Radio Fields: Anthropology and Wireless Sound in the 21st Century

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“In a series of striking case studies, Radio Fields reveals the vibrancy and diversity of wireless technologies across an enormous geographic range. From radio that constitutes the nation to the pirate, religious, indigenous and & free radio that provide alternatives to it, the essays draw out the breadth of contemporary radio practices. Mixing together technological analyses of voice, liveness, and immediacy with their political effects, the volume shows how radio is felt as well as heard, and brings out the entanglements of audition, religion, technology, and politics that makes up the social life of radio around the world.

“–Brian Larkin, Barnard College, Columbia University

“Its potential for creating renewed interest and research on radio’s relationship with culture and social change has been carefully cultivated, and that may ultimately be a much more significant achievement.”–Peter Hart-Brinson “Mobilization”

“Radio Fields crackles and buzzes with the social life of radio and the noise of an anthropology of close listening. I can’t imagine a more well-theorized and deeply grounded entrée to the sensory mediation politics of radiophony in global public culture.”–Steven Feld, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Music, University of New Mexico

“Radiofields has been recognized as a stimulating subject of research by a handful of interdisciplinary and regionally focused volumes, but RadioFields represents a concentrated effort to insert an anthropological voice into their discussions…Radio Fields is poised to inspire further research.”– “Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute”

Lucas Bessire is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma.

Daniel Fisher is a lecturer in Anthropology at Macquarie University.

Faye Ginsburg is Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University. Ginsburg is cofounder of the NYU Center for Disability Studies and author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community and coauthor of Disability Worlds.