Shimmering Screens Making Media in an Aboriginal Community Jennifer Deger Table of Contents		$22.50 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-4922-7 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4922-8 $67.50 Cloth ISBN: 0-8166-4921-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4921-1
Reconsiders the interplay between Aboriginal communities and media. How does the introduction of modern media influence a community? How does technology coexist with tradition? How do reality and imagination converge in the creation of documentary? Jennifer Deger addresses these questions in her compelling study of one Aboriginal community’s relationship with media. Deger spent several years working with the Yolngu community in Gapuwiyak, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, both as an ethnographic researcher and as a collaborator in the production of media. Shimmering Screens explores the place of technology in Gapuwiyak through discussions about the influence of mainstream television, the changing role of photography in mortuary ceremonies, and the making of local radio and video. A rich ethnographic study, this book examines the productive, and sometimes problematic, conjunctions of technology, culture, and imagination in contemporary Yolngu life. Deger offers a new perspective to ongoing debates regarding “media imperialism.” Reconsidering established assumptions about the links between representation, power, and “the gaze,” she proposes the possibility of a more culturally specific and, ultimately, a more mutual relationship between subject, image, and viewer. “Shimmering Screens is at the leading edge of a disciplinary paradigm shift. Deger conveys a deeply sensitive understanding of the power of images.” —Leonardo “Shimmering Screens makes a valuable contribution to the field of visual anthropology, showing the value of an ethnography of visual forms of communication. But it is ultimately much more than this: it is a profoundly moving book.” —The Australian Journal of Anthropology Jennifer Deger is a research fellow in anthropology, Macquarie University, Australia. 256 pages | 54 halftones | 7 x 10 | 2006 Visible Evidence Series, volume 19 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Prologue Introduction 1. Culture and Complicities: An Indigenous Media Research Project 2. (In)Visible Difference: Framing Questions of Culture, Media, and Technology 3. Tuning In: Mediated Imaginaries and Problems of Deafness and Forgetting 4. On the “Mimetic Faculty” and the Refractions of Culture 5. Taking Pictures: Media Technologies and a Yolngu Politics of Presencing 6. Flowers and Photographs: Death, Memory, and Techno Mimetics 7. Technology, Techne, and Yolngu Videomaking 8. Shimmering Verisimilitudes: Making Video, Managing Images, Manifesting Truths 9. Worlding a Yolngu World: Radiant Visions and the Flash of Recognition Conclusion Notes             Glossary Bibliography Index