The radio serves as form of media that reflects the nature of the community that it serves and simultaneously (re)creates community. Any radio station, mainstream or not, can be analysed in terms of these two processes as long as it has listeners and participants. For the purpose of this blog entry, I focus analysis on radio in Northern Australia, CBQM in Fort Macpherson, and in Guatemala in relation to how it serves its listeners and participants while creating community: In all of these three cases, the radio reflects the unique nature of each community and serves to perpetuate its goals and cultural values. Additionally, the notion of the ‘imagined community’ is salient in terms of how the radio creates community. The community that is created by the radio is largely imagined, parallel to Anderson’s (2000:6) notion of nations as ‘imagined communities’: Nations or communities are imagined because most people will never meet each other, yet they all are able to imagine themselves as part of a community that is connected to other individuals.
Radio in Northern Australia among the Aboriginal peoples is managed by The Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association (TEABBA) which was established “to train Indigenous people in the use of broadcasting gear” (Fisher 2009:283) so that they have their own voice for their own community. This station reflects the community through its broadcasts, primarily of requests, which are designed to maintain their kinship ties: Family is important to them, and the radio serves as a mechanism to (re)produce their cultural norms regarding kinship as they can dedicate songs to family members (Fisher 2009:283). Moreover, the radio serves to enforce the community’s postcolonial discourse in respects to their lost generations, as it has a distinct Aboriginal feel and connects separated family members. Creating an imagined radio community among the Aboriginal peoples in Australia is important because they are geographically separated due to colonialism and incarceration: Radio has the capability to mediate between the most remote corners around Northern Australia and (re)create community (Fisher 2009:281). Aboriginal families, dispersed members of Australia’s Stolen Generations, and incarcerated men and women are able to be ‘linked up’ with one another by the radio (Fisher 2009:282). The community created by radio is also unique to their area and people, as they do not broadcast in urban areas except when trying to connect to inmates in the Berrimah prison (Fisher 2009:285).
As described by Tal Nitsan (2011), radio in Guatemala reflects women’s needs to have their own space through which they can voice their own opinions without being censored. Moreover, despite being presumably unsafe on the streets in Guatemala, this space has a distinct feminist perspective in that it serves as a resource to help women who are struggling to have a space of their own. The radio ultimately is used as a tool of voice and serves their community by reflecting the strength of women who are attempting to help other women. They are able to use ‘radio space’ as a means to demonstrate that they have a definitive space and community, despite suffering from gendered disparity. Moreover, radio is extremely imaginary because it is ‘airy’ and ‘illusive’—it has no touchable or visible sense to it; the created community is also imaginary, as people can only hear uncensored voices and assume others are listening to those same voices. There are many women who do not know how to read or write because they do not have the linguistic level or may not have time to read the newspaper: The radio, therefore, becomes an important mechanism as a communicative tool through which women are able to learn the news and activities, and thus be included in their imagined community.
CBQM radio serves the small community of Fort Macpherson by facilitating daily activities, broadcasting relevant news, and perpetuating its strong Anglican beliefs. Community members are able to use the radio as a means through which they can learn about events being hosted in the community, and about problems in the community, like people egging houses (Allen 2010). Moreover, the radio reflects the laid back nature of Fort Macpherson through the use of live performances by community members. Because CBQM’s broadcasters are all members of the community, like a member of the RCMP, an aboriginal elder, their Anglican pastor, among others, they are able to directly air the needs and goals of the community themselves. Community is also created in Fort MacPherson through CBQM. As shown in the film, it seems like everyone tunes into the station daily, and therefore, everyone participates in the imagined community. CBQM is particularly unique in that it serves to help maintain the community by acting as a means through which people can communicate. For example, many people call in to ask the host if he or she can tell somebody else in the community to get off the phone (Allen 2010). Everyone in the (re)created radio community can then imagine that they are connected to the mentioned individuals because they are able to know what is happening in their lives at that moment.
As discussed the radio, in various communities around the world like among the Aboriginal peoples in Northern Australia, in Fort Macpherson, and women in Guatemala, is important in transcending community beliefs into a public domain that in turn promotes their own unique goals and perpetuates their cultural values, which are largely kinship and post-colonial, feminist, and belief and entertainment based in each of the respective cases described above. The radio also serves to (re)create community, which is largely imagined, as the radio has an ‘airy’ feel that promotes the use of voice that participants can hear and connect to without being physically present or ever even meeting each other.
References Cited
Allen, Dennis
2010 CBQM National Film Board of Canada.
Anderson, Benedict
1983 Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.
Fisher, Daniel
2009 Mediating Kinship: Country, Family, and Radio in Northern Australia. Cultural Anthropology 24(2):280-312.
Nitsan, Tal
2011 ANTH 378 Class Lecture. March 4, 2011. Vancouver, BC: UBC.
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