Page 310 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Notes 299

60 For a definitive review of Cultural Studies theory, see Turner (1990). I do not
wish to ignore a very significant dimension of much of Cultural Studies: its
historical-materialist roots. While the anthropological approach I will follow in
this book focuses on practice and on the agency of audiences in determining
meanings and outcomes, the question of determination is far from settled, and
an important continuing question for Cultural Studies (see next note).
61 See the debate published as Garnham (1995) and Grossberg (1995).
62 Lila Abu-Lughod has assessed this turn from an anthropological perspective in
an essay focusing on some of the initial efforts by media scholars, which she
found too theoretically, and not enough anthropologically, driven. Abu-Lughod
(1997).
63 For a complete discussion, see Moores (1993) and Bird (2003).
64 Albanese (1998).
65 For literature reviews of these trends, see Clark and Hoover (1997) and Clark
(2002).
66 Winston (2000).
67 Clark (2003).
68 Rosenthal (2004).
69 Hangen (2002).
70 Schmalzbaur (2003).
71 McCloud (2004).
72 Mitchell (2000).
73 Hendershot (2004).
74 Morgan (1996).
75 Of course, the same can be said for some earlier “classics” in media and reli-
gion studies, including Horsfield (1984), Hoover (1988), Schultze (1990),
Frankl (1987), and Peck (1993).
76 Herberg (1983).
77 For the classic statement, see Lerner (1964). In one chapter, Lerner describes the
worldview of a traditional tribal elder, conveying with some sensitivity the fact
that such people would soon find themselves caught up in the relentless march
of modernity, something that they would struggle to understand and account
for. The implicit message: such worldviews would soon be a thing of the past as
modernity brushed aside such (religiously modulated) ideas and values.
Ironically, that passage referred to Iran.
78 For a more complete discussion of the emergence of religion into journalistic
discourse, see Hoover (1998).
79 As is obvious from the discussion in the introduction, this is not necessarily a
new phenomenon. However, it does seem to be more and more common. On
the US side of the Atlantic, for example, much has been made of the involve-
ment of prominent actors such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise in the Church
of Scientology. There was a good deal of press attention in 2003 to the story
that the Australian actor Mel Gibson is involved, along with his father, in the
development of a conservative Catholic movement. Meanwhile, British news-
papers reported in the summer of the same year that the singer Madonna, her
husband, and a number of other American and British celebrities were involved
in founding a new London headquarters for a center devoted to the teachings
of the Kabbalah (Observer, Sunday, 23 May 2003, p. 3).
80 I described them as 1) a concern with ideology and power; 2) a concern with
the “effects” of media on religion or vice versa; and 3) a concern with media as
a center of Durkheimian social meaning and solidarity.
81 I would argue, by the way, that these limitations are also present in other
approaches, including more positivist, empiricist, and quantitative ones.