Media Anthropology

The Anthropology of Writing. Understanding Textually-Mediated Worlds

by Tom Van Hout

Book review of Barton, D., & Papen, U. (Eds.) (2010). The Anthropology of Writing. Understanding Textually-Mediated Worlds. London: Continuum

Published in the Journal of Writing Research, 2011 (3) 1

Imagined Disaster

by Anton Novenanto

Sometimes, disasters occurred are not only caused by physical damages as consequences of destructive natural... more Sometimes, disasters occurred are not only caused by physical damages as consequences of destructive natural phenomena, but also triggered by the unstable social structures in the society that affect the ordinary social processes. This article looks at the role of mainstream and alternative media responses to mud volcano in Porong, Sidoarjo, East Java which has occurred since May 29, 2006, or “the Lapindo Case”. Following the spirit of “freedom to express”, which is getting stronger since the Reform 1998, has pushed social groups to voice their version of the truth about this case. The truths are articulated through the existing mass media, or by publishing new (alternative) media. Rather to construct, these efforts were just deconstructing public’s images about the Lapindo Case.

Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: Boundary-Work, Subjectivity, and Value in the Hindi Film Industry

by Tejaswini Ganti

Published in Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 85 no.1, Winter 2012

This article complicates the discussion of commercial mass media production and takes it beyond simplistic assertions... more This article complicates the discussion of commercial mass media production and takes it beyond simplistic assertions of the “bottom-line” by focusing on a specific feature of the everyday life of film production in Mumbai, India, home to the Hindi-language film industry, more commonly known as “Bollywood.”  It examines the inordinate amount of criticism and contempt expressed by Hindi filmmakers about the workings of the industry as well as filmmakers’ efforts to assert their difference from a generic norm – ranging from discourses about behavior to a fetishization of technology.  These sentiments and discourses operate as a form of “boundary-work,” which serves to create alternate regimes of value and criteria of prestige that are independent of commercial outcome.  The article also demonstrates how it is possible to carry out ethnographic research within large-scale media industries that addresses core anthropological concerns about subjectivity, social life, and social practice.  It illustrates how the sites and processes of media production, and not simply the finished outcomes, are invested with social and cultural meaning.

Book review.: Johanna Sumiala. Median rituaalit: Johdatus media-antropologiaan

by Anne Holappa

In: Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 35(4) 2010: 65.

Digital Money, Mobile Media, Consequences of Granularity

by Adam Fish

Digital money and mobile media, in a state of fine granularity, are symbolically opened for innovative as well as... more Digital money and mobile media, in a state of fine granularity, are symbolically opened for innovative as well as manipulative financialization and potentially wide democratization. Granularity, by refining things into ever-smaller units, increases the opportunities for access to previously closed systems. On the one hand, this can be empowering as peer-to-peer media and financial transactions can increase and, for a time, transpire under the radar of regulators and speculators. On the other hand, media/money granularity can also result in “flexible accumulation,” the post-nation manufacturing of information/financial/mathematical tools such as seen in the derivatives market that is increasingly difficult to regulate, litigate, or access if you are a citizen.

From Players to Raiders: Wissensgenerierung in virtuellen Welten am Beispiel kollektiver Gaming Projekte

by Felix Abrudan

University seminar paper/ BA thesis topic introduction

Promoting_Anthro_with_Prezi.final

by Janelle Christensen

The Limits of Decency and the Decency of Limits: Censorship and the Bombay Film Industry

by Tejaswini Ganti

Published in Censorship in South Asia, eds. William Mazzarella & Raminder Kaur, Indiana U.P., 2009

“And Yet My Heart Is Still Indian”: The Bombay Film Industry and the (H) Indianization of Hollywood

by Tejaswini Ganti

Mumbai vs. Bollywood: The Hindi Film Industry and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Contemporary India

by Tejaswini Ganti

Published in Global Bollywood, eds. Anandam P. Kavoori and Aswin Punathambekar, NYU Press, 2008

Violence and Symbolic Resistance in the Youth Unrest of the Eighties

by Heinz Nigg

By Heinz Nigg
In: Gau, Sønke / Schlieben, Katharina (Ed.) Spectacle, Pleasure Principle or the Carnivalesque? A Reader on Possibilities, Experiences of Difference and Strategies of the Carnivalesque in Cultural/Political Practise. b_books. Berlin 2008. p. 151-166

"We want it all, and we want it now! The youth unrest in Switzerland in the eighties and its aftermath" (*)... more "We want it all, and we want it now! The youth unrest in Switzerland in the eighties and its aftermath" (*) is a reference work written in German (536 pages). It contributes to a review of the history of the so called Eighties Movement and was published on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the outbreak of youth unrest in Switzerland.

