Almost 25 years ago, Spitulnik (1993, p.293) wrote: ‘There is yet no anthropology of mass media. Even the intersection of anthropology and mass media appears rather small considering the published literature to date’. Her skepticism echoes in the terminolgy used by Latham (2012), ‘this emerging sub-sub-subdiscipline’. On the other hand, Askew (2002, p.12) claims: ‘Media anthropology, the brainchild of Mead, Bateson, and Powdermaker, has finally come into its own.’ Postill (2009, p.334) shows the same enthusiasm: ‘After long decades of neglect, the anthropological study of media is now booming.’ And so does Bird (1992, p.2): ‘Our discipline came late to the field of media studies, but today the anthropology of media has come of age.’
In her attempt to both reflect these uncertainties and also legitimize this new academic field through a number of approaches, Anna Cristina Pertierra states: ‘And for the time being, at least, there is plenty of work for anthropologists of media and digital culture to be getting on with’ (p.158). Note the ‘at least’. As one of those who have pleaded since the early 2000s for this discipline’s recognition and empowerment, I can only be happy that a prestigious publishing house has published a synthesis on this theme. Every synthesis is also a manifest, a project that epistemologically justifies and empirically proves (by invoking a strong research current) the right to existence of media anthropology. However, things are not simple at all, and the debates are engulfed. This is obvious from oscillations and terminological uncertainties: Pertierra uses terms such as ‘media anthropology’, ‘anthropology of media’, ‘anthropology of media and digital technologies’, and ‘anthropology of media and communication’. In addition, her book suggests, through its title, that media anthropology is on the way to becoming a new field, an anthropology of the digital world. So, how can we promote and empower a discipline, when it is only a bridge, a transition, between two stages, two (maybe more) legitimate areas of anthropology?
Pertierra’s presentation oscillates between the anchoring of the new field only in the area of application of ethnographic research methods and the invocation of a specific theoretical framework, capable of validating a new sub-discipline of anthropology. The studies that originated from cultural anthropology (Askew and Wilk, 2002; Ginsburg et al., 2003; Peterson, 2003; Postill, 2009) place the media anthropology in anthropology’s interdisciplinary field (as the development of either applied or visual anthropology). Yet, the works coming from media studies (Bird, 1992; Couldry, 2003; Rothenbuhler and Coman, 2005) see media anthropology as an extension of communication studies. As a consequence, the interdisciplinary dialogue among anthropology, communication, media studies, and digital studies is a complex one, and might involve applying anthropology theories and methods in mass communication, media, and digital research. It might also include using media studies theories and concepts when investigating cultural and anthropological related phenomena. However, as Pertierra book shows, this has never really happened!
Pertierra’s mission is not at all easy: anthropologists tend to ignore media (culture) and the digital world, and researchers in media studies or cultural studies tend to reduce anthropology to its consecrated method (ethnography), ignoring specific concepts and theories. Starting in the 1990s, they adopted the ethnographic techniques in a euphoric way; they did not develop any dialogue with anthropologists, nor with the critical bibliography connected to this field. Consequently, in the author’s happy formulation: ‘the purpose of this book, then, is to chart the mutual disinterest and subsequent love affair that has taken place between the fields of anthropology and media studies’ (p.21). In this complicated context, Pertierra adds to the binary equation (the relationship between anthropology and media studies) the field of digital studies, itself a crossroads between several sciences and scientific paradigms. This complexity is probably the explanation of the heterogeneous structure of the book: the first two chapters are devoted to the relationship between anthropology (as a science) and mass media (as an object of study); another chapter investigates the relationship among cultural studies, media studies, and the ethnographic method. The next chapter approaches the use of ethnography in virtual worlds research, starting with discussion of mobile cultures and social media, proceeding to how some anthropologists participate in the development of commercial or educational media products, and finishing with a return to the problems of ethnographic research. Thus, the emphasis in this presentation is not on the intersection of paradigms, theories, and concepts of the various sciences that meet, as much as on the methods of research and the challenge of their application to the mass media, new media, social media, and other forms of digital communication.
The presentations of the various approaches is clear and (inevitably) didactic. Pertierra pays commendable attention to the studies of media studies scholars, often focusing on the consumption of mass media in modern society. The best known are the investigations of the ethnography of reception, which were carried out mainly under the banner of cultural studies. This ‘alliance of cultural and media studies with ethnography’ (p.60) was not a result of an anthropological program, but emerged from a major theme of cultural studies – the role of culture in imposing the world view of dominant groups (hegemony). In the same way, although she mentions some ethnographic studies of media production, the author has paradoxically ignored the classical studies of the sociology of the newsroom, conducted in the 1970s and 1980s through intensive ethnographic observation in newsrooms.
Instead, many directions specific to the ethnography of digital world research (netnography, design ethnography, corporate ethnography, etc.) are mapped, which provides an integrative vision of this emerging field. Unfortunately, its vibrant and attractive presentation concentrates excessively on the actions (production, consumption and communication) and leaves the issue of contents untreated. I am thinking here of the rituals – the extraordinary rich field of media events studies, inspired by the classical work of Dayan and Katz (1992); I am thinking of the mythology – the full range of investigations of myths and archetypes in the media, but also in popular culture, digital games or social media; and I am thinking of religion in the media and digital world.
In the light of these debates, it is noticeable that the interdisciplinarity model developed is asymmetrical. Anthropology offers the conceptual frame, while the conceptual contribution of media studies disappears. In Pertierra’s terms, ‘media anthropologists drew from the founding principles of their intellectual tradition to produce accounts of media production and consumption’ (p.155), thus contributing to ‘de-centering the media in media studies’ (p.156). It remains to be seen if translating the experience of media anthropology into digital anthropology will lead to a conceptual re-modeling of either. It may be, as with many of the studies presented in this synthesis, that the conceptual dominance of anthropology will persuade digital studies to borrow anthropological concepts while having no significant influence on the paradigmatic frames of canonical anthropology.