Papers by Johan Andersson
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2012
Sociology, 2010
This article addresses the intersection of sexual orientation and religion and belief through a f... more This article addresses the intersection of sexual orientation and religion and belief through a focus on a specific religious community — the worldwide Anglican Communion. It does so by unpacking a particular event within this Communion debate: the decennial Lambeth Conference, at Canterbury, UK. Events have received little attention within sociology, yet case studies of particular events potentially represent an effective way of empirically researching the complexity of the ways that intersections of categories, such as sexual orientation and religion and belief, are experienced in everyday life. By focusing on the strategies of pro-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) groups at Lambeth, this article demonstrates how, in the material space of an ‘event’, abstract discourses and positionings in diffuse social networks become transformed into tangible emplaced social relations where power is outworked.
Sociological Research Online, 2010
Recent discussions of the international Anglican Communion have been dominated by notions of a ‘c... more Recent discussions of the international Anglican Communion have been dominated by notions of a ‘crisis’ and ‘schism’ resulting from conflicts over issues of homosexuality. Existing accounts of the Communion have often tended to emphasise the perspectives of those most vocal in the debates (particularly bishops, senior clergy, and pressure groups) or to engage in primarily theological analysis. This article examines the nature of the purported ‘crisis’ from the perspectives of Anglicans in local parishes in three different national contexts: England, South Africa, and the United States. Unusually for writing on the Communion, attention is simultaneously given to parishes that have clear pro-gay stances, those that largely oppose the acceptance of homosexual practice, and those with more ambivalent positions. In doing so, the article offers new insights for the growing body of literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians, as well as wider discussions about the cont...
Social & Cultural Geography, 2012
In this paper, we extend recent discussions on the geographies of encounter to examine how studen... more In this paper, we extend recent discussions on the geographies of encounter to examine how students and staff narrate their experiences of cross-cultural contact on a British university campus. In theory, the campus environment offers opportunities for more intense and prolonged forms of contact than the ephemeral micro-scale forms of interaction that have dominated much of the literature on encounters.
Religion, 2010
This article examines the evolution of the transnational orthodox Anglican movement through the l... more This article examines the evolution of the transnational orthodox Anglican movement through the lens of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)dthe movement's most significant public expression to date. GAFCON represented the first large-scale event at which a sizable number of Anglicans (ordained and lay) from both the global North and global South gathered to galvanise an 'orthodox' response to the current 'crisis' in the Anglican Communion (a crisis precipitated by debates over the status of homosexuality). The analysis is based upon fieldwork conducted at GAFCON, a review of a range of documentary sources, and retrospective interviews with several attendees. The article argues that GAFCON constituted a key moment for the attempted framing of movement objectives for participants, other Anglicans, and outside observers, fixing a standard of orthodoxy in the final Jerusalem Declaration. While attempting to project an image of orthodox unity to outsiders, GAFCON leaders also made the negotiation of certain aspects of cultural difference central to the event's purpose. Detailed examinations are provided of two topics (homosexuality and female ordination) that exemplify the ongoing negotiation of the boundaries of orthodoxy within the movement. The article concludes with reflections on the significance and further development of the movement.
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2012
ABSTRACTSince the drafting of Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill in 2009, considerable attentio... more ABSTRACTSince the drafting of Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill in 2009, considerable attention has been paid both in Uganda and across the African continent to the political and social significance of homosexual behaviour and identity. However, current debates have not adequately explained how and why anti-homosexual rhetoric has been able to gain such popular purchase within Uganda. In order to move beyond reductive representations of an innate African homophobia, we argue that it is necessary to recognise the deep imbrication of sexuality, family life, procreation and material exchange in Uganda, as well as the ways in which elite actors (including government officials, the media and religious leaders) are able to manipulate social anxieties to further particular ends. We employ a discourse analysis of reporting in the state-owned newspaperNew Vision, first considering how the issue of homosexuality has been represented in relation to wider discourses regarding threats to publ...
The Geographical Journal, 2012
ABSTRACT
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2011
This paper explores questions of sexual difference and religious belief in relation to recent deb... more This paper explores questions of sexual difference and religious belief in relation to recent debates in urban studies and geography on urban encounters. Although it has been widely suggested that increased contact between members of different groups is an important driver for tolerant and respectful intergroup relations, there is need for more careful consideration of the kinds of sites that actually facilitate ‘meaningful encounters’. Specifically, we draw on empirical research in Episcopalian churches in New York City and examine how straight-identified parishioners and clergy narrate and perceive their encounters with the city's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population. Moving beyond the traditional focus on public space in the literature on cosmopolitan urbanism, we examine how churches serve as ‘micropublics’ which organize, facilitate, and/or limit encounters with sexual difference. To capture the tension between orthodox theological understandings of hum...
