Abstract
Media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, Mark Poster, Arjun Appadurai (McLuhan 1967, Manuel 2001; Poster 1995; Appadurai 1996) and others have challenged the Frankfurt School’s denunciation of the electronic media as instruments of control by demonstrating that the digital media and satellite technologies can be democratizing, through increasing connectivity and accessibility across geographical boundaries. The debates on the new media in the new millennium have largely focused on concerns about the growing digital divide that excludes a large proportion of the global population in constructing the new mediascapes that connect global, cosmopolitan peoples. However, an increasing number of studies, such as those of Peter Manuel (2001) on Cassette Culture and Mark Poster (1995) on the Internet have successfully demonstrated how the new digital technologies can, in fact, lead to sonic democratization and to the expansion of the public sphere to include local peoples in addition to cosmopolitans. The global flows of Bhangra, a hybrid British music derived from a Punjabi harvest dance of the same name, and the convergence of multiple ethnic, caste, gendered, and sectarian subjectivities in the musical production of the Jat cultivator caste and the performing caste of mirasis, offers a classic case of the appropriation of new media and technologies by non-cosmopolitan players. Bhangra’s production, circulation, and consumption serves as the textbook example of the impact of digital technologies on the politics of culture and their role in altering relations of power between and within nations, classes, castes, ethnicities, and regions.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity atLarge: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Manuel, P. 2001. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India. Chicago: Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology.
McLuhan, M. 1967. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. New York: Bantam.
Poster, M. 1995. The Second Media Age. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Poster, M. 2001. “CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere.” What’s the Matter with the Internet? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Anjali Gera Roy
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roy, A.G. (2010). The Punjab Peasant and Digital Culture. In: Kalantzis-Cope, P., Gherab-Martín, K. (eds) Emerging Digital Spaces in Contemporary Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299047_43
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299047_43
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-32397-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-29904-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Business & Management CollectionBusiness and Management (R0)