Diyakronik Medya Etnografisi: Toplumsal Değişimden Fiili Toplumsal Değişimlere

Year 2017, Volume: 4 Issue: 1 - Ethnography, 19 - 43, 15.06.2017

John Postill

Abstract

Bu makalede medya ve toplumsal değişimler gibi zorlu bir meselenin etnografik olarak nasıl incelenebileceği sorusuyla ilgileniyorum. Bu amaçla bu konuya odaklanan medya etnografisi literatürünün yanı sıra Malezya ve İspanya’da yürüttüğüm kendi çalışmalarımdan da yararlanıyorum. Etnografların medya ve toplumsal değişime dair disiplinlerarası incelemelere katkı sunabilecek bir konuma sahip olduklarını ileri sürüyorum. Öte yandan bunu başarabilmek için mutlaka dikkatimizi medya ve “toplumsal değişim”den (yani her şeyin sürekli değişim halinde olduğu yönündeki tespitten) medyanın fiilî toplumsal değişimlerle ilişkisi bağlamında incelenmesine çevirmemiz gerekiyor—1970’li yıllardan 2000’lere Kuala Lumpur’da yaşanan banliyöleşme, İspanya’da Franco sonrası dönemde ahlâkın sekülerleşmesi ya da yine İspanya’da yeni indignados partilerinin 2015 yerel seçimlerinde gösterdikleri başarı bu tür değişimlere örnek teşkil edebilir. Etnografik anlamda şimdiki zamandan geçmiş zamana—muhtemel değişimlerden fiilî değişimlere—doğru böylesi bir geçiş toplumsal tarih adına etnografiden vazgeçmemizi gerektirmez. Aksine bu tür bir yaklaşım fiilî toplumsal değişimlerin aşama aşama ilerleyen biyografik mantığını kavrayabilecek yeni “diyakronik etnografi” türlerine ihtiyaç duyar. Bunun üstesinden gelebilmek için medya pratikleri, medya biçimleri ve faillerine dair sadece çok-alanlı (Marcus, 1995) değil aynı zamanda çok-zamanlı saha çalışmaları yürütmemiz gerekir. 

Keywords

medya, toplumsal değişim, diyakronik etnografi, medya etnografisi

The Diachronic Ethnography of Media: From Social Changing to Actual Social Changes

Abstract

In this article I address the challenge of how to study media and actual social changes ethnographically. To do so I draw from the relevant media ethnography literature, including my own research in Malaysia and Spain. I argue that ethnographers are well positioned to contribute to the interdisciplinary study of media and social change. However, to do so we must first shift our current focus on media and ‘social changing’ (i.e. how things are always changing) to the study of media in relation to actual social changes, e.g. the suburbanisation of Kuala Lumpur in the 1970s to 2000s, the secularisation of morality in post-Franco Spain, or the success of new indignados parties in Spain’s 2015 local government elections. This shift from the ethnographic present continuous to the past simple – a move from potential to actual changes – does not require that we abandon ethnography in favour of social history. Rather, it demands new forms of ‘diachronic ethnography’ that can handle the biographical, phase-by-phase logic of actual social changes. It also requires that we conduct not only multi-sited (Marcus, 1995) but also multi-timed fieldwork on specific congeries of media practices, forms and agents. 

Keywords

media, social change;, diachronic ethnography, media ethnography

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