Portraits and texts from former activists, an extensive collection of pamphlets, movement newspapers, photos, audio tapes from assemblies, a compilation of extracts from action videos, press reports, scholarly analyses, and a chronology of events all capture the sudden uprising in the eighties and what has become of it. The combination of book, website (www.sozialarchiv.ch/80) and DVD allows the study of a social movement from within as well as from an outside perspective.

This paper (**) is a montage of interviews with former activists (p. 152-160) and focuses on some of the key issues of the Eighties Movement:
- What caused the uprising?
- Networking, militancy and violence
- Communication and symbolic resistance
- Impact of the movement

The text montage is complemented by a conversation in which Claudia Mareis asked Heinz Nigg, the editor of "We want it all, and we want it now!" to expand on the aesthetics of resistance (p. 174-180)

(*) Heinz Nigg (Hrsg.) Wir wollen alles, und zwar subito! Die Achtziger Jugendunruhen in der Schweiz und ihre Folgen. Mit DVD und Website. Zürich 2011: Limmat Verlag

(**) In: Gau, Sønke / Schlieben, Katharina (Ed.) Spectacle, Pleasure Principle or the Carnivalesque? A Reader on Possibilities, Experiences of Difference and Strategies of the Carnivalesque in Cultural/Political Practise. b_books. Berlin 2008.

Culture, Globalization, Mediation

by William Mazzarella

Youth Protest Media (Switzerland)

by Heinz Nigg

By Heinz Nigg
In: John D. H. Downing (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media. Thousand Oaks, California 2011: SAGE PUBLICATIONS. (p. 555-557)

The youth riots in Switzerland, beginning on May 39, 1980, hit the international news. They began with a rally in... more The youth riots in Switzerland, beginning on May 39, 1980, hit the international news. They began with a rally in front of the Zürich opera house, where hundreds of young people protested against Zürich City Council's unfair cultural policies. Out of the riots evolved a youth protest movement active in imaginative uses of alternative media. Pirate radio, action video, street theater, and other forms of media expression like flyers, underground newspapers, and photo documentations were used to highlight the aims of youth protest: the creation of autonomous youth and cultural centers, more space for experimental art forms, free universities, liberal cannabis policies, better housing and living conditions in inner city Zürich, more public transport, no more motorways cutting through the city of Zürich, and other ecological goals, anticipating the green movement of today.

“They live in Lonesome Dove”: Media and contemporary Western Apache place-naming practices

by M. Eleanor Nevins

Language in Society 2008

This article treats a place-naming genre among residents of the White Mountain Apache reservation in which people use... more This article treats a place-naming genre among residents of the White Mountain Apache reservation in which people use English-language mass media discourse to name newly constructed neighborhoods on the reservation, usually with humorous effect. It is argued that these names do not represent simple assimilation to mainstream discursive norms. Instead, they represent the deployment of media discourse according to locally defined speech genres and language ideology to comment on social changes brought about by the new housing developments. As a strategy for engaging with the dominant
society, these names are acts of community self-definition that confound mainstream expectations for place names generally, and for Native American place names in particular. They celebrate participation in media discourse, but in terms that privilege reservation insiders. Use of these names constitutes the reservation as an interpretive community in which participation is defined not along nationalist models of citizenship, but in terms of locally established idioms of sociality. (Discourse and place, genre, intertextuality,
mass media, Western Apache, place names, Native American,
narrative, joking, verbal play)*

Utopian enterprise: Articulating the meanings of Star Trek's culture of consumption

by Robert Kozinets

23. Kozinets, Robert V. (2001), “Utopian Enterprise: Articulating the Meanings of Star Trek’s Culture of Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Research, 28 (June), 67-88.

In this article, I examine the cultural and subcultural construction of consumption meanings and practices as they are... more In this article, I examine the cultural and subcultural construction of consumption meanings and practices as they are negotiated from mass media images and objects. Field notes and artifacts from 20 months of fieldwork at Star Trek fan
clubs, at conventions, and in Internet groups, and 67 interviews with Star Trek fans are used as data. Star Trek’s subculture of consumption is found to be constructed as a powerful utopian refuge. Stigma, social situation, and the need for legitimacy shape the diverse subcultures’ consumption meanings and practices. Legitimizing articulations of Star Trek as a religion or myth underscore fans’ heavy investment of self in the text. These sacralizing articulations are used to distance the text from its superficial status as a commercial product. The findings emphasize and describe how consumption often fulfills the contemporary hunger for a conceptual space in which to construct a sense of self and what matters in life. They also reveal broader cultural tensions between the affective investments people make in consumption objects and the encroachment of commercialization.

