Transnational Television, Cultural Identity, and Change: When STAR Came to India by Melissa Butcher Review by: Sara

Dickey The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Aug., 2005), pp. 774-776 Published by: Association for Asian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25075871 . Accessed: 24/01/2012 14:11
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Association for Asian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Asian Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

774

THE JOURNAL OF ASIAN

STUDIES

insults; and stories of employers using threats of deportation and obtain docility and compliance" (p. 125).
Based on these analyses and historical accounts, the text

"to discipline
offers an

the workers
cri

important

normative discourses and media practices that discriminate tique of present-day as in Canada them "normal" Sikhs families or as against by portraying lacking out the "home these of fundamentalist perpetually playing politics country." Against the book argues that, rather than being natural forms of identity against portrayals, which a postcolonial community may be judged, both the "normal" family and the that "correspond to historical of colonialism "homeland" are themselves products as as in in well the socio-economic characteristics changes changes immigration policy (p. 193). the enduring significance of colonialism within postcoloniality, Demonstrating in reductive title, presents a highly nuanced The Sikhs Canada, despite its deceptively and critical analysis of the historical and social forces that have grounded the sub text citizens. Canadian The should prove of interest jectification of contemporary Sikh to both sociologists envision as the the international authors of (whom migration more and scholars of diaspora studies book's target audience) It, concur generally. a to accounts within Sikh studies that welcome corrective standard rently, provides resist rigorous theorization and critique neoliberal categories of identity. of colonialism, the modern Brian nation-state, Keith Axel and of community"

Swarthmore College

Transnational Television, Cultural Identity, and Change: When India. By MELISSA BUTCHER. New Delhi: Sage Publications, $54.95 (cloth).

STAR Came to 2003. 321 pp.

television Butcher examines the impact of transnational imagery on the in India. She places identities of urban and rural youth postliberalization changing in the context of "strategies of cultural identity production" visual representations and television nationalist organizations, employed by the state, the market, Hindu audiences, all of which she sees shaping television content through production of and/ or critical responses to content. The study draws from qualitative research with youths to and their and adults of parents' grandparents' generation, twenty-five, aged fifteen Melissa media industry personnel. television has a "reinforcing but Butcher concludes that transnational Ultimately not deterministic in "the shifting of cultural boundaries" role" (p. 266). This limited and "dislocating" properties?that "space-binding" impact derives from television's is, the power of images (and reactions to them) to serve as inclusive and exclusive markers of community identity as well as to help alter identities by introducing and supporting new values and forms of relationships. Butcher found that an emphasis on family woman marker of Indianness, with the body of the ties "appears as the quintessential its most adherent representation" (p. 144), thus setting the boundaries of a At the same time, commercial Indian identity against the immoral West. positive television dislocates other values with its "syncretic use of representations, re-orienting state discourse the of ancient from and the media official religio-cultural landscape a more to These nation" 235). syncretic representations, along regime, youthful (p. aesthetics and images with Indian content with a "fusion" style combining Western

BOOK REVIEWS?SOUTH

ASIA

775

parallels

and

resonates

with

the

"in-between"

identity

of many

contemporary

youth

for their elders (pp. (e.g., p. 194), although ambiguity 272-73). these larger conclusions do not push the analysis of media consumption Although or contemporary offers identities in India terribly far, Butcher's analysis nonetheless on recent In discussions of audiences. Butcher about the agency particular, insights benefit of ethno disproves those popular and academic critics who, usually without and find transnational both media homogenized homogenizing. graphic evidence, how even transnational television has been "localized," with Instead, she demonstrates audiences languages and content that are culturally familiar and "comfor preferring an in table," packaged attractively "global" aesthetic. Her analysis of both audience content goes a long way toward debunking reactions and television simplistic
about media imperialism. Butcher simultaneously possesses a subtle sense

such fusion creates distressing

arguments

and in the end she sees of the limits on viewers' power to shape programming, localization as part of amarket strategy. She argues, "the local appears to have become an aspect of economic [sic] set of by a homogenous organisation, underpinned commercial and strategies practices" (p. 161). Another strength of Butcher's analysis is the diversity that she reveals in audience and response. A laudable research design undergirds this nuanced composition and with interviews television focus groups viewers, Butcher portrayal. Using of people from different regions and of different ages, socio perspectives in studies of India are her and genders. Especially unusual categories, across areas. and The focus groups elicited north/south India urban/rural comparisons views among respondents, and these impressively detailed and often contradictory compares economic
support Butcher's argument that no subgroup of viewers?let alone an entire "mass

to images uniformly and that young people form not only media audience"?responds a differentiated a audience. In portraying youths as unexpectedly but also discerning
critical, informed, and sometimes conservative consumers of new ideas and values,

