Brian Larkin   Associate Professor

Associate Professor
Ph.D, New York University

Telephone: (212)-854-5402       Email: blarkin@barnard.edu

My research examines the role media play in the shaping of social life. This takes several directions but all of them emerge out of research in Nigeria. I write on issues of circulation and the movement of cultural forms; Nigerian cultural production, especially video films; piracy; the materiality of media technologies; infrastructure and technological breakdown; and the relationship between media and forms of political rule. These issues come together in my book, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure & Culture in Urban Nigeria (Duke University Press). My current research is on the religious use of media by Muslim movements in Nigeria, the relationship between religion and mediation and how media shape new forms of religious publics. I am also interested in the ruined life of infrastructures in Nigeria, examining this through the collapse of electricity provision in Nigeria (and the consequent rise of generators) and the demise of the state telephone network and rapid acceptance of mobile phone technologies.

Selected Publications

Books

2002 Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, Brian Larkin, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press

Signal and Noise Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria. 2008 Durham: Duke University Press.

 
Articles

2007 Pirate Infrastructures.  In, Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. Joe Karaganis ed.  Pp. 74-87.  New York: SSRC.: Akyeampong paper: (PDF)

2006 Pentecostalism, Islam and Culture. New Religious Movements in West Africa. (with Birgit Meyer). In, Themes in West African History. Emmanuel Akyeampong ed. Pp. 286-312. Oxford: James Currey.: (PDF)

2004 Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy. Public Culture. 14(3) Fall.: (PDF)

2004 From Majigi to Hausa Video Films.  Cinema and Society in Northern Nigeria.  In, Hausa Home Videos:  Technology, Economy, Society.  Abdalla Uba Adamu ed.  Pp: 46-53.  Kano, Nigeria: BUK Press.: (PDF) 

2003 Itineraries of Indian Cinema. African videos, Bollywood and Global Media. In, Multiculturalism, Postcolonialism and Transnational Media. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam eds. Pp. 170-192. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.: (PDF)

2002 Bandiri Music, Globalization and Urban Experience in Nigeria. In, Cahiers D'Etudes africaines 168 XLII-4 Pp.739-762.: (PDF)

2002 Materializing Culture: Cinema and the Creation of Social Space. In, Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, Brian Larkin eds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 319-336.: (PDF)

2002 Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities. In, The Anthropology of Globalization. A Reader. Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo eds. Oxford: Blackwell Books

1999 Introduction, Media Technologies and the Design for Modern Living: A Symposium. Brian Larkin ed. Special Issue, Visual Anthropology Review 14(2): 11-13: (PDF)

1999 Theaters of the Profane: Cinema and Colonial Urbanization. Special Issue, Media and the Design for Modern Living. Brian Larkin ed. Visual Anthropology Review 14(2): 46-62.

1997 Hausa Dramas and the Rise of Video Culture in Nigeria. In Nigerian Video Film. Jonathan Haynes ed. Pp. 209-242. Ohio: Ohio University Press.

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