Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Marathi Press and the Politics of Reading in Maharashtra, India

The New School, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral student Matthew F. Rosen, under the guidance of Dr. Vyjayanthi Rao, will examine the relationship between newspaper readership and the culture of democracy in India. The goal of the research is to understand the relationship between India's recent newspaper revolution and its ongoing democratic upsurge; how political culture shapes the presentation and reception of print; and how print in turn stimulates changes in political values, beliefs, and institutions. The research will be carried out in the city of Pune, in the State of Maharashtra, India. There Rosen will study the practices and experiences of ordinary readers (in public newspaper reading rooms) and professional journalists (in the editorial offices of a leading Marathi daily). The researcher will undertake intensive study of three domains of the print media field in Maharashtra: the circulation and presence of newspapers (by looking at readership patterns); the production of news stories and representations in the editorial offices of newspaper; and the uses and appropriations of newspapers among members of the reading public. The researcher will employ the qualitative research methods of participant observation, ethnographic interview, and media production and reception analytical techniques. This project will contribute to the emerging field of the social science of democracies, and to cross-cultural ethnography of reading. By focusing on democratic discourse and opinion formation circulated by Marathi newspapers to readers in the city of Pune, this research offers an empirically grounded method for analyzing the cultural specificity of Indian democracy and for examining reading as a social and collective activity. The project also contributes to the education of a social scientist.