[Commlist] Call For Chapters: A Media Anthropology of India

*_A MEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY OF INDIA_***

*_CALL FOR CHAPTERS_***

*- Preeti Raghunath and Haripriya Narasimhan *

*_CONCEPT NOTE _*__

The intertwining of Communication and Media Studies, and the discipline 
of Anthropology is not new, in the Indian context. Arjun Appadurai’s 
(1990) considered takes on global communication flows and mediascapes, 
Purnima Mankekar’s (1999) landmark work on screen cultures, and the 
steady engagement of anthropologists like Binod C. Agrawal (1985) in 
Communication and Media Studies, are some instances of efforts 
at bringing the two subject areas to influence each other. The growing 
number of ethnographies in Communication and Media Studies showcase the 
influence of Anthropology’s methodological and epistemological offerings 
to study various media-related phenomena. Research on media and cultures 
is underway in various departments of Cultural Studies and Film Studies, 
in the country and outside.  Similarly, the popularity of digital 
ethnography, anthropology of popular culture and development, are areas 
that have caught Anthropology's fancy.  Visual Anthropology has emerged 
as a distinct field within Anthropology, while departments of Sociology 
carry out ethnographic work on aspects of Communication and Media 
Studies. These disparate engagements across diverse 
disciplinary frameworks purport a call for a unification of these 
efforts. The lack of a reflexive formulation of Media Anthropology as a 
distinct sub-discipline is strikingly evident.,  This proposed edited 
volume on Media Anthropology is a call to recognize, and conceptualize 
such a sub-discipline in and on India, an area that  seems to warrant 
careful attention in its own right. It is in this context that we seek 
to lay out the genealogy of such a body of work, take cognizance of the 
‘practice’ turn in  Communication and Anthropology alike, contend with 
technology’s current multiple offerings, and provide insights from 
decolonial and non-Western perspectives. We ask a range of questions: 
What are the key works that would feature in a genealogy of a Media 
Anthropology of India? Can one conceptualize such a sub-discipline 
as comprising only ethnographic work, or do there exist other 
methodological and epistemological inputs that could go into its 
formulation? Is media synonymous with technology and related cultures? 
On a related note, how would such a sub-discipline contend with 
accusations of technological determinism and evolutionary undertones?  
How does the ‘practice’ turn in Communication and Media Studies that 
seeks to go beyond media-centrism (Couldry, 2004; Budka, 2020) propel 
human-centric work?  What are the politics of the digital turn as seen 
through empirical realities in India?  Finally, what does Media 
Anthropology of India have to offer in terms of critical perspectives 
and for the current decolonial turn that the social sciences are 
contending with?

In a bid to answer these questions, we propose a set of themes that are 
not exhaustive by any means:

ØConceptualising a Media Anthropology of India

ØGenealogical accounts and reviews of media anthropology research in/on 
India

ØMethodological interventions, including but not limited to 
multi-modal methods, autoethnographies, policy ethnography, design 
ethnography and the like

ØMedia histories and historiographies, and their linkages to the 
anthropological

ØAnthropological lenses on media, popular and tech cultures, including 
but not limited to the study of newsrooms, cinema, AI

ØAccounts of Praxis, drawing on precarities and informality of labour

ØStudies of identities and marginalities of various kinds, also enabled 
by the recognition of intersectionalities

ØEncountering the Transnational and Global

ØInfrastructures and the Urban

ØCapturing the Datafication of human lives that is currently underway

Please email your abstracts to _*mediaanthrobook (at) gmail (dot) com*_, 
by *November 10, 2020*. The chapters themselves could be written in 
diverse formats like reflexive essays, commentaries, thick 
ethnographies, interviews and beyond, facilitating a range of inquiries 
into the sub-discipline. The editors will work with the shortlisted 
authors to weave together the edited volume, for which interest has been 
expressed by a prominent international publisher.

*ABOUT THE EDITORS *

*Preeti Raghunath *is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis Institute 
of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, India.

*Haripriya Narasimhan *is an Associate Professor at the Department of 
Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad, India.

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