The weakness of weak ties: personal media and social leadership in a Malaysian suburb

Draft only, submitted to journal Ethnos in March 2009

This article draws from fieldwork in a Malaysian suburb to investigate whether personal media (email, laptops, blogs, mobile phones, etc.) are making any significant difference to local leadership practices. I argue that residential politics does not provide fertile ground for the growth of ‘networked individualism’ – the claim that contemporary social relations are being reconfigured around individuals (Wellman, Castells). Instead of egocentrism, leaders’ personal media practices sustain a sociocentric field of residential politics around 'community’ issues such as waste disposal and petty crime. Leaders exploit the affordances of personal media (portability, ubiquity, personalisation, etc.) to derive strength from their weak ties (Granovetter) and further their public careers. Yet when operating within the field of residential politics they must align their personal media practices with the field’s egalitarian doxa and communitarian media.

KEYWORDS personal media, local leadership, networked individualism, field theory, Malaysia, suburbia

Localizing the internet beyond communities and networks

New Media & Society, Vol. 10, No. 3, 413-431 (2008)

As the numbers of internet users worldwide continue to grow, the internet is becoming `more local'. This article addresses the epistemological challenge posed by this global process of internet localization by examining some of the conceptual tools at the disposal of internet researchers. It argues that progress has been hampered by an overdependence on the problematic notions of community and network whose paradigmatic status has yet to be questioned by internet scholars. The article seeks to broaden the conceptual space of internet localization studies through a ground-up conceptualization exercise that draws inspiration from the field theories of both Pierre Bourdieu and the Manchester School of Anthropology, and is based on recent fieldwork in suburban Malaysia. This exploration demonstrates that a more nuanced understanding of the plural forms that residential sociality can take is needed in order to move beyond existing binaries such as `network sociality' versus `community sociality'.


Key Words: banal activism • community • field theory • internet localization • Malaysia • network • residential sociality • suburbia

Introduction: Theorising Media and Practice

In: B. Bräuchler and J. Postill (eds) forthcoming Theorising Media and Practice. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.   

In this Introduction I review the relevant media studies and practice theory literature to argue not for a new ‘practice paradigm’ in media studies (pace Couldry and Hobart, this volume) but rather for practice theory as a new strand to add to existing strands of media theory. Drawing from the practice theories of Giddens, Bourdieu and Warde as well as from my own research in Malaysia, I sketch out a field/practice theoretical approach to media around three main questions: media in everyday life, media and the body, and media production. I then note some of the limitations of any practice perspective on media, ending with an outline of the book.

Two media dramas

Draft only. To appear in Postill, J. (forthcoming) Localizing the Internet: An Anthropological Account. Oxford and New York: Berghahn

This chapter opens a second ‘black box' in Bourdieu's field theory: not process in general (pace Jenkins 2002) but specifically political process. Such was precisely the emphasis of earlier work on field theory by the Manchester School of political anthropology (see Swartz et al 1966, Evens and Handelman 2006). The chapter turns to Manchester School field concepts such as social drama, processual form, field sector and arena to analyse two crises that unfolded in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur in 2003 and 2004. The first crisis was small and influential residents managed to contain it largely within a single field sub-sector (the Web forum USJ.com.my), preventing it from spreading to other field sectors and beyond. In stark contrast, the second crisis spread very rapidly, spilling over to the powerful fields of federal government and the national mass media through the deft use of a range of ICTs by an unprecedented alliance of residents' groups. Residents were protesting against the building of a food court on land reserved for a police station. Together, both crises reveal the field's dynamics of factionalism, alliance-building and technological mediation, as well as its complex relationships to powerful neighbouring fields at two specific points in time.

Postill, J. 2009. ‘What is the point of media anthropology?‘

Social Anthropology No. 17(3), 334-337, 340-342

Postill, J. forthcoming ’Researching the Internet’,

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (accepted, pending minor revisions)