A Saha
Biographic Data
| ID | 43704 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Saha |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Saha |
| SIGNATURE | SAHA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7704-2493 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 193 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Race, culture and media: A dialog between Herman Gray and Anamik Saha
To mark the publication of the second edition of Race, Culture and Media , the author, Anamik Saha, is interviewed by Herman Gray, one of the leading figures in race and media scholarship. In this wide-ranging conversation, the two draw out key themes from the book, including the value of an interdisciplinary approach that brings together cultural studies, political economy, postcolonial studies and media studies, and the importance of historical…
Encoding, decoding race. The politics of production and reception in cultural industries
In this joint interview, Anamik Saha and Maxime Cervulle discuss their respective acts of scholarship. Their research shares a common root in British Cultural Studies, particularly in the foundational work of Stuart Hall. Based on distinct case studies and research trajectories in two different academic contexts, each scholar has offered essential contributions to the study of how race configures the contemporary cultural industries. Their exchan…
Preface: Space Invaders revisited
This is the preface to a special issue of The European Journal of Cultural Studies on Space Invaders revisited, edited by Nirmal Puwar, Jo Littler and Anamik Saha.
Charles W. Mills and Media Theory
This short article introduces the special section, ‘Charles W. Mills and Media Theory’. It considers the contribution that Mills’ thought – on the relations between race and class, on the significance of race, whiteness and ignorance for understanding liberalism, and on the potential of liberalism to be made more radical, redistributive and egalitarian – for work on media and communication
Yuma
For more than two decades James Clifford Kent has photographed Cuba, capturing the resilience, endurance, and survival of an increasingly threadbare Revolution. His journey began in the early 2000s
Racism Seems to be the Hardest Word: How Racialised Workers Make Sense of Racial Inequalities in Creative and Cultural Industries
The creative and cultural industries face an urgent challenge in addressing structural exclusion and forms of racism. This article, based on in-depth interviews with 42 Black, Asian and ethnically diverse creatives, reveals that nearly all respondents faced racial disadvantages hindering their career progression. However, it was striking how there are different degrees of willingness to attribute their struggles to structural racism. Our research…
Return to innocence? Diaspora screen media and 'New Ethnicities' in the moment of diversity
This article revaluates Stuart Hall's influential essay "New Ethnicities" for the study of diaspora screen media. In "New Ethnicities", published in 1988, Hall famously declares that we have reached the "end of innocence", having identified a shift in how race was then being articulated in the work of a new generation of British-born black and Asian film-makers. However, while Hall was excited by the promise of these new ethnicities, this article…
How the Marketing and Selling of Books by Authors of Colour Produces Racial Inequalities in Publishing
Based upon a unique empirical study on diversity in UK publishing involving over 110 interviews with publishers, this paper explores the obstacles facing authors of colour. While the underrepresentation of authors from minoritized backgrounds is generally seen as a problem of acquisition, we identify what political economist Nicholas Garnham calls the “cultural distribution” stage as the most critical for authors of colour. Specifically, we demon…
Black, Brown and Asian cultural workers, creativity and activism: The ambivalence of digital self-branding practices
How do cultural and creative workers respond to racism and the politics of representation and respectability in the digital age? In what ways do they engage in forms of community-building and solidarity-making, while managing pressures to build digital presence and personal brands? This article seeks to address these questions via 30 in-depth interviews with Black, Brown and Asian (BBA) workers in the UK cultural and creative industries (CCIs). F…
Diversity, media and racial capitalism: A case study on publishing
This article demonstrates the ambivalence of diversity in the cultural industries, and racial capitalism more broadly. Based upon an empirical study of the production of writers of colour in UK trade publishing, the article highlights how diversity acts as a form of racial governance but is also a source of anxiety for the dominant culture. Opening with an overview of critical approaches to diversity, we then introduce the study, based upon in-de…
Funky Days Are (Not) Back Again: Cool Britannia and the Rise and Fall of British South Asian Cultural Production
This article explores the conditions that led to the rise and fall of British South Asian cultural production. Following a high point in the 1990s when for the first time a South Asian diasporic presence was felt in British popular culture, across television, film, music, literature and theatre, Asians have now returned to the periphery of the cultural industries. But this is not a simple case of British Asians falling in and out of fashion. Rath…
CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond
The debates and critiques of #CommunicationSoWhite have arisen as responses to troubling academic and political contexts, which are complexly intertwined. We are in the midst of widespread expansion and ascendance of white supremacy globally, as disturbingly evident in the trajectories, rhetoric, and actions of Donald Trump in the United States, the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson, and the Golden Dawn in Greece, alongside the growing power of righ…
No alternatives, always more, willful optimism: New editors of the European Journal of Cultural Studies in conversation
The following is a conversation, conducted over email in late 2019 and early 2020, between Yiu Fai Chow and Anamik Saha, the two incoming editors of European Journal of Cultural Studies
The politics of representation in the politics of anti-racism
In this short response to Gavan Titley's new book Racism and Media, I engage with his discussion of the politics of the representation in relation to his important concept of debatability. I underline two key contributions made by Titley in the chapter "The Politics of Representation in Postracial Media Culture": (1) the limitations of an anti-racist politics based on media representation alone and (2) how the politics of representation and the c…
Producing and Consuming Inequality: A Cultural Sociology of the Cultural Industries
Even when shocks in a firm's environment are predictable, their consequences are not. Using the relocation of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium as a rich case of such a disruption, we investigate how combinations of strategic interpretation and spatial distance influence incumbent business owners' decisions to pursue temporal adaptation as a response. Temporal adaptation (TA) comprises timing rather than content changes by the firm seeking to adjust to …
The Politics of Race in Cultural Distribution: Addressing Inequalities in British Asian Theatre
This article has two aims. Firstly, it challenges the assumption in both policy and media studies of race that increasing the number of minorities in the media will automatically lead to more diverse content. Secondly, it highlights how cultural distribution is a critical, yet under-researched, moment for racialised minorities working in the arts. Using a case study on 'British Asian theatre', the article problematises a particular cultural polic…
Production Research: Continuity and Transformation
At the heart of this book is the question: how well do we understand the institutions which create our media, our information, and our culture? Rather than seeking to reveal the substantially hidden world of cultural production (as many works cited in this introductory chapter do well), this anthology explores many of the contemporary challenges to understanding the nature of cultural production—considering the research process, rather than resea…
The Rationalizing/Racializing Logic of Capital in Cultural Production
This article conceptualizes the "rationalizing/racializing" logic of capital as a new form of racial governance. This is most evident in cultural production, where the techniques of rationalization-and in particular, the uses of data-that characterize media industry practices produce racializing effects, transforming the potentially disruptive texts of minority producers into absolute ethnic difference. To illustrate this, the article presents an…
Making diaspora in a global city: South Asian youth cultures in London
Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production
This article seeks to develop an approach to cultural production which takes racism seriously. We suggest that there has been a lack of attention to race and ethnicity in the booming research field of cultural production studies, and that the few good studies of race, ethnicity, and cultural production have been somewhat marginalized. Following a section that outlines our understandings of “race” and ethnicity, we outline the development of resea…
Citizen Smith more than Citizen Kane ? Genres-in-progress and the cultural politics of difference
As the first British situation comedy about a Muslim family, Citizen Khan received mostly negative reviews from the press. Reviews could be split into two tropes: Citizen Khan was offensive to Muslims, or just offensively bad. It was the comedy's use of crude caricatures, compounded by its foundation in a rather archaic form of humour that seemingly rubbed up both white and Asian critics alike. However, this paper argues that much of this critici…
Curry Tales: The production of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the cultural industries
Within popular culture in the West, stereotypical representations of ‘race’ still persist. This is particularly troubling when we find that it is racialized minorities themselves behind such representations. The aim of this article is to explore how the conditions of the cultural industries steer the work of minority cultural producers in directions that can undermine the radical potential of the counter-narratives of difference. The article begi…
