The Anthropology of Media: A Reader
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
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.
Acknowledgments viii
Timeline of Media Development x
Introduction 1
Kelly Askew
Part I Seeing/Hearing is Believing: Technology and Truth 15
Part II Representing Others 73
Part III Representing Selves 157
Part IV Active Audiences 237
Part V Power, Colonialism, Nationalism 323
Resource Bibliography 394
Index 406