Overview

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.

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9780814771679

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Reviews

In a series of striking case studies, Radio Fields reveals the vibrancy and diversity of wireless technologies across an enormous geographic range. From radio that constitutes the nation to the pirate, religious, indigenous and 'free' radio that provide alternatives to it, the essays draw out the breadth of contemporary radio practices. Mixing together technological analyses of voice, liveness, and immediacy with their political effects, the volume shows how radio is felt as well as heard, and brings out the entanglements of audition, religion, technology, and politics that makes up the social life of radio around the world. -Brian Larkin, Barnard College, Columbia University

Radio Fields cackles and buzzes [with] the social life of radio and the noise of an anthropology of close listening. I can't imagine a more well-theorized and deeply grounded entre to the sensory mediation politics of radiophony in global public culture. Steven Feld, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Music, University of New Mexico

Author Information

Faye Ginsburg (Afterword by) Faye Ginsburg is Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University. Ginsberg is cofounder of the NYU Center for Disability Studies and author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community and coauthor of Disability Worlds. Lucas Bessire (Editor) Lucas Bessire is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. Daniel Fisher (Editor) Daniel Fisher is a lecturer in Anthropology at Macquarie University.

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