Anthropology 295: Anthropology of Media

Consider this bit of common sense: Our world is saturated by mass media, and these media powerfully shape how we perceive and interact with our surroundings.

This claim has great relevance for cultural anthropology because of its suggestion that a distinct new force shapes the most basic aspects of daily life in our society and others around the world. It affects how we as humans come to know things, how we communicate those things with others, how and why we organize ourselves into social groups, and so on. It leads us to ask: what are these new forces, institutions, technologies, and processes reshaping culture and social relationships? What is so new, different, and powerful about them? How do these media transform existing social formations?

Now consider this. Anthropological research has shown time and again that our “common sense” is neither common nor necessarily even sensical. In fact, on closer inspection, claims about media such as the one above are often made on the basis of surprisingly little research on the actual relationships between media and the complex socio-cultural worlds in which people live and work. This in turn leads us to ask: how do people rooted in their complex lived worlds constitute and shape these forces, institutions, technologies, and processes? How do people produce, distribute, and consume media in culturally-specific ways?

In recent years, anthropologists have been exploring ethnographically and cross-culturally both the power of mass media and the power of people to shape media. This work sometimes confirms our common sense, in other instances contradicts it, but almost always complicates our understanding of media. There are, as we will see in this course, rich worldwide subtleties and diversity in media production, circulation, and consumption that betray any easy universalisms about the relationship between media, culture, and society.

This course has two major goals. One of these is to introduce you to the vibrant field of media anthropology, which is at the cutting edge of anthropology’s dedication to understanding contemporary cultural and global transformations. This field studies the social contexts, interactions, and uses of diverse kinds of media technologies and expressive cultures, including bodies, voices, sounds, music, photography, television, cinema, radio, cassette tapes, podcasts, videotapes, newspapers, advertising, the World Wide Web, blogs, wiki sites, etc. It focuses on issues like the role of media technologies and content in the production of subjectivities, cultural similarity and difference, globalization, and space-time relations. It also focuses on the social worlds and logics of media institutions and sites of production. We will examine the field’s major analytical frameworks, theoretical debates, and methodological tools, with a goal of helping you develop an anthropologically-informed and cross-culturally sophisticated perspective on media.

The second major goal is to provide you with critical viewing and producing skills required of citizens in a society where the primary aspiration of multi-media, advertising, information, and spin producers is to permeate, inform, and shape the contours of your daily existence in order to get you to think in certain ways and do certain things, especially buy stuff and hold certain political ideas. Through many hands-on activities and media production experiences, we will also reflect critically on the distinct opportunities and dilemmas of communicating through distinct kinds of technologies of mediation.

The following required texts are available for purchase at the University Store:
1. Askew, K. and R. Wilk, eds. (2002) The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. Blackwell.
2. Chris, Cynthia. (2006) Watching Wildlife. University of Minnesota Press.
3. Lutz, C. and J. Collins. (1993) Reading National Geographic. University of Chicago Press.
4. Rushkoff, D. (1999) Coercion: Why We Listen to What “They” Say. Riverhead Books.

The format of this course is participatory and hands-on seminar, and therefore carries with it certain opportunities and obligations. Although we will periodically have lectures, guests, and films the in-class portions of this course are organized primarily around interactive activities, discussion of the readings, and the broader themes raised by course materials. Therefore, it is essential that each of you comes to class prepared, which means having done the assigned readings before every class session and considered the issues you would like to contribute to discussion. Needless to say, attendance is mandatory at all course activities, and the only excused absences are for family or health emergencies (with proof).

You will be graded on the following:

Class attendance, participation, and collaborative note-taking: 15%
Blog Discussion: 20%
Media Artifact Installation: 10%
Media Technologies assignment: 30%
Take-Home Final: 25%

Collaborative Note-taking
We will post class notes on a wiki site. Each week, three people will be responsible for taking notes of lectures, discussion, comments, etc. from class. As individuals they will post the notes to the wiki site, and collaboratively edit the notes online. I will not grade the accuracy of the notes—it is up to the group to ensure their accuracy through the group editing process—but completing this assignment becomes an aspect of your overall class attendance grade.

