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Converging Crossroads or Parallel Tracks? An Inquiry Into the
Nature
of the Media as Seen by Cultural Studies and Anthropology
Media studies scholars have long recognized the value of
interdisciplinary inquiry, and for those among us who find resonance with the
cultural studies paradigm, cultural anthropology has proved quite useful.
Anthropologists and media scholars have plenty to say to one another, yet
neither side appears to be truly comprehending the other at this point.
Interdisciplinary dialogue is never cultivated easily, and often there is turf
to protect and terminology to negotiate. Nonetheless, few within the academy
would oppugn the usefulness of cross-disciplinary conferences, course offerings,
or other heuristic devices. The similarities between the fields appear quite
meaningful. Most importantly, both fields are areas which study
humankindDgrossly put, cultural anthropology studies the media as part of
culture, while media studies does so in examining the relationship of the media
to the culture. However, cultural anthropology seems more certain in its
tendency to privilege the human as the center of study, while media studies
appears as yet unsure of how the individual fits into the realm of media
politics, economics and structure. Regardless of this last, both disciplines do
ultimately study human interaction with media, and it seems that both should
yield similar results. Ultimately, the question of concern for this paper
became not one of merely trying to detail the similarities and then the
differences between the fields of study, but to try to understand why these
differences should occur in fields so apparently alike, and to address their
common weaknesses:
1. In fact, neither field appears to actually study human
relationship with the media as the central point of study. Anthropology appears
to study the cultural dynamic of the environment in which media is used by
people. Media studies appears to concentrate its focus on the media itself in
preference to the people involved.
2. From the first point, neither field truly appears to privilege
the individual as the center of study and the process of meaning that the
individual makes of the media. Assumed determinative frameworks (cultural and
structural) around the individual involved tend to be investigated instead.
There are many other areas, such as differing perspectives on human agency,
which appear to influence the emphasis on the individual within this
media/cultural concept.
3. In the end, the goals, and the results of anthropologists and
media specialists become quite different. This difference is probably the most
difficult area to explain. It is not easily spoken of. It is at once a very
real (although not dramatic) difference between the two forms of results, and at
the same time, an intuitive feeling that the differences in the basic premises
have created a difference in perspective that cannot be surmounted.
In this essay, we shall explore the respective terrains of media
studies and anthropology, the extent of their dialogue with one another, and the
future direction of media studies as it has been informed by cultural
anthropology.
Cultural Studies Positions
Cultural studies, the closest approximation to an "anthropological
approach" within media studies, analyzes cultural forms, products, and practices
in an attempt to explicate social meaningDthe analysis of media products,
institutions, and audiences are part of the purview of cultural studies. As
Turner (1992), Murdoch (1989), and Carey (1989) have noted, cultural studies has
its roots in British literary studies and textual analysis. In its search to
discover how individuals construct cultural meaning, the cultural studies
enterprise deconstructed popular mediated texts in an attempt to understand the
process of negotiating meaning in everyday life. The ethnographic approach used
by early practitioners of this enterprise revealed that meanings are moderated
around "culture" as a site of conflict between competing discourses, all of
which claim to offer legitimate means for viewing the social world. Ultimately,
cultural studies incorporated the notion of power into its scope in order to
account for this struggle to negotiate meaning. Obviously, some discourses
within the cultural playing field are supported by greater material resources
and/or dominant ideological stances; thus power became a pivotal axis upon which
cultural studies practitioners lodged their analyses, and cultural studies
assumed a character of economic determinism.
Within media studies, there is a chasm between those who practice
this political economic spin on cultural studies (which usually emphasizes an
institutional approach to media studies) and those who practice what Carey terms
the "interpretive" approach, which argues that power can limit, order, and
contextualize the construction of meaning on a large scale, but that it is local
knowledge which is premier in the construction of meaning. Carey appropriates
Geertz's text metaphor for the study of culture; he argues that "[W]e are
challenged to grasp the meanings people build into their words and behavior and
to make these meanings, these claims about life and experience, explicit and
articulate so that we might fairly judge them" (1989, 59). Thus, we must read
human action as a text. Although this presents some problems, Carey argues
that:
[T]he trick is to read these "texts" in relation to
concrete social structure without reducing them to that
structure. . . .
[T]o look at communication as, if you will forgive me,
communicationDas
an interpretation, a meaning construed from and placed upon
experience,
that is addressed to and interpreted by someoneDallows us to
concentrate
on the subject matter of the enterprise and not some extrinsic
and
arbitrary formula that accounts for it. (p. 61)
If we accept Carey's reading of Geertz which emphasizes the study of
culture as an interpretive endeavor, we gain an understanding of communication
as part of a system of cultural practices that create, maintain, and transmute
society.
