Transnational Television Cultural Identity And Change

This significant book is based on intensive fieldwork in Korba, a little known multi-project industrial area in Chhattisgarh. It describes the impact of piecemeal industrial development, and its consequent environmental degradation on the lives of the original inhabitants of the region./-//-/This timely and thought-provoking book about the impact of multiple industrial projects on the environment and on the lives of the local people questions the concept of ‘development’ that benefits a few at the cost of many.

This book is the first to offer a global perspective on the unique contemporary media phenomenon of transnational television channels. It is also the first to compare their impact in different regions of the globe. Revealing great richness and diversity across some of the world's main geocultural regions (Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Greater China and Latin America), international contributors with in-depth industry knowledge examine the place of these channels in the process of globalization, their impact on the nation-state and on regional culture and politics. The book also considers audiences and geocultural TV markets, providing new ways of thinking about the emerging transnational media order.

Although television has developed into a major agent of the transnational and global flow of information and entertainment, television historiography and scholarship largely remains a national endeavour, partly due to the fact that television has been understood as a tool for the creation of national identity. But the breaking of the quasi-monopoly of public service broadcasters all over Europe in the 1980s has changed the television landscape, and cross-border television channels - with the help of satellite and the Internet - have catapulted the relatively closed television nations into the universe of globalized media channels. At least, this is the picture painted by the popular meta-narratives of European television history. Transnational Television History asks us to re-evaluate the function of television as a medium of nation-building in its formative years and to reassess the historical narrative that insists that European television only became transnational with the emergence of more commercial services and new technologies from the 1980s. It also questions some common assumptions in television historiography by offering some alternative perspectives on the complex processes of transnational circulation of television technology, professionals, programmes and aesthetics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Media History.

The face of U.S. television broadcasting is changing in ways that are both profound and subtle. Global Television uncovers the particular processes by which the international circulation of culture takes place, while addressing larger cultural issues such as identity formation. Focusing on how the process of internationally made programming such as Highlander: The Series and The Odyssey—amusingly dubbed “Europudding” and “commercial white bread”—are changing television into a transnational commodity, Barbara Selznick considers how this mode of production—as a means by which transnational television is created—has both economic rewards and cultural benefits as well as drawbacks. Global Television explores the ways these international co-productions create a “global” culture as well as help form a national identity. From British “brand” programming (e.g, Cracker) that airs on A&E in the U.S. to children’s television programs such as Plaza Sesamo, and documentaries, Selznick indicates that while the style, narrative, themes and ideologies may be interesting, corporate capitalism ultimately affects and impacts these programs in significant ways.

For 'ethnic minorities' in Britain, broadcast TV provides powerful representations of national and 'western' culture. In Southall - which has the largest population of 'South Asians' outside the Indian sub-continent - the VCR furnishes Hindi films, 'sacred soaps' such as the Mahabharata, and family videos of rites of passage, as well as mainstream American films. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change examines how TV and video are being used to recreate cultural traditions within the 'South Asian' diaspora, and how they are also catalysing cultural change in this local community. Marie Gillespie explores how young people negotiate between the parental and peer, local and global, national and international contexts and culturess which traverse their lives. Articulating their own preoccupations with television narratives, they both reaffirm and challenge parental traditions, formulating their own aspirations towards cultural change. Marie Gillespie's in-depth study offers an invaluable survey of how cultures are shaped and changed through people's recreative reception of the media.

In an interactive and densely connected world, transnational communication has become a central feature of everyday life. Taking account of a variety of media formats and different regions of the world, Adrian Athique provides a much-needed critical exploration of conceptual approaches to media reception on a global scale. Engaging both the historical foundations and contemporary concerns of audience research, Athique prompts us to reconsider our contemporary media experience within a transnational frame. In the process, he provides valuable insights on culture and belonging, power and imagination. Beautifully written and strongly argued, Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale will be essential reading for students and teachers of global media, culture and communications.

Explores the role of media in the construction of cultural identities.

Environmental and Climate Change in South and Southeast Asia offers a cultural studies' perspective on how local cultures cope with climate changes and environmental crises. The focus is on Hindu India, Islamic Indonesia, Buddhist Thailand, and Himalayan glaciers.