[Air-L] new collection - online pornography

Attwood, Fiona F.Attwood at shu.ac.uk
Wed Jan 6 05:06:42 PST 2010


Dear Colleagues,
You may be interested in this new collection:

porn. com: Making Sense of Online Pornography
Ed. Feona Attwood.
Digital Formations/Peter Lang

Pornography has often been central to debates about sex and about new media technologies as they emerge, and today debate is increasingly focused on online pornographies. This collection examines pornography’s significance as a focus of definition, debate and myth, its development as a mainstream entertainment industry, and the emergence of a new economy of Porn 2.0 and of new types of porn labor and professionalism. It looks at porn style behind the scenes of straight hardcore, in gay, lesbian, and queer pornographies, in shock sites, and in amateur erotica. It investigates the rise of the online porn fan community, the sex blogger, the erotic rate-me site and the visual cultures of swingers. Treating these developments as part of a broader set of economic and cultural transformations, the book argues that new porn practices reveal much about contemporary and competing views of sex and the self, the real and the body, culture and commerce.

Contents:

Introduction: Porn Studies: From Social Problem to Cultural Practice
Feona Attwood

Part One: Porn Practices

1 Online Obscenity and Myths of Freedom: Dangerous Images, Child Porn, and Neoliberalism
Stephen Maddison

2 Child Pornography: Classifications and Conceptualizations
Adam Stapleton

3 Debbie Does Dallas Again and Again: Pornography, Technology, and Market Innovation
David Slayden

4 Porn 2.0? Technology, Social Practice, and the New Online Porn Industry
Sharif Mowlabocus

5 Younger, paler, decidedly less straight: The New Porn Professionals
Feona Attwood

Part Two: Porn Styles

6 Behind the Scenes of Straight Pleasure
Sanna Härmä and Joakim Stolpe

7 Horrorporn/Pornhorror: The Problematic Communities and Contexts of Extreme Online Imagery
Steven Jones

8 Good Amateurs: Erotica Writing and Notions of Quality
Susanna Paasonen

9 Gay for Pay, Gay For(e)play: The Politics of Taxonomy and Authenticity in LGBTQ Online Porn
Jennifer Moorman

Part Three: Porn Cultures

10 Widening the Glory Hole: the Discourse of Online Porn Fandom
Simon Lindgren

11 The New World Dream and the Female Itch: Sex Blogging and Lolita Costume Play in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and ChinaKatrien Jacobs

12 How Do I Rate?: Web Sites and Gendered Erotic Looking Glasses
Dennis D. Waskul and Cheryl Radeloff

13 Beyond Key Parties and Wife Swapping: The Visual Culture of Online Swinging
Alison Rooke and Monica Moreno Figueroa

Conclusion: Toward the Study of Online Porn Cultures and Practices
Feona Attwood

Reviews:

porn. com presents an outstanding contribution to the emerging field of online porn studies, examining the intersection of online sociability and erotic content, and providing important insights about both.

Online fan cultures and a democratization of production have affected the porn industry as they have all sectors of the communication industry, but these new forms represent a diverse range of practices, values, and challenges that defy attempts at reductive description. The chapters of porn. com provide a tour of this new and rapidly changing erotic landscape, and a detailed analysis of the contexts in which these interactions take place.

The collection should be of interest not only to those who are engaged in porn studies, but to anyone who wants to understand the broad range of contexts in which online interaction takes place.
Alex Halavais, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut, US 

The internet has become the key site of contemporary debates around the effects of pornography on communities and individuals. Anxieties are widespread about the impact of online porn on the sexualities and attitudes of young people, and on the capacity of paedophiles to establish networks for sharing images. 

Feona Attwood's new edited collection is a timely addition to this debate, bringing together an impressive range of international scholars on porn studies to explore such themes as the production and consumption of online porn, the evolution of the industry and the content of sex blogging and amateur online erotica. This book will make a valuable contribution to an intensifying global debate.
Brian McNair, University of Strathclyde, UK

This anthology positions net porn at the throbbing centre of society.  If you're ready for some uncensored scholarship on porn cultures in the digital age, this is the reader for you. Beyond good or evil, porn.com provides us with a broad overview of topics such as child pornography, the working conditions of porn professionals,  Web 2.0 cultures, extreme imagery, image rating and insights into the online 'swinging' world. So let's praise the researchers and blast the moralists!
Geert Lovink, Dutch-Australian media theorist and net critic. 


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