Costelloe-KuehnMemo10

1) Media Studies, including anthropology of media... Focus on "alternative" media production.
subfields/keywords: indigenous media, alternative media, community media, independent media

The lines between media studies, communications, anthropology (and other disciplines) of media, etc. are quite unclear.

For a recent class I wrote a paper titled "Sites of Productive Permeability between Interdisciplines: Science and Technology / Media Studies." Here is a relevant chunk that maps various ways to construe the object of "media":

“Media” and “technoscience” are both terms that refer to a wide array of social, technical, political, economic and cultural practices and products. When we talk about “the mass media,” we refer to a socio-technical complex composed of, //inter alia//, people (experts, professionals, administrators of various types, readers), a wide array of information and communication technologies (ICTs), laws and regulations, “artistic” practices, norms, ideologies and aesthetics. Media can be broken down roughly into news and entertainment, although this boundary is increasingly blurred. Along with profit motives, changes in media technologies may contribute to a shift towards “infotainment.” Max Frankel, a former editor of the //New York Times//, admits that as with an increasing focus on targeting internet audiences, the media will tend to forefront “sex, sports, violence, and comedy… on their menus, slighting, if not altogether ignoring, the news of foreign wars or welfare reform” (quoted in Herman and Chomsky 2002, xvi).

“Mass media” can also be contrasted with “new media,” which generally refers to a more participatory and distributed range of media technologies and practices. New media is a contested and shifting signifier and has been characterized as a “still-emerging field” that is “complex, changing and indeterminate” (Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort 2003, 29). But the supposed “newness” of new media obscures continuities with “old” conventions. For example, screen-based interactive 3-D environments still tend to use cinema’s rectangular framing, “since they rely on other elements of cinematic vision, specifically, a mobile virtual camera … this frame creates a distinct subjective experience that is much closer to cinematic perception than it is to unmediated sight” (Manovich 2003, 81-82).

Like many emerging technologies, new media has largely been framed in a deterministic oppression/freedom binary (Poster 2008). As Lev Manovich put it, “a Western artist sees the Internet as a perfect tool to break down all hierarchies and bring art to the people. In contrast, as a post-communist subject, I cannot but see the Internet as a communal apartment of the Stalin era: no privacy, everybody spies on everybody else, always present are lines for common areas such as the toilet or kitchen” (quoted in Tribe 2008, x). STS approaches that focus on how technologies are used in myriad contexts and multiple ways can help to acknowledge the “logics" of the interface between the human and the machine as well as the forces that mediate this interface such as globalization (Poster 2008).

Another way to unpack the term “media” is to distinguish between, on the one hand, “mainstream” or “corporate” media, and on the other, “alternative,” “community-based,” or “independent” media. Along these lines, Schramm (1977) distinguishes “big” from “little”. The former is extensive, expensive, and marked by complex infrastructures and organizational arrangements, including national broadcast networks and communications satellites. “Little media” is local, small scale, and inexpensive, such as newsletters, print shops, or local radio. But many media technologies and practices blur this boundary between “big” and “small” considerably. The Independent Media Center (IMC) networks, for example, are both local and global, generally inexpensively produced yet extensive.

The [|"theme" page on Media Studies] on culanth.org mentions some of the questions addressed in this area:
 * "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."**
 * Faye Ginsburg is a "leading" anthropologist of media. She has focused on the ways in which Aboriginal film-making and political activism negotiate diversity with the Australian nation-state and offer alternative accounts that undermine monolithic national narratives. Ginsburg`s paper, "Black Screens and Cultural Citizenship", illuminatingly revealed the multi-faceted ways in which we must think of Australianess as a diverse, often contested cultural formation” (Kääpä 2006, 1; see Ginsburg 2005).

annual reviews: Wilson, S. M., and L. C. Peterson. 2002. The Anthropology of Online Communities. //ANNUAL REVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY// 31: 449-467. Media Resource Center, Zambia, and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Zambia). 1996. //Freedom forum annual review: a publication of the Media Resource Center, Zambia//. Lusaka, Zambia: Media Resource Center. Mazzarella, W. 2004. Culture, Globalization, Mediation. //ANNUAL REVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY// 33: 345-367.

