Paper short abstract:

This paper draws from a five-year collaborative research project on global television, to consider the relationship between anthropological theory and television research. In comparison to the ever-growing ethnographic literature on new media and information communications technologies, anthropologists have had less to say about television in recent decades. Yet the work that does exist demonstrates the considerable contribution that anthropological theory can make to understanding television practices, no less so in an era that has seen many television systems transform from national broadcast models into multi-platform, transnational, hyper-commercial ones. Despite earlier predictions that television would decline in the new media age, recent work in television studies indicates quite the opposite. The increasingly variegated conditions in which the production, consumption and distribution of television can take place suggest that media anthropologists might focus more, rather than less, on the role of television in social change. In the interdisciplinary field of television studies, anthropology remains under-utilised by those who seek to theorise the contextual and located nature of television practices. Beyond merely offering the techniques of participant observation to be adapted by qualitative researchers, such possibilities are exemplified in this paper by considering how two arguments developed by anthropologists without focussing on media – the work of Teresa Caldeira on urban fear, and that of Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward on the ontology of denim – may enrich understandings of contemporary television consumption. The argument is supported by an ethnographic study of television consumption in southeastern Mexico, which forms part of a forthcoming book manuscript.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws from a five-year collaborative research project on global television, to consider the relationship between anthropological theory and television research. In comparison to the ever-growing ethnographic literature on new media and information communications technologies, anthropologists have had less to say about television in recent decades. Yet the work that does exist demonstrates the considerable contribution that anthropological theory can make to understanding television practices, no less so in an era that has seen many television systems transform from national broadcast models into multi-platform, transnational, hyper-commercial ones. Despite earlier predictions that television would decline in the new media age, recent work in television studies indicates quite the opposite. The increasingly variegated conditions in which the production, consumption and distribution of television can take place suggest that media anthropologists might focus more, rather than less, on the role of television in social change.

In the interdisciplinary field of television studies, anthropology remains under-utilised by those who seek to theorise the contextual and located nature of television practices. Beyond merely offering the techniques of participant observation to be adapted by qualitative researchers, such possibilities are exemplified in this paper by considering how two arguments developed by anthropologists without focussing on media - the work of Teresa Caldeira on urban fear, and that of Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward on the ontology of denim - may enrich understandings of contemporary television consumption. The argument is supported by an ethnographic study of television consumption in southeastern Mexico, which forms part of a forthcoming book manuscript.