Media Studies

Over the last twenty years Cultural Anthropology has published a range of articles focused on media in different cultural contexts, and on media and cultural production. Authors have queried how transformations in media technology have changed the way media is conceived, produced and circulated, and the way developments in media have contributed or run parallel to political-economic developments and social re-alignments. Focusing on subjects that range from network news to cyberspace, they have asked probing questions about ways gender, class and race have been constructed and re-constructed, and about the cultural and political effects of media immersion.

In 1986, for example, George Lipsitz, currently Professor of Black Studies at UC-Santa Barbara, published an essay that examines television comedies to develop insights on family and ethnicity in the United States. In 1998, noted feminist anthropologist Sherry Ortner published an essay on the challenge of ethnographic inquiry in media saturated contexts – examining the so-called "Generation X" children of people in her own high school grading class in Newark, New Jersey. The journal has also published a series of essays by leading media anthropologist Faye Ginsberg: In 1991, Ginsberg asked whether the development of video and television among indigenous peoples (particularly in Australia) created a "Faustian Contract, or Global Village?" In a 1994 article, Ginsberg builds on Arjun Appardurai’s conception of a "mediascape" to "take account of the inderdependence of media practices with the local, national and transnational circumstances that surround them," again focusing on Aboriginal Australians.

Cultural Anthropology articles can be accessed electronically through AnthroSource, http://www.anthrosource.net/, which is available through most research libraries and to all members of the American Anthropological Association. Cultural Anthropology articles of interest to researchers and teachers of media studies include the following:

Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood
David Novak
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 40-72
Supplemental Material

Branding the Mahatma: The Untimely Provocation of Gandhian Publicity
William Mazzarella
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 1-39
Supplemental Material

Moscow's Echo: Technologies of the Self, Publics, and Politics on the Russian Talk Show
Tomas Matza
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 3: 489-522
Supplemental Material

COINCIDENCE AND CONSEQUENCE: Marianism and the Mass Media in the Global Philippines
Deirdre de la Cruz
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 3: 455-488
Supplemental Material

The Songs of the Siren: Engineering National Time on Israeli Radio
Danny Kaplan
Cultural Anthropology May 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2: 313-345
Supplemental Material

Mediating Kinship: Country, Family, and Radio in Northern Australia
Daniel Fisher
Cultural Anthropology May 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2: 280-312
Supplemental Material

Dislocating Sound: The Deterritorialization of Indonesian Indie Pop
Brent Luvaas
Cultural Anthropology May 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2: 246-279
Supplemental Material

THE FACE OF MONEY: Currency, Crisis, and Remediation in Post-Suharto Indonesia
Karen Strassler
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 1: 68-103
Supplemental Material

Watching U.S. Television From the Palestinian Street: The Media, The State and Representational Interventions
Amahl Bishara
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2008, Vol. 23, No. 3: 488-530
Supplemental Material

"Survival is Your Business": Engineering Ruins and Affect in Nuclear America
Joseph Masco
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 361-398.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Disciplines of Prescence in Modern Turkey: Discourse, Companionship, and the Mass Media of Islamic Practice
Brian Silverstein
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2008, Vol. 23, No. 1: 188-153
Supplemental Material

Spectacles of Sexuality: Televisionary Activism in Nicaragua
Cymene Howe
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2008, Vol. 23, No. 1: 48-84
Supplemental material

Cancer Butch
S. Lochlann Jain
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 501-538.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi: Consumerism, Brand Image, and Public Interest in a Globalizing India
Neeraj Vedwan
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 659-684.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Fijian Water in Fiji and New York: Local Politics and a Global Commodity
Martha Kaplan
Cultural Anthropology Nov 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 685-706.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Mediating Infanticide: Theorizing Relations between Narrative and Violence
Charles L. Briggs
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2007, Vol. 22, No. 3: 315-356.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Rose-Colored Glasses? Color Revolutions and Cartoon Chaos in Postsocialist Georgia
Paul Manning
Cultural Anthropology May 2007, Vol. 22, No. 2: 171-213.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Remediation and Local Globalizations: How Taiwan's "Digital Video Knights-Errant Puppetry" Writes the History of the New Media in Chinese
Teri Silvio
Cultural Anthropology May 2007, Vol. 22, No. 2: 285-313.
Supplemental material and Discussion