Suburban drifts: Mundane multiculturalism in outer London
This article explores the ethnicization of London suburbs to challenge the growing public and political discourse of the 'failure of multiculturalism' mobilized by politicians in the UK and Europe, and even worse, the more pernicious rhetoric that blames multiculturalist policies for a whole raft of social ills including social exclusion, terrorism and urban riots. Through reviving the concept of multicultural drift deployed by Stuart Hall over a…
Locating MIA: ‘Race’, commodification and the politics of production
MIA (real name: Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam) is one of the few British South Asian music artists who have crossed into the mainstream of western pop. The way in which she has attained this while foregrounding an explicit anti-racist and anti-imperialist message in her songs can be seen as a significant musical-political intervention, although the particular contestation of her work that has followed also highlights the challenges that Asian arti…
Beards, scarves, halal meat, terrorists, forced marriage: Television Industries and the Production of ‘Race
This article considers the persistence of stereotypical representations of ‘race’ that appear in television in the West. According to a particular policy discourse, improving the on-screen representation of non-white groups is a matter of increasing the number of black and Asian folk working in the broadcasting industries – particularly at the senior management level. However, this article argues that the constant production of hegemonic images o…
Suburban drifts: Mundane multiculturalism in outer London
This article explores the ethnicization of London suburbs to challenge the growing public and political discourse of the 'failure of multiculturalism' mobilized by politicians in the UK and Europe, and even worse, the more pernicious rhetoric that blames multiculturalist policies for a whole raft of social ills including social exclusion, terrorism and urban riots. Through reviving the concept of multicultural drift deployed by Stuart Hall over a…
Beards, scarves, halal meat, terrorists, forced marriage: Television Industries and the Production of ‘Race
This article considers the persistence of stereotypical representations of ‘race’ that appear in television in the West. According to a particular policy discourse, improving the on-screen representation of non-white groups is a matter of increasing the number of black and Asian folk working in the broadcasting industries – particularly at the senior management level. However, this article argues that the constant production of hegemonic images o…
Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production
This article seeks to develop an approach to cultural production which takes racism seriously. We suggest that there has been a lack of attention to race and ethnicity in the booming research field of cultural production studies, and that the few good studies of race, ethnicity, and cultural production have been somewhat marginalized. Following a section that outlines our understandings of “race” and ethnicity, we outline the development of resea…
Producing and Consuming Inequality: A Cultural Sociology of the Cultural Industries
Even when shocks in a firm's environment are predictable, their consequences are not. Using the relocation of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium as a rich case of such a disruption, we investigate how combinations of strategic interpretation and spatial distance influence incumbent business owners' decisions to pursue temporal adaptation as a response. Temporal adaptation (TA) comprises timing rather than content changes by the firm seeking to adjust to …
Curry Tales: The production of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the cultural industries
Within popular culture in the West, stereotypical representations of ‘race’ still persist. This is particularly troubling when we find that it is racialized minorities themselves behind such representations. The aim of this article is to explore how the conditions of the cultural industries steer the work of minority cultural producers in directions that can undermine the radical potential of the counter-narratives of difference. The article begi…
The Politics of Race in Cultural Distribution: Addressing Inequalities in British Asian Theatre
This article has two aims. Firstly, it challenges the assumption in both policy and media studies of race that increasing the number of minorities in the media will automatically lead to more diverse content. Secondly, it highlights how cultural distribution is a critical, yet under-researched, moment for racialised minorities working in the arts. Using a case study on 'British Asian theatre', the article problematises a particular cultural polic…
CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond
The debates and critiques of #CommunicationSoWhite have arisen as responses to troubling academic and political contexts, which are complexly intertwined. We are in the midst of widespread expansion and ascendance of white supremacy globally, as disturbingly evident in the trajectories, rhetoric, and actions of Donald Trump in the United States, the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson, and the Golden Dawn in Greece, alongside the growing power of righ…
