As John Frow and Katrina Schlunke state in their editorial, the diverse writing in this issue of Cultural Studies Review (Vol. 15, No. 1, Melbourne University Publishing, $29.95 pb, 220 pp) collected under the theme of ‘Homefronts’, includes essays dealing with nationhood, family, the manufacture of crisis and celebrity, neo-liberalism and homelessness. Given the space to explore complexity, many contributions remain refreshingly accessible to the non-specialist reader. Popular culture is, of course, one of the mainstays of cultural studies, and the first two essays