Blog Discussion
At least once a week during the semester you must write on our course blog a brief posting that refers to/analyzes/responds to an issue raised in class and/or at least one of the readings we are doing in class. This posting does not have a maximum limit but it must be a minimum of 300 words. You will also be required to respond at least once every two weeks to a posting from a classmate. There is no minimum number of words for a response, but it must engage substantively with the submission to which it responds. Completion of this assignment constitutes 20% of your grade.

Feel free to post more thoughts and responses than I am asking for here. If you are clearly engaged with the issues in the blog and continually offering thoughtful perspectives throughout the semester, I will consider raising your final course grade by ½ grade.

I do not expect these to be polished essays and responses; they are “thought pieces,” meant to provoke you to think through issues in preparation for class discussion, and to extend our discussions beyond the classroom. But remember, these will be seen, reviewed, and responded to by the rest of the class, so think somewhat carefully about what you are going to write. I expect the highest standards of professional engagement and will not tolerate personal attacks or derogatory statements of any kind toward anyone in the class. When possible, I will also submit my own thoughts and responses on the blog.

The most effective submissions should 1) refer to the main ideas and arguments of relevant text(s) and/or comment(s), and 2) be followed by questions, commentary, assessments, analysis, protests, opinions, or any combination of these. You will not be graded in terms of their quality, only that you fulfill your obligation to post once a week and respond to someone else’s posting once every two weeks. The penalty of missing a post is that you will lose a whole grade of your blog discussion grade (i.e., miss one, drop from A to B for overall blog discussion grade; if you miss four, you get an F for that category). In other words, actually do them and you will receive full credit.

Media Artifact Installation
We will spend time throughout the semester critically analyzing the persuasive techniques of actual media products, including film, television, radio, advertising, etc. During the last week of the semester, you will have an opportunity to show the class a media artifact (from any source–magazine, internet, television, radio, etc.) and critically analyze it. You will then provide the artifact, or some kind of visual/audio representation of it, along with a short caption briefly offering your analysis. We will vote on the strongest and most interesting examples, and I will prepare an installation of the winners in display cases of the Anthro Department lounge.

Understanding Digital Media Technologies
This is a three-part, small group activity. Working in groups of three, you will identify an everyday cultural practice or typical social interaction at UVM and record and edit it, first as a 1-2 minute audio project and later as a 1-2 minute video project. After producing these media, your group will present its media projects to the rest of the class and discuss the similarities and differences between producing audio and visual projects, as well as the possibilities and limitations of each technology for representing cultural processes. The final component of the assignment is for you as an individual to write a 6-page reflection paper on the processes of producing these media. This three-part exercise (audio, visual, and reflective writing assignment) will continue over the course of several weeks, and will constitute 30% of your grade for the course. I will hand out a more substantial description of this assignment early in the semester.

Take-Home Final
This exam will require you to offer an anthropologically-informed analysis of a particular media-related situation. The technological format for your response is open: it can be written, visual, audio, etc. We will discuss details of this assignment late in the semester.

Schedule of Readings

NOTE: READINGS WITH AN "(R)" NEXT TO THEM WILL BE ON RESERVE. Reserve articles are available online through Bailey-Howe’s Voyager. A hard copy of every reserve reading will always be available in the Anthropology Department office – 509 Williams Hall, open 8:00am-4:30pm. The readings should be done before the class date under which they are listed.

PART I
Introduction: Mediations of Culture, Enculturations of Media

Course Introduction
Tues. 8/28: Introduction to the course, instructor’s expectations, requirements, etc.