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2011
... Sadgrove a & Kevin Ward b pages 670-689. ... Sociological Theory , 17: 290–306. [... more ... Sadgrove a & Kevin Ward b pages 670-689. ... Sociological Theory , 17: 290–306. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®], [CSA] View all references, 292; cf. Habermas 2006). ... Culture and Religion , 52: 179–202. [Taylor & Francis Online] View all references; Thumma and Gray 200576. ...
Sexualities, 2013
This article extends recent discussions about the variegated character of American evangelicalism... more This article extends recent discussions about the variegated character of American evangelicalism through a qualitative analysis of how issues of same-sex marriage (and gay rights more broadly) were viewed by one group of self-identified Christian evangelicals worshipping in New York City. Specifically, we draw on parish-based interviews and participant observation in one Episcopalian evangelical parish to discuss the extent to which its members accepted the framing of gay rights as civil rights, and how this framing allowed some parishioners to separate personal religious views from secular politics.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
In this article, I think of Berlin’s techno club Berghain as a form of relational aesthetics wher... more In this article, I think of Berlin’s techno club Berghain as a form of relational aesthetics where encounters mediated by tactile sounds, labyrinthine architecture, and libido-enhancing drugs create an unusually porous sexual subjectivity. By sketching out some changes in the composition of the club’s crowd and drug culture – a shift towards aphrodisiac substances such as G and mephedrone – I argue that Berghain has become a specific pharmacolibidinal constellation. Especially the recreational drug G can be thought of as an unruly liquid that concretises queer theory’s preoccupation with sexual fluidity. Instead of nausea-inducing drugs in combination with same-sex erotica – a popular technique in so-called ‘aversion therapy’ – this is a ‘gay conversion therapy’ in reverse whereby erotic horizons expand and multiply through the combination of chemicals and a multi-sensory overload of pleasurable stimuli. Rather than thinking of sexual orientation as located inside the body, I sugges...
How has American cinema engaged with the rapid transformation of cities and urban culture since t... more How has American cinema engaged with the rapid transformation of cities and urban culture since the 1960s? And what role have films and film industries played in shaping and mediating the “postindustrial” city? This collection argues that cinema and cities have become increasingly intertwined in the era of neoliberalism, urban branding, and accelerated gentrification. Examining a wide range of films from Hollywood blockbusters to indie cinema, it considers the complex, evolving relationship between moving image cultures and the spaces, policies, and politics of US cities from New York, Los Angeles, and Boston to Detroit, Oakland, and Baltimore. The contributors address questions of narrative, genre, and style alongside the urban contexts of production, exhibition, and reception, discussing films including The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Cruising (1980), Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), King of New York (1990), Inception (2010), Frances Ha (2012), Fruitvale Station (2013), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Doctor Strange (2016). American Cinema and Urban Change: Industry, Genre, and Politics from Nixon to Trump, Johan Andersson, King's College London, UK and Lawrence Webb, University of Sussex, UK Part One: Film Production and the Postindustrial Turn Daniel Bell, Post-industrial Society and Los Angeles Cinema c.a 1967–72, Mark Shiel, King's College London, UK Made in New York: Film Production, the City Government, and Public Protest in the Koch Era, Lawrence Webb, University of Sussex, UK You Don't Have to Call Us Home, but Please Stay Here: The City Film Commission, Nathan Koob, Oakland University, USA The Boston Movie Boom, Carlo Rotella, Boston College, USA Part Two Postindustrial Narratives and Aesthetics The New Boston and the Grip of Tradition: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Brink's Job (1978), and The Verdict (1982), Stanley Corkin, University of Cincinnati, USA Undead Detroit: Crisis Capitalism and Urban Ruin, Camilla Fojas, University of Virginia, USA The Flexible Urban Imaginary: Postindustrial Cities in Inception, The Adjustment Bureau, and Doctor Strange, Nick Jones, University of York, UK A Networked Life: Representations of Connectivity and Structural Inequalities in Fruitvale Station, Amy Corbin, Muhlenberg College, USA Part Three Cinema and Gentrification 9 For Whom Are the Movies?: The Landscape of Movie Exhibition in the Gentrified City, Brendan Kredell, Oakland University, USA Ebbets Field and Other Monuments: Outer Borough Neighborhoods and Revanchism in 1990s Cinema, Erica Stein, Vassar College, USA Gentrification by Genre: Desperately Seeking Susan and the 1980s Screwball, Johan Andersson, King's College London, UK Frances Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Gender, Crisis, and the Creative City in Frances Ha and The Giant Mechanical Man, Martha Shearer, King's College London, UK
Urban Studies, 2018
This article historically contextualises the origins of a transnational gay male aesthetic many n... more This article historically contextualises the origins of a transnational gay male aesthetic many now think of as homonormative. While typically understood as a depoliticisation that ‘recodes freedom and liberation in terms of privacy, domesticity, and consumption’ (Manalansan, 2005: 142), homonormativity also has an associated look defined by a set of slick surface appearances relating both to the body and design. Recognisable in various locations across the globe and in multiple settings including cruise ships, resorts, and gyms, this aesthetic is, above all, associated with gaybourhoods and gay villages. Using Soho’s gay village in London as a case-study of the emergence of this generic style in the 1990s, its branded emphasis on ‘affluence’, minimalist interior design and idealised gym bodies is contextualised with references to yuppification and AIDS. Constituting a ‘clean break’ with earlier forms of urban gay culture now stigmatised as ‘dirty’ and ‘unhealthy’, the homonormative...
