"This edited collection investigates the use of sound and audio production in community engaged participatory arts practice and research. The popularity of podcast and audio drama, combined with the accessibility and portability of affordable field recording and home studio equipment, makes audio a
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compelling mode of participatory creative practice. This book maps existing projects occurring globally through a series of case study chapters that exemplify community engaged creative audio practice. The studies focus on audio and sound-based arts practices that are undertaken by artists and arts-led researchers in collaboration with (and from within) communities and groups. These practices include - Applied audio drama, community-engaged podcasting, sound and verbatim theatre, participatory sound art, community-led acoustic ecology, sound and media walks, digital storytelling, oral history and reminiscence, and radio drama in health and community development. The contributors interrogate the practical, political, and aesthetic potentialities of using sound and audio in community engaged arts practice, as well as its tensions and possibilities as an arts-led participatory research methodology." (Publisher description)
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"Media of the Masses investigates the social life of an everyday technology - the cassette tape - to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes became a ubiquitous presence in Egyptian homes and stores. Audiocassette technology gave an opening to ordinary indiv
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iduals, from singers to smugglers, to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households. Drawing on a wide array of audio, visual, and textual sources that exist outside the Egyptian National Archives, Andrew Simon provides a new entry point into understanding everyday life and culture. Cassettes and cassette players, he demonstrates, did not simply join other twentieth century mass media, like records and radio; they were the media of the masses. Comprised of little more than magnetic reels in plastic cases, cassettes empowered cultural consumers to become cultural producers long before the advent of the Internet." (Publisher description)
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"The aim of the report has been to identify data about reading habits of the population in a selection of countries, then to summarise them. Our hope is that this report will form an empirical base and a starting point for further research and discussions regarding this important topic for the inter
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national publishing industry. The results can be summed up as the following: There is a global and clear trend that the traditional reading of books has declined over the last 20 years; The level of decrease in reading varies from country to country; In many countries the curve has flattened, and there is now a slight increase; The decline is strongest in the younger age groups, specifically for older youth and young adults; Women generally read more than men. Older readers are the most faithful readers; More readers read fewer books than before; More readers read less frequently; The number of readers who read every day is decreasing, while the number of readers reading several times a week is increasing; The number of non-readers is declining; Several countries show an increase in leisure reading; There are plenty of reading stimulation activities directed at children, fewer for adults; Reading stimulation activities are often quantitative, such as reading competitions rewarding the highest amount of read pages; Many reading activities are directed at children and aim to stimulate reading during holidays; There are also reading measures that have a qualitative focus, for example days focusing on reading out loud, book purchasing or particular dissemination activities; • Book donations are important in many countries in order to augment the selection of books." (Executive summary)
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"Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship addresses the multifaceted roles sound plays in Indian cultures and media, and enacts a sonic turn in South Asian Studies by understanding sound in its own social and cultural contexts. "Scapes, Sites, and Circulations" considers the spatial and circu
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latory ways in which sound "happens" in and around Indian sound cultures, including diasporic cultures. "Voice" emphasizes voices that embody a variety of struggles and ambiguities, particularly around gender and performance. Finally, "Cinema Sound" make specific arguments about film sound in the Indian context, from the earliest days of talkie technology to contemporary Hindi films and experimental art installations." (Publisher description)
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"Das Hörbuch hat in den letzten Jahren an Beliebtheit und Bedeutung gewonnen. Es ist kaum mehr aus Bibliotheken und Buchhandlungen wegzudenken - und zunehmend zeigt sich auch die Forschung interessiert. Gleichzeitig herrscht noch erheblicher Konturierungsbedarf: Wie die Wortbildung »Hör-Buch« be
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reits andeutet, handelt es sich um einen vielschichtigen Gegenstand, der nicht nur verschiedene Sinne zugleich anspricht, sondern auch in Abhängigkeit von der Perspektive, aus der man ihn betrachtet, seine Gestalt verändert. Die Beiträge des Bandes widmen sich dieser Vielgestaltigkeit an der Schnittstelle verschiedener Disziplinen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Investigating a vibrant audio-recording industry in southern Yemen, The Moral Resonance of Arab Media shows how new forms of political activism emerge through sensory engagements with Arabic poetry and song. From the 1940s onward, a new cadre of political activists has used audio-recording technolo
