Page 32 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

culturally speci¤c ways of producing meaning in media consumption. Although current
anthropological work on the media moves beyond this rather limited orientation, the
anthropology of media is now still mainly associated with a focus on the mass media,
making up, in a way, for the shortcomings of media studies while at the same time adopt-
ing its conceptual framework. In the two recent handbooks on media and anthropology
(Askew and Wilk 2002; Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002) virtually all contribu-
tions focus on modern electronic mass media, ¤lm, photography, radio, or TV. Although
we sincerely welcome anthropology’s turn to the media in the 1990s, we deem it impor-
tant to realize that the media should not simply be equated with mass media and that, if
we do so, we conceive of the anthropology of media too narrowly.
5. The importance of mass literacy for the fragmentation of religious authority has
been addressed, for example, in Eickelman (1992) and Messick (1993), and in the con-
tributions to Anthropological Quarterly 68 (1995) about print, writing, and the politics
of religious identity in the Middle East. For a discussion of religious authority in relation
to the shift away from orality and literacy, see Probst 1987 (with regard to Africa) and
Goody (1977, 41ff.).
6. In this sense the New York Times article quoted at the beginning of this introduc-
tion is misleading in that it assumes a situation in which religion had not yet found tech-
nology.
7. The production and reception of fatwas (learned opinions), for instance, is very
different under conditions of face-to-face interaction, in the case of radio-muftis broad-
casting to an anonymous public (Messick 1996), or in the case of cybermuftis whose
identity may well be up in the air. Since the mid-1990s there has been a tremendous
growth of Islamic websites, many of which also distribute fatwas.

References

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1. 1993b. Finding a Place for Islam: Egyptian Television Serials and the National
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Alexander, Bobby C. 1997. Televangelism: Redressive Ritual within a Larger Social Drama.
In Rethinking Media, Religion, and Culture, ed. Stewart M. Hoover and Knut Lundby,
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Allievi, Stefano, and Jorge Nielsen, eds. 2003, Muslim Networks and Transnational Com-
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Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Re®ections on the Origins and Spread
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Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Min-
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Arthur, Chris, ed. 1993. Religion and the Media: An Introductory Reader. Cardiff: Univer-
sity of Wales Press.

Introduction 21