Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and the Experience of Social Space

An "electronic elsewhere," as Berry (film and television studies, U. of London, UK), Kim (cinema studies, Korean National U. of Arts, South Korea), and Spigel (screen cultures, Northwestern U., US) formulate the term for the purpose of this collection of 12 papers, refers to the idea that places are not just represented in the media, but are produced. The papers explore how media technologies contribute to the spatial relations of modern/postmodern life in a variety of contexts and lie at the intersection between the disciplines of film and media studies and cultural and social geography. Topics include the creation of the virtual home online, utopian discourses of the role of media technology in the "smart home," the avatars created by women at online pregnancy sites as challenges to the established imaginaries of the female body, new documentary practices and forms in China and their relation to the public arena, satellite television in Algeria and the politicization of the neighborhood and home, the role of the media in producing nationalism and the communalist violence between Hindus and Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, Turkish satellite television and the constitution of European Turkish audiences as a public, the media discourses surrounding the London Underground (subway system), mediations of New York's "Ground Zero" site, and mediated imaginations of Tokyo as global city. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)