The Anthropology of Media: A Reader is an unprecedented collection of articles that, taken together, define this emergent field. Anthropologists - traditionally hailed as interpreters of cultural "Others" - no longer serve as the primary interlocutors for the communities with which they work. Owing to the spread of mass media and new forms of expression and communication, anthropologists have been displaced by CNN, Hollywood, the Internet, and other global media in presenting and representing unfamiliar cultures to the majority of our world. People everywhere are seeing and hearing themselves and others in new ways, and have picked up these media to use for their own purposes.

The Anthropology of Media offers a critical overview of how mass media represent and construct both Western and non-Western cultures. By drawing on the recent explosion of culture and media studies and moving beyond earlier anthropological emphases on ethnographic film, this volume heralds the emergence of a new field and brings its key literature together for the first time.