The Anthropology of Radio Fields

Abstract

This review surveys a resurgent ethnographic interest in radio media in order to identify the contours and potentials of an emergent anthropology of radio. We first locate such scholarship in relation to long-standing questions about the nature and power of technological mediation, as well as voice, sound, and aurality. This allows us to reveal how conceptualizations of a singular ontology of radio often implicitly underwrite most accounts of its social power. Finally, we draw attention to how recent but rarely consolidated anthropological efforts to engage ethnographically with radio technology and its sensorial affordances require critically rethinking the relationships among radio, ontology, and mediation. In doing so, this review advances a new working definition of radio: not as an old medium on the verge of obsolescence, but as a vibrant domain for acoustically resignifying the ontological that merits sustained ethnographic exploration.

“We’re looking out through a window to a field of weeds and sand and stones”: The Stadium Broadcast, a Radio Memorial

“…At the same time, however, the sounds and transmission patterns of radio stations have changed comparatively little since the earthquakes. Prequake radio stations continue to broadcast with little change in transmitter location, evidencing the medium’s “rugged and inexpensive materialities” (Bessire & Fisher, 2013, p. 364). Sound and radio waves are articulated by a complex system of transmitters, microphones, music sources, and people, located in broader structures of ownership and control (Fuller, 2005), in which the physical and auditory configurations of radio are intertwined.…”

“…In that sense, the Stadium Broadcast was produced by the February 2011 earthquake, the empty disused stadium, the studio and sleeping caravans, the networks of online and broadcast transmission, and the artist networks that brought Field Theory to that location for that project. These are elements of what Bessire and Fisher (2013) refer to as “radio fields—the specific constellations of cultural, political, and socioeconomic ‘relations of force’ [. .…”

La radio en la investigación comunicativa en España: una línea minoritaria para un medio mayoritario

“…De hecho, pese a la familiaridad y proximidad de la radio señalada por Bessier y Fisher (2013), solo se han podido recuperar dos estudios relativos a la investigación radiofónica:…”

Spectral technologies, sonic motility, and the paranormal in Chile

“…But this emphasis on the motivations of the voice, be it in a political context or through radio, begs several questions. In relation to radio, for instance, Bessire and Fisher (2013) argue that, “radio is an action potential that expands the very parameters of the being-in-the-world it presumably channels” (365). In their view, we are best off not thinking of the homogenizing potential of radio voices, but of “radio fields” (Bessire and Fisher, 2013: 366), which are always, although not only, “ontological fields.” Indeed, what happens when the modified radio device, such as the Ghostbox, is used to open up communicative possibilities to worlds beyond the human, to a plurality of voices that are constructed from the “noise” of the radio?…”

“…In relation to radio, for instance, Bessire and Fisher (2013) argue that, “radio is an action potential that expands the very parameters of the being-in-the-world it presumably channels” (365). In their view, we are best off not thinking of the homogenizing potential of radio voices, but of “radio fields” (Bessire and Fisher, 2013: 366), which are always, although not only, “ontological fields.” Indeed, what happens when the modified radio device, such as the Ghostbox, is used to open up communicative possibilities to worlds beyond the human, to a plurality of voices that are constructed from the “noise” of the radio? Here, what Bessire and Fisher (2013) say is the “conflation of media and ontology” (365) occurs on a practical basis in the manipulation of the devices themselves, with unpredictable results.…”