general or art educatio
implemented in general or art education contexts. Like Mayo (2002) and
Giroux (2004b), we see the need to explore specific practices of critical
public pedagogies, in order to understand how they operate.
We find Ellsworth’s (2005) most recent work on public pedagogy helpful in our exploration; she urges critical
educators to explore what she calls
“anomalous places of learning”?museums, public art installations, films,
and other forms of popular culture. We engage with her idea of the
“pedagogical hinge” (p. 5) to examine culture jamming as critical public
pedagogy, and to discover how culture jamming functions as a powerful site
of learning. In addition, we borrow from Ellsworth a way of thinking about
education within popular culture as a process rather than
a product, and seek
to understand how knowledge is created and experienced by the “learning self in the making” (p. 2). To Ellsworth, public pedagogy is most powerful
when it creates “transitional spaces”?when it connects our inner selves to
people, objects, and places outside of ourselves.
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CULTURE JAMMING AS CRITICAL PUBLIC PEDAGOGY 327
Finally, we focus on culture jamming groups specifically addressing issues of consumerism and overconsumption, following Reynolds’s (2004) recent call for curriculum scholars to explore work that resists “the brand
name corporate order” (p. 32). Reverend Billy and Adbusters are part of a
wider social movement focused on resisting consumerism and consump
tion that has received little attention among educational researchers; this movement includes groups working toward labor rights, fighting against
the destructive consequences of globalization and advocating for fair trade,
raising awareness about global sweatshops, and fighting against the
eco
logical destruction that accompanies massive overconsumption. This social
movement “attempt [s]
to transform various elements of the social order
surrounding consumption and marketing” (Kozinets 8c Handelman, 2004,
p. 691). While a handful of educators have focused on various social movements that resist consumption (Jubas, 2006; Sandlin, 2005; Sandlin 8c
Milam, 2007; Spring, 2003; Usher, Bryant, & Johnston, 1997), we believe
educators need to pay more attention to consumption, given the increasing role it plays in structuring every aspect of our lives and in fostering gross social and economic disparities (Bocock, 1993; McLaren, 2005).We thus
place our work in the context of recent concerns of critical curriculum
scholars about the increasing power of global corporate hypercapitalism and the imperialism of commercialism which shape the educational mes
sages of popular culture while eradicating any public sphere not controlled
by the market (Giroux, 2003c; McLaren, 2005).
THE CASES OF ADBUSTERS AND REVEREND BILLY AND THE CHURCH OF STOP SHOPPING
We draw from multiple sources of data for this project. Following Ellsworth
(2005), we used secondary data from scholars in other disciplines who have researched and written about culture jamming, and from culture jamming activists who participate in, record, and write about their activism?”the
words and concepts of others”?as “raw material” (p. 13). We also analyzed data from two culture jamming groups, Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. To examine Adbusters, we gathered textual and visual material from its Web site, including blogs, articles, and “sub
vertisements”; 10 issues of Adbusters magazine published between 2003 and
2006; and a curriculum guide for high school teachers published by Adbusters that focuses on critical media literacy. To examine Reverend
Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, we gathered textual, visual, and audio material from its Web site, including blogs, MP3s of Reverend Billy’s “sermons,” photographs, and public performance “scripts” written by Rev
erend Billy. We also examined two recent documentaries (Post 8c Palacios, 2006; Sharpe, 2001) containing interviews with Reverend Billy, footage of Reverend Billy enacting performance interventions, and footage of
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328 JENNIFER A. SANDLIN AND JENNIFER L. MILAM
Reverend Billy preaching in various venues. Finally, we examined Reverend
Billy’s recent autobiography (Talen, 2003). We sought in our analysis to make sense of how culture jamming oper
ates as curriculum. Duncombe (2002) explains that when analyzing cultural resistance, one must examine four aspects: the content of the
resistance, the form it takes, the ways it is interpreted, and the activities of its creation. We viewed the various forms of data we gathered?including
visual, written, and performative?as “cultural texts,” and drawing upon
McKee’s (2003) approach to interpretive cultural textual analysis, we
sought to understand how culture jammers viewed and critiqued the world
around them, how they created alternative visions of the world, and how
they articulated these visions to others. To further understand culture
jamming as curriculum, we also drew upon ethnographic
or qualitative
media analysis (Altheide, 1987,1996), which focuses on the ethnography of
cultural texts and consists of the “reflexive movement between concept
development, sampling, data collection, data coding, data analysis, and
interpretation” (Altheide, 1987, p. 65). Altheide (1987) further explains that this type of analysis is embedded in constant discovery and constant
comparison, but seeks to go beyond description of the content of texts, to
arrive at understanding of broader social discourses created by and
reflected in the texts.
Adbusters is a magazine produced by the Adbusters Media Foundation.
Based in Vancouver, Canada, Adbusters describes itself as “a global network
of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepre neurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the infor
mation age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge
a
major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century” (Adbusters Media
Foundation, n.d.). The content of Adbusters focuses on two main themes?
how marketing and mass media colonize space, and how global capitalism
and rampant consumption are
destroying natural environments (Rumbo,
2002). Adbusters magazine (Figure 1) is a
reader-supported, not-for-profit
magazine with an international circulation of 85,000 and contains reader
generated materials, commentaries by activists from across the globe, and
photographs and stories depicting readers’ social activism. Adbusters also
hosts a Web site (http://www.Adbusters.org/) where activists can read
about anti-consumption campaigns; download posters, stickers, and flyers
for distribution; and share information about their own activism. Some of
Adbusters’ ongoing campaigns include Buy Nothing Day (described
earlier) and TV Turnoff Week (a week in April where individuals are
encouraged to take a break from the incessant commercial messages
coming through their televisions by just turning them off; instead of watch
ing TV, Adbusters encourages people to interact with others and become
involved in community activism). Reverend Billy is
an anti-consumption performance
artist based in New
York City, and the leader of the Church of Stop Shopping. Bill Talen, whose
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CULTURE JAMMING AS CRITICAL PUBLIC PEDAGOGY 329
J^DBUSTERS
FIGURE 1.
FIGURE 2.
stage character is Reverend Billy, adopts the persona of a Southern, con
servative, evangelical preacher?a la Jimmy Swaggart?including pouffy hair and a white suit (Figure 2).
He stages “comic theatrical service [s]” (Lane, 2002, p. 60)?structured as comic church services? with “readings from the saints (or the devils),
public confessions, collective exorcisms, the honoring of new saints, dona
tions to the cause, a lively choir, and a
rousing sermon” (Lane, 2002, p. 61).
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330 JENNIFER A. SANDLIN AND JENNIFER L. MILAM
During these services, he acts out a
call-and-response style of preaching as
the audience responds with Amens! and Hallelujahs! Reverend Billy also
performs “retail interventions” in public spaces and retail stores
along with
the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir; some of his popular targets of anti
consumption activism include the Disney Company, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Victoria’s Secret. In addition, Reverend Billy writes “intervention
manuals” and scripts that other activists can use in their own public theater
jams.
CULTURE JAMMING AS CRITICAL PUBLIC PEDAGOGY
Our analysis focused on how and why culture jamming activists enact what we
position as critical public pedagogy. Given the
