[ecrea] Media anthropology: call for papers. Abstract submission: February 1, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS

Media anthropology today: Seeing, hearing, understanding?
(Tsantsa No. 18, year: 2013)

Editors of this dossier on media anthropology: Heinz Nigg (University of Bern) und Kathrin Oester (PH Bern)

Media anthropology examines how people relate to media, how media produce and reproduce reality and how they are embedded within economic and political contexts. How does technological change shape and transform media landscapes? What is so specific about media communication and its aesthetic expression? These questions show that media anthropology cannot be reduced to the tradition of ethnographic film or visual anthropology alone. Visual anthropology has become one among other fields of interest in media anthropology. New topics arise, like the study of communication with and through social media or their use as interactive tools in research and teaching. Last but not least, audiovisual media are now indispensable for communicating anthropological work to a wider public, particularly in settings of transnational dialogue. The number of universities and colleges offering postgraduate programmes in media anthropology or visual studies is growing.  It has also become an accepted practice for students to submit academic work in the form of film, photographic documents and exhibition.

Both visual and media anthropology, are exposed to similar epistemological questions: Are the messages transmitted by audiovisual documents different to those transmitted by written texts? Or are written texts, spoken words and visual representations just different versions of the same content? The growing popularity of audiovisual media in societies across the world suggests that images and sounds address our senses in a more direct way than written texts. The picture of a person wounded in a war can evoke strong feelings of pity, horror or disgust. Or the painting of a solitary landscape may elicit personal memories or feelings of nostalgia. However, if a written text is metaphorically charged, it can also speak immediately to our senses with great emotional and poetic impact. So the relation between text, image and sound is a complex one. As much as we complement visual perceptions with specific notions and ideas, in order to know and classify an object, we also complement verbal messages and notions with visual associations in the process of knowledge production.

For this dossier of Tsantsa we invite contributions from academic as well as from applied research relevant for media anthropology today:

- In what thematic fields and for what epistemic and social purposes are cameras and other media being used? How is data edited, analysed, presented and discussed?
- What can be learned from the use of pictures, photos, films, sound features, or social media in research and learning processes?
- What is the significance of audiovisual research in the history of social and cultural anthropology?
- How are the political and economic interests of media industries reflected in media anthropology?
- How does media anthropology focus upon social and political movements?

Abstracts: 2000 characters with spaces. Please, complete your abstract with a short bio including your discipline and professional position. Deadline: 1st February 2012
Please send your abstract to Heinz Nigg: (heinz.nigg /at/ anthro.unibe.ch)

For author's guidelines, please visit (heading "Dossier"): http://www.seg-sse.ch/pdf/Instructions_Tsantsa.pdf

 Time schedule:

- February 1, 2012: Abstract submissions
- June 15, 2012: Articles due (length of the text: 40’000 signs incl. spaces and bibliography)
Peer-reviews
- October 1, 2012: Authors notified
- January 1, 2013: Final versions due
- May 2013: Publication of the issue 18 of Tsantsa

pdf-files in English, French and German and  enclosed



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Dr. Heinz Nigg

Institut für Sozialanthropologie
Universität Bern
(heinz.nigg /at/ anthro.unibe.ch)
www.anthro.unibe.ch<http://www.anthro.unibe.ch>

AV-Produktionen Heinz Nigg
(nigg /at/ av-produktionen.ch)
www.av-produktionen.ch<http://www.av-produktionen.ch>

+41 (0)79 208 14 60





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