Introduction (Anthropological Research) (Essay‪)‬

In the 21st, century the relationship between media and anthropology is becoming more comprehensive, if not more complex. This is partly due to the number of media that now exist, but it also speaks of the willingness of researchers to engage these myriad forms and ask a variety of questions about their relationship to culture (Dickey 1997). As media anthropologists continue to work diligently on the different 'media worlds' that exist in various cultures globally, other anthropologists and researchers have recently come to recognise the importance of media in the assortment of 'ethnoscapes' (Appadurai 1991) that individuals occupy. Simultaneously, other academics tangentially related to anthropology have realised the unique insights that the ethnographic approach provides through the emulation of these methods in analysis. This development has been influenced by a number of works that have attempted to interrogate the relationship between media and culture from an anthropological vantage (Askew and Wilk 2002; Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod and Larkin 2002; Rothenbuler and Coman 2005). At present traditional questions about media and culture continue to be posed, but new questions about those who produce media (Mahon 2000) and those who consume it (Abu-Lughod 2005) in a variety of local, national and imagined settings are also introduced. We attempt to continue this trajectory by offering studies that also interrogate the content of various media, the intentions behind this work and the intended or unintended outcomes of studies of the reception of various media. The articles collected for this issue of Critical Arts provide a number of different entrees into the practice of media anthropology while remaining true to the origins of this particular journal by providing a space where academics from a variety of backgrounds and positions may utilise an interdisciplinary approach. It is our position that through an interdisciplinary approach to media and culture some of the most novel approaches to understanding this relationship can occur. The studies collected represent journeys, experiments, and what we would like to offer as possible innovations in the study of media and culture from, or influenced by, an anthropological perspective.