Among those media scholars who follow the political economic strain
of cultural studies (which seems to be most of them), a grasp of the
politico-economic dynamics that account for the production of mediated texts is
essential to the understanding of how ideology works within the system of mass
communication. A political economy orientation provides that grasp. Studies
within this vein tend to analyze mediated messages according to the
institutional structures which produced them. Occasionally, these studies also
include an analysis of the audience's reading of media content. Grossberg
(1993, 95) argues that the examination of the practice of communication per se
within a cultural context is a difficult task:
Communicational cultural studies, in the end, reduces
culture to the symbolic representation of power and grants it a
certain
apparent autonomy. As a result, communicational cultural
studies finds
itself constantly rediscovering what it already knew:
Regarding
domination, that particular cultural practices reproduce the
structures
of domination and subordination, and that they reinscribe
relations of
identity, difference, and inequality; and regarding
subordination,
communicational cultural studies seems satisfied with finding
the cracks
in the processes of the reproduction and reinscription. The
assumption
that people are active and capable of struggle and resistance
becomes an
apparent discovery, and the important empirical questions, of
the
concrete contextual effects of such practices, are left
unanswered.
Thus, domination and subordination are already assumed and the
interesting questions are not only left unanswered, but are left unasked, e.g.,
how are cultural practices (including communication) manifested in power
relations themselves, how is power manifested in cultural practices, how does
culture affect particular communicational contexts, and what is the relation
between culture and policy?
Unfortunately, however, cultural studies has been encumbered by a
tendency to separate economic factors from other cultural factors so that all
examinations of meaning construction are often reduced to questions of power.
While the political economic perspective to cultural studies originated as an
attempt to focus on material reality as a means to illuminate "lived culture,"
it is ultimately reductive and simplistic. From a scientific point of view, a
test cannot be devised that can disprove or falsify the notion of economic
determinism. Further, we are trapped in a tautology when we argue that one
interpretation of a mediated message can be contrary or oppositional, but that
even a contrary reading of a media text can still fuel the engine of a hegemonic
system when audience members are convinced that they have constructed a truly
oppositional meaning but the dominant ideology still thrives. Moreover, can we
really argue that the economy is a determinative cultural process or factor that
can be separated from other cultural processes or factors?
The work of Morley's Nationwide studies (Morley, 1992) showed that
the class-struggle aspect of text interpretation/decoding was false. Meaning
thus appears to be a matter, in part only, of a special-interest cultural
process. Yet, no one seems sure which of these interests are actually
functional in this meaning-making. Later, Morley's work and others' was
criticized because the construction of the audience itself was considered a
construct of the researcher, and thus (it is implied) was invalid (Moores, 1993,
28-29). This may be carrying critique to the point of no-return.
This criticism does not mean that the perspective espoused by Carey
is any less subject to critical analysis. Carey's notions of meaning (and even
culture) are ephemeral to the extent that he believes, along with Geertz, that
"thick description" will invariably lead to successful interpretation. Carey
tends to concentrate on culture as a site of shared meaning and social cohesion.
This concentration seems wholly incompatible with the notion of power, which
emphasizes inequality and domination rather than sharing. The notion of shared
meaning and cultural cohesion sometimes fails to account for the struggle over
meaningsDhow they are negotiated, how they change, and how they are historically
determined in part. Further, Carey's prescriptive notions regarding the
autonomy of culture (i.e., that it is not determined per se) offer a tenuous
basis for the construction of empirical or taxonomic categories within which we
can examine cultural meaning from the standpoint of "lived culture." Carey's
appropriation of Geertz's metaphors for the interpretation of meaning are
seductive, yet they are difficult to translate into scholarly endeavor.
Anthropological Positions
Cultural studies is methodologically centered around ethnography
and textual analysis. Ethnography has traditionally been understood as a
descriptive (and somewhat atheoretical) practice that serves as an account of
the anthropologist's field experience from which an interpretation of culturally
constructed meaning can be extrapolated. And, traditionally, cultural studies
has been understood as the investigation of the construction of meaning within
everyday life and how this meaning construction is negotiated from competing
discourses within the social power structure. At first, ethnography seems
completely incompatible with the enterprise of cultural studies because
ethnography seems to have use only within the domain of audience studies. These
studies constitute only a portion of the larger domain of cultural studies;
descriptive accounts of audience uses of mediated content cannot provide the
critical tools necessary to understand meaning construction based on
hermeneutical analysis of mediated texts.
Yet, to the extent that meaning construction is bound to notions of
power and is thus inextricably linked to a critical analytic stance, ethnography
can be a useful tool in widening the scope of cultural studies. Textual
analysis has been a staple of cultural studies research; as a means of "reading"
cultural products in order to understand the construction of meaning, textual
analysis has concentrated on the socio-political context of the production and
reception of mediated messages. It has, however, been criticized for
privileging the scholar's reading of a text, which could be too narrow to
comprehend the appropriation of meaning by specific audiences (such as
subcultures or minority groups). Here, audience ethnography can enrich textual
analysis by contextualizing the construction of meaning within the worldview of
these specific audiences. Dick Hebdige's studies of punk rock subcultures in
London used ethnography to provide a framework from which to analyze this
subculture's styles of dress and music as a symbolic form of opposition.