Antipode, 2016
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2013
Michael Haneke's film Code Unknown (2000) depicts an interracial confrontation on the Paris M... more Michael Haneke's film Code Unknown (2000) depicts an interracial confrontation on the Paris Métro, which the critical literature has tended to discuss as a comment on European multiculturalism. In this paper I argue that this scene must also be understood as a variation of a string of similar interracial subway scenes that emerged in the New Hollywood era of American cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s. Reflecting interconnected changes in the American city and film industry, this subterranean scene constitutes a key example of a new form of graphically violent urban cinema. Haneke being an ardent critic of American entertainment violence, the appropriation of this scene in Code Unknown allows us to evaluate his counteraesthetic in ways that bridge thematic and auteurist approaches, and that take into account the crucial role of the spectator.
Cinema and audiovisual media are integral to the culture, economy and social experience of the co... more Cinema and audiovisual media are integral to the culture, economy and social experience of the contemporary global city. But how has the relationship between cinema and the urban environment evolved in the era of digital technology, new media and globalization? And what are the critical tools and concepts with which we can grasp this vital interconnection between space and screen, viewer and built environment? Engaging with a rapidly transforming urban world, the contributions to this collection rethink the 'cinematic city' at a global scale. By presenting a global constellation of screen cities within one volume, the book encourages juxtapositions and comparisons across the North and South to capture the global city and its dynamics of exchange, hybridity, and circulation. The contributions examine film and screen cultures in a range of locations spanning five continents: Antibes,
Antipode, 2017
In this article I discuss 1980s New York cinema through the conceptual lens of landscape, drawing... more In this article I discuss 1980s New York cinema through the conceptual lens of landscape, drawing in particular on the interconnected but separate traditions of the pastoral and the picturesque. While the former mode of representing landscape is idealizing (the shepherd/nymph-motif), the latter with its origins in the period of the enclosures of the English countryside tends to aestheticize poverty and dispossession. This distinction can productively be deployed in relation to tensions between glamorization and exploitation in 1980s New York cinema, which often dealt with the themes of rent, eviction, and unemployment in postindustrial settings. Focusing in particular on Downtown 81 (Edo Bertoglio, 1981/2000) and Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985), I argue that the current nostalgia for a pre-gentrified and less regulated New York in popular culture is dependent on these idealizing and aestheticizing tendencies insofar that they conceal or prettify some of the darker aspects of the period.
Urban Studies, 2018
This article historically contextualises the origins of a transnational gay male aesthetic many n... more This article historically contextualises the origins of a transnational gay male aesthetic many now think of as homonormative. While typically understood as a depoliticisation that 'recodes freedom and liberation in terms of privacy, domesticity, and consumption' (Manalansan, 2005: 142), homonormativity also has an associated look defined by a set of slick surface appearances relating both to the body and design. Recognisable in various locations across the globe and in multiple settings including cruise ships, resorts, and gyms, this aesthetic is, above all, associated with gay-bourhoods and gay villages. Using Soho's gay village in London as a case-study of the emergence of this generic style in the 1990s, its branded emphasis on 'affluence', minimalist interior design and idealised gym bodies is contextualised with references to yuppification and AIDS. Constituting a 'clean break' with earlier forms of urban gay culture now stigmatised as 'dirty' and 'unhealthy', the homonormative aesthetic can be viewed as an example of 'de-generational unre-membering' following the first traumatic phase of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s (Castiglia C and Reed C (2011) If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past. Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press, p. 9). By placing AIDS at the centre of a discussion of homonormativity, some of the assumptions about its privilege can be queried while at the same time maintaining a critique of how class-specific 'aspirational' imagery was deployed to detract from the stigma of the health crisis.
This paper explores questions of sexual difference and religious belief in relation to recent
deb... more This paper explores questions of sexual difference and religious belief in relation to recent
debates in urban studies and geography on urban encounters. Although it has been widely suggested
that increased contact between members of different groups is an important driver for tolerant and
respectful intergroup relations, there is need for more careful consideration of the kinds of sites that
actually facilitate `meaningful encounters'. Specifically, we draw on empirical research in Episcopalian
churches in New York City and examine how straight-identified parishioners and clergy narrate and
perceive their encounters with the city's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.
