Global ETD Search

1	Digital Jianghu: Independent Documentary in a Beijing Art Village Sniadecki, John Paul 08 June 2015 (has links) My ethnography explores the independent documentary film community in Songzhuang, an artist village in Beijing's Tongzhou District. Through participant-observation, interviews, participation in festivals, and my own filmmaking practice, I describe filmmakers and festival organizers as cultural producers endeavoring to work outside the confines of both the government and the mainstream cinema industry. To offer an analysis of the social, political, economic, and ethical conditions of this independent film community, my study also focuses on concrete practices of filmmakers and film supporters; privately-owned centers and social networks that enable the production, exhibition, and distribution of films; and the relationship between this community and government regulation. I argue that the independent documentary community constitutes a jianghu (literally, “rivers and lakes”), which, drawing from Chinese literature, I delimit as a social world of marginality and resistance against the status quo. Further, jianghu refers not only to independent filmmakers, but also to millions of “migrants” within the Chinese population who, even as they provide labor that fuels development, nonetheless subsist on the margins. This study also considers the efforts of filmmakers and scholars to elucidate a Chinese visual aesthetic, which has been called xianchang (“on the spot”) and, most recently, jingguan dianying (“quiet observational cinema”). These indigenous framings counter eurocentric notions of documentary and prevail among the majority of independent directors as an aesthetic wellsuited to represent the “cruelty of the social,” a term I introduce to describe social suffering born not only of China’s modern history of pain but also its contemporary turbulent era. I draw together the issues of distribution, social impact, and economic stability for independent documentary, as well as document the role of the state in quelling, censoring, and co-opting independent film. I conclude by exploring xianchang and my own filmmaking practice as advancing a form of knowledge that, owing to its experiential quality and its refusal to simplify and reduce phenomena into cultural data, is well-suited to represent the inherent complexity of Chinese society. Finally, a coda documents recent government oppression and festival cancellations to argue that the current moment is one of grave uncertainty for Chinese independent film. / Anthropology Asian studies Aesthetics Film studies China Digital Video Documentary Jianghu community Media anthropology Songzhuang
2	Manufacturing Conflict? An Ethnographic Study of the News Community in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire / Les journalistes ivoiriens, des fabriquants de conflits? Une ethnographie de la communauté journalistique d’Abidjan en Côte d’Ivoire Théroux-Bénoni, Lori-Anne 23 February 2010 (has links) This ethnographic study explores the experiences of Ivorian journalists in the context of the 2002-2009 crisis in Abidjan, the economic capital city of Côte d’Ivoire. I present material on the political affiliations of newspapers, the structure of the news industry, the attitudes of journalists, and certain aspects regarding the reception and dissemination of media texts in the streets of Abidjan. My interests lie in analysing the origins and the impacts of the accusations to which journalists of the written press are being subjected concerning their role in the Ivorian conflict. I explore how the crisis has been constructed and construed by and through media agents. I focus on the reflexive moments of journalists and on what their metadiscourses reveal about the context of news production in Côte d’Ivoire. Data was collected through participant-observation and interviews over 18 months of fieldwork in 2003, 2004-2005 and 2006 mainly in three newsrooms in Abidjan. This dissertation questions the emphasis placed upon the role of media in African conflicts, which I term the Rwandan paradigm. The Rwandan paradigm is the reductionist notion that mass media indoctrination plays a decisive role in mobilizing African audiences to commit acts of communal violence. Ultimately, I suggest two avenues to broaden our understanding of the intersection between communication and conflict: 1) a recognition of the complex agency of media producers and their audience; 2) an exploration of alternative media and public spaces. media anthropology Côte d'Ivoire conflict journalism agency Rwandan Paradigm 0326 0391 0708