Similarly, Kottak's (1990) ethnography, Prime Time Society, examined
television's social context and cultural effects in Brazil.
Ethnography might also be useful to examine communication as a
cultural practice from Grossberg's vantage. While he professes an interest in
the material conditions that construct and reflect communication as a cultural
practice, ethnographies of the institutionalized production of media content
(i.e., newsrooms, production studios) might serve to illuminate communication as
a cultural practice from a critical standpoint. Essentially, then, the
descriptive nature of ethnography may certainly serve as a tool for enhancing
cultural criticism.
As we have found, however, few ethnographies of the media as
cultural forms are done within the domains of either media studies or
anthropology. Indeed, anthropologists have engaged questions concerning the
media largely from the standpoint of visual ethnography. These questions
usually focus on the authenticity of the image generated from subjective
ethnographic film techniques; the modes of this image production; and the
authenticity of the voices telling the ethnographic story. They tend not to
address the reception of ethnographic films among audiences other than scholarly
ones. Jay Ruby (1994) is a notable exception to this rule. He examines the
reception of ethnographic films as viewed on television and in educational
settings as part of a larger exploration of meaning construction involving all
types of film.
Ruby uses the same strategy set up by Larry Gross (1985), who
argues that the symbol systems we use to interpret meaning are culturally
derived; thus, despite claims that we all make our own meaning, we nevertheless
share a common basis of interpretive symbolic strategies by virtue of membership
in a particular culture. Gross supports the idea of coding, implying a text to
be read and expected to be understood, "[S]ymbolic events are those we assume
were intended to communicate something to us. Further, we assume that these
events are articulated by their "author" in accordance with a shared system of
rules of implication and inference. That is, they are determined not by
physical or psychological "laws," but by [culturally shared and understood]
semiotic conventions"
(p. 2).
Ruby subscribes to this convention in general (that the text can be
decoded along commonly understood lines), but then follows by contending that
all other individualistic elements of the film (production, producer
assumptions, etc.) must be evaluated ethnographically, which once again suggests
a chaotic polysemy of decoded meanings which could lie far outside the
producer's intent and viewer's understanding.
Further, Ruby argues that the audience reception of mediated
messages is best analyzed through an anthropological model that affords primacy
to culture in the construction of meaning. Nonetheless, he eventually argues
for a mode of interpretation that is very similar to the political economic vein
of cultural studies. He claims that anthropologists' goals in making
ethnographic films should be directed toward producing an "oppositional"
reading:
[A]nthropological producers' implied meanings should be
diametrically opposed to their readers' and viewers'
attributions. The
role of the ethnographic filmmaker is to produce programs
subversive to
their audiences' view of the world and of the media. In its
most radical
formulation, anthropology's public message should be designed
to alter
the West's conceptualization of the Other and the construction
of
knowledge. Viewed from this perspective, the ethnographic
filmmaker is
not merely attempting to educate his or her viewers about the
humanity of
exotic people but to propagandize for a fundamental alteration
of their
view of the world. (1994, 74)
He continues to assert that the television viewers of ethnographic
film seldom render this "oppositional" reading of any mediated content and that
viewers are unlikely to successfully receive an intended challenge to commonly
held "folk wisdom." Cultural studies scholars would probably disagree that the
intent of ethnographic film producers is to challenge these common notions;
rather, the economics of television ownership and production would dictate that
the content of televised messages would be to reinforce the dominant ideology
(which, in this case, would probably be to persist in the portrayal of exotic
Otherness in order to maintain the status quo). Ultimately, Ruby contends that
this scenario is the likely model and that anthropologists who wish to produce
ethnographic films for television should educate themselves about television
audiences. Thus, Ruby's argument begins with the assumption of cultural primacy
in meaning construction and evolves into an essentially political economic
rendering of how power relationships determine institutional perspectives and,
finally, strategies for creating meaning.
It would seem that with this point the political dimension of
anthropological film far outshadows the scholarly efforts of the film. One
would film/tape and edit, according to this notion, to shock and be subversive,
in preference to attempting a "realistic" (and admittedly possibly hegemonic)
impression of the research. While Ruby dismisses the film Black Harvest for its
lack of "professional anthropological input," it is quite possible to see his
evaluation of the film as not real anthropology also in its failure to confront
the audience (1994, 77). Such a political notion raises serious questions about
the purpose of anthropology itself.
Is anthropology a scholarly endeavor with the purpose of
representing the "Other?" If so, the political aspect of Ruby's notions must be
abandoned in preference to "truer" representation. However, if filmic
anthropology is to shock and disrupt in order to displace audience stereotypes
of the Other, of what value is any discussion concerning representation? It
would seem there can be no concern with representation of the Other if one
operates under a political directive which is determined by the anthropologist.
