This page is devoted
to announcing events of interest to anthropologists working on
media issues.
If you have any
events of this nature that you wish to publicise, please send all
relevant details to Sigurjon Hafsteinsson
(email: sbh(at)hi.is, please replace the (at) with @).
(Because
the documents are in PDF format you need Acrobat
Reader to download and read them.)
MEDIA PRACTICES AND CULTURAL PRODUCERS
EASA Media Anthropology Network Second Workshop
Barcelona, Spain, November 6-7, 2008
Abstract
The workshop addresses media practices and the arenas of cultural
production in the context of the "new media" landscape. In broad terms,
the workshop will inquire into the leading theoretical and methodological
perspectives for doing anthropological research on digital mediated
practices and their implications for the understanding of people's
interaction with media. The aim is to explore the circulatory flows of
media practices and in particular, how digital technology use is changing
media culture, cultures of media circulation and the very definition of
cultural producer.
Anthropological and ethnographic studies of media have been largely
focused on analyzing reception of media products (television, radio, press
and film) and media consumption related to domestic appropriation of
technologies. There is also a wide body of research devoted to the study
of the political dimension of alternative and indigenous media. However,
there has been a separation between media and Internet studies, and
between the analysis of media reception and practices of self production,
such as family photography or home video. Current digital media practices
urge scholars to examine self production contents and media flows from a
broader perspective that cross-cuts divisions between public and private,
media corporative products and people releases, home production and
cultural industry, political activism and domestic affairs. The workshop
aims to become a locus for discussing innovative theoretical and
methodological approaches that deal with such interwoven practices of
media production and consumption.
The workshop will address questions like: how is self production entering
circulatory matrices of media and power? How does cultural production
itself become a practice of reception or consumption? What are the
implications of understanding audiences as cultural producers? Do new
media practices redefine the role of cultural producers? Are self
production and content sharing new cultural forms of media production?
What are the cultural implications of people's media productive practices?
Rather than an uncritical celebration of people's empowerment, this
workshop encourages exchange of research experiences about ways of doing
ethnographic research by following social networks and the circuits of new
media practices.
Key note speakers
Elizabeth Bird (University of South Florida)
Don Slater (London School of Economics)
Dorle Drackle (University of Bremen)
Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Coordinators
Elisenda Ardèvol
Open University of Catalonia
Sigurjon Baldur Hafsteinsson
Coordinator of the European Association of Social Anthropologists Media Anthropology Network
Organization Committee in Barcelona
Begonya Enguix
Edgar Gomez Cruz
Adolfo Estalella
Studies of Humanities
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Gemma San Cornelio
Toni Roig
Studies of Sciences of Information and Communication
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Call for "research in progress" presentations
The workshop will include presentations and a poster session. Please if
you are interested in presenting your research about such topics, send
abstracts (500-800 words) to mabcnworkshop(at)gmail.com (please replace (at) with @).
The deadline for submissions is 17 May 2008. Submissions will be reviewed
by the organizing committee, and will be selected for a paper presentation
or for the poster session. Notice of acceptance will be sent by 17 June.
This event is funded by a conference grant from the MEC and the UOC.
Funds are available to cover travel costs for researchers whose
submissions are selected for presentation at the workshop.
Registration
Due to the limited number of places available,
please register in order to take part in the event.
Registration fee: Euro 80 (Euro 60 students)
Coffee breaks and one cold lunch is included
Registration until 17 of July
For registration and further information please contact
mabcnworkshop(at)gmail.com (please replace (at) with @).
Venue
Drassanes
University of Catalonia (UOC)
more info: http://www.uoc.edu/symposia/easa
MEDIA,TECHNOLOGY, AND KNOWLEDGE CULTURES: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ISSUES
OF DIVERSITY, MUTUALITY AND EXCLUSION (W071)
10th EASA Biennial Conference 2008: Experiencing diversity and mutuality
Ljubljana, Slovenia
26 to 30 August, 2008
Convenors:
Cora Bender (University of Bremen)
Corabender(at)aol.com (please replace the (at) with @)
Ian Dent (University of Cambridge)
Ian.Dent(at)iandent.com (please replace the (at) with @)
Discussant:
Dorle Dracklé (University of Bremen) dorle.drackle(at)s-hb.de
(please replace the (at) with @)
Abstract
In the recent years, many scholars in the field of media anthropology have pointed
out the necessity to study media as technology, in order to further decenter the
textual content of media in favor of their social context. However, what do we mean
by technology? This workshop intends to inspire the reception of recent debates
in anthropology and related neighboring disciplines which have expanded the perspectives
on technology vastly. Science and technology studies, material culture studies,
ecology and environmentalism, medical anthropology, and anthropological studies of
cyberspace and technoscience, contribute to a much better understanding of technologies
not only as sets of material devices, but as complex, negotiated arrangements
of agents, social practices, cultural imaginations, and circulating things.
Abandoning older 'ballistic' concepts of technologies as physical tools having an
'impact' on cultures, research into the dynamics of technoscience suggests that much
of what constitutes technology in a given situation is the outcome of politically
interested media discourse producing models of diversity, mutuality and exclusion.
Nevertheless, every technological orthodoxy produces its heterodoxy, as well.
Unpacking the 'black box' of technologies, therefore, means to look at different opposing
ways of how technology is culturally constituted by and in the media, how media-related
practices configure and re-configure technology, and how technology and cultural imagination interplay.
