draws on interview material to analyse the ways in which heterosexual 'couple practices' interface with friendship practices (outside the couple). Focusing on the qualitative detail of participants' experiences of friendship and of coupledom, I analyse the relationalities of gender, heterosexualities and friendship. Rather than focusing on gender as a variable in friendship variance, I examine the ways in which friendships 'do' gende…
Currencies of Commercial Exchange
Drawing on interviews with advertising practitioners, this article explores the circulation of understandings of research in the advertising process. These understandings flow between advertising practitioners, their clients, and academics, and function to constitute important power-knowledge formations. Focusing on agencies’ imperative for self-promotion in a competitive, unstable market, I argue that attention to this circulation of knowledges …
Domestic Friends
Based on a qualitative, interview-based study of friendship, this article examines the specificity of 'domestic friendships' between women. Forged from the particular experiences, emotions and challenges of motherhood, they are qualitatively different from most friendships which tend to be based on individualistic connection and self-expression. Domestic friendships facilitate a specific form of 'inclusive intimacy' and shape an expansive experie…
Mobility and Market Research
This article explores the centrality of mobility in the practices of the outdoor advertising industry, analysing how commercial conceptualisations of mobility orient the production and sale of advertising space on roadside billboards, panels in pedestrian zones, on buses and taxis, and in train stations. I explore how the industry's market research practices conceive of urban space as mobility, and how understandings of mobility impact upon the d…
Reputational capital in 'the PR University
Drawing on empirical data, this article identifies the emergence of the ‘PR University’ as an assemblage. Using a case study of university press officers’ work, I analyse how this form of media relations PR stages competition between UK universities through the media. A key form of this competition centres on the accumulation and circulation of what I term ‘reputational capital’. I focus on one core element of reputational capital – media stories…
Resituating the political in cultural intermediary work
Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the…
Researching Urban Space, Reflecting on Advertising
This photo essay places into dialogue practices of photographing urban space and the market research practices of the U.K. outdoor advertising industry. It explores photography as a method for accessing understandings of cities, and it examines ways of analyzing the interplay between photographic practices and data gathered through ethnography. Through personal reflections on the research process, the essay considers the spatial practices of the …
Gender in the making of commercial worlds
If capitalism is being increasingly understood as performative and processual, and if these understandings are being folded into capitalism's production of itself, what place does gender have in performing the commercial world? This article argues that the significance of gender as genre or type has been overlooked in the recent literature on the performance of the market or market relations. While the role of economic theories and management pra…
The substance of consumption
This article reconsiders the category of `commodity' by exploring its historical and contemporary articulation with the category of `drug' and the way in which both have been figured as transformative. I argue that ideas of substance, substance-dependency, willpower, structures of feeling and social struggles over power amass or materialize at particular moments in their cultural circulation. They coalesce temporarily into a structure conventiona…
Consumer rights/cultural rights
In an initiative by the World Commission on Culture and Development, the Council of Europe has produced a series of policy documents that aim to define Europe through a common `European culture'. This article explores the ideas of Europe, culture and consumerism that are used in the report to redefine the terms of European belonging and rights. I explore the gendered and racial interconnections in these definitions and the rhetorical use of cultu…
Temporalities of the Visual and Spaces of Knowledge
Urban Spaces
Temporalities of the Visual and Spaces of Knowledge
The substance of consumption
This article reconsiders the category of `commodity' by exploring its historical and contemporary articulation with the category of `drug' and the way in which both have been figured as transformative. I argue that ideas of substance, substance-dependency, willpower, structures of feeling and social struggles over power amass or materialize at particular moments in their cultural circulation. They coalesce temporarily into a structure conventiona…
Consumer rights/cultural rights
In an initiative by the World Commission on Culture and Development, the Council of Europe has produced a series of policy documents that aim to define Europe through a common `European culture'. This article explores the ideas of Europe, culture and consumerism that are used in the report to redefine the terms of European belonging and rights. I explore the gendered and racial interconnections in these definitions and the rhetorical use of cultu…
Currencies of Commercial Exchange
Drawing on interviews with advertising practitioners, this article explores the circulation of understandings of research in the advertising process. These understandings flow between advertising practitioners, their clients, and academics, and function to constitute important power-knowledge formations. Focusing on agencies’ imperative for self-promotion in a competitive, unstable market, I argue that attention to this circulation of knowledges …
Regimes of mediation
This paper explores the status of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and uses that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy. Using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK, I explore how the circulation of rhetoric in the advertising industry functions as one form of mediation performed by advertising practition…