The Other, in fact, is not the point in such an orientation. The point seems to
be the use of the film to raise consciousness about the entirety of the
anthropological endeavor itself. This purposive notion he attributes to
ethnographic film appears to remove the importance of the text of the people
studied, and privilege the political purpose of the "anthropologist-author,"
with the purpose of educating the viewer into the author's frame of
understanding. This idea of using ethnography of the Other to instill a
political point held by the insider-author would seem ironically enthocentric
and culturally imperialistic.
In the end, though, Ruby's considerations of the anthropological or
ethnographic film point out a crucial difference between the notion of visual
anthropology and the sense that media studies carries into its study of film.
While echoing a number of media studies' common concerns about the audience and
the construction of meaning, anthropology (as suggested by Ruby and others)
appears fixated on ethnographic film. This appears, from a media studies point
of view, to be terribly limited; almost as if the field of anthropology has
turned in on itself and considered its own "project" to the exclusion of the
rest of the world's film work.
Here is where film, as seen by anthropologists, appears to remain
generally unproblematized. The ethnographic film is used by ethnographers as a
tool for communicating their work. Commercial film, however, appears not to be
a representative quality of a culture deserving of study, as it is in media
studies. Anthropology appears to ignore the cultural value of film created
within the culture, and to prefer to concern itself with the use of film as a
tool for "doing the work."
This is both interesting, and a point of concern from a media
studies point of view. As noted, anthropology has well-critiqued the audience
experience, but appears to have not significantly extended its scope of critical
investigation beyond its own use of film as a tool. Nearly every culture
currently produces filmic or video representations of itself or its stories. As
self-images, these representations promise to be highly value-laden in regards
to the cultural norms, hopes, and values of a society. It is suggested that if
anthropology were to engage all film as cultural product, rather than viewing
film primarily as a means of transmitting anthropological data by the
anthropologist or the Other, such a scope of investigation may provide greater
insight into the culture as a whole than some of the anthropological film
itself.
Among other anthropologists, however, both Spitulnik (1993) and
Ginsburg (1994) advocate the exploration of an "anthropology of mass media."
Spitulnik issues a call for the study of media as cultural forms. She states:
[B]eyond approaching specific facets of mass media
anthropologically, it seems that the greater challenge lies in
integrating the study of mass media into our analyses of the
"total
social fact" of modern life. How, for example, do mass media
represent
and shape cultural values within a given society? What is
their place in
the formation of social relations and social identities? How
might they
structure people's senses of space and time? What are their
roles in the
construction of communities ranging from subcultures to
nation-states,
and in global processes of socioeconomic and cultural change?
(Spitulnik, 1993, 293-4)
She mentions the validity of the contribution cultural studies
scholars have made to this endeavor, but, like Ruby, tends to focus on power as
a determinative factor in meaning construction. Also like Ruby, Spitulnik
asserts that cultural studies has misappropriated ethnography in its method of
audience analysis:
Most of this work is based on interviewing audiences in
their homes, and critics have argued that the label
"ethnography" is
misleading because detailed participant-observation is minimal,
and
actual immersion in the daily practices and social worlds of
the people
studied is almost nonexistent. _ Although not entirely
ethnographic
(though some would argue that no one can rightly lay claim to
the word),
these efforts have greatly enhanced our knowledge of the
diversity of
media practices, and they raise significant challenges for
theorizing
mass media's relations to "reality" and the construction of
social
meaning. (p. 298)
This outlook seems common among anthropologists who support an
anthropology of mass media. Ginsburg (1994) offers a perspective that considers
how culture and social relations are negotiated through media content. She
claims that ethnography of media consumption need not be limited to audience
reception analysis because consumption always relates to historical patterns,
interpretive practices, and power relations. She cites Kottak's (1990)
ethnographic examination of television as a cultural phenomenon in Brazil as
illustrative of "anthropology of culture and media":
Such work is an important contribution to understanding
public culture as it emerges from multiple locations; it also
offers a
useful corrective to current Foucauldian fashions in media
studies which
point to discourses of power as causative, but fail to locate
them
concretely in the lives of motivated social actors and the
processes of
everyday life. By contrast, ethnographic approaches provide
grounded
analyses and critiques of how 'technologies of power' are
created and
contested, by tracking the dynamics of 'public spheres' in
which an
independent criticism and practice can develop. (Ginsburg,
1994: 13)
We will examine Kottak's book in the following section, but Ginsburg
has identified what we believe to be a key weakness in media studies. Indeed,
many studies of media audiences theoretically concentrate on power relations to
the detriment of identifying how these relations manifest themselves in the
"processes of everyday life." Ironically, cultural studies grew out of a need
within media studies to examine culture as it is experienced in the everyday
world rather than as it is conceived by scholars in the academy. While
ethnography would provide just such a perspective, many anthropologists have
neglected the media as a significant part of meaning construction in everyday
life. Many anthropologists who have expressed interest in media within
anthropology have, as noted above, concerned themselves mostly with questions of
visual anthropology. Unfortunately, this perspective seems to concentrate
literally on anthropology in the media, i.e., the presentation of
anthropological findings within media, particularly film. Few anthropologists
have attempted to venture beyond this "outsider" position to examine media as a
cultural form as part of the ethnographic exploration of a culture, whether it
be Brazilian, Russian, or American.
