Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty (Sign, Storage, Transmission)

Mukherjee, Rahul

ISBN 10: 1478008067 / ISBN 13: 9781478008064

Published by Duke University Press, 2020

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781478008064

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty (Sign, Storage, Transmission)
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478008067
• ISBN 13: 9781478008064
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In Radiant Infrastructures Rahul Mukherjee explores how the media coverage of nuclear power plants and cellular phone antennas in India—what he calls radiant infrastructures—creates environmental publics: groups of activists, scientists, and policy makers who use media to influence public opinion. In documentaries, lifestyle television shows, newspapers, and Bollywood films, and through other forms of media (including radiation-sensing technologies), these publics articulate contesting views about the relationships between modernity, wireless signals, and nuclear power. From testimonies of cancer patients who live close to cell towers to power plant operators working to contain information about radiation leaks and health risks, discussions in the media show how radiant infrastructures are at once harbingers of optimism about India's development and emitters of potentially carcinogenic radiation. In tracing these dynamics, Mukherjee expands understandings of the relationship between media and infrastructure and how people make sense of their everyday encounters with technology and the environment.

About the Author

Rahul Mukherjee is Dick Wolf Assistant Professor of Television and New Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.