Race, Media and Social Justice - Dr Anamik Saha

Dr Anamik Saha

Even though most people would agree that the media plays an important role in shaping society’s attitude towards race, the study of media and race together is still a relatively marginal field of research. In the sociology of race, analysis of the media features only rarely, with some implying that discussions of issues of cultural representation and commodification are trivial in relation to more urgent questions regarding the forms of exploitation and racial subjugation that racial and ethnic minorities experience.  In critical media studies, with questions of media power and resistance at its core, it is even rarer to find researchers venturing into the question of race. In this talk I will make a case for why centralising the media is absolutely crucial for research into both race and racism and critical media studies. I argue that taking the question of race and media more seriously not only contributes to anti-racist struggle, but more broadly gives us a more nuanced perspective of how ideology and power operates in the cultural industries.

Chaired by Dr Caspar Melville, SOAS

Biography

Dr Anamik Saha is a Lecturer in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London and co-convenor of MA Race, Media and Social Justice. After completing his PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, Anamik worked in the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds, firstly as an ESRC Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, then as a Lecturer in Communications. He has held visiting fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Trinity College, Connecticut. Anamik’s research interests are in race and the media, with a particular focus on cultural production and the cultural industries. He has had his work published in journals including Media, Culture and Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and European Journal of Cultural Studies . With David Hesmondhalgh (2013) he co-edited a special issue of Popular Communication on race and ethnicity in cultural production, and with Dave O’Brien, Kim Allen and Sam Friedman (2017) he co-edited a special issue of Cultural Sociology on inequalities in the cultural industries. His new book Race and the Cultural Industries came out in early 2018, published by Polity Press.