Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction

Boundary-Work, Subjectivity, and Value in the Hindi Film Industry

Bibliographic Data

ID3017789
AuthorsTejaswini Ganti (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume85
Issue1
Pages5-43
Publication date2012-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anq.2012.0004
OpenAlexW1993687698
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited29

This article complicates the discussion of commercial mass media production and takes it beyond simplistic assertions of the "bottom-line" by focusing on a specific feature of the everyday life of film production in Mumbai, India, home to the Hindi-language film industry, and more commonly known as "Bollywood." It examines the inordinate amount of criticism and contempt expressed by Hindi filmmakers about the workings of the industry as well as filmmakers' efforts to assert their difference from a generic norm-ranging from discourses about behavior to a fetishization of technology. These sentiments and discourses operate as a form of "boundary-work," which serves to create alternate regimes of value and criteria of prestige that are independent of commercial outcome. The article also demonstrates how it is possible to carry out ethnographic research within large-scale media industries that addresses core anthropological concerns about subjectivity, social life, and social practice. It illustrates how the sites and processes of media production, and not simply the finished outcomes, are invested with social and cultural meaning

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Hindi · Linguistics · Media studies · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Value (mathematics) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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