Thurs. 8/30: Locating “The Media”
In class: Media Memoirs (2 pages)
Reading:
1. Rushkoff, Coercion, pp. 1-23
2. Miller, Rex (2005) “The Digital Dynamic: How Communications Media Shape our World.” Annual Editions: Mass Media 06/07, pp. 179-81. (R)

Tues. 9/4: Media and/as Knowledge: How Do You Know What You Know?
In class: How do you know what you know exercise
Reading:
1. Rushkoff, Coercion, pp. 24-98

Thurs. 9/6: Persuasive Techniques
Reading:
1. Rushkoff, Coercion, pp. 99-161
2. Bageant, Joe (2007) “A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle: The Great American Media Mind Warp” http://www.alternet.org/story/58437/

Tues. 9/11: But Wait….How to Not Use the West as a Point of Departure for Media Studies
In class: "Babakiueria," excerpts from "Atanarjuat--Fast Runner"
Reading:
1. Ginsburg, “Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media, Ethnographic Film, and
the Production of Identity.” Anthropology of Media reader
2. Hahn, “The Tongan Tradition of Going to the Movies.” Anthropology of
Media reader
3. Kulik and Willson, “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day” Anthropology of Media
reader
Recommended: “Rethinking the Digital Age.” Available at http://www.media-
anthropology.net/ginsburg_digital_age.pdf

Thurs. 9/13: Locating Culture in Media, Media in Culture
Reading:
1. Askew, “Introduction,” Anthropology of Media reader
2. Powdermaker, “Hollywood and the USA,” Anthropology of Media reader
3. Hobart, M. (2005) “The Profanity of the Media.” In Media Anthropology, eds. Rothenbuhler and Coman, Sage Publications, pp. 26-35. (R)

PART II
Technologies and Truths

Tues. 9/18: Technology, Culture, and Truth
Selections from “Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me!”
Reading:
1. McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” Anthropology of Media reader
2. Williams, “The Technology and the Society” Anthropology of Media reader
3. Mead and Bateson, “The Use of the Camera in Anthropology” Anthro of
Media reader
4. Berger, “The Ambiguity of the Photograph” Anthropology of Media reader

Thurs. 9/20: Bodily Media(tions)
Reading:
1. Mauss, M. “Techniques of the Body.” In Beyond the Body Proper: Reading
the Anthropology of Material Life, eds. Lock and Farquhar, Duke U. Press, pp. 50-68. (R)
2. Sullivan, S. (2006) “On Dances and Difference: Bodies, Movement, and Experience in Khoesaan Trance-Dancing—Perceptions of a Raver.” In Talking About People: Readings in Contemporary Cultural Anthropology, 4th edition, eds. Haviland, Gordon, and Vivanco, McGraw-Hill Higher Ed., pp. 234-41. (R)
3. Turner, T. (2007) “The Social Skin” In Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life, eds. Lock and Farquhar, Duke U. Press, pp. 83-103. (R)

Auditory Cultures
Tues. 9/25: Noise, Soundscapes, and Auditory Cultures
Selections from “Voices of the Rainforest”
Reading:
1. Feld, Fox, and Porcello (2003) “Vocal Anthropology: From the Music of Language to the Language of Song” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Alessandro Duranti. New York: Blackwell, pp. 314-329.
2. Feld, S. “From Ethnomusicology to Echo-Muse-Ecology” http://www.acousticecology.org/feld/index.html
3. Tacchi, “Radio Texture: Between Self and Others.” Anthropology of Media
reader

Thurs. 9/27: Performing, Projecting, and Listening to Meaningful Sounds
Reading:
1. Hirschkind, C. (2001) “The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in
Contemporary Egypt.” American Ethnologist 28(3): 623-49. (R)
2. Spitulnik, D. (2002) “Mobile Machines and Fluid Audiences: Rethinking Reception Through Zambian Radio Culture.” In Media Worlds, eds. Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, Larkin, U. California Press, pp. 337-54. (R)