In this next section we will consider two worksDone by a media
scholar (James Lull's China Turned On) and one by an anthropologist (Conrad
Kottak's Prime Time Society)Dthat seem to aspire to combine the two disciplines.
While both works are admirable in scope and in creative scholarship, they also
offer an excellent opportunity to examine the differences between the
disciplines. We preface this discussion by suggesting that a difference in
primary beliefs about the use of a medium (e.g., film as recording tool vs. film
as political instrument) dictates findings regarding the medium. With regard to
television, on a very basic level, some in media studies may examine television
in reference to its sense as a political tool; as a result, the interplay of
television and culture is discussed in political terms. In anthropology, some
may see culture as determining the sense of television; as a result, the
interplay of television and people becomes framed within a discussion of
culture. We suggest, as we are sure others have, that the deepest basic
assumptions guiding each discipline define a sense of what's important in the
interaction, and that information is collected, organized and presented in that
discipline-specific manner. Thus, differing results in research from the same
field studies will emerge between disciplines by necessity.
While the two books concerning cultural response to television in
this section cannot be seen as representative of all the work in media studies
and anthropology, they are illustrative of the outcome differences in the
discipline-specific framework mentioned above. Finally, the importance of the
discipline-specific framework lies not so much in the fact that it occurs, as it
does in pointing up the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, offering
fertile ground for the bettering of both.
Cultural Studies and Anthropology Speaking to Each Other: The
Melding of Disciplines
Kottak's (1990) Prime Time Society is an anthropological comparison
of television's social context and cultural effects in Brazil and the United
States. His interest in television stems from his belief that it affects the
collective behavior and knowledge of contemporary Americans. He argues that
television's effects are comparable to those of traditional institutionsDfamily,
church, state, education. Television is creating new cultural experiences and
meanings, according to Kottak. In this sense, he resembles the thinking of some
media scholars.
In Prime Time Society, Kottak uses ethnographic methods
(participant observation and interviews) as well as quantitative survey research
to examine Brazilian television, in particular telenovelas (serial dramas), as
cultural products. Kottak builds his analysis from knowledge of Brazilian
culture gained during his previous fieldwork in Brazil. Kottak also approaches
his work from a comparative point of view, in the traditional anthropological
vein. He continually reminds the reader of the difference between American and
Brazilian cultures, and uses this to reflect on the differences in television.
Consider, for example (1990, 100):
Brazilians still spend much of their leisure time with
their extended families. American, however, are in constant
contact, at
work or play, with strangers ... [i]n the United States, our
social and
economic lives depend on converting strangers into friends.
Much of what
Americans see and talk about, in media and real life, reflects
their
dealings with strangers ... [i]n their works of fiction,
whether
literature, cinema, or television, Brazilians are much less
concerned
with nonfamily settings and relationships. They are also less
fanciful
than Americans. Suspense, horror, and fantasy are rare in
Brazilian
productions, but are key elements of American works.
This extended selection speaks volumes of the value of the
comparative approach. By highlighting the differences between the cultures, and
placing those differences within an explanatory context, Kottak provides a
description of program fare and the explanation for that fare as a deep and
pervasive social/cultural reflection. Essentially, Kottak argues that: 1) the
popularity of television programs reflects their cultural appropriateness; 2)
popular media content illustrates fundamental values and institutions; and 3)
contrasts in media content across cultures can be keys to perceiving and
understanding fundamental cultural differences.
These findings are not unlike those a media scholar would seek.
Prime Time Society begins with a background section on television and culture,
continues with sections on broadcasting as an institution in Brazil, television
program content in Brazil, and Brazilian culture, and concludes with a section
on the social and individual impact of television on audiences. Kottak's
findings, however, when examined in detail, seem to focus on the effects of
television on social behavior and attitude formation. For example, fears of
television's potential harmful effects were expressed mostly by intellectual
elites; television viewing enhances social interaction; heavy viewing is
associated with greater fear of crime and violence; and levels of trust in
government and in other people declined with greater television viewing. These
findings are derived in large part from Kottak's quantitative analysis of his
survey research. He used his observation and interview data to support these
findings, but did not seem to engage deeply with the critical interpretive
questions involving media's influence in the creation of meaning. He does offer
a profile of a woman named Sonia, one of his informants (1990,135-136). We
learn of her age during an initial interview, her media-deprived condition, her
rural roots, her social isolation, the difficulty she had dealing with the
interview which occasionally brought tears, and her longing for a home of her
own. On a second interview only a year later, after exposure to media (the
family had obtained a black-and-white TV), Kottak talks of her almost as if she
were another woman, noting that the "changes were obvious to my wife and me."
