COMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND CONFRONTATION (Communication Processes Series)

Description

The third and final volume in the series on Communication Processes, Communication, Culture and Confrontation is a bold attempt at breaking conceptual and methodological impasses which stifle communication studies. Departing from established frameworks and dated technological metaphors such as ‘transmission’, the present volume explores and analyzes different forms of communication media in relation to the cultural configurations and contending forces that permeate them.

Positioned at the interface of culture and communication studies, the discourse in the book engages with multiple voices, bringing together academic scholars and grassroot social animators. Exploring seven different popular cultural forms, such as rituals, songs, narratives, calendar art, pamphlets, and so on, through 18 case studies, it goes on to suggest a complex model of communication. In this framework, cultures cannot be viewed as items exchanged in the hegemonic space of global communication. Cultural configurations display themselves as ‘evolutive’ forms of social communication that weave human beings into collectives and bind these collectives with one another—all permeated with the power parameter. Cultures ‘perform’ viable collectives when they come to be apprehended in a field of contending forces: a milieu of exchange, encounter, confrontation and possibly conflict.

This volume will be invaluable for students of communication, culture studies, sociology and journalism.

Bernard Bel, a computer scientist with an electronics background, pioneered real-time melodic movement analysis for Indian music, alongside rule-based drumming modeling. He earned a 1990 PhD in theoretical computer science and undertook projects in musicology and anthropology. Co-founding workshops and the Speech Prosody Special Interest Group, he focused on prosody and language representation. Now retired, he dedicates time to healthcare research, computational musicology, and a unique corpus of grindmill songs via People’s Archive of Rural India.

Jan Brouwer is an anthropologist, author of The Makers of the World (OUP) which will be enriched with a new chapter for its 2nd edition by Primus Books soon. His current work Business and Culture with co-author Dr Mark Avery and a monograph on Kodava (Coorg) Culture: Interface Between the Material and the Mental. He can be reached at indiaabc.in, abc43dh@gmail.com.

Biswajit Das is Professor and founding Director of Centre for Culture, Media & Governance. He has over four decades of teaching and research experiences in the field of theory, method and history of Communication in India. His latest publications include Gandhian Thought and Communication(ed.) (Sage, 2020), Caste, Communication and Power (ed.) (Sage, 2021). Seeing South Asia: Visuals beyond Borders (ed.) (Routledge, 2022), Korean Wave in South Asia: Transcultural flow, fandom and Identity (ed.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and Pedagogy in Practice: Project-Based Learning in Media policy & Governance (ed.) (Bloomsbury,2022).

Vibodh Parthasarathi maintains a multidisciplinary interest in media policy/business/history. Associate Professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, he has been a visiting scholar at University of Queensland, KU Leuven, University of Helsinki, and IIT Bombay, and an affiliate at Lund University and Central European University. Widely published in leading scientific journals, including anchoring several special issues, his edited volumes include Pedagogy in Practice (Bloomsbury, 2022) and The Indian Media Economy (OUP, 2018). Currently, he is Associate Editor of the Journal of Digital Media and Policy.

Guy Poitevin (1934-2004) was a social activist and scholar. He was the Director of the Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences (CCRSS) in Pune which he had founded in 1982.