Radio Fields

by Bessire, Lucas; Fisher, Daniel; Ginsburg, Faye (AFT)

• ISBN13: 9780814738191
• ISBN10: 0814738192
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-19
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

Radio is the most widespread electronic medium in the world today. As a form of technology that is both durable and relatively cheap, radio remains central to the everyday lives of billions of people around the globe. It is used as a call for prayer in Argentina and Appalachia, to organize political protest in Mexico and Libya, and for wartime communication in Iraq and Afghanistan. In urban centers it is played constantly in shopping malls, waiting rooms, and classrooms. Yet despite its omnipresence, it remains the media form least studied by anthropologists. Radio Fields employs ethnographic methods to reveal the diverse domains in which radio is imagined, deployed, and understood. Drawing on research from six continents, the volume demonstrates how the particular capacities and practices of radio provide singular insight into diverse social worlds, ranging from aboriginal Australia to urban Zambia. Together, the contributors address how radio creates distinct possibilities for rethinking such fundamental concepts as culture, communication, community, and collective agency.

Author Biography

Lucas Bessire is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. Daniel Fisher is a lecturer in anthropology at Macquarie University (Australia). Faye Ginsburg is David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Graduate Program in Culture and Media at New York University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Radio Fields	p. 1
Aurality under Democracy: Cultural History of FM Radio and Ideologies of Voice in Nepal	p. 48
From the Studio to the Street: Producing the Voice in Indigenous Australia	p. 69
Editing the Nation: How Radio Engineers Encode Israeli National Imaginaries	p. 89
Reconsidering Muslim Authority: Female "Preachers" and the Ambiguities of Radio-Mediated Sermonizing in Mali	p. 108
Community and Indigenous Radio in Oaxaca: Testimony and Participatory Democracy	p. 124
The Cultural Politics of Radio: Two Views from the Warlpiri Public Sphere	p. 142
Frequencies of Transgression: Notes on the Politics of Excess and Constraint among Mexican Free Radios	p. 160
"Foreign Voices": Multicultural Broadcasting and Immigrant Representation at Germany's Radio MultiKulti	p. 179
"We Go Above": Media Metaphysics and Making Moral Life on Ayoreo Two-Way Radio	p. 197
Appalachian Radio Prayers: The Prosthesis of the Holy Ghost and the Drive to Tactility	p. 215
Radio in the (i)Home: Changing Experiences of Domestic Audio Technologies in Britain	p. 233
"A House of Wires upon Wires": Sensuous and Linguistic Entanglements of Evidence and Epistemologies in the Study of Radio Culture	p. 250
Radio Fields: An Afterword	p. 268
About the Contributors	p. 279
Index	p. 281
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