Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents (Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series) - Hardcover

Hannerz, Ulf

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226315746 ISBN 13: 9780226315744

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2004

Synopsis

Foreign News gives us a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look into the practices of the global tribe we call foreign correspondents. Exploring how they work, Ulf Hannerz also compares the ways correspondents and anthropologists report from one part of the world to another.

Hannerz draws on extensive interviews with correspondents in cities as diverse as Jerusalem, Tokyo, and Johannesburg. He shows not only how different story lines evolve in different correspondent beats, but also how the correspondents' home country and personal interests influence the stories they write. Reporting can go well beyond coverage of a specific event, using the news instead to reveal deeper insights into a country or a people to link them to long-term trends or structures of global significance. Ultimately, Hannerz argues that both anthropologists and foreign correspondents can learn from each other in their efforts to educate a public about events and peoples far beyond our homelands.

The result of nearly a decade's worth of work, Foreign News is a provocative study that will appeal to both general readers and those concerned with globalization.

About this title

About the Author:

Ulf Hannerz is a professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University. He is the author, most recently, of Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning and Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places.

Review:

"The term foreign correspondent conjures up images of intrepid men and women leading adventurous and glamorous lives, traveling from one exotic locale to the next. Yet as Hannerz shows in his latest book, the lives of these journalists are also rife with danger, uncertainty, and personal sacrifice. Hannerz relies on his training in social anthropology to provide an in-depth study of the culture and social interactions of the correspondents. He details the complexities and nuances of living and working in a country other than one's own and studies his subjects' lifestyles and careers through interviews with them and through fieldwork in several of the major news regions, including the Middle East and Africa. His research also provides insights into such global issues of the day as terrorism." (Donna Marie Smith Library Journal)

"Foreign News works as a founding document for the anthropology of journalism. Hannerz raises important questions and suggests p[romising new avenues for further research. . . . [The work] provides not only an important window into a parallel profession, but also a mirror in which to examine our own methods and aims in an increasingly integrated, yet dangerously anarchic world." (Mark Pedelty Anthropological Quarterly)

"Foreign News is a great contribution to the anthropology of work. The rich ethnographic material, the correspondents' narratives and the pace of the text were excellent." (Rob Johnston Anthropology of Work Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0226315746
• ISBN 13: 9780226315744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296