Anon. Independent Media Center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indymedia. Anon. 2007. Community Media Review. //Community Media Review// (Summer). http://communitymediareview.org/files/2007_02_summer.pdf. Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1997. The Interpretation of Culture(s) After Television. //Representations.//, no. 59: 109. Beckerman, Gal. 2003. Edging Away from Anarchy. //Columbia Journalism Review// 42, no. 3 (October): 27-30. Briebart, Joshua. 2004. An Independent Media Center of One's Own: A Feminist Alternative to Corporate Media. In //The Fire This Time//. Carroll, John M., and Mary Beth Rosson. 2007. Participatory design in community informatics. //Design Studies// 28: 243-261. Clodagh, Miskelly, and Fleuriot, Constance. 2006. Layering Community Media in Place. //Digital Creativity// 17, no. 3. De Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. //Technologies of gender : essays on theory, film, and fiction//. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fernback, Jan. Information Technology, Networks and Community Voices: Social Inclusion for Urban Regeneration. Green, N.F. 1998. Chicago StreetWise at the Crossroads: A Case Study of a Newspaper to Empower the Homeless in the 1990s. In //Print Culture in a Diverse America//, ed. J. Danky and W. Wigand, 34-55. Urbana, Il.: University of Illinoise Press. Hall, Stuart. 1986. On Postmodernism and Articulation: an Interview with Stuart Hall. //Journal of Communication Inquiry// 10, no. 2: 45-60. Halleck, DeeDee. 2003. Hand-Held Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media. //Canadian Journal of Communication// 30, no. 1: 41-64. Howley, Kevin. 2005. //Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies//. Cambridge University Press. Rodriguez, Jose Manuel Ramos. Indigenous Radio Stations in Mexico: a Catalyst for Social Cohesion and Cultural Strength. Schuler, Douglas. 1996. //New Community Networks: Wired for Change//. ACM Press, NY, NY. Slater, Don, Jo A. Tacchi, and Peter A. Lewis. 2002. Ethnographic Monitoring and Evaluation of Community Multimedia Centres: A Study of Kothmale Community Radio Internet Project, Sri Lanka. Stengrim, Laura. 2005. Negotiating Postmodern Democracy, Political Activism, and Knowledge Production: Indymedia's Grassroots and e-Savvy Answer to Media Oligopoly. //Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies// 2, no. 4 (December): 281-304. Tacchi, Jo, and Eryl-Price Davies. 2001. //Community Radio in a Global Context: A Comparative Analysis in Six Countries//. [Online]: CMA. Available at www.commedia.org.uk/reports.htm. Tower, Craig. 2005. 'Arajo efemu:' Local FM Radio and the Socio-Technical System of Communications in Koutiala, Mali. //The Radio Journal - International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media// 3, no. 1.

relevant methodology lit:

Cahill, Caitlin. 2007. Including excluded perspectives in participatory action research. //Design Studies// 28: 325-340. Eubanks, Virgina, and Campbell, Nancy. Making Sense of Imbrication: Popular Technology and 'Inside-Out' Methodologies. http://www.populartechnology.org/Virginia/Imbrication.pdf. Jensen, K.B., and Jankowski, N.W., eds. //A Handbook for Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research//. Slater, Don, Jo A. Tacchi, and Peter A. Lewis. 2002. Ethnographic Monitoring and Evaluation of Community Multimedia Centres: A Study of Kothmale Community Radio Internet Project, Sri Lanka. Tacchi, Jo A., and etc. //Ethnographic Action Research//.

2) STS. Focus on "information society?" ICTs and grassroots information/knowledge work. Questioning dominant discourses.
subfields/keywords: anthropology of technoscience, anthropology of media (or ICTs)

//STS scholarship aims to develop methods, empirical data and theory to advance historical, philosophical and social scientific understanding of science and technology. STS is a multidisciplinary field of research with a history of continual growth and diversification. It includes historical studies of scientific and technological change; ethnographic accounts of laboratories, design studios, and of technoscientific knowledge and artifacts in broad cultural context; sociological and policy analyses of the organizational, legal and political-economic context within which technologies and sciences develop. STS research also examines the impacts of scientific and technological development, and efforts to improve the contributions science and technology make to social wellbeing. Environmental sustainability is a major focus in the RPI STS Department, for example, as are studies of biomedicine and public health, and studies of the social dimensions of information technology.//

Highlights for me:
 * "ethnographic accounts of... technoscientific knowledge and artifacts in broad cultural context"
 * "sociological and policy analyses of the organizational, legal and political-economic context within which technologies and sciences develop."
 * "the impacts of scientific and technological development, and efforts to improve the contributions science and technology make to well-being..."
 * "the social dimensions of information technology."