Butcher's marketing Yet,

Butcher's or of

work

contradicts

the

executives, cultural there is much more

analysis itself. There among

that she heard from older viewers, stereotypes critics, and politicians. that we could learn from these quotations and from
is little close examination and of often indeed the fascinating excerpts excerpts sometimes views,

contradictions

respondents'

contradict
introduction

Butcher's
discusses

own point
the

or seem irrelevant
of narrative

to it. (On a related note, while

analysis, there are virtually

the
no

advantages

narratives among the brief excerpts and no narrative analysis presented in the book.) no now numerous the on is there also of discussion Oddly ethnographic monographs a which South Asian media could have fruitful models for consumption, provided more detailed analysis of viewer responses. In contrast, the book is filled with an extended and able review of literature related to identity, postmodernity, and media so so own it that much detracts from author's the consumption?but analysis. The writing overall can be
text.

less than

lucid, making

this book

difficult

to assign

as an

undergraduate

there are intriguing lessons to be gained from Butcher's extensive Nonetheless, to research. In addition her perceptive discussion of the complexities of localization, one of her most striking points is that "the liberalisation of India is a generational the point is explored only briefly, the text provides experience" (p. 230). Although an unusual opportunity to examine the interplay of economic liberalization with the as a liberalization practices of everyday life and identity construction. Portraying source of shifting identities and a challenge to old orders, Butcher explores how new

776

THE JOURNAL OF ASIAN

STUDIES

media with

and other

consumer

the discomfort

products are used to explore new identities and to deal that arises from what she argues has been a period of unusually Sara Dickey

rapid social change. Bowdoin College

Uncommons in the Commons: Community Initiated Forest Resource Management. By Rucha with Alka Chaturvedi. New Delhi: Ghate, Concept Rs 2004. 206 350 (cloth). pp. Publishing, in the From the beginning decades of the nineteenth century until independence forest use and harvest in central India was based in large part on the mid-twentieth, blend of a colonial administration defining state needs and the localized tradition of those living in itsmidst. What was "common" between these two in their perspectives about this enormous, diverse environment which covered most of the subcontinent's
midsection was that the forest was a resource. What was "uncommon" was how those

resources were managed depending on concepts of ownership, control, and hereditary In in Uncommons Commons: the Community Initiated Forest Resource Management, rights. of these historical and cultural themes as the Rucha Ghate uses the implications eastern in habitats of her Maharastra. She looks closely at the of five moorings study issues of change, identity, tradition, very different struggles to come to terms with leadership, and especially the concept of nistar rights. Of the five sites that Ghate chose for her work, the best known from previous is the village of Mendha studies and the longtime work of NGOs (Lekha). It is a small a with Gond households. of about homogeneous population village seventy-five Almost the entire defined village area of over four thousand acres is forested, and the exercised their customary nistar rights to collect the traditionally people of Mendha forest produce. This included not the timber that was (is) so valued by the government,
but annually renewable products such as the flowers and seeds of the mahua tree, tendu

leaves, amia and sitaphal fruit, lac, and various medicinal themes of history and culture collided in the 1990s, when
resources became a flashpoint.

plants. It is here that the access and control of forest

Land and resource issues in India have a long history of association with zamindari. the Gond view of human and natural ecology never recognized any propri However, etary title to the soil on the part of the zamindars, so for a long time there has been a muted grievance about forest resources. By the early twentieth century, the British restricted nistar rights in an economic decision to gain government administratively the sale of timber and grazing fees. As a result, the central from revenues, mostly huge considered the village's forest as a part of the protected resource and state governments owned and controlled by zamindars up to the early 1950s. the abolition of zamindari soon after independence, much of the central Following Indian forests were "transferred" to the forest department, again to enforce the point that in the absence of formal title to land, these were state resources which needed to
be "protected." In 1963 forest-settlement officers were sent to these forests in eastern

Maharastra

the specific task of determining rights. It took twelve proprietary acres were to in determined be "reserved" and were of forest but 1975 350,000 years, transferred to the control of the state government. For the people of Mendha, of living in and off the after uncountable generations of forest and adjusting to conflicting concepts ownership, control, cultural affiliation, with