Moving beyond the traditional focus on public space in the literature on cosmopolitan urbanism, we
examine how churches serve as `micropublics' which organize, facilitate, and/or limit encounters
with sexual difference. To capture the tension between orthodox theological understandings of
human sexuality and lived experiences in a metropolitan context where homosexuality is expressed
relatively openly, the discussion focuses in particular on an evangelical case-study parish, where the
church leadership is opposed to full LGBT inclusion in the church.
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Papers by Johan Andersson
debates in urban studies and geography on urban encounters. Although it has been widely suggested
that increased contact between members of different groups is an important driver for tolerant and
respectful intergroup relations, there is need for more careful consideration of the kinds of sites that
actually facilitate `meaningful encounters'. Specifically, we draw on empirical research in Episcopalian
churches in New York City and examine how straight-identified parishioners and clergy narrate and
perceive their encounters with the city's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.
Moving beyond the traditional focus on public space in the literature on cosmopolitan urbanism, we
examine how churches serve as `micropublics' which organize, facilitate, and/or limit encounters
with sexual difference. To capture the tension between orthodox theological understandings of
human sexuality and lived experiences in a metropolitan context where homosexuality is expressed
relatively openly, the discussion focuses in particular on an evangelical case-study parish, where the
church leadership is opposed to full LGBT inclusion in the church.
debates in urban studies and geography on urban encounters. Although it has been widely suggested
that increased contact between members of different groups is an important driver for tolerant and
respectful intergroup relations, there is need for more careful consideration of the kinds of sites that
actually facilitate `meaningful encounters'. Specifically, we draw on empirical research in Episcopalian
churches in New York City and examine how straight-identified parishioners and clergy narrate and
perceive their encounters with the city's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population.
Moving beyond the traditional focus on public space in the literature on cosmopolitan urbanism, we
examine how churches serve as `micropublics' which organize, facilitate, and/or limit encounters
with sexual difference. To capture the tension between orthodox theological understandings of
human sexuality and lived experiences in a metropolitan context where homosexuality is expressed
relatively openly, the discussion focuses in particular on an evangelical case-study parish, where the
church leadership is opposed to full LGBT inclusion in the church.
blockbusters to indie cinema, it considers the complex, evolving relationship between moving image cultures and the spaces, policies, and politics of US cities from New York, Los Angeles, and Boston to Detroit, Oakland, and Baltimore. The contributors address questions of narrative, genre, and style alongside the urban contexts of production, exhibition, and reception, discussing films including The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Cruising (1980), Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), King of New York (1990), Inception (2010), Frances Ha (2012), Fruitvale Station (2013), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Doctor Strange (2016).
American Cinema and Urban Change: Industry, Genre, and Politics from Nixon to Trump, Johan Andersson, King's College London, UK and Lawrence Webb, University of Sussex, UK
Part One: Film Production and the Postindustrial Turn
Daniel Bell, Post-industrial Society and Los Angeles Cinema c.a 1967–72, Mark Shiel, King's College London, UK
Made in New York: Film Production, the City Government, and Public Protest in the Koch Era, Lawrence Webb, University of Sussex, UK
You Don't Have to Call Us Home, but Please Stay Here: The City Film Commission, Nathan Koob, Oakland University, USA
The Boston Movie Boom, Carlo Rotella, Boston College, USA
Part Two Postindustrial Narratives and Aesthetics
The New Boston and the Grip of Tradition: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Brink's Job (1978), and The Verdict (1982), Stanley Corkin, University of Cincinnati, USA
Undead Detroit: Crisis Capitalism and Urban Ruin, Camilla Fojas, University of Virginia, USA
The Flexible Urban Imaginary: Postindustrial Cities in Inception, The Adjustment Bureau, and Doctor Strange, Nick Jones, University of York, UK
A Networked Life: Representations of Connectivity and Structural Inequalities in Fruitvale Station, Amy Corbin, Muhlenberg College, USA
Part Three Cinema and Gentrification 9 For Whom Are the Movies?: The Landscape of Movie Exhibition in the Gentrified City, Brendan Kredell, Oakland University, USA
Ebbets Field and Other Monuments: Outer Borough Neighborhoods and Revanchism in 1990s Cinema, Erica Stein, Vassar College, USA
Gentrification by Genre: Desperately Seeking Susan and the 1980s Screwball, Johan Andersson, King's College London, UK
Frances Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Gender, Crisis, and the Creative City in Frances Ha and The Giant Mechanical Man, Martha Shearer, King's College London, UK