Saturday, November 01, 2008

Interesting book

I started reading the recent book Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria by Brian Larkin, after seeing this 1997 article Bollywood Comes To Nigeria. The book turned out be very interesting and as this blurb says:
"Media technologies were introduced to Nigeria by colonial regimes as part of an attempt to shape political subjects and create modern, urban Africans. Larkin considers the introduction of media along with electric plants and railroads as part of the wider infrastructural project of colonial and postcolonial urbanism. Focusing on radio networks, mobile cinema units, and the building of cinema theaters, he argues that what media come to be in Kano is the outcome of technology’s encounter with the social formations of northern Nigeria and with norms shaped by colonialism, postcolonial nationalism, and Islam. Larkin examines how media technologies produce the modes of leisure and cultural forms of urban Africa by analyzing the circulation of Hindi films to Muslim Nigeria, the leisure practices of Hausa cinemagoers in Kano, and the dynamic emergence of Nigerian video films. His analysis highlights the diverse, unexpected media forms and practices that thrive in urban Africa. Signal and Noise brings anthropology and media together in an original analysis of media’s place in urban life."
Some of Brian Larkin's papers can be found at his Bernard College Faculty site and the book as well as the papers seem useful to those interested in development problems.

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