Here we see the meaning of television to a person as a change-agent, but we
don't get a sense of mass communication as a cultural practice from Kottak's
work. We don't get a sense of the media's role in cultural construction,
change, maintenance, conflict, and perpetuation. His work is informative, yet
full use was not made of his rich ethnographic data.
By comparison, Lull's (1991) China Turned On is an ethnographic
look at how television influenced the cultural and political consciousness of
urban Chinese. He interviewed 100 urban Chinese families and television
executives in 1986, and talked to students, scholars, citizens, and broadcasters
after the 1989 demonstration in Tiananmen Square. Lull argues that television
is a device of propaganda and resistance. Unlike Kottak, Lull concentrates on
television as an economic and political institutionDthe role of television in
political reform is examined, its propagandistic and anti-government content is
described, and coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre is analyzed in terms of
its cultural significance. Lull's interviewees speak frequently throughout
China Turned On about Chinese culture and government, television's impact on
their lives, and about specific program content. However, it appears that many
of his findings are anecdotal. No clear method of achieving a random sample
emerged, no way of evaluating the viability of the sentiments of the
interviewees was mentioned, and outside of having respondents answer a set list
of questions as a jumping-off point, no specific research agenda appeared as
directive. In addition, the questions asked of respondents appeared to assess
what viewers did with television in preference to what television meant to them.
This illustrates media studies' relative "newcomer" status to qualitative work.
While such qualitative work can be done well by many in the field (and has been
by Lull himself), the discipline of media studies has seemed reluctant not only
to recognize qualitative work in its scholarly journals, but the understanding
of the work itself appears somewhat truncated, if not mutated, from an
anthropological perspective.
Lull does supplement his ethnographic evidence with some textual
analysis of several televised dramas, including New Star, an extremely popular
politically oriented serial drama. But the New Star account reads more as an
episodic touching on the Chinese spirit in conflict with the bureaucratic
structure, than as something grounded in a universal cultural base of the people
which touches all aspects of their lives, as do the telenovela soap operas of
Brazil. Lastly, Lull devotes a section to the interpretation of television's
meaning. He argues:
How viewers interpret television's messages do not
simply reflect the aims of the producers, and the apparent
implications
of programs do not necessarily reveal the meanings that
audiences take
away from viewing. Television programs do not have a single
meaning,
connotation, or objectively definable significance. _
[P]rograms are
repositories of potential interpretations that are actualized
in viewers'
varying involvements with them. This is not to say that TV
programs are
completely open texts that encourage limitless or wholly
unguided
interpretations. We must be careful not to overstate or
romanticize the
role of the viewer in the reception and use of television
content. The
specific images, framing, format, at the internal structure of
any
specific program, and the program's relation to other symbolic
material
on the medium all help establish cues for preferred 'readings'
by
audiences. (pp. 214-215)
Despite Lull's legitimate (according to Jay Ruby's criteria) use of
ethnographic method in his work, he exhibits the same tendencies as many media
scholars do in overemphasizing power relations and structures to the extent that
they become determinative. In these types of analyses, power is granted an
overprivileged role in meaning construction rather than being regarded as just
another element within the cultural construction of everyday life. Lull's
ethnographic data are used, then, to lend support to a theorized relationship
between power structures and meaning creation that may not indeed exist in lived
experience.
In both works reviewed here, we can sense a consistent inadequacy
in the methodological and theoretical elements that constitute these studies.
The anthropological perspective is one with a greater immediate sense of the
people and the culture; while the media studies perspective is one of a
distanced-empiricism which examines structures and power in preference to the
culture and people.
Is this a fair representation? In part. Anthropology has both
its "peopled" Clifford Geertz and its "materialist" Marvin Harris. Media
studies has both its "humanist" Raymond Williams and the "political economy" of
a Graham Murdock. But in the main, there is the sense that cultural
anthropology is closer to the experience of the culture and the people who
comprise it, while media studies tends to study more the structure of the media
and the effects it is purported to have on the public. Both Kottak's and Lull's
attempts to meld anthropological and media studies viewpoints into a coherent
exploration of media's role in meaning construction succeed to an extent;
ultimately, however, they fail to glean much from the other's perspective.