"Rituaalinen näkökulma mediaan ja yhteisön järjestäytymiseen." (Kirja-arvostelu, Tieteessä Tapahtuu Vol 29, Nro 1 [2011].)

by Jere Kyyrö

Book Review. Johanna Sumiala: Median Rituaalit - Johdatus media-antropologiaan. Tampere: Vastapaino, 2010.

Caribbean Pirates or Robin Hood’s crowd? Perceptions of Illegal Behaviors

by Valentina Bazzarin

Complete title: Caribbean Pirates or Robin Hood’s crowd? Perceptions of Illegal Behaviors and warning signals in Internet seas and forests comparing American and Italian adolescents’ perspective.
Co-authored with Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Stefano Ghirlanda
Published in McLuhan Galaxy Conference Understanding Media, Today
Conference Proceedings
Pag. 59

One of the most well-known quotation by McLuhan is from “The Global Village” (1962): “Technology environments are not... more One of the most well-known quotation by McLuhan is from “The Global Village” (1962): “Technology environments are not merely passive containers of people but are active processes that reshape people and other technologies alike” (p. 2).
This quote is particularly relevant today, especially for children and adolescents, for whom the reshaping also involves the representation of what is legal and illegal, as well as their awareness of laws and rules intended to protect individuals from the risks of the virtual world (i.e. child grooming, cyber-bullism, privacy of personal or medical data, etc.), and of those intended to protect intellectual property or economic interests.

A review of The Anthropology of News & Journalism: Global Perspectives

by Gabriel Alberto Moreno Esparza

REFERENCE:

Moreno E., Gabriel A. (2011) 'A Review of: "S. Elizabeth Bird (Ed.). The Anthropology of News & Journalism: Global Perspectives."', Mass Communication and Society, 14: 1, 145 - 152.

Visual Media and Political Communication: Reporting about Suffering in Kinshasa

by Katrien Pype

(December 2011) Journal of Modern African Studies, 49(4)

Many sub-Saharan African societies have undergone significant political shifts in the last two decades. Changes in... more Many sub-Saharan African societies have undergone significant political shifts in the last two decades. Changes in political representation and leadership have induced new forms of political mediation and communication. This article probes into one of the most visible transformations in Kinshasa’s political society: TV news reports about urban misery, often resulting from a malfunctioning state, are produced in which Kinshasa’s inhabitants testify about their difficulties and press fellow citizens as well as local and national leaders to bring about change. Exposing suffering is a strategy to mobilise shame and it thus becomes a political act. Through the discursive and visual aesthetics of the proximity account, citizens and political leaders are inserted into one political community. The main argument is that the proximity account illustrates a new kind of political communication. The article analyses the socio-political contexts in which the proximity report emerged and has become popular. The emergence of this new kind of interaction between political leaders and citizens enabled through the proximity account is traced back to the transformation of the late Zairian ‘state’, vernacular understandings of ‘democracy’, the influence of NGO activities and Pentecostal Christianity.


[Key words: DR Congo, Kinshasa, political society, political communication, journalism, media, news]

copyright Cambridge University Press

Beyond dramatic revolutions and grand rebellions: everyday forms of resistance during the ‘Zimbabwe crisis’

by Wendy Willems

Published in: Communicare 29, Special Edition, September 2010: 1-17.

In the context of the ‘Zimbabwe crisis’ of the early 2000s, both popular and academic accounts frequently discussed... more In the context of the ‘Zimbabwe crisis’ of the early 2000s, both popular and academic accounts frequently discussed Zimbabweans as passive victims of their government, hereby suggesting that the extensive efforts of the state to create a ‘patriotic’ citizenry through the cultural project of the Third Chimurenga were largely successful. This article argues that the absence of physical protests in the streets should not be equalled to an absence of resistance. By adopting a narrow focus on the forms of resistance associated with dramatic revolutions and grand rebellions, journalists and scholars neglected the everyday forms of resistance through which Zimbabweans sought to challenge the state such as popular humour and rumour. These nascent forms of resistance could have been drawn upon in a more sustained way by the political opposition and civil society in order to provoke political change.