3	Manufacturing Conflict? An Ethnographic Study of the News Community in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire / Les journalistes ivoiriens, des fabriquants de conflits? Une ethnographie de la communauté journalistique d’Abidjan en Côte d’Ivoire Théroux-Bénoni, Lori-Anne 23 February 2010 (has links) This ethnographic study explores the experiences of Ivorian journalists in the context of the 2002-2009 crisis in Abidjan, the economic capital city of Côte d’Ivoire. I present material on the political affiliations of newspapers, the structure of the news industry, the attitudes of journalists, and certain aspects regarding the reception and dissemination of media texts in the streets of Abidjan. My interests lie in analysing the origins and the impacts of the accusations to which journalists of the written press are being subjected concerning their role in the Ivorian conflict. I explore how the crisis has been constructed and construed by and through media agents. I focus on the reflexive moments of journalists and on what their metadiscourses reveal about the context of news production in Côte d’Ivoire. Data was collected through participant-observation and interviews over 18 months of fieldwork in 2003, 2004-2005 and 2006 mainly in three newsrooms in Abidjan. This dissertation questions the emphasis placed upon the role of media in African conflicts, which I term the Rwandan paradigm. The Rwandan paradigm is the reductionist notion that mass media indoctrination plays a decisive role in mobilizing African audiences to commit acts of communal violence. Ultimately, I suggest two avenues to broaden our understanding of the intersection between communication and conflict: 1) a recognition of the complex agency of media producers and their audience; 2) an exploration of alternative media and public spaces. media anthropology Côte d'Ivoire conflict journalism agency Rwandan Paradigm 0326 0391 0708
4	Popular Media, Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Ghana Oduro-Frimpong, Joseph 01 December 2012 (has links) How do popular media genres reinforce or provide alternative perspectives to circulating official political discourses, as well as articulate issues of social concern? In what ways do such media offer insights into aspects of cultural practices that inform and represent matters of key significance in people's quotidian lives? This dissertation investigates these two general questions within four distinct Ghanaian popular visual media genres: popular video-films, political cartoons, death announcement posters, and vehicle inscriptions (`mottonyms'). Regarding the Ghanaian popular video-films, I examine how the films (re)present the issue of cyberfraud (`sakawa') in Ghana. I contrast the films' (re)presentation of this phenomenon vis-a-vis that of certain official pronouncements on the issue, and argue that a critical approach to the `sakawa film series' reveals a robust counter discourse to official denunciations. My investigation of political cartoons, examines some of the works of the artist Akosua in the Ghanaian newspaper, Daily Guide. Here I focus on how Akosua's works, utilizing popular cultural allusions, function as an alternative media discourse in contemporary Ghanaian sociopolitical debates. As regards the death-announcement posters, I investigate how, situated as they are within certain well-known Ghanaian cultural values and practices, including funerary caskets, these posters remediate these cultural mores in the context of rapid social change. Lastly, regarding the mottonyms, I explore, through interviews with vehicle owners, the interactions between specific life experiences that spurred them to coin these inscriptions and the cultural fabric within which they have done so. Conceptually, this dissertation draws not only from cultural anthropology and its subfields of visual culture, and religion, media and culture, but also significantly from global/international media studies and from emergent works on African cultural and media studies. The harnessing of interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks, such as phenomenological and social constructionist approaches, to interrogate Ghanaian popular visual media in this dissertation advances our current thinking in the above-mentioned fields in several ways. For example, the social constructionist (Lee-Hurwitz 1995; Morgan 2005) and phenomenological approaches (Langsdorf, 1994; Lanigan 1998) that guide the investigation of vehicle inscriptions and death-announcement posters reveal purposeful intentionality in human communication. Furthermore, this dissertation, with its focus on popular video-films, press cartoons, death-announcement posters and vehicle inscriptions concretely elucidates recent expansive theorizations of `media'. Here `media' is understood as practices of mediation (de Vries 2001; Meyer 2003; Zito 2008), and broadly conceived to transcend narrowly defined traditional mass media formats (Downing 1996). In the latter case, I advocate for global/international media scholars to begin to pay equal `field service' to popular media artifacts within the current ambit of the `practice paradigm' in global/international media studies (Postill 2010:4; Couldry 2004). African Popular Arts African Popular Media Ghanaian Popular Arts Material Culture Media Anthropology Popular Culture
5	The social lives of UK fashion blogs Eldred, Susan A. January 2013 (has links) This thesis is the result of twenty-five months of ethnographic fieldwork, both online and offline, in the United Kingdom working with London-based fashion bloggers. It aims to examine the ways that bloggers negotiate between style and identity through the presentation of self in online environments, more specifically fashion blogs and corresponding social media websites, as well as offline spaces, including London Fashion Week, industry events, and regular social interactions with other bloggers and blog readers. It also address the relationships between bloggers and members of the fashion industry, as the industry struggles to define a place for them. Furthermore, this thesis hopes to contribute to growing debates regarding the potentiality of media anthropology to influence the creation and production of ethnographic texts. 746.9
