Description
Book SynopsisIn
The Voice and its Doubles Daniel Fisher explores the production of Aboriginal Australian audio media, showing how the mediatization of the Aboriginal voice provides the means to representing and linking Indigenous communities, maintaining distinct linguistic and cultural traditions, and gaining access to Australian political life.
Trade Review"Fisher’s writing will be valuable for all kinds of classes in the anthropology of communication, political anthropology, sound and media studies, and ethnomusicology. Radio producers and students of media production will enjoy the stories of festivals and radio production studios and the lives of young Aboriginal workers and their mentors. Fisher’s dedicated ethnographic work serves as an example and model for anthropologists working with the social and political complexities of media production." -- Rodney A. Garrett * Reviews in Anthropology *
"
The Voice and Its Doubles expands and challenges our ideas about Aboriginal cultural expression. It helps us (especially non-Aboriginal readers) to hear Aboriginal radio and music as a hidden and powerful language. It expands our notion of what is possible in ethnographic study—the ethnography of the staged voice. And it challenges us to think about the political power embedded in everyday phenomena, such as radio talkback or the oversaturation of country music hits, and demands that we understand the politics embedded in the production of the voice." -- Toby Martin * Anthropological Forum *
"Fisher has made impressive work of characterizing the messy strands of [an] unstable and transforming social field.
The Voice and Its Doubles makes for compelling reading, not only for students of media but for anyone interested in grappling with the contemporary contested politics of Aboriginality." -- Melinda Hinkson * American Ethnologist *
". . .
The Voice and Its Doubles is an eloquent, thoughtful, and original work of anthropology. It makes a valuable contribution to sound studies, the anthropology of media, Aboriginal studies, and deserves to be read also by those compelled by broader questions with regard to critical Indigeneity."
-- Jennifer Deger * The Australian Journal of Anthropology *
". . .
The Voice and Its Doubles is a thoughtful, well-written, and beautifully printed book that is timely in challenging readers to understand the important and often-marginalized work of Indigenous Australians in their attempts to reinforce social cohesion and build better opportunities for their communities through the medium of radio." -- Aaron Corn * Anthropological Quarterly *
Table of ContentsAcronyms vii
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue. Staging the Voice xiii
Introduction 1
1. Mediating Kinship: Radio's Cultural Poetics 43
2. Aboriginal Country 80
3. From the Studio to the Street 114
4. From Radio Skid Row to the Reconciliation Station 143
5. Speaking For or Selling Out? Dilemmas of Aboriginal Cultural Brokerage 182
6. A Body for the Voice 222
Conclusion. An Immanent Alterity 250
Notes 267
References 287
Index 307