Locating MIA: ‘Race’, commodification and the politics of production
MIA (real name: Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam) is one of the few British South Asian music artists who have crossed into the mainstream of western pop. The way in which she has attained this while foregrounding an explicit anti-racist and anti-imperialist message in her songs can be seen as a significant musical-political intervention, although the particular contestation of her work that has followed also highlights the challenges that Asian arti…
Multiculturalism: A Critical Introduction
Michael Murphy, MULTICULTURALISM: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION, London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012 (Routledge Contemporary Political Philosophy), ix + 196 pp., £24.99 (paper) Multiculturalism: A C
Black, Brown and Asian cultural workers, creativity and activism: The ambivalence of digital self-branding practices
How do cultural and creative workers respond to racism and the politics of representation and respectability in the digital age? In what ways do they engage in forms of community-building and solidarity-making, while managing pressures to build digital presence and personal brands? This article seeks to address these questions via 30 in-depth interviews with Black, Brown and Asian (BBA) workers in the UK cultural and creative industries (CCIs). F…
Citizen Smith more than Citizen Kane ? Genres-in-progress and the cultural politics of difference
As the first British situation comedy about a Muslim family, Citizen Khan received mostly negative reviews from the press. Reviews could be split into two tropes: Citizen Khan was offensive to Muslims, or just offensively bad. It was the comedy's use of crude caricatures, compounded by its foundation in a rather archaic form of humour that seemingly rubbed up both white and Asian critics alike. However, this paper argues that much of this critici…
Negotiating the Third Space: British Asian Independent Record Labels and the Cultural Politics of Difference
Within postcolonial discourse the emergence of British (South) Asian electronic dance music, with its conscious fusion of Eastern and Western influences, was seen as an important cultural-political moment, challenging essentialist perceptions of South Asian identity. Yet the danger is that such a perspective overstates the transgressive potential of Asian dance music. Based on in-depth interviews with managers of three independent record labels i…
No alternatives, always more, willful optimism: New editors of the European Journal of Cultural Studies in conversation
The following is a conversation, conducted over email in late 2019 and early 2020, between Yiu Fai Chow and Anamik Saha, the two incoming editors of European Journal of Cultural Studies
Return to innocence? Diaspora screen media and 'New Ethnicities' in the moment of diversity
This article revaluates Stuart Hall's influential essay "New Ethnicities" for the study of diaspora screen media. In "New Ethnicities", published in 1988, Hall famously declares that we have reached the "end of innocence", having identified a shift in how race was then being articulated in the work of a new generation of British-born black and Asian film-makers. However, while Hall was excited by the promise of these new ethnicities, this article…
The politics of representation in the politics of anti-racism
In this short response to Gavan Titley's new book Racism and Media, I engage with his discussion of the politics of the representation in relation to his important concept of debatability. I underline two key contributions made by Titley in the chapter "The Politics of Representation in Postracial Media Culture": (1) the limitations of an anti-racist politics based on media representation alone and (2) how the politics of representation and the c…
Making diaspora in a global city: South Asian youth cultures in London
Negotiating the Third Space: British Asian Independent Record Labels and the Cultural Politics of Difference
Within postcolonial discourse the emergence of British (South) Asian electronic dance music, with its conscious fusion of Eastern and Western influences, was seen as an important cultural-political moment, challenging essentialist perceptions of South Asian identity. Yet the danger is that such a perspective overstates the transgressive potential of Asian dance music. Based on in-depth interviews with managers of three independent record labels i…
Locating MIA: ‘Race’, commodification and the politics of production
MIA (real name: Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam) is one of the few British South Asian music artists who have crossed into the mainstream of western pop. The way in which she has attained this while foregrounding an explicit anti-racist and anti-imperialist message in her songs can be seen as a significant musical-political intervention, although the particular contestation of her work that has followed also highlights the challenges that Asian arti…
Beards, scarves, halal meat, terrorists, forced marriage: Television Industries and the Production of ‘Race