Conclusion: What Cultural Studies Scholars and Anthropologists
Should Say to Each Other
It seems as though media scholars tend to rely heavily on the study
of mass media as institutions in addition to studying media messages, audiences,
and effects. Anthropologists, on the other hand, seem to study media primarily
as cultural products. Although we might recognize that each discipline pursues
a different enterprise, the ultimate goal of scholarship that has both a social
scientific and humanistic character is to reveal something significant and
interesting about the human condition. In this pursuit, anthropology and media
studies have much to say to one another.
Media scholars would do well to listen to anthropologists who have
successfully employed the use of ethnographic techniques to examine and
interpret the real experiences of everyday life. The media studies/cultural
studies endeavor is burdened with the argument over whether culture is
autonomous or determined. We in cultural studies have mired ourselves in a
theoretical mud over this question to the extent that we often fail to engage
with culture as it is lived, produced, and transformed every day. We have let
this debate obscure any knowledge we may have gained from empirical observation
and interpretive strategies.
By the same token, anthropologists would do well to listen to media
scholars who have grappled with questions of agency and interpretation regarding
the media's role as a cultural artifact. For anthropologists to accept the mass
media as cultural forms worthy of careful analysis (rather than mere recording
devices) means, ultimately, that they can move beyond media-oriented ethnography
as thick description toward analytical interpretation. In his talk at the
University of Colorado's Visual Ethnography Symposium (April 7-9, 1995), Jay
Ruby argued that a media studies approach to critical research often employs
literary criticism passed off as ethnography. Further, he claimed that, under
the guise of interdisciplinary work, media scholars have misappropriated
ethnography to the point where it is not confrontational and reflective of the
Other. We argue that, indeed, media scholars are interested in appropriating
ethnography although this appropriation does not always involve confrontation
and reflectiveness of the Other. We are studying ourselves, not an exotic
OtherDmost everyone is part of a media audience, whether in the United States,
China, Brazil, or the Amazonian rain forest. Most everyone is aware, if
unconsciously, of media as cultural products, as institutions, and as purveyors
of cultural meanings. Ethnographic approaches to the study of media as cultural
forms should rightly be concerned with questions of vocality and representation,
but these concerns need not paralyze media scholars' theoretically informed
study of the media's role in meaning construction in the everyday world.
Neither anthropologists nor media scholars have truly learned from
each other's collective wisdom. In a recent piece by Michael Fischer (1991) he
advocates the expansion of "anthropology as cultural critique" so that it
transcends the discourse of "self and Other" and embraces interdisciplinary
knowledge. In part, this includes a foray into media studies. He argues:
It is not that anthropology should buy into the
"metanarratives" of media disseminated discourses _ On the
contrary, the
role for anthropology could be to deconstruct these discourses
precisely
by drawing attention to their presumptions, their
particularistic
groundings, or the social contexts from which they are staged.
(p. 529)
In fact, media scholars, under the cultural studies umbrella, had
been doing exactly that for yearsDand finding some interesting relationships.
Conversely, if media scholars had been listening to anthropologists, their
findings might have illuminated more clearly the realities shaped by and
transforming the media.
Neither culture nor media are static realities or stable fields of
study. Each is constantly changed by the cumulative actions of people
responding to changes in the culture and the media. Individual human action and
decisions re-form culture daily. Individual determination of which media make
sense, and the process of groping with making meaning out of that media choice
gives new form to the new media daily. Thus, the question that appears to be
missing in each discipline, is: What is the meaning of the media in a person's
life?
In media studies, we examine how the media power structure is
organized; who owns what; who holds political power and how they manage to
reproduce that power; what is being shown on the television; the effects of the
media on the populace, and so on.
In cultural anthropology, we examine cultural structure and form;
what traditions help explain the cultural values; whether we must examine the
culture in its entirety or whether an individual can represent a whole culture;
whether we have the right to speak for, or of others, or whether the Other alone
holds such a right. We seek a clarification of this notion of culture itself,
and so on.
There appears to be the assumption within both disciplines
that meaning exists a priori, merely because the media have moved information to
a point for the consumer to use. But the consumer may not only create
alternative meanings of the message, he/she may ignore the message altogether.
We assume the complexity of end-game meaning construction; yet we do not have a
grasp on the initial point of how people relate to the media in general.
Drawing an analogy of media to the concept of time may be useful at
this point. If one were in need of knowing the time, one would look at a clock
to determine the hour. While this speaks to common uses of information sources
on a functional level, it narrows its focus at the cost of understanding the
greater cultural meaning of time: how time has structured societal expectations
of work performance; how time organizes activities ranging from sports to
warfare; how it measures the quality of sexual performance and the cessation of
life by the number of minutes a person can live without oxygen.
Normally, this cost is inconsequential. However, if we were
scholars of time, the cost would be unconscionable. We are scholars of culture
and media and must examine the complexity of the media, rather than reduce it to
an effects machine within a culture. Instinctively, we have every reason to
believe that the media create a framework similar to time's throughout a
particular culture (and now global culture) for the experience of life.
