* Brings together key writings in the emergent field of the anthropology of media for the first time. * Offers critical overview of how mass media represents and constructs both Western and non--Western cultures. * Integrates key themes in the anthropology of media by means of editorial commentary.

Acknowledgments. Timeline of Media Development. Introduction: Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk. Part I: Seeing/Hearing is Believing: Technology and Truth:. 1. The Medium is the Message: Marshall McLuhan. 2. The Technology and the Society: Raymond Williams.. 3. Mead and Bateson Debate: On the Use of the Camera in Anthropology: Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. 4. The Ambiguity of the Photograph: John Berger. 5. Save, Save the Lore!: Erika Brady. Part II: Representing Others:. 6. The Gaze of Western Humanism: James C. Faris. 7. The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender: Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins. 8. The Imperial Imaginary: Ella Shohat and Robert Stam. 9. Complicities of Style: Dave MacDougall. Part III: Representing Selves:. 10. Hollywood and the USA: Hortense Powdermaker. 11. Yoruba Photography: How the Yoruba See Themselves: Stephen F. Sprague. 12. Relationships: Daniel Miller and Don Slater. 13. Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media, Ethnographic Film, and the Production of Identity: Faye Ginsburg. Part IV: Active Audiences:. 14. Radio Texture: Between Self and Others: Jo Taachi. 15. The Tongan Tradition of Going to the Movies: Elizabeth Hahn. 16. Rambo's Wife Saves the Day: Subjugating the Gaze and Subverting the Narrative in a Papua New Guinean Swamp: Don Kulick and Margaret Willson. 17. 'It's Destroying a Whole Generation': Television and Moral Discourse in Belize: Rick Wilk. 18. National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City: Purnima Mankekar. Part V: Power, Colonialism, Nationalism:. 19. Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture: Sut Jhally. 20. The Global and the Local in International Communications: Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi. 21. In Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua: David E Whisnant. 22. The Objects of Soap Opera: Egyptian Television and the Cultural Politics of Modernity: Lila Abu-Lughod. Resource Bibliography. Index.

The Anthropology of Media: A Reader is an unprecedented collection of articles that, taken together, define this emergent field. Anthropologists – traditionally hailed as interpreters of cultural "Others" – no longer serve as the primary interlocutors for the communities with which they work. Owing to the spread of mass media and new forms of expression and communication, anthropologists have been displaced by CNN, Hollywood, the Internet, and other global media in presenting and representing unfamiliar cultures to the majority of our world. People everywhere are seeing and hearing themselves and others in new ways, and have picked up these media to use for their own purposes. The Anthropology of Media offers a critical overview of how mass media represent and construct both Western and non-Western cultures. By drawing on the recent explosion of culture and media studies and moving beyond earlier anthropological emphases on ethnographic film, this volume heralds the emergence of a new field and brings its key literature together for the first time.

"In its bold presentation of an emergent subfield – anthropology of media – this comprehensive collection is a timely resource for students and others interested in cross-cultural research on mass communication. Destined to become a standard text, it explores a wide range of theoretical ideas and spotlights fascinating case studies. Highly recommended!" Harald E. L. Prins, Society for Visual Anthropology (1999–2001) "Provides a unique collection of classic and vanguard, theoretical and substantive studies that demonstrates the centrality of anthropology to contemporary media studies. By a judicious selection of fascinating papers this volume is able to go beyond any single study to reveal the many different ways an anthropology sensitive to political and economic environments can investigate the production, consumption, and consequences of media by creators and users. As such it makes the ideal foundation for teaching a subject that has now clearly come into its own." Daniel Miller, University College London

Timeline of Media Development. Introduction: Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk. Part I: Seeing/Hearing is Believing: Technology and Truth. Part II: Representing Others. Part III: Representing Selves. Part IV: Active Audiences. Part V: Power, Colonialism, and Nationalism. Bibliography.