This article considers the persistence of stereotypical representations of ‘race’ that appear in television in the West. According to a particular policy discourse, improving the on-screen representation of non-white groups is a matter of increasing the number of black and Asian folk working in the broadcasting industries – particularly at the senior management level. However, this article argues that the constant production of hegemonic images o…
Multiculturalism: A Critical Introduction
Michael Murphy, MULTICULTURALISM: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION, London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012 (Routledge Contemporary Political Philosophy), ix + 196 pp., £24.99 (paper) Multiculturalism: A C
Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production
This article seeks to develop an approach to cultural production which takes racism seriously. We suggest that there has been a lack of attention to race and ethnicity in the booming research field of cultural production studies, and that the few good studies of race, ethnicity, and cultural production have been somewhat marginalized. Following a section that outlines our understandings of “race” and ethnicity, we outline the development of resea…
Citizen Smith more than Citizen Kane ? Genres-in-progress and the cultural politics of difference
As the first British situation comedy about a Muslim family, Citizen Khan received mostly negative reviews from the press. Reviews could be split into two tropes: Citizen Khan was offensive to Muslims, or just offensively bad. It was the comedy's use of crude caricatures, compounded by its foundation in a rather archaic form of humour that seemingly rubbed up both white and Asian critics alike. However, this paper argues that much of this critici…
Curry Tales: The production of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the cultural industries
Within popular culture in the West, stereotypical representations of ‘race’ still persist. This is particularly troubling when we find that it is racialized minorities themselves behind such representations. The aim of this article is to explore how the conditions of the cultural industries steer the work of minority cultural producers in directions that can undermine the radical potential of the counter-narratives of difference. The article begi…
Suburban drifts: Mundane multiculturalism in outer London
This article explores the ethnicization of London suburbs to challenge the growing public and political discourse of the 'failure of multiculturalism' mobilized by politicians in the UK and Europe, and even worse, the more pernicious rhetoric that blames multiculturalist policies for a whole raft of social ills including social exclusion, terrorism and urban riots. Through reviving the concept of multicultural drift deployed by Stuart Hall over a…
Production Research: Continuity and Transformation
At the heart of this book is the question: how well do we understand the institutions which create our media, our information, and our culture? Rather than seeking to reveal the substantially hidden world of cultural production (as many works cited in this introductory chapter do well), this anthology explores many of the contemporary challenges to understanding the nature of cultural production—considering the research process, rather than resea…
The Rationalizing/Racializing Logic of Capital in Cultural Production
This article conceptualizes the "rationalizing/racializing" logic of capital as a new form of racial governance. This is most evident in cultural production, where the techniques of rationalization-and in particular, the uses of data-that characterize media industry practices produce racializing effects, transforming the potentially disruptive texts of minority producers into absolute ethnic difference. To illustrate this, the article presents an…
Making diaspora in a global city: South Asian youth cultures in London
Producing and Consuming Inequality: A Cultural Sociology of the Cultural Industries
Even when shocks in a firm's environment are predictable, their consequences are not. Using the relocation of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium as a rich case of such a disruption, we investigate how combinations of strategic interpretation and spatial distance influence incumbent business owners' decisions to pursue temporal adaptation as a response. Temporal adaptation (TA) comprises timing rather than content changes by the firm seeking to adjust to …
The Politics of Race in Cultural Distribution: Addressing Inequalities in British Asian Theatre
This article has two aims. Firstly, it challenges the assumption in both policy and media studies of race that increasing the number of minorities in the media will automatically lead to more diverse content. Secondly, it highlights how cultural distribution is a critical, yet under-researched, moment for racialised minorities working in the arts. Using a case study on 'British Asian theatre', the article problematises a particular cultural polic…
Funky Days Are (Not) Back Again: Cool Britannia and the Rise and Fall of British South Asian Cultural Production
This article explores the conditions that led to the rise and fall of British South Asian cultural production. Following a high point in the 1990s when for the first time a South Asian diasporic presence was felt in British popular culture, across television, film, music, literature and theatre, Asians have now returned to the periphery of the cultural industries. But this is not a simple case of British Asians falling in and out of fashion. Rath…
CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond
The debates and critiques of #CommunicationSoWhite have arisen as responses to troubling academic and political contexts, which are complexly intertwined. We are in the midst of widespread expansion and ascendance of white supremacy globally, as disturbingly evident in the trajectories, rhetoric, and actions of Donald Trump in the United States, the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson, and the Golden Dawn in Greece, alongside the growing power of righ…
No alternatives, always more, willful optimism: New editors of the European Journal of Cultural Studies in conversation
The following is a conversation, conducted over email in late 2019 and early 2020, between Yiu Fai Chow and Anamik Saha, the two incoming editors of European Journal of Cultural Studies
The politics of representation in the politics of anti-racism
In this short response to Gavan Titley's new book Racism and Media, I engage with his discussion of the politics of the representation in relation to his important concept of debatability. I underline two key contributions made by Titley in the chapter "The Politics of Representation in Postracial Media Culture": (1) the limitations of an anti-racist politics based on media representation alone and (2) how the politics of representation and the c…
Diversity, media and racial capitalism: A case study on publishing
This article demonstrates the ambivalence of diversity in the cultural industries, and racial capitalism more broadly. Based upon an empirical study of the production of writers of colour in UK trade publishing, the article highlights how diversity acts as a form of racial governance but is also a source of anxiety for the dominant culture. Opening with an overview of critical approaches to diversity, we then introduce the study, based upon in-de…
How the Marketing and Selling of Books by Authors of Colour Produces Racial Inequalities in Publishing
Based upon a unique empirical study on diversity in UK publishing involving over 110 interviews with publishers, this paper explores the obstacles facing authors of colour. While the underrepresentation of authors from minoritized backgrounds is generally seen as a problem of acquisition, we identify what political economist Nicholas Garnham calls the “cultural distribution” stage as the most critical for authors of colour. Specifically, we demon…
Black, Brown and Asian cultural workers, creativity and activism: The ambivalence of digital self-branding practices
How do cultural and creative workers respond to racism and the politics of representation and respectability in the digital age? In what ways do they engage in forms of community-building and solidarity-making, while managing pressures to build digital presence and personal brands? This article seeks to address these questions via 30 in-depth interviews with Black, Brown and Asian (BBA) workers in the UK cultural and creative industries (CCIs). F…
Return to innocence? Diaspora screen media and 'New Ethnicities' in the moment of diversity
This article revaluates Stuart Hall's influential essay "New Ethnicities" for the study of diaspora screen media. In "New Ethnicities", published in 1988, Hall famously declares that we have reached the "end of innocence", having identified a shift in how race was then being articulated in the work of a new generation of British-born black and Asian film-makers. However, while Hall was excited by the promise of these new ethnicities, this article…
Preface: Space Invaders revisited
This is the preface to a special issue of The European Journal of Cultural Studies on Space Invaders revisited, edited by Nirmal Puwar, Jo Littler and Anamik Saha.
Charles W. Mills and Media Theory
This short article introduces the special section, ‘Charles W. Mills and Media Theory’. It considers the contribution that Mills’ thought – on the relations between race and class, on the significance of race, whiteness and ignorance for understanding liberalism, and on the potential of liberalism to be made more radical, redistributive and egalitarian – for work on media and communication
Yuma
For more than two decades James Clifford Kent has photographed Cuba, capturing the resilience, endurance, and survival of an increasingly threadbare Revolution. His journey began in the early 2000s
Racism Seems to be the Hardest Word: How Racialised Workers Make Sense of Racial Inequalities in Creative and Cultural Industries
The creative and cultural industries face an urgent challenge in addressing structural exclusion and forms of racism. This article, based on in-depth interviews with 42 Black, Asian and ethnically diverse creatives, reveals that nearly all respondents faced racial disadvantages hindering their career progression. However, it was striking how there are different degrees of willingness to attribute their struggles to structural racism. Our research…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Politics (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Media studies (11 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (8 works)