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International Media Flows: Global Media and Culture

Moderator: Ian Condry
Aswin Punathambekar SM '03 Xiaochang Li SM '09 Jing Wang Orit Kuritsky SM '09 Ana Domb SM '10: April 23, 2010; Running Time: 1:16:32

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Ian Condry introduces five graduates of the Comparative Media Studies Program—Aswin Punathambekar, Xiaochang Li, Jing Wang, Orit Kuritsky, Ana Domb —in this final panel, who share their views and experiences about the international/global dimension of the program.

‘Comparative’ can be interpreted across time—media through history, media in times of transition or across media—across platforms, across kinds of technological connectivity. Condry asserts that storytelling and other kinds of social practices are no longer constrained “within a ‘silo’ of media,” but continue to move across media forms.

Reinforcing the notion that the world has gotten closer through communication technology, a common theme throughout the discussion is the view that “the local is the new global.” Concerns that globalization would be akin to the “Americanization” or “Westernization” of the creative output have been replaced by a new understanding that media is something everyone participates in, even as it moves around the world undergoing changes along the way. National boundaries no longer exclusively define location, but allow participants to see and change the output with a new objectivity and perspective. “Living within and through difference,” as Punathambekar describes it.

The fascination lies in watching as local media become global media then become local media again. Kuritsky provides an example of mainstream English-language lifestyle programs becoming the common language in cable channels throughout the world; Domb uses tecno brega, music from northern Brazil, to show how local musicians create “centers out of the peripheries,” inserting themselves into the mainstream music scene; Punathambekar describes how the local Indian movie scene in Bombay became the global phenomenon known as “Bollywood;” Wang uses her civic media project, NGO 2.0, to show how grass-roots organizations can gain mainstream media attention.

Underlying the local-global dialogue is the importance of how the Comparative Media Studies program can continue to incorporate these changes into the program, to encourage the collective and collaborative nature of the global-international dialogue.

Lecture Details

Location: E14-633

“Get away from the notion of “first here, then elsewhere” temporal logic. We’re at a point in time where media futures are unfolding simultaneously in many, many different locations in the world. And to recognize that as a serious multiplicity of different times and spaces that we’re inhabiting and to take them on their own terms instead of imposing some established timelines, like ‘global’ . . . or ‘international’. ”

Aswin Punathambekar

About the Speakers

Moderator: Ian Condry

Associate Professor, Comparative Media Studies, MIT

Ian Condry is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in contemporary Japan with a focus on media, popular culture, and globalization. His first book was an ethnography of the Japanese rap music scene, exploring issues of race, gender, language, popular music history, and cultural politics primarily through the perspectives of Japanese musicians. He is interested in the making of global anime cultures, focusing on the creators in Tokyo studios, but also considering wider connections to Asia and the US.

He received his Government B.A. from Harvard in 1987 and his Anthropology, PhD from Yale in 1999.

Aswin Punathambekar SM '03

Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Aswin Punathambekar's research and teaching revolve around globalization, culture industries, new media and media convergence, and public culture. He is currently working on a book that provides a historical and critical account of ongoing changes in the media sector in Bombay and examines the operations of film, television, and dot-com companies as they grapple with the challenges of imagining "Bollywood" as a global cultural industry.

Punathambekar has published articles in Biblio, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies, and has also co-edited an anthology of essays (Global Bollywood, NYU Press, 2008). He blogs about these and other topics at BollySpace 2.0

Xiaochang Li SM '09

Digital Brand Strategist, Weber Shandwick

Xiaochang Li lives and works in NYC where she consults as a a media and branding “mercenary” specializing in globalization, digital media, and “rampant delight.” She received an M.S. degree from the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT.

Jing Wang

S.C. Fang Professor of Chinese Languages & Culture, Foreign Language and Literatures, MIT

Jing Wang received her Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She taught at Duke University for sixteen years before joining the MIT Foreign Language and Literatures faculty.

Wang is the founder and organizer of New Media Action Lab (NMAL) – previously known as the MIT International Initiative of Critical Policy Studies of China. Professor Wang also serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board of Creative Commons China and a recently appointed member on the Advisory Board of Wikimedia Foundation. In spring 2009 she launched an NGO 2.0 project (“Chinese NGOs in the Web 2.0 Environment") undertaken in collaboration with two Chinese universities, Ogilvy & Mather China, and three Chinese NGO partner organizations.

Orit Kuritsky SM '09

Scriptwriter and editor

Orit Kuritsky is a scriptwriter, content editor, and creative director with experience working in Israel. She is a 2009 graduate of the CMS program.

Ana Domb SM '10

Qualitative Researcher, The Meme

Ana Domb does user experience and cultural research at THE MEME Design and has worked as a journalist, film, and music producer, and cereal mascot. Her work has always revolved around the creativity and audiences. In her native Costa Rica, she co-founded Cinergia, the first film production fund designed to stimulate media activity in Central America and Cuba.

Her Master’s thesis was an ethnographic exploration into the symbolic currencies and the value of audience participation in Brazil’s Tecnobrega. She recently obtained a MS degree from the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT where she worked with the Convergence Culture Consortium.