The classic image of a reader is someone alone with their eyes on a book, ignoring the world around them. But Janice Radway argues that the communities we’re in can shape what we read and how we read. Reading is not something that only takes place in our individual minds, but an activity that influences and is influenced by our social world. From prison reading groups to caregivers who read to get a break from their domestic duties, people read with agendas and desires they share with others in similar situations.
Tag: anthropology
When you think of an expert or specialist, you might picture a scientist with a lab coat and test tubes. Science likes to claim that its knowledge applies everywhere – like gravity or evolution – which makes scientific knowledge superior to local knowledge about one specific place. But Paige West points out that in practice scientists rely heavily on local people’s knowledge, for example the specialist knowledge that indigenous people in Papua New Guinea have about the fish, plants and ecosystems of their area. In fact, such local knowledge has proven to be crucial for successfully combating major problems like climate change.
For many people, binge-watching is a guilty pleasure. In the Golden Age of Television, we might feel guilty because great tv shows deserve to be watched slowly and thoughtfully, not rushed through. If we’re just watching for what happens next in the story, we’ll probably miss out on subtler kinds of artistry. But Michaela Bronstein wants to defend bingeing, and points out that people had similar worries a hundred years ago about the novel: concerns about binge-reading then and binge-watching today reflect a shift from viewing each medium as just entertainment to viewing it as high art.