Media Policymaking at the Core of Anthropological Concerns in South Asia: Community Radio Policies in South Asia: A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach by Preeti Raghunath, (2020). Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Charusmita C

doi:10.16997/wpcc.1022

Abstract

Preeti Raghunath’s monograph Community Radio Policies in South Asia examines the Community Radio policymaking process in four South Asian countries – India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka – on Community Radios. This cross-disciplinary project draws from multiple traditions ranging from political economy and history to grounded theory and anthropology and proposes a new theoretical paradigm – the Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach – to study policy formulation in postcolonial societies with a ground-up, holistic perspective in South Asia. The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their series ‘Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change’. This review of her book discusses her argument and treatment of ethnographic material in the context of scholarship on media anthropology.

Highlights

Anthropology and Media Policymaking In recent decades, the anthropology of media in South Asia has witnessed scholarship on audiences, media production, visual and material culture, and media use
Use of anthropology in media policymaking is an even more niche area within this body of scholarship, carrying with it an enormous potential to contribute to the understandings of participatory communication, administrative implementations, and decision-making among policy actors
In chapter four, the author shows how an ‘informal venue of the tea party hosted after the regional convention ended emerges, over the two decades, as a prime feature of community radio policymaking in Nepal and the region broadly’ (158) and how these informal everyday locations are, deliberative spaces that provide for interaction amongst diverse policy actors

Summary

Introduction

Anthropology and Media Policymaking In recent decades, the anthropology of media in South Asia has witnessed scholarship on audiences, media production, visual and material culture, and media use. The book dispels the conventional notions of media anthropology studies in our minds to make space for a refreshing critical policy ethnography that allows for reflexive engagement with field data from four countries.

Results

Conclusion