Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain - Hardcover

"After years of avoiding the subject, anthropologists have finally discovered that media can be profitably studied ethnographically and that anthropology of media is not only possible but essential. Media Worlds is a collection of groundbreaking essays by top-notch scholars."-Jay Ruby, author of Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology "Not just a book, but the book on the anthropology of the media. The collection works not just as an assemblage but from a sense that every paper adds another perspective to the whole."-Danny Miller, co-author of The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach

This volume showcases the work emerging from the ethnography of media, an area in anthropology that expands both social theory and ethnographic fieldwork to examine the way media - film, television, video - are used in societies around the globe, often in places that have been off the map of conventional media studies. The contributors, key figures in this field, cover topics ranging from indigenous media projects around the world to the unexpected effects of state control of media to the local impact of film and television as they travel transnationally. Their essays, mostly new work produced for this volume, bring theoretical perspectives grounded in cross-cultural ethnographic realities to the study of media.