Tues. 10/2: Podcast presentations

Reading the News, Magazines…And Photographs
Thurs. 10/4: “Reading” a Photograph
Guest: Rob Gordon
Reading:
1. Chapters 1-3, Reading National Geographic

Tues. 10/9: National Geographic and the “Savage Slot”
Film: “The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey.”
Reading:
1. Chapters 4-6, Reading National Geographic
2. Sprague, “Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves” Anthro of
Media reader

Thurs. 10/11: Video Presentations

Tues. 10/16: Gazing and Imagining
Reading:
1. Chapters 7-9, Reading National Geographic
2. Faris, “The Gaze of Western Humanism” Anthropology of Media reader

Thurs. 10/18: Advertising, Self, and Other
Film excerpts from “The Ad and the Ego”
Reading:
1. Jhally, “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture” in Media
Anthropology reader.
2. Rushkoff, Coercion, pp. 99-161
[Reflection papers for Digital Media Technologies assignment due 10/18]

Tues. 10/23: Print Culture and the Question of Small Nationalisms
Guest: Professor Aram Yengoyan, U.C. Davis
Reading:
1. Anderson, B. (1983) Chs. 1-3 (“Introduction”; “Cultural Roots” and “Origins
of National Consciousness”) in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, pp. 1-46. (R)

Part III
Cultures of Film, Films of Culture

Thurs. 10/25: Shifting Frameworks in Anthropology and Film
Film excerpts from “Cannibal Tours”, “Incidents of Travel in Chichén Itzá”
Reading:
1. MacDougall, “Complicities of Style” In Anthropology of Media Reader
2. Vivanco, Luis (2003) “Performative Pilgrims and the Shifting Grounds of Anthropological Documentary” In Representing Religion in World Cinema,
ed. S. Brent Plate, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 159-177. (R)

Tues. 10/30: (Visual) Cultures of Nature: Wildlife Films
Reading:
1. Chris, Watching Wildlife, Introduction, Chs. 1-2
Recommended: Shohat and Stam, “The Imperial Imaginary” Media Anthropology reader

Thurs. 11/1: Adventures with Animals
Reading:
1. Chris, Watching Wildlife, Ch. 3-5
2. Vivanco, L. (2006) “The Work of Environmentalism in an Age of
Televisual Adventures.” In Tarzan was an Ecotourist…And Other Tales
in the Anthropology of Adventure, eds. L. Vivanco and R. Gordon, Berghahn Books, pp. 125-43. (R)

Tues. 11/6: Learning from Television
Reading:
1. Chris, Watching Wildlife, Conclusion
2. Wilk, “It’s Destroying a Whole Generation” Media Anthropology reader
3. Mankekar, “National Texts and Gendered Lives” Media Anthropology
reader
4. Abu-Lughod, “The Objects of Soap Opera” Media Anthropology reader

Thurs. 11/8: Indigenous Media
In-class: selections from Ojo de Agua Comunicación (Oaxaca, Mexico)
Reading:
1. Ginsburg, “Screen Memories: Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media.” In Media Worlds, eds. Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, Larkin, U. California Press, pp. 39-57. (R)
2. Himpele, J. (2004) “Gaining Ground: Indigenous Video in Bolivia, Mexico, and Beyond” American Anthropologist 106(2): 353-73. (R)

Tues. 11/13: Fourth Cinema, Part I
Begin “Te Rua”
Reading: 1. Barclay, B. (2003) “Celebrating Fourth Cinema” Illusions Magazine (New Zealand). http://kainani.hpu.edu/hwood/HawPacFilm/BarclayCelebratingFourthCinema.doc

Thurs. 11/15: Fourth Cinema, Part II
Finish “Te Rua”
Reading: 1. Barclay, B. (1999) “The Vibrant Shimmer.” The Contemporary Pacific11(2): 390-413. (R)

Tues. 11/20-22: Thanksgiving Recess. No classes.