Watching Twin Bracelets in China: The Role of Spectatorship and Identification in an Ethnographic Analysis of Film Reception
Sara L. Friedman
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2006, Vol. 21, No. 4: 603-632.

Technologies of the Voice: FM Radio, Telephone, and the Nepali Diaspora in Kathmandu
Laura Kunreuther
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3: 323-353.

Anthropology and the New Technologies of Communication
Brian Keith Axel
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3: 354-384.

Tracking Properness: Repackaging Culture in a Remote Australian Town
Kimberly Christen
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2006, Vol. 21, No. 3: 416-446

Between Cinema and Social Work: Diasporic Turkish Women and the (Dis)Pleasures of Hybridity
Katherine Pratt Ewing
Cultural Anthropology May 2006, Vol. 21, No. 2: 265-294.

Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
Christopher Kelty
Cultural Anthropology May 2005, Vol. 20, No. 2: 185-214.
Supplemental Material

Violence and the Rhetoric of Images
Gregory Starrett
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2003, Vol. 18, No. 3: 398-428.
Supplemental Material and Discussion

Musical Community on the Internet: An On-line Ethnography
René T. A. Lysloff
Cultural Anthropology May 2003, Vol. 18, No. 2: 233-263.

"Very Bombay": Contending with the Global in an Indian Advertising Agency
William Mazzarella
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2003, Vol. 18, No. 1: 33-71.

Cyborg Violence: Bursting Borders and Bodies with Queer Machines
Anne Allison
Cultural Anthropology May 2001, Vol. 16, No. 2: 237-265.
Supplemental Material

"A Broke-Up Mirror": Representing Bajan in Print
Janina Fenigsen
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1999, Vol. 14, No. 1: 61-87.

Performing Modernity
Louisa Schein
Cultural Anthropology Aug 1999, Vol. 14, No. 3: 361-395.

Reporting from Jerusalem
Ulf Hannerz
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 1998, Vol. 13, No. 4: 548-574.

Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World
Sherry B. Ortner
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1998, Vol. 13, No. 3: 414-440.

Spatial Reconfigurations, Imagined Geographies, and Social Conflicts in Cartagena, Colombia
Joel Streicker
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1997, Vol. 12, No. 1: 109-128.

Animated Indians: Critique and Contradiction in Commodified Children's Culture
Pauline Turner Strong
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1996, Vol. 11, No. 3: 405-424.

Maya Hackers and the Cyberspatialized Nation-State: Modernity, Ethnostalgia, and a Lizard Queen in Guatemala
Diane M. Nelson
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1996, Vol. 11, No. 3: 287-308.

Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media
Faye Ginsburg
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1994, Vol. 9, No. 3: 365-382.

Photojournalism, Anthropology, and Ethnographic Authority
Michele D. Dominy
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1993, Vol. 8, No. 3: 317-337.

Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?
Faye Ginsburg
Cultural Anthropology Feb 1991, Vol. 6, No. 1: 92-112.

Analyzing a Speech Event: The Bush-Rather Exchange a (Not Very) Dramatic Dialogue
George L. Dillon, Anne Doyle, Carol Eastman, Harold Schiffman, Sandra Silberstein, Michael Toolan, Susan Kline, Gerry Philipsen
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1989, Vol. 4, No. 1: 73-94.

Hypermedia and the Future of Ethnography
Alan Howard
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 1988, Vol. 3, No. 3: 304-315.

The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television Programs
George Lipsitz
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 1986, Vol. 1, No. 4: 355-387.