Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postclolonial India

By Purnima Mankekar

Book Overview

In Screening Culture, Viewing Politics Purnima Mankekar presents a cutting-edge ethnography of television-viewing in India. With a focus on the responses of upwardly-mobile, yet lower-to-middle class urban women to state-sponsored entertainment serials, Mankekar demonstrates how television in India has profoundly shaped women's place in the family, community, and nation, and the crucial role it has played in the realignment of class, caste, consumption, religion, and politics.
Mankekar examines both "entertainment" narratives and advertisements designed to convey particular ideas about the nation. Organizing her study around the recurring themes in these shows--Indian womanhood, family, community, constructions of historical memory, development, integration, and sometimes violence--Mankekar dissects both the messages televised and her New Delhi subjects' perceptions of and reactions to these messages. In the process, her ethnographic analysis reveals the texture of these women's daily lives, social relationships, and everyday practices. Throughout her study, Mankekar remains attentive to the tumultuous historical and political context in the midst of which these programs' integrationalist messages are transmitted, to the cultural diversity of the viewership, and to her own role as ethnographer. In an enlightening epilogue she describes the effect of satellite television and transnational programming to India in the 1990s.
Through its ethnographic and theoretical richness, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics forces a reexamination of the relationship between mass media, social life, and identity and nation formation in non-Western contexts. As such, it represents a major contribution to a number of fields, including media and communication studies, feminist studies, anthropology, South Asian studies, and cultural studies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822323907
• ISBN13: 9780822323907
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Reality well described

I especially liked this book because the author went to the normal people and interviewed them. She does not try to judge them, but rather just honestly describes her experiences. I like her style of writing. Having lived in the place, I would recommend anyone to believe what the author describes.

One of the best ethnographies I have ever read

This is great work. Mankekar is one of the only authors that I have read to clearly express her thoughts about postcoloniality and its influence on cultural production. This book is full of great insights about the construction of Indian identity and the homogenization of differences that particpates in that construction. While, like in many ethnographic work, we don't have a clear sense of how she reached her analysis, Mankekar certainly bases her insights on very detailed fieldwork in Delhi's suburbs. I only wish I had written this book myself.

Interesting study of television

This book provides an indepth look into the effect of television on Indian people, esp women. I thought the book was easy to read and understand, yet still provided insightful commentary and information. The book is based off of research the author did, viewing television programs with lower middle class families. I would recomend this book to anyone interested in India, politics, or the history of communications.