Beyond the Lens: Indian and Egyptian Media Unwound

By Katherine Seiffert

An art investment consultant.   A playwright.   A freelance writer for Watchdog Newspaper in Washington, D.C.   A middle-school teacher in inner-city Los Angeles.

Through the many paths that Mark Peterson has walked in his life, there was always one common denominator: expanding his social and cultural understanding.

Peterson's interests in bettering his cultural understanding led him to study anthropology as a career.   Now, he is an assistant professor in collaboration between the department of anthropology and the international studies program at Miami.

While in graduate school at the Catholic University of America in D.C., Peterson decided to focus his studies on anthropology rather than previous inclinations toward philosophy.

Philosophical queries like "What does it mean to be human?" and "Are there universal norms?" serve as two of the main questions Peterson explores but from an anthropological perspective.

"Unlike philosophy, [answers to above questions] are empirical, they have data," explained Peterson.

Beyond the tapestries that hang colorfully in his office, you'd find what appear to be over a thousand books on media and their influence in the Third World.   With such an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Peterson could not be fulfilled with books alone.

India was the first stop.

Peterson and his family moved to New Delhi for approximately a year to study the differences and similarities between English, Hindi and Urdu newspapers.

Whereas New York City has four daily newspapers and three of those are regionally focused, New Delhi supports approximately 40 dailies that focus solely on the local news and events despite only 65 percent literacy and low family incomes.   This led Peterson to the obvious questions of why and how, which were the focus of his analysis.

According to Peterson, India's societal issue of mass unemployment actually feeds into the success of its newspapers. Peterson said that if you were to walk down the streets of New Delhi, you would find large groups of unemployed men reading daily newspapers and trading those papers between themselves.

After studying the societal impact of the media in India and earning his Ph.D. in 1996, Peterson decided to take a position teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, as an "Asianist," a specialist in Asian studies.

When Peterson was describing his experiences in Egypt, he explained how "what was originally going to be a two-year stay stretched" to an entire five years as he "got more interested in the society, language and people."

This cultural interest fed into his academic work so he created a course called Media Culture and Society in the Islamic World.   His stay in Egypt also spurred his interest in the role of transnational popular culture in the Third World, along the lines of a "McWorld."

From that point, it was clear that his boyhood dream of becoming a movie writer and director transformed into an academic career working as a behind-the-scenes anthropological critic of sorts.

Peterson said that one of his biggest advantages for having lived and learned abroad is that he has two Third World countries to use as examples.   For Peterson, this is an important insight because his studies are "not just the West versus the rest."

In the freshman seminar World Media Peterson teaches, the students are not only taught about media from across the globe but also get a glimpse of what it's really like to live in other parts of the world, like India and Egypt.   As students enter the classroom, they hear world music played to get them into the setting of that day's topic.

"Bollywood," India's thriving movie market, is one of the topics covered as popular Indian music plays.

Clips from a National Public Radio show about Bollywood are fused with an original production: 13-year-old Thea Peterson's self-made movie of Bollywood clips. Used together, they give the students visuals and different perspectives.

Students are encouraged to create their own media files, just like Peterson's daughter did, for their semester project.   How better to explain media's impact but through the use of media.

First-year business major Angela Irion said that she enjoys the music when she enters because it's interesting and helps her relate to what's being covered.   While the topic itself was her favorite part of the class, Irion said that one of the most helpful parts of Peterson's teaching is his use of personal experiences in the classroom.

But she clarified why it works for this particular class. "If you're talking science and math, I don't think it's going to make a difference if you tell a personal story or not," explained Irion.   "But this is different.   This is all about personal experiences."

Drawing on his experiences in India, Egypt and even Minnesota, where he grew up, Peterson excites his students' minds with colorful stories from his travels.   Those travels are the basis for his second book Connected in Cairo .

While his first book, Anthropology in Mass Communication, had a more general focus, his second book takes a closer look at the cultural impact media has on Egypt.

As Peterson studies the influence of media on Third World nations, it's interesting to note the strong influence media and other cultures have had on his own life.

You could see it in the news writing he did for a local Minnesota TV station while in high school.

You could see it dramatized by a Denver theater troupe. The actors performed Peterson's undergraduate play "The Goat Singers," which plays with the existence of acrobatics and sideshows before and after ancient Greek dramas.

You can see it in his office in the picture of Peterson shaking hands with President Bill Clinton from when Peterson was a writer for Watchdog Newspaper.

You even could see it in the way he describes one of his most prized possessions: a wood printing block of a page from the Koran, a gift from a former student who understood Peterson's passion for cultural differences in media and religion.

Read more of Katherine Seiffert's articles:

East Meets West: the Travels of a Miami Professor