//Interdisicplinary work... is not about confronting already constituted disciplines (none of which, in fact, is willing to let itself go). To do something interdisciplinary it's not enough to choose a "subject" (a theme) and gather around it two or three sciences. Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object that belongs to no one.// Roland Barthes, "Jeunes Chercheurs," quoted in Clifford's Introduction to Writing as Culture

//That's a big part of what I think sts's "mission" is: broadening an intellectual scope -- of scientists, of what we think science is and how it is done. That mission then is one of restoring or recognizing the "subtle," which to me is a pretty hard demand. If the "problem" is "subtle" then so must our research methods be, our analytic methods and concepts, and our modes of writing. And the goal is not solving the problem, but something else: attuning practitioners, making them more "reflective." That too seems to call for something different than "here's what's wrong, do X and that will make it right..." But what is that something different?// Mike Fortun

I think of my work on alternative media as "broadening an intellectual scope... of what we think science is and how it is done" in the sense that it takes a more expansive view of what counts as journalism and media. Journalists and media producers, like scientists, engage in "object conflicts" over notions of objectivity and journalistic norms, the technical infrastructure required to broadcast, the "right" to broadcast on certain frequencies, "public" property, etc. My work will also push and reconfigure what counts as "STS." I will pay close attention to the "technological grid" and the "media ecology" in the contexts I explore, but other aspects might not be immediately recognizable as "hardcore" STS (I am not doing lab studies, focusing on the social constructedness of technoscience, or talking to "scientists"). I would like to draw on and contribute to STS projects that deal with race, gender and technological access and use.

STS is often depicted as “border crossing,” and while there is a great diversity of approaches and topics within STS, there are also many areas in which communication between STS, other (inter-) disciplinary fields, and various social movements and issues, could be greatly improved (Latour 2008, Freudenburg et al. 1998; Martin). Insights generated within STS are particularly well-suited for application to the concerns and approaches of Media Studies. A hybrid STS/media studies can contribute to understanding the development and deployment of power, authority and expertise by examining how technoscience is represented and circulated in the mainstream media and how critical media literacy practices can deconstruct the assumed “truth” in media and technoscience. It could contribute to understanding the globally dominant system of media and the alternatives developing in response to this condition. I argue that empirical research in this area of scholarship is likely to develop new theoretical understandings of community, identity and networking.

[1] Scott Frickel (2004) characterizes interdisciplines as “hybridized knowledge fields that are constituted by intentionally porous organizational, epistemological, and political boundaries” (269). [3] Boczkowski and Lievrouw (2008) claim that there is a “rising tide” of scholarship on media within STS,” (4) but of the 240 sessions at the 2008 meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), only 2 sessions explicitly referred to the media (Final Program for 4S Annual Meeting, 2008). These were titled “People and Technologies Mediating Health Information” and “Engaging Publics: Configuring Community as Mediated Places.”

//Technoscience// In the promotional paragraph for the 3rd Edition of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, STS is defined as “a flourishing interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, and consequences of science and technology in their cultural, historical, and social contexts” (2009 MIT Press Catalogue of Science, Technology & Society.) But this language seems to separate culture, history and society as part of the passive context, background or stage on which science and technology “play out.” Haraway (1997), in a kind of figure/ground shift, writes of technoscience as a “material-semiotic universe” consisting of a “wealth of connections,” a “net of stories, agencies, and instruments” that “constitute a specific, finite” assemblage (3-4). It is common to think of science as the underlying research and knowledge practices that enable the development of novel technologies. But for Haraway, “technoscience extravagantly exceeds the distinction between science and technology as well as those between nature and society, subjects and objects, and the natural and the artifactual that structured the imaginary time called modernity” (1997, 3). This spirit of “extravagantly exceeding” distinctions makes STS particularly well suited to study the messy mix of power relations and socio-technical material-semiotics called “the media.”

//STS + Media Studies// While there are not a large number of articles combining STS and Media Studies explicitly, some of the best examples of research drawing on these two interdisciplines can be found in the //Journal of Science Communication//. Their website proclaims that “JCOM is trying to become an interdisciplinary melting-pot capable of providing some theoretical guidelines for science communication.”