Part IV
Lives in Cyberia

Tues. 11/27: The Interpenetration of On- and Offline Worlds
Blog Guest: David Hoffman, UVM Class of 2005
Reading:
1. Rushkoff, Coercion, pp. 230-64
2. Miller and Slater, “Relationships,” Media Anthropology reader
3. Hammer, A. (2005) “Weaving Trickster: Myth and Tribal Encounters on the World Wide Web.” In Media Anthropology, eds. Rothenbuhler and Coman, Sage Publications, pp. 260-8. (R)
4. Handout – Alter, A. (2007) “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?” Wall
Street Journal 8/10//07, p. W1.

Thurs. 11/29: Anthropology and Web 2.0
Blog Guest: David Hoffman, UVM Class of 2005
1. Wesch, M. (2007) “What is Web 2.0? What Does it Mean for Anthropology?:
Lessons from an Accidental Viral Video.” Anthropology News May 2007, pp. 30-1.
2. View Wesch’s video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
3. explore http://anthropology.wetpaint.com/

Tues. 12/4: Media Artifacts presentations
No reading

Thurs. 12/6: Media Artifacts presentations and Course Conclusions
No reading

** Take-home final due December 11 in 512 Williams Hall by 12noon **

Our class notes are available at http://media-anth.pbwiki.com

Media Education, Criticism, and Activism
(Have any good suggestions to add to this list? Email Luis: lvivanco@uvm.edu)

Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME)

ACME’s list of essential resources for media education:

Adbusters

Center for Public Integrity “Well Connected: Tracking the Players in Telecommunications, Media, and Technology”

Center for Media and Democracy
Sign up for CMD’s “The Weekly Spin”

Center for the New American Dream

Columbia Journalism Review “Who Owns What”

On the Media (NPR)

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

Freedom Forum

Girls, Women + Media Project

Media Awareness Network

Media Education Foundation

Media Matters

Meme Films

National Institute on Media and the Family

Project Censored

Accuracy in Media (AIM)

Indigenous Video and Film

Pacific Islanders in Communications

MORE TO COME

Interesting Radio Soundscapes and Narratives

Public Radio Exchange

This American Life

Lost and Found Sound (NPR)

First Voices Indigenous Radio

SBS Radio (Australian Aboriginal Radio)

National Indigenous Radio Service (Australia)

In these days of computer-mediated writing, there are no excuses for the two following problems: 1) late papers due to computer crashes, and 2) poor spelling and grammar. Regarding the former, claiming a “computer crash” is the basically the same as telling me that your dog ate your homework. This is not a valid excuse if you are backing up your materials on hard drives or the UVM mainframe. If indeed this has happened, I expect you to provide a note from a computer specialist explaining the problem; otherwise your late paper will be evaluated in terms of my late paper policy. Regarding the latter problem, use your spellcheck option and proofread – I will mark you down for poor spelling and grammar.

My policy on late papers is that I do not accept them, although I will make an exception if you are willing to receive a lower grade. Written work is due in class. Anything not turned in during class is late, and for every 24 hour period your paper is late, you drop a full grade from the grade I feel your paper would receive if it were not late. For example, if your ‘A’ paper is not turned in at class, you will receive a ‘B’ if it is turned in within the next 24 hours. The next day, your grade drops to a ‘C.’ The day after that, it is a ‘D.’ If you turn in a paper late and expect to receive a non-reduced grade, you must provide evidence of an emergency.

Policy on Religious Holidays
If you will miss a class because of a religious holiday, the University policy is that you must submit in writing to me by the end of the second full week of classes your documented religious holiday schedule for the semester. I will permit students who miss work for the purpose of religious observance to make up this work.

Please bring a copy of the following paper to class on Thursday 8/30:

A 2-page reflection on your childhood experience with media. How did you and your family use media when you were growing up? Which media--newspapers, books, radio, internet, television, music, etc.--were most important? Why were they important? How did you and your family use them? This is a reflective essay, written in the first person. It should be descriptive and detailed.