Construction of meaning, as crucial an aspect of study as it is, thus actually
becomes a subset of this cultural media framework. And it is within this
greater framework that we find the meaning of the media in a person's life.
We cannot simply point to culture and locate the media within it.
The media, as with the concept of time, have woven themselves throughout the
warp and woof of culture, creating the multi-dimensional framework a culture
uses to understand itself. When we understand that perspective, perhaps
critical questions such as, "if meaning is created by the media user, as many of
the theoretical perspectives appear to agree, how is that meaning created?" take
on greater scope than previously imagined. Such a question separates itself
greatly from the "the construction of meaning" seen primarily as an interaction
between text and reader. It really doesn't matter that a viewer identifies
with the heroine in a movie of the week, thus constructing meaning from the
movie to her life. The real questions are: how is that meaning constructed
through cultural processes; what cultural understandings did she hold that
permitted/aided/enhanced that construction; how did those understandings
interplay with the meaning of the media that she has culturally negotiated for
herself and through others; and how did that negotiation take place? Some
scholars are addressing these questions; but this avenue of inquiry has not
become naturalized within either discipline.
With full respect to the materialist argument, this is one instance
where the cultural and thought processes of the individual are of paramount
importance. We cannot find explanatory power in the behavioral responses we
observe in a television viewer, for example: they are too unpredictable in that
they are based on past events and immediate surroundings; the meanings created
are too susceptible to variation based on unquantifiable criteria; and the
social "use" of the material after exposure (and later use during viewing) is
too dependent on forthcoming cultural interactions and events.
To understand the meaning of the media means that we must trust the
media user and ask that person about these things. It means that we cannot walk
into a theater of media experience with theoretical notions guiding principled
questions (even the notion of empiricism must be challengedDit serves little
purpose merely to watch people watch television). The entire "project" of
understanding the meaning of the media in the lives of people must be developed
from the ground up, within the experience of investigating it and within the
culture in which it is practiced, so that questions have relevance to the media
user.
And it is here, in taking as our central question to discover the
meaning of the media to the media user, that we find the missing question of
media studies and anthropology. But this "solution by meaning" creates two
problems: the first is that the proposition appears to be too individually
based, leaving little room for theoretical generalization; the second problem is
that "meaning of the media to the media user" privileges the area under study,
rather than the academic's theoretical preference (e.g., political economy or
uses-and-gratification theories).
The first problem can be addressed historicallyDcomparative
anthropology has made a practice of gathering disparate elements of cultural
behavior and artifacts in seeking a common ground for human behavior.
Postmodern relativism notwithstanding, there is no reason we should not be
willing to accept this same notion of accumulation of ethnographic information
and comparative studies as applied to the media experience.
The second problem is a little more difficult. This requires that
the academic professionals who enter the media arena do so without the
protective armor of their individual philosophical bents. Difficult, to say the
least. But for any number of reasons (e.g., the failure of current theory to
adequately explain or predict; the individuality of media use; the lack of any
determining theoretical construct holding sway; the failure of any current
theory to address meaning-construction beyond mentioning it), the media offer an
area of study which must be driven by "ground-up" theoretical development,
rather than the imposition of old, tried, and uncertain ideas.
Thus, until the development of the meaning of the media experience
is addressed by both the nearness and immediacy of the anthropological project,
and the often more-distanced, global perspective of media studies, both
disciplines will only continue to replicate theoretical perspectives that
validate current incomplete opinions, in place of developing a much-needed new
theory of meaning construction through media use. Perhaps the time has come for
us to not merely invoke the rubric of interdisciplinary studies, but to explore
the meaning of the notion itself from new and more productive perspectives.
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Routledge.
Converging Crossroads or Parallel Tracks? An Inquiry Into the
Nature
of the Media as Seen by Cultural Studies and Anthropology
A paper submitted for consideration in the Qualitative Studies
Division for the 1996 Annual Convention of the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication, August 10-13, 1996, Anaheim, CA.
By
Jan Fernback
Doctoral Candidate
University of Colorado at Boulder
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Campus Box 287
Boulder, CO 80309-0287
(303) 492-0368
([log in to unmask])
and
Greg Stene
Doctoral Candidate
University of Colorado at Boulder
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Campus Box 287
Boulder, CO 80309-0287
(303) 492-1737
([log in to unmask])
Converging Crossroads or Parallel Tracks? An Inquiry Into the
Nature
of the Media as Seen by Cultural Studies and Anthropology
Abstract
Media studies scholars have long recognized the value of
interdisciplinary inquiry, and for those who find resonance with the cultural
studies paradigm, interpretive cultural anthropology has proved quite useful.
Anthropologists and media scholars can speak to one another, yet neither side
appears to be truly comprehending the other. This essay explores the respective
terrains of media studies and anthropology, the extent of their dialogue with
one another, and the future direction of media studies as it has been informed
by interpretive cultural anthropology.