The Anthropology of Media: A Reader / Edition 1

by Kelly Askew, Richard R. Wilk

Overview

The Anthropology of Media: A Reader

• Brings together key writings in the emergent field of the anthropology of media for the first time
• Integrates key themes in the anthropology of media by means of editorial commentary
• Explores the theoretical issues that have arisen from ethnographic studies of media

offers a critical overview of how mass media represents and constructs both Western and non-Western cultures. Moving beyond earlier anthropological preoccupation with ethnographic film and drawing on the recent explosion of creative studies of culture and media, this volume heralds the emergence of a new field – the anthropology of media – and brings its key literature together for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780631220930
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	02/15/2002
Series:	Wiley Blackwell Readers in Anthropology , #2
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.95(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Kelly Askew is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studiesat the University of Michigan. She is the author of Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (2002).

Richard R. Wilk is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University. He is the author of several books, including Household Ecology (1991) and Economies and Cultures (1996), as well as over a hundred papers and articles on topics as diverse as Maya archaeology, research ethics, and global consumer culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.

Timeline of Media Development.

Introduction: Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk.

Part I: Seeing/Hearing is Believing: Technology and Truth:.

1. The Medium is the Message: Marshall McLuhan.

2. The Technology and the Society: Raymond Williams..

3. Mead and Bateson Debate: On the Use of the Camera in Anthropology: Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.

4. The Ambiguity of the Photograph: John Berger.

5. Save, Save the Lore!: Erika Brady.

Part II: Representing Others:.

6. The Gaze of Western Humanism: James C. Faris.

7. The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender: Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins.

8. The Imperial Imaginary: Ella Shohat and Robert Stam.

9. Complicities of Style: Dave MacDougall.

Part III: Representing Selves:.

10. Hollywood and the USA: Hortense Powdermaker.

11. Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves: Stephen F. Sprague.

12. Relationships: Daniel Miller and Don Slater.

13. Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media, Ethnographic Film, and the Production of Identity: Faye Ginsburg.

Part IV: Active Audiences:.

14. Radio Texture: Between Self and Others: Jo Taachi.

15. The Tongan Tradition of Going to the Movies: Elizabeth Hahn.

16. Rambo's Wife Saves the Day: Subjugating the Gaze and Subverting the Narrative in a Papua New Guinean Swamp: Don Kulick and Margaret Willson.

17. 'It's Destroying a Whole Generation': Television and Moral Discourse in Belize: Rick Wilk.

18. National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City: Purnima Mankekar.

Part V: Power, Colonialism, Nationalism:.

19. Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture: Sut Jhally.

20. The Global and the Local in International Communications: Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi.

21. In Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua: David E Whisnant.

22. The Objects of Soap Opera: Egyptian Television and the Cultural Politics of Modernity: Lila Abu-Lughod.

Resource Bibliography.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

"In its bold presentation of an emergent subfield – anthropology of media – this comprehensive collection is a timely resource for students and others interested in cross-cultural research on mass communication. Destined to become a standard text, it explores a wide range of theoretical ideas and spotlights fascinating case studies. Highly recommended!" Harald E. L. Prins, Society for Visual Anthropology (1999–2001)

"Provides a unique collection of classic and vanguard, theoretical and substantive studies that demonstrates the centrality of anthropology to contemporary media studies. By a judicious selection of fascinating papers this volume is able to go beyond any single study to reveal the many different ways an anthropology sensitive to political and economic environments can investigate the production, consumption, and consequences of media by creators and users. As such it makes the ideal foundation for teaching a subject that has now clearly come into its own." Daniel Miller, University College London

From the Publisher