Media, Anthropology and Public Engagement / Edition 1

by Sarah Pink, Simone Abram

Overview

Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785337444
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	09/01/2017
Series:	Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology , #9
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sarah Pink is a social anthropologist whose research includes a focus on visual methodologies and the relationship between applied and academic anthropology. Her books include Doing Visual Ethnography (2001), Home Truths (2004), Working Images (2004) and Applications of Anthropology (2005). She is Professor of Design and Emerging Technology at Monash University, Australia.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Mediating Publics and Anthropology: An Introduction
Simone Abram and Sarah Pink

PART I: ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC MEDIA SPHERE

Chapter 1. Doing Anthropology in Public: Examples from the Basque Country
Margaret Bullen

Chapter 2. The Perils of Public Anthropology? Quiescent Anthropology in Neo-Nationalist Scandinavia
Peter Hervik

Chapter 3. For a Creative Anthropological Image-Making: Reflections on Aesthetics, Relationality, Spectatorship and Knowledge in the Context of Visual Ethnographic Work in New Delhi, India
Paolo Favero

Chapter 4. A Language For Re-Generation: Boundary Crossing and Re-Formation at the Intersection of Media Ethnography and Theater
Debra Spitulnik Vidali

Chapter 5. Social Movements and Video Indígena in Latin America: Key Challenges for ‘Anthropologies Otherwise’
Juan Francisco Salazar

PART II: PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Chapter 6. Anthropology by the Wire
Matthew Durington and Samuel Gerald Collins

Chapter 7. Public Anthropology in Times of Media Hybridity and Global Upheaval
John Postill

Chapter 8. Anthropological Publics and their Onlookers: The Dynamics of Multiple Audiences in the Blog SavageMinds.Org
Alex Golub and Kerim Friedman

Chapter 9. The Open Anthropology Cooperative: Towards an Online Public Anthropology
Francine Barone and Keith Hart

Notes on Contributors

Editorial Reviews

"The importance of public anthropology has been growing around the world making this a timely edition which, 'mark[s] a line in the sand about where we are today' [This volume] provides a place to begin to discuss the different ways in which people are currently engaging in public anthropology, including their methods, types of media used, topics researched and blogs such as 'Savage Minds.' It has the potential to be a valuable resource in instigating discussions around what anthropology can do, should do and has the potential to communicate through being public." - SITES - A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies

"I am delighted that we have here a volume on 'our' frustrations, experiences, and hopes regarding media. If we are to better engage publics we need to keep all the balls identified in the introduction (public, anthropology, media, and engagement) in the air at the same time, which will continue to be a challenging endeavor. As suggested by the contributions in this volume, layers of frustrations are in need of serious consideration and deconstruction; this book is welcome as a step in that direction." - Journal of Anthropological Research

"For many reasons made clear in the volume, anthropologists are still not very good at, and reticent about, participating in the public sphere, but the contributors here are showing how it can be done, and others will hopefully join in their tentative steps." - Anthropology Review Database

"This volume explores the opportunities and obstacles that face anthropologists reaching out to wider publics through engagement with media industries, art, performance, blogging, social media, and open, cooperative sharing of material. Through a breadth of case studies, the authors offer a cautiously optimistic vision of the challenges and opportunities for public anthropological scholarship in the twenty-first century." - Mark Allen Peterson, Miami University

"A timely collection of chapters probing the heart of contemporary anthropology and engaging with the position of anthropologists in a global society where non-scientific 'experts' dominate the public sphere. These fascinating case studies from all over the world offer reflections on what 'public anthropology' can mean." - Katrien Pype, KU Leuven University and University of Birmingham

From the Publisher