Possible fields of exploration may include, among others: Symbolic appropriations
of technologies as 'techno-totems'; media, technology and the body; technology and
minority claims; technology and indigenous media; media practices and technological ideologies;
technologies, moral regimes, and joy; technologies and the reconfiguration of nature-culture boundaries; technologies and
nationalism; technologies and imagined communities; technology and creativity;
entertainment; media technology and gambling; technologies and representations of the
post-human; visual cultures of technology; technology, media and empowerment;
technology and the construction of the subject.
See also the
Workshop homepage
UNDERSTANDING MEDIA PRACTICES WORKSHOP (W013)
9th EASA Biennial Conference: Bristol, UK
September 18th - 21st, 2006
Convenors:
John Postill (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
jpostill(at)usa.net (please replace the (at) with @)
Birgit Bräuchler (Asia Research Institute, Singapore)
birgitbraeuchler(at)gmx.net (please replace the (at) with @)
This workshop will explore the current state of the anthropological study of media practices and what directions it
may take in future (an EASA Media Anthropology Network Workshop).
Abstract
In recent years, anthropologists have taken a great interest in
the study of media. A plethora of ethnographic studies, three media anthropology readers, one historical survey of this research area
and the EASA Media Anthropology Network are some examples of this growing interest.
Although this area of research is marked by a high degree of theoretical and empirical diversity, most anthropologists
working in it concentrate their efforts on the study of 'media practices',
including practices of visual representation, telework, TV production
and consumption, news making, radio drama, biomedicine, online dating,
web forums, cyberactivism, e-government, blogging and text messaging.
Drawing on these
kinds of case studies, this workshop is aimed at exploring the current
state of the anthropological study of media practices, and what
directions it may take in future. Contributors may wish to address
questions such as: What do we actually mean by 'media practices'?
What are the key theoretical and methodological problems attending
their study? How do different theories of practice aid or hinder
anthropological analyses of media practices? In what ways do different
media practices overlap with one another and with non-media practices?
How can we begin to map and theorise the bewildering diversification
of media practices in recent years?
Accepted papers:
-
What do we mean by 'media practices'?
Mark Hobart (School of Oriental and African Studies)
-
Finding our subject: media practice,
structure and communication (PDF, 240 KB)
Daniel Taghioff (School of Oriental and African Studies)
-
'Speaking of practice': knowledge, fear, and music in an Ojibwa community
Cora Bender (University of Bremen)
-
The power of news: anthropology and the observation of local news-making
practices
Ursula Rao (Institut für Ethnologie, Universität Halle)
-
Foreign correspondents/ foreign news
production
Angela Dressler (University of Bremen)
-
Media anthropological reflections on the writing of history in the case of the Danish Muhammad
cartoons
Peter Hervik (Malmø University, Sweden)
-
Ethnography and communicative ecology: local networks and the assembling of
media technologies
Don Slater (London School of Economics)
-
Internet and changing media practices in West Africa
Tilo Grätz (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle)
-
The online nomads of cyberia (PDF, 337
KB)
Alexander Knorr (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen)
-
Game pleasures and media practices
(PDF, 160 KB)
Elisenda Ardèvol, Antoni Roig, Gemma San Cornelio, Ruth Pagès and Pau Alsina
(Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
-
Anthropology at the movies
Stephen Hughes (School of Oriental and African Studies)
-
The third space of television viewers
Sanja Puljar D'Alessio (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
For a list of accepted paper proposals see
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa06/easa06_panels.php?PanelID=27
For further information on the conference see
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa06/index.htm
For a report on the workshop in German language see
http://technikforschung.twoday.net/topics/Konferenzberichte/
For further information on this workshop, please contact
John Postill (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
jpostill(at)usa.net (please replace the (at) with @)
Birgit Bräuchler (Asia Research Institute, Singapore)
birgitbraeuchler(at)gmx.net (please replace the (at) with @)
The discussions within the workshop continued on the mailing list of the Media Anthropology Network within the scope of an
e-seminar (PDF, 60 KB).
EASA Media Anthropology Network Workshop:
Using anthropological theory to understand media forms and practices.
29 November to 20 December 2005
Organised by Sarah Pink (Loughborough) and John Postill (Staffordshire)
on behalf of the EASA Media Anthropology Network
The three stages of this part-online workshop will be:
29 Nov. to 6 Dec. e-workshop
(part 1) (PDF, 374 KB)
9 Dec. Loughborough University workshop (Photo
Gallery)
15 Dec. to 20 Dec. e-workshop
(part 2) (PDF, 190 KB)
Workshop
Programme
10.00-10.20
Introduction Sarah Pink
(PDF, 82 KB)
10.20-10.40 Speaker 1: Nick
Couldry (LSE) (PDF, 82 KB)
10.40-11.00 Speaker 2: John
Postill (Staffordshire) (PDF, 108 KB)
11.00-11.20 Speaker 3: Dorle
Dracklé (Bremen) (PDF, 95 KB)
11.20-11.40 Speaker 4: Brian
Street (King's) (PDF, 104 KB)
11.40-12.00 Break
12.00-12.20 Speaker 5: Graham Murdock (Loughborough)
12.20-12.40 Speaker 6: Tom
Wormald (Manchester) (PDF, 144 KB)
12.40-1.00 Speaker 7: Elisenda
Ardevol (OU Catalonia) (PDF, 134 KB)
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-2.10 Intro to the working groups
2.10-3.10 Working groups
3.10-3.30 Tea
3.30-4.30 Presenting group findings and final discussion