Rags and Refuse
This article asks what an analysis of nineteenth century English newspapers can tell us about the developing commodity culture, and what an understanding of the newspaper as commodity can reveal about the evolving nature of the newspaper. Using Walter Benjamin's work on commodities and temporality, and focusing on issues of empire, I argue that newspapers such as The Manchester Guardian constituted a 'technology of possession': alongside their st…
Advertising and the Metabolism of the City
In this paper I explore the role of outdoor advertising in organising city space and framing people's experience of that space. I examine how UK outdoor advertising companies remap that space, segmenting and pricing certain areas of cities, and routes to and around cities. I argue that, in this cartographic, taxonomising role, advertising constitutes one of the forces that continually makes and remakes city space. Using Lefebvre's concept of city…
Mobility and Market Research
This article explores the centrality of mobility in the practices of the outdoor advertising industry, analysing how commercial conceptualisations of mobility orient the production and sale of advertising space on roadside billboards, panels in pedestrian zones, on buses and taxis, and in train stations. I explore how the industry's market research practices conceive of urban space as mobility, and how understandings of mobility impact upon the d…
Gender in the making of commercial worlds
If capitalism is being increasingly understood as performative and processual, and if these understandings are being folded into capitalism's production of itself, what place does gender have in performing the commercial world? This article argues that the significance of gender as genre or type has been overlooked in the recent literature on the performance of the market or market relations. While the role of economic theories and management pra…
Urban Spaces
Advertising, Commercial Spaces and the Urban
Introducing Commercial Spaces The Industry and the City: Knowledge Practices as Commercial Experiments Mobility, Market Research and Commercial Aesthetics The Commodity Rhythms of Urban Space Fabulating Commercial Spaces: Mediation, Texts, and Perception Perceiving Urban Change in Detroit and Manchester: Space, Time and the Virtual The Commercial Vernacular of Advertising: Public Space, Commercialisation and Public Address
Researching Urban Space, Reflecting on Advertising
This photo essay places into dialogue practices of photographing urban space and the market research practices of the U.K. outdoor advertising industry. It explores photography as a method for accessing understandings of cities, and it examines ways of analyzing the interplay between photographic practices and data gathered through ethnography. Through personal reflections on the research process, the essay considers the spatial practices of the …
Distant Friends, Mobility and Sensed Intimacy
This article draws on a qualitative, interview-based project to argue that emotionally close friendships at-a-distance can create distinctive spatial sensibilities of friendship. These sensibilities are formed when friends move apart geographically. In part, they are composed of the tangible forms of friendship practices (such as visiting), but their main constituent is the more intangible emotional bond between friends which can extend across co…
Domestic Friends
Based on a qualitative, interview-based study of friendship, this article examines the specificity of 'domestic friendships' between women. Forged from the particular experiences, emotions and challenges of motherhood, they are qualitatively different from most friendships which tend to be based on individualistic connection and self-expression. Domestic friendships facilitate a specific form of 'inclusive intimacy' and shape an expansive experie…
Gendering Friendship
This article draws on interview material to analyse the ways in which heterosexual 'couple practices' interface with friendship practices (outside the couple). Focusing on the qualitative detail of participants' experiences of friendship and of coupledom, I analyse the relationalities of gender, heterosexualities and friendship. Rather than focusing on gender as a variable in friendship variance, I examine the ways in which friendships 'do' gende…
Reputational capital in 'the PR University
Drawing on empirical data, this article identifies the emergence of the ‘PR University’ as an assemblage. Using a case study of university press officers’ work, I analyse how this form of media relations PR stages competition between UK universities through the media. A key form of this competition centres on the accumulation and circulation of what I term ‘reputational capital’. I focus on one core element of reputational capital – media stories…
Resituating the political in cultural intermediary work
Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the…
Reconceptualising Transparency in Journalism
This article re-examines debates about transparency in journalism by using a sociological framework that analyses how transparency is held in a dynamic tension with secrecy. I use a specific empirical case study as the grounding for my analysis and then proceed to expand its scope to consider significant developments in transparency in the media. I take as my case study the relationship between UK journalists and public relations (PR) practitione…
Doing Crisis response digitally
Background: The Response for Vulnerable People (RVP) team evolved to support new migrants to ROI initially in the National Transit Centre and subsequently across over 70 geographic locations in Ireland aside from homeless settings. Supporting thousands of distributed migrants that are new to the country with limited access to primary care required a change of approach. Through remote working a small clinical workforce is supported by a larger soc…
The State of Cultural Studies Today – Challenges and Opportunities
Short articles with no abstracts
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (10 works) · Business (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Advertising (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)