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Introduction to Ethnographic Fil and Media Anthropology
Syllabus – Lumiere Individual Research Program – Summer 2023
Research Mentor: Alejandro Jaramillo, PhD student in anthropology at NYU
Research Mentee: Yuke Zhang
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the novel field of ethnography of media emerged as an
exciting new area for sociocultural qualitative research. While claims about media in people’s
lives are made often, few research agendas attempt to look at how media is part of the lived
and contextually grounded of realities people. This syllabus examines the social and political life
of film and media and how it makes a difference in the daily lives of people as a practice – in
representations, production, reception, or circulation. It examines cross-culturally how the
mass media have become crucial to the constitution of subjectivities, collectivities, truth-telling
practices, and histories in the contemporary world.
This program prioritizes the role of film and media in constituting and contesting national
identities, in forging alternative political visions, and in creating subcultures.
Guidelines for reading, reflection, and discussion
Please aim to reflect upon the problem the study addresses and its theoretical framing; the
empirical field of research; the method of research and data collected; the conclusion.
• What is the question the author is trying to answer? What methods do they use?
• What data do they collect? Do the data answer the question they set out to answer?
• Did the data in fact enable the author to make his/her conclusions? If not, how might
they have developed a better methodology for answering their questions?
• If you have critiques of this research, how would you extend/redo to improve the study?
• How does this book/article add to our knowledge of media as a social practice?
Program duration
June 10 through August 19 (10 weeks)
Not including week 0 (first meeting) and 11 (graduation)
Ten one-on-one meetings consisting of one hour
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Course Overview
Week Topic Description and Content
1 – June 17 Ethnography of media: an How media came to be a privileged
introduction object of and site for qualitative social
research.
Readings:
Ginsburg, Faye, Lila Abu-Lughod, &
Brian Larkin. 2002. “Introduction,” In
Media Worlds. California. pp. 1-25.
2 – June 24 Theoretical Antecedents: Marxist thinkers in the early to mid-20th
Ideology, Hegemony, and Public century were pioneers in studying the
Sphere social and political implications of
media. Albeit highly criticized for their
economic determinism and structural
approach, their concepts are necessary
referents in today’s discussions about
the effects of media in everyday
practices and national imaginings.
Readings:
Wayne, Mike. “The Conspiracy Film,
Hollywood’s Cultural Paradigms, and
Class Consciousness”. In Fredric
Jameson and Film Theory
Habermas, Jurgen.
1964 “The Public Sphere: An
Encyclopedia Article.” Transl. by Sara
Lennox and Frank Lennox.
New German Critique, Autumn, 1974,
No. 3: 49-55.
3 – July 1 Theoretical Antecedents: Nation, Building on Marxist approaches but also
Globalization, Mediation distancing from its models, social
theorist in the past thirty years have
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sought to understand media as a site
generative of collective identities,
within and without national
boundaries.
Readings:
Anderson, Benedict.
1991. “Introduction;” “Cultural Roots;”
& “The Origins of National
Consciousness.” In Imagined
Communities. Verso. pp. 1-46.
4 – July 8 Audience and reception studies Approaches to the study of active and
passive reception of medial messages
by audiences and subjects.
Readings:
Morley, David
1995 “Theories of Consumption in
Media Studies.” In Acknowledging
Consumption, ed. Daniel
Miller. London: Routledge, pp. 293-
319.
5 – July 15 Subjecthood, social movements, This module seeks to discuss how
and the media media shapes the contours of
subjectivity and how individuals
understand their social action as
meaningful with respect to national
broadcast and social media.
Readings:
Bonilla, Yarimar, and Jonathan Rosa. "#
Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag
ethnography, and the racial politics of
social media in the United States."
American ethnologist 42, no. 1 (2015):
4-17.
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6 – July 22 Media, Development, and Social theorists, especially
Modernity anthropologists, argue that the
modernization of technological
infrastructure in developing countries
should not be seen as a process of
homogenization. Rather, particular
attention should be paid to how
communication, entertainment, and
information technologies are adopted
to fit culturally specific social norms and
imaginings.
Readings:
Larkin, Brian
2008. “Colonialism and the built space
of cinema”, in Signal and Noise: Media,
Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in
Nigeria. Duke.
7 – July 29 Counter-publics Critics of Habermas’ notion of “public
sphere” have underscored how varied
and multifaceted is the participation of
civil society in producing, circulating,
and consuming media in the digital age.
So, rather a single public sphere there
could be said to be varied publics with
their respective counter-publics – or
audiences that come together to
dispute hegemonic messages put forth
by a public.
Readings:
Fattal, Alex. “Hostile remixes on
YouTube: A new constraint on pro-FARC
counterpublics in Colombia,” In
American Ethnologist, Vol. 41, No. 2,
pp. 320–335,
Fattal, Alex. 2018. Counterpublics. The
International Encyclopedia of
Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.
2018 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.
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8 – August 5 Film production as an We explore how to approach from an
ethnographic site ethnographic lens film production
locales.
Readings:
Martin, Sylvia J. 2012. “Of Ghosts and
Gangsters: Capitalist Cultural
Production and the Hong Kong Film
Industry.” Visual Anthropology Review,
v. 28, n. 1, p. 32-49.
Ganti, Tejaswini. 2014. The Value of
Ethnography. Media Industries. 1 (1).