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gies, especially the audiocassette, to redefine traditional Muslim authorship. Cassette producers address conflicted views about the resurgence of tribalism by showing Yemenis how to adapt traditional mores toward more progressive and pluralistic aims. Skilled bards continue to perform orally marked tribal verse. As Miller demonstrates through an analysis of several centuries of changing media ecology, however, oral performance is anything but static. Much of the power of orality stems from its relation to writing, print, and audiovisual media that link tribal ideals with metropolitan and national discourses. Through an examination of the lives and works of individual poets, singers, and audiences, Moral Resonance shows how tribalism becomes a resource for critical reform when expressed in tropes of community, place, person, and history. Yemenis' use of audiocassettes turns such tropes into cultural resources for morally evaluating political liberalism." (Publisher description)
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"The article explores the processes that have allowed Islam to gain great appeal as a community-building idiom in Mali since the introduction of multiparty democracy in 1991. Drawing on the mediatic performances of the charismatic preacher Sharif Haidara, the article analyzes how new media technolog
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ies facilitate and play into Islam’s new prominence and how they influence the particular ways in which Islam is presented in the public sphere. It examines the particular ways audio recording technologies intervene in and complicate the terms of interaction between political regimes and their critics, and thus change the place of religion in postcolonial state politics. Rather than interpret this process as a “resurgence” and threat of religion to secular nation state politics, the article emphasizes the paradoxical effects “small”, decentralized media have on the constitution of moral community. Audio recordings enable the move to public prominence of a variety of interpreters of Islam who seek to articulate an Islamic normativity as the basis of the common good. Paradoxically, the same processes that enhance the possibilities of Muslims of various backgrounds and pedigree to participate in public debate simultaneously undermine their appeal to Islamic scholarly consensus. While these processes strengthen these Muslims’ possibilities to speak in public, they weaken their capacities to speak as the public, a claim that is pivotal to their quest for collective moral renewal." (Abstract)
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"An essential aspect of what is now called the Islamic Revival, the cassette sermon has become omnipresent in most Middle Eastern cities, punctuating the daily routines of many men and women. Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have be
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en recalibrated to a modern political and technological order - to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call for citizen participation. Contrary to the belief that Islamic cassette sermons are a tool of militant indoctrination, Hirschkind argues that sermon tapes serve as an instrument of ethical self-improvement and as a vehicle for honing the sensibilities and affects of pious living. Focusing on Cairo's popular neighborhoods, Hirschkind highlights the pivotal role these tapes now play in an expanding arena of Islamic argumentation and debate - what he calls an "Islamic counterpublic." This emerging arena connects Islamic traditions of ethical discipline to practices of deliberation about the common good, the duties of Muslims as national citizens, and the challenges faced by diverse Muslim communities around the globe." (Publisher description)
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"Myron J. Pereira, SJ, brings together his years of experience in Development Communication as the director of ASTHA, a department of the Xavier Institute of Communications, Bombay. In this book he deals with sound slides, video, audio-cassettes and posters, street-plays and puppets and how they can
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be effectively used to transform the society. Essentially this is a 'how to' book. Numerous media practitioners are not professionals in any way. They are teachers, pastors, social workers, community organizers and political activists. But they are aware of the influence of modern communications and they would like to improve their skills and widen their perspectives both in communication and with the media. The book is meant for them." (Back cover)
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"The book covers three main themes: 1. the relationship of interdependence between culture, education and communication; 2. the need for participatory processes in sustainable development, and 3. the crucial importance of culturally appropriate communication systems and approaches to education and t
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raining. These themes are discussed from a general, rather theoretical perspective in the first two chapters. The rest of the book has these themes recurring in discussions of specific development strategies, perception studies, and the various media used for development." (https://www.ircwash.org/resources)
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"En 1980, se inició un proceso de producción de audiovisuales en el Departamento de Comunicaciones del Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario y Reforma Agraria de Nicaragua. El presente trabajo forma parte de ese proceso [...] Consta de tres partes. La primera abarca aspectos del proceso de comunic
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ación y del lenguaje. En la segunda, se desarrolla un manual de producción de audiovisuales. La tercera parte trata sobre aspectos prácticos y adicionales del trabajo con audiovisuales." (Cubierta del libro)
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"Der Einsatz von Massenmedien für die Verbreitung von Neuerungen hat sich in den Entwicklungsländern vor allem wegen des Auftretens von verfremdenden Nebenwirkungen als sehr problematisch erwiesen. Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit wird dagegen ein alternatives Kommunikationsmodell vorgestellt. Dieses
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folgt zum Teil den Methoden der «Pädagogik der Unterdrückten» von Paulo Freire, wobei kleine Gruppen durch Hörspiele zu eigener Kreativität angeregt werden, um ihre Probleme zu bewältigen. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit berichtet darüber, wie eine nach diesem neuen Modell verfasste Programmserie, die in Lateinamerika bereits großen Erfolg gehabt hat, in Indonesien neu inszeniert und eingesetzt wird." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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