6	Gender – Bilder – Sanaa. Eine Ethnographie Linke, Irina 29 August 2017 (has links) Diese Studie erkundet den Zusammenhang von Gender und Bilderpraktiken in Sanaa vor dem Hintergrund der globalen Zirkulation von Bildern. Von Geschlechtersegregation gekennzeichnet und an der Peripherie globaler Bilderproduktion liegend, bietet sich der Jemen für die Erforschung des Spannungsfelds von Bildern und Gender an. Betrachtet wird insbesondere, wie Jemenitinnen öffentliche Bilder entschleierter Frauen auf eigene Vorstellungen von Sittsamkeit und Unsichtbarkeit beziehen und wie öffentliches Erscheinen von Frauen verhandelt wird. Ein filmischer Zugang führt zur Betrachtung der performativen Dimension von Bildern. Gefilmte Mikrosituationen werden nach einem hermeneutischen Verfahren interpretiert, das sich am Prozess-, Interaktions- und Diskursverlauf der gefilmten sozialen Praxis orientiert. Sprache wird kontextualisiert und zu Bildern in Bezug gesetzt. Befunde zur Rolle des Umgangs mit Bildern bei der Geschlechterkonstitution offenbaren drei zentrale Themen. Erstens sind Bilderpraktiken von Frauen dynamische und konflikthafte Prozesse, in denen Frauen genderspezifische Räume und Rollen aushandeln. So werden beispielsweise jemenitische Frauen, die im Fernsehen erscheinen, dem Anderen zugeordnet, visuelle Elemente öffentlicher Bilder von Frauen werden heruntergespielt. Zweitens gefährden Bilder die Geschlechtersegregation. Indem das Verbot für Frauen, sich zu sehen zu geben, auch Bilder umfasst, wird das subversive und transgressive Potenzial von Bilderpraktiken deutlich. Es wird deutlich, dass sich hinter früheren wissenschaftlichen Befunden zum islamischen Bilderverbot teilweise genderbezogene Blickverbote verbergen. Drittens folgt die Suche jemenitischer Frauen nach dem eigenen Bild einer Dialektik von Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit, denn oft erreichen Frauen öffentliche Sichtbarkeit durch die Repräsentation von Unsichtbarkeit. Diese Ergebnisse verdeutlichen die Notwendigkeit performativer Ansätze bei der Erforschung von Bildern und Medienpraxen. / This ethnographic study explores the intersection of gender and image usage in Sanaa, Yemen, against the background of the global circulation of images. Yemen is a gender-segregated society at the periphery of image production and provides a powerful context in which the phenomena of this intersectionality can be captured and analyzed. Of particular relevance is the means by which Yemeni women relate public images of unveiled women to their requirement of modesty in front of men outside their close families. Within this setting, the negotiation of women’s public appearance is studied. A filmic approach leads to a consideration of the performative dimensions of images. Filmed micro-situations are interpreted according to a hermeneutic method, informed by the procedural, interactive and discursive aspects of social practice. Using this methodology, spoken language is contextualized and related to image practices. Findings on the role of image practices in gender constitution concern three main themes. First, image practices are found to be dynamic and conflictual as gender-specific social spaces and roles are negotiated. For example, Yemeni women who appear on TV are often attributed to the Other, and on the level of language, visual elements of public images of women are downplayed. Second, images pose challenges for gender segregation. As prohibitions on women allowing themselves to be seen in person extend to their images, the subversive and transgressive potential of image practices become apparent. Interestingly, this reveals that some prohibitions on images in the Islamic context discussed by previous researchers are in fact gendered restrictions on looking at women. Finally, the search of Yemeni women for an image of self follows a dialectic between visibility and invisibility. Often those women who reach public visibility do so by representing invisibility. This work demonstrates the need for performative approaches to the study of images and media practices. Gender Bilder Jemen Sanaa dokumentarfilmischer Zugang direct cinema Performance Frauen Geschlechtertrennung visuelle Kultur Blick Bilderpraktiken Ethnographie Medienethnologie Unsichtbarkeit Sichtbarkeit Selbstbilder Fremdbilder sozialer Raum Phänomenologie Übersetzung jemenitische Medien Satellitenfernsehen Bilderverbot gender images Sanaa Yemen visual culture performance documentary filmmaking direct cinema visuality eye image practices gender segregation media anthropology social space transnational TV Yemeni media phenomenology invisibility visibility images of self images of other translation gender performativity embodiment 301 Soziologie, Anthropologie LC 96335 LB 44355 LC 13355 LH 61090 ddc:301

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