For 'ethnic minorities' in Britain, broadcast TV provides powerful representations of national and 'western' culture. In Southall - which has the largest population of 'South Asians' outside the Indian sub-continent - the VCR furnishes Hindi films, 'sacred soaps' such as the Mahabharata, and family videos of rites of passage, as well as mainstream American films. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change examines how TV and video are being used to recreate cultural traditions within the 'South Asian' diaspora, and how they are also catalysing cultural change in this local community.Marie Gillespie explores how young people negotiate between the parental and peer, local and global, national and international contexts and culturess which traverse their lives. Articulating their own preoccupations with television narratives, they both reaffirm and challenge parental traditions, formulating their own aspirations towards cultural change.Marie Gillespie's in-depth study offers an invaluable survey of how cultures are shaped and changed through people's recreative reception of the media.

Product Description: Visit the "Understanding Media" series microsite. 'This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of research and debate about media audiences, written by some of the leading scholars in the field. It covers a wide range of media genres, from TV news to soaps and reality shows, as well as addressing broader issues, for example to do with globalisation, the social contexts of media use and the power of the media...read more

Product Description: The accompanying Analysing Media Texts DVD-ROM is the winner of the 2006 British Universities Film and Video Council's 'Learning on Screen Award' for Interactive Media (Course and Curriculum related content). Visit the Understanding Media series microsite...read more

Product Description: Diasporas and Diplomacy analyzes the exercise of British ‘soft power’ through the BBC’s foreign language services, and the diplomatic role played by their diasporic broadcasters. The book offers the first historical and comparative analysis of the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ that has characterized the work of the BBC’s international services since the inception of its Empire Service in 1932 – from radio to the Internet...read more