WRITING SOCIETY THROUGH MEDIA: Ethnography of a Hindi Daily

The anthropology of journalism has emerged as a rather distinct research interest, committed to investigate news as a form of cultural meaning making by studying occupational practices and professionalism among people in the news business. A scholarly engagement with journalism is of course not new but what anthropologists have contributed to media studies in recent time are detailed ethnographic insights from editorial offices and work routines in various social contexts and in different parts of the world. If journalism previously was a rather thoroughly researched occupation in large cities of Western Europe and the United States, we now also have a growing number of comparative studies of news professionals elsewhere, making us better equipped to grasp the diversities and variability in a globally distributed form of media production.
This is the first ethnographic study of vernacular journalism in India, conducted in the latter half of the 1990s and is centred on the Lucknow journalists. By focusing on a profession that describes – but is simultaneously inscribed in – contemporary Indian society, the book attempts to discuss a professional practice in relation to processes of cultural globalisation, modernity and political imagination.
Contents

1 Writing Society

2 The Present and the Past of Indian Journalism

3 The Cartography of News

4 On the Beat

5 The Journalists

6 Professionals for the People

7 Global Modernity Spelt in Hindi