Channeling Cultures

Description

Television plays a very important role in constructing and presenting images of Indian modernity. Channeling Cultures brings together scholars from various disciplines to locate television within multiple histories of the nation as well as current trajectories in global culture and politics. Building on analytical frameworks of postcoloniality, citizenship, democracy, development, globalization and consumerism, this volume addresses questions in televisual form, genre, identity, politics, affect, gender, body and sexuality, and explores regional, national, and global itineraries of Indian television. Focusing on the genres of news, reality show, and soap opera, the book interrogates some of the standard assumptions of television studies and more broadly global media studies. It provides fresh perspectives on the transition of Indian television from a state monopoly to a market-driven system and liberalization's nuanced relationships with Indian media in general. The arguments invite the reader to critically engage with many theoretical perspectives ranging from political economy to cultural studies that energize the field of research on Indian television. The book will interest all those looking to critically engage with television, media theory, and popular culture.  

Table of contents

CONTENTS

Foreword by Peter Ronald deSouza
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction
Biswarup Sen and Abhijit Roy

1. TV after Television Studies
Recasting Questions of Audiovisual Form
Abhijit Roy

2. Televisual Temporalities and the Affective
Organization of Everyday Life
Purnima Mankekar

3. Television, Narrative Identity, and Social Imaginaries
A Hermeneutic Approach
Sanjay Asthana

4. Spaces of Television
Rethinking the Public-Private Divide in Postcolonial India
Shanti Kumar

5. From Clients to Consumers
The Missing Citizens among the Indian Television Audience
Dipankar Sinha

6. Television News and an Indian Infotainment Sphere
Daya Kishan Thussu

7. When Live News was Too Dangerous
The Early History of Satellite TV in India
Nalin Mehta

8. NDTV 24×7 Remix
Mohammad Afzal Guru Frame by Frame
John Hutnyk

9. Big Brother, Bigg Boss
Reality Television as Global Form
Biswarup Sen

10. The Saffron Hues of Gender and Agency on Indian Television
Santanu Chakrabarti

11. Sange Thakun
Bangla News Channels and Media-citizenry
Nilanjana Gupta

12. Tears, Talk, and Play
A Window to Gender and Sexuality on Tamil Television
Uma Vangal

Afterword by Arvind Rajagopal

Index
Notes on Editors and Contributors