[Air-L] Call For Chapters: A Media Anthropology of India

[Preeti Raghunath]

A MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY OF INDIA

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

- Preeti Raghunath and Haripriya Narasimhan


CONCEPT NOTE

The intertwining of Communication and Media Studies, and the discipline
ofAnthropology is not new, in the Indian context. Arjun Appadurai’s (1990)
considered takes on global communication flows and mediascapes, Purnima
Mankekar’s (1999) landmark work on screen cultures, and the steady
engagement of anthropologists like Binod C. Agrawal (1985) in Communication
and Media Studies, are some instances of efforts at bringing the two
subject areas to influence each other. The growing number of ethnographies
in Communication and Media Studies showcase the influence of Anthropology’s
methodological and epistemological offerings to study various media-related
phenomena. Research on media and cultures is underway in various
departments of Cultural Studies and Film Studies, in the country and
outside. Similarly, the popularity of digital ethnography, anthropology of
popular culture and development, are areas that have caught Anthropology's
fancy. Visual Anthropology has emerged as a distinct field within
Anthropology, while departments of Sociology carry out ethnographic work on
aspects of Communication and Media Studies. These disparate engagements
across diverse disciplinary frameworks purport a call for a unification of
these efforts. The lack of a reflexive formulation of Media Anthropology as
a distinct sub-discipline is strikingly evident., This proposed edited
volume on Media Anthropology is a call to recognize, and conceptualize such
a sub-discipline in and on India, an area that seems to warrant careful
attention in its own right. It is in this context that we seek to lay out
the genealogy of such a body of work, take cognizance of the ‘practice’
turn in Communication and Anthropology alike, contend with technology’s
current multiple offerings, and provide insights from decolonial and
non-Western perspectives. We ask a range of questions: What are the key
works that would feature in a genealogy of a Media Anthropology of India?
Can one conceptualize such a sub- discipline as comprising only
ethnographic work, or do there exist other methodological and
epistemological inputs that could go into its formulation? Is media
synonymous with technology and related cultures? On a related note, how
would such a sub-discipline contend with accusations of technological
determinism and evolutionary undertones? How does the ‘practice’ turn in
Communication and Media Studies that seeks to go beyond media-centrism
(Couldry, 2004; Budka, 2020) propel human-centric work? What are the
politics of the digital turn as seen through empirical realities in India?
Finally, what does Media Anthropology of India have to offer in terms of
critical perspectives and for the current decolonial turn that the social
sciences are contending with?
[image: page1image26040] [image: page1image26216]

In a bid to answer these questions, we propose a set of themes that are not
exhaustive by any means:

Ø Conceptualising a Media Anthropology of India
Ø Genealogical accounts and reviews of media anthropology research in/on
India Ø Methodological interventions, including but not limited to multi-modal
methods, autoethnographies, policy ethnography, design ethnography and the
like

Ø Media histories and historiographies, and their linkages to the
anthropological

Ø Anthropological lenses on media, popular and tech cultures, including but
not limited to the study of newsrooms, cinema, AI

Ø Accounts of Praxis, drawing on precarities and informality of labour

Ø Studies of identities and marginalities of various kinds, also enabled by the
recognition of intersectionalities

Ø Encountering the Transnational and Global

Ø Infrastructures and the Urban

Ø Capturing the Datafication of human lives that is currently underway

Please email your abstracts to mediaanthrobook at gmail.com, by November 10,
2020. The chapters themselves could be written in diverse formats like
reflexive essays, commentaries, thick ethnographies, interviews and beyond,
facilitating a range of inquiries into the sub-discipline. The editors will
work with the shortlisted authors to weave together the edited volume, for
which interest has been expressed by a prominent international publisher.


ABOUT THE EDITORS

Preeti Raghunath is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis Institute of
Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, India.

Haripriya Narasimhan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Liberal
Arts, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad, India.

-- 
Preeti Raghunath, PhD
Assistant Professor
Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC)
Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India

My Book: Community Radio Policies in South Asia: A Deliberative Policy
Ecology Approach <https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-5629-6>

Email: preeti.raghunath at simc.edu
Website: www.preetiraghunath.com
Twitter: @preetiraghunath
Phone: +919160518081

Vice-Chair, Global Media Policy Working Group, IAMCR
<https://iamcr.org/s-wg/working-group/gmp>

Visiting Fellow, Nepal Institute of International Cooperation and
Engagement (NIICE) <https://niice.org.np>

Editor, Media Anthropology Research Collective-South Asia
<https://mediaanthropologysouthasia.wordpress.com>