Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 8

Volume XXII Issue VIII Version I 16 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 © 2022 Global Journals A Locating Media in Cultural Theories analysis of fans, but he acknowledges that the mutual marginalization is no less severe when theorists activate their agenda: “Academic practice – regardless of its favoured theorists and theoretical frameworks – typically transforms fandom into an absolute Other.” 14 This mutation takes place because of the theorist’s concern to place ethnographic reading of practice in an abstract generalization of the discipline. All too often, …. theorists follow their o wn institutional or theoretical agendas, and use fandom within these theory wars and territorial skirmishes. And of course, if this is to be my argument then I too will have to defend myself from the very same accusations, or make explicit what my own institutional and theoretical agendas might be. 15 Discussing the humanitarian perspective that underlies cultural studies in the UK, Couldry emphasizes the importance of reflexivity and suggests that the problem of voice persists: Cultural studies, however, should involve not only dialogue, but also reflexivity…, including reflection about the means through which all the voices in that dialogue have been formed, and the conditions which underlie the production of the space of cultural studies itself. That means reflecting both on ourselves and on the culture around us: …. Critical reflection on shared culture, of course, carries risks: of being misunderstood as elitist or unconstructive. 16 In addition to dialogue with actors, Couldry demands theoretical mediations beyond ethnographical research on grassroots practice, but what would “critical reflection on shared culture” be in the post-medium digitized media culture? If the practice perspectives in media research generate risks, why so? Taking the risk of being elitist is not the only solution to avoid being unconstructive in theoretical terms. From the critical reviews of the practice perspectives above, it is clear that one cannot deny the empirical applicability of the theory in a facile fashion; the notion of habitus would be valid to some social conditions in which normative social practice has a general implication as part of a prevailing cultural norm. Actors endowed with certain bodily skill may be incorporated into a social system as an inadvertent constituent. In his/her relative autonomy in relation to the public, the sustenance of habitus would be a necessary pre-condition for the reproduction of the overall structure. In this manner, in practice perspectives, the analytic concern with the social constitutes an important agenda; compared to the ethnomethodology in which practice is considered a methodological basis of research on the subjective dimension of cultural reality, it occupies a central locale in the sociology of Bourdieu. The dual foci on subjective practice and its collective consequence mark the strength of his practice theory, but the need for the co- 14 Hills, ibid., p. 5. 15 Hills, ibid., p. 2. 16 Couldry, Inside Culture: Re-Imagining the Method of Cultural Studies , Sage Publications, 2000, p. 38. ordination of one perspective with the other is also a spin-off from the fundamental premise of the body/mind synthesis, not an inevitable entailment in reality. In his discussion about the assemblage as an alternative to conventional society as a closed system, Delanda clarifies why the choice Couldry refers to is not only unnecessary but irrelevant. The very fact that individuals (fans, for example) do not normally share a holistic concern with the functioning of society warrants the point. … we can define social wholes like interpersonal networks or institutional organizations that cannot be reduced to the persons that compose them but that do not totalise them either, fusing them into a seamless whole in which their individuality is lost. …. The property of density, and the capacity to store reputations and enforce norms, are non- reducible properties and capacities of the entire community, but neither involves thinking of it as a seamless totality in which the very personal identity of the members is created by their relations: neighbours can pack their things and move to a different community while keeping their identity intact. 17 IV. M edia and the S peech A ct T heory In coping with the multivalences of meaning that media generate, we realize that the mind/body synthesis inherent in cognition goes beyond the semantic realm that semiotics predicate. Yet, the question of to what extent the prioritization of practice is warranted becomes pertinent when the social dimension of practice intensifies the aberration between the two spheres. Research on the impact of media on social behavior shows the problematic status of practice in the age of post-medium culture (‘after’ in the sense of lost materiality): loss of social space not only affects the way in which the very notion of “social” is conceived by actors but also re-constitutes the way media operate. While practice theory takes the primary significance of the body as a given, the theory leaves open the mechanism by which the retention of experience is transformed into a systematic axiom of doing things. Even though the practice perspective prioritizes this invisible internal mechanism, the reference to the mutation of space/time in digitized media culture raises a question about the relevance of an analytic strategy that relies on practice, where we are tendentiously forced to take the collective social process as the reference point of research on media. In this manner, in media research, theory and ethnography exhibit characteristically volatile modes of articulation between conceptual synthesis and empirical data: the latter reveals unfamiliar facades often in unexpected fashion, demanding a break from prior formulations. I argue that this dialectic is particularly 17 Delanda, Assemblage Theory , Edinburgh University Press, 2016, pp. 10–11.