"While much has been written about the growing influence of television and the Internet on modern warfare, little is known about the relationship between media and nation building. This book explores, for the first time, this relationship by means of a paradigmatic case of successful nation building
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: Malaysia. Based on extended fieldwork and historical research, the author follows the diffusion, adoption, and social uses of media among the Iban of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo and demonstrates the wide-ranging process of nation building that has accompanied the Iban adoption of radio, clocks, print media, and television. In less than four decades, Iban longhouses ('villages under one roof') have become media organizations shaped by the official ideology of Malaysia, a country hastily formed in 1963 by conjoining four disparate territories." (Publisher description)
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"In this groundbreaking work, Brian Larkin provides a history and ethnography of media in Nigeria, asking what media theory looks like when Nigeria rather than a European nation or the United States is taken as the starting point. Concentrating on the Muslim city of Kano in the north of Nigeria, Lar
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kin charts how the material qualities of technologies and the cultural ambitions they represent feed into the everyday experiences of urban Nigeria. Media technologies were introduced to Nigeria by colonial regimes as part of an attempt to shape political subjects and create modern, urban Africans. Larkin considers the introduction of media along with electric plants and railroads as part of the wider infrastructural project of colonial and postcolonial urbanism. Focusing on radio networks, mobile cinema units, and the building of cinema theaters, he argues that what media come to be in Kano is the outcome of technology's encounter with the social formations of northern Nigeria and with norms shaped by colonialism, postcolonial nationalism, and Islam. Larkin examines how media technologies produce the modes of leisure and cultural forms of urban Africa by analyzing the circulation of Hindi films to Muslim Nigeria, the leisure practices of Hausa cinemagoers in Kano, and the dynamic emergence of Nigerian video films. His analysis highlights the diverse, unexpected media forms and practices that thrive in urban Africa." (Publisher description)
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"The study showed that, in 2005, the contribution of the copyright-based industries (CIs) to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Ukraine amounted to 2.85 per cent or 12,583.54 million UAH. At the same time the total contribution of the core CIs constituted 1.54 per cent or 6,815.61 million UAH. The
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contribution of CIs to gross national production in 2005 amounted to 3.47 per cent, or 36,336.71 million UAH. The contribution of the core CIs to gross production constituted 2.07 per cent, or 21,714.34 million UAH. The total number of employees in the CIs in 2005 amounted to 360,412 persons or 1.91 per cent of the total working population of Ukraine." (Summary, page 4)
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"South Africa offers a rich context for the study of the interrelationship between the media and identity. The essays collected here explore the many diverse elements of this interconnection, and give fresh focus to topics that scholarship has tended to overlook, such as the pervasive impact of tabl
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oid newspapers. Interrogating contemporary theory, the authors shed new light on how identities are constructed through the media, and provide case studies that illustrate the complex process of identity renegotiation taking place currently in post-apartheid South Africa. The contributors include established scholars as well as many new voices. Collectively, they represent some of South Africas finest media analysts pooling skills to grapple with one of the countrys most vexing issues: who are we?" (Publisher description)
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"The total value added of the copyright-based industries in Colombia reached Col$9.5 millions of millions in 2005 (approximately 4,800 million US dollars) from Col$5.7 millions of millions in 2000. As a percentage of GDP, the CBI represented an average of 3.3 per cent throughout the period. In real
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terms, i.e. discounting price increases, the value added of the CBI grew 29 per cent in five years from Col$2.4 millions of millions in 2000 to Col$3.1 millions of millions in 2005 (at 1994 constant prices). During the period analyzed, the CBI had an average participation in GDP of 3.3 per cent. This rate is similar to the share of electricity and gas, slightly higher than the contribution of crude oil and natural gas extraction and more than double that of coffee and coal. The latter comparison emphasizes the importance of the CBI in national output since coffee and coal are two important Colombian exports, which have a significant share in the global market. The composition of the CBI is as follows: the core industries represent 56 per cent of the total value added generated by these economic activities, followed by interdependent (24 per cent), non-dedicated support (13 per cent) and partial copyright industries (8 per cent)." (Executive summary, page 10)
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"This is the first book to offer a systematic overview of the themes, topics and methodologies in the emerging dialogue between anthropologists studying mass communication and media analysts turning to ethnography and cultural analysis. Drawing on dozens of semiotic, ethnographic and cross-cultural
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studies of mass media, it offers new insights into the analysis of media texts, offers models for the ethnographic study of media production and consumption, and suggests approaches for understanding media in the modern world system. Placing the anthropological study of mass media into historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book examines how work in cultural studies, sociology, mass communication and other disciplines has helped shape the re-emerging interest in media by anthropologists." (Publisher description)
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"James Currey was the editor in charge of the African Writers Series (AWS) at Heinemann Educational Books from 1967 to 1984. Together with his colleagues Henry Chakava in Kenya, Aig Higo in Nigeria, and Keith Sambrook in London they published the first 270 titles in the series. This fascinating and
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highly entertaining book tells the story how they did it, and how publishing relationships were developed and nurtured with a very large number of African writers, including some of the continent’s now foremost writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nuruddin Farah, Alex la Guma, Bessie Head, Dennis Brutus, Dambudzo Marechera, and many more. The focus is on the first twenty-five years of the series from 1962 to 1988. Rich in anecdotal material on many of Africa’s best known writers, the book offers a narrative how the now famous series came together. It “provides evidence of the ways in which estimation by a publisher of the work of writers grows and, sadly on occasion, diminishes”, and gives examples of “how the views of publishers and their advisers emerge as they consider a new manuscript, and then coalesce and change as they assess further work by the same author.” The book is interspersed with archival photographs and portraits of African writers by George Hallett, whose photographs were used on many of the books’ covers. Much of the contents consist of extracts from correspondence between James Currey and the numerous writers that were published in the series, as well as correspondence with literary agents, copy editors, correspondence with Currey’s colleagues at (then) Heinemann offices in Kenya and Nigeria, together with extracts from readers’ reports. The various chapters vividly capture the drama and energy of the whole enterprise: the publishing risks involved, dealing with writers egos and temperaments, their financial needs, their perceptions about publication rights issues, and their sometimes unrealistic expectations of sales and royalty earnings." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 1331)
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