Boczkowski and Lievrouw (2008) write about some of the ways in which STS and communication studies can mutually benefit from inter-inter-disciplinary conversation: "For STS, communication studies has provided an extensive body of social science research and critical inquiry that documents the relationships among mediated content, individual behavior, social structures and processes, and cultural forms, practices and meanings. For communication studies, STS has provided a sophisticated conceptual language and grounded methods for articulating and studying the distinctive socio- technical character of media and information technologies themselves as culturally and socially situated artifacts and systems" (3).

The “conceptual bridges that have been especially fruitful in both fields” are, they argue, “prevailing notions about causality in technology-society relationships, the process of technology development, and the social consequences of technological change” (3). Rather than describing the most common connections that have been made between STS and communication studies, I offer underexplored sites of intersection and areas for potential empirical work. This paper examines potential connections to a more critically and culturally focused tradition of Media Studies while Boczkowski and Lievrouw focus on STS and communication studies, which they characterize as traditionally having a more “administrative” focus on “effects and regulation” (6). That taking up views about media and ICTs from both STS and Media Studies played a part in the shift away from this “administrative” focus to a more contextual perspective that “stressed local practices, everyday life, subjectivity, interaction, and meaning” (8).

3) Globalization, especially Cultural Anthropology of
subfields/keywords: the global justice movement, neoliberalism,

I am interested in the "global justice movement" aka anti-globalization aka alter-globalisation, etc. The widely held imaginary of this "movement" is the summit protests, especially Seattle 1999. I am more interested in the generative aspects of this movement and their experiments in new forms of collectivity, decision-making, networking, media, culture, etc.

//There are two ways to excape suffering [the inferno]. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.// Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

I also want to engage in conversations on "globalization" because I am interested in how the global and local interact and how people imagine and affect the Others that are geographically (and sometimes institutionally, socially) remote.

Part of "globalization" is the rapid flow of digital information through ICTs, but I also want to pay attention to exclusions (the digital divide) and undone (or badly done) translation. The political implications of grossly uneven flows of information, risk&reward, burden&benefit, horror&hope.

Beck, Ulrich. 2000. //What is globalization?// Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Beck, Ulrich. //Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity// Boellstorff, T. 2003. Dubbing culture: Indonesian gay and lesbi subjectivities and ethnography in an already globalized world. //AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST// 30: 225-242. Castells, Emanuel. //The Rise of the Network Society//. Farmer, Paul. 2004. An Anthropology of Structural Violence. //Current anthropology.// 45, no. 3: 305. Fortun, Kim. 2001. //Advocacy after Bhopal : environmentalism, disaster, new global orders//. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Inda, Jonathan Xavier., and Renato. Rosaldo. 2008. //The anthropology of globalization : a reader//. Blackwell readers in anthropology, 1. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Kirsch, S. 2007. Indigenous movements and the risks of counterglobalization: Tracking the campaign against Papua New Guinea's Ok Tedi mine. //AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST// 34, no. 2: 303-321. Tsing, Anna. 2000. The Global Situation. //Cultural anthropology : journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology.// 15, no. 3: 327.

4) Community
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. //Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism//. London: Verso. Annie E. Casey Foundation. Forward. In //Improving school-community connections: Ideas for moving toward a system of community schools//. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation. Brunt, Lodewijk. Into the Community. In //Handbook of Ethnography//. Cox, Jr., Taylor. //Cultural Diversity in Organizations: Theory, Research & Practice//. Fernback, Jan. Information Technology, Networks and Community Voices: Social Inclusion for Urban Regeneration. Jason, Leonard A. //Community Building: Values for a Sustainable Future//. The Miami Theory Collective, ed. 1991. //Community at Loose Ends//. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

5) Design, espeiclaly Participatory
Carroll, John M., and Mary Beth Rosson. 2007. Participatory design in community informatics. //Design Studies// 28: 243-261. Nieusma, Dean. 2004. Alternative Design Scholarship: Working Toward Appropriate Design. //Design Issues// 20, no. 3 (Summer). Schuler, Douglas, and Aki Namioka, eds. 1993. //Participatory Design: Principles and Practice//. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Winner, Langdon. “Political Ergonomics”. In //Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies//, ed. Buchanan, Richard and Victor Margolin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.