UC San Diego

The study of media, a relatively new area of focus for anthropologists, draws on traditions of, and research in, both media studies and anthropology. While specifically anthropological and ethnographic approaches to media have put forth valuable insights regarding the culturally specific nature of media and media's integration into the totality of life, much of media anthropology leaves something to be desired in its conceptions of the relationship between the individual, particularly individual subjectivity, and culture. Providing an overview of media studies generally and studies of new or digital media specifically, I argue that the theories and perspectives of psychological anthropology could bring to media anthropology a more developed understanding of the individual in culture. Furthermore, I argue that psychological anthropology, which like all social science was initially developed in the paradigm of face-to-face, spatially and temporally circumscribed social interaction, could benefit by considering the relationship of existing concepts of personhood, selfhood, identity, and experience to new contexts of mediated communication and interaction.