Media Rurality investigates the centrality of rural places and people within the media systems and technologies that shape daily life in and across rural and urban settings alike. From the boglands of Ireland to data centers in the Oregon countryside to the homemade media systems of rural Tanzania, the contributors to this volume show how rural territories are highly mediated, technologized spaces profoundly enmeshed with global capitalism and colonialism. Approaching the study of rurality through a materialist lens that foregrounds infrastructure, this collection shows how rural spaces often bear the environmental brunt of capitalist development while being relegated to the economic and cultural periphery.
Contributors. Christopher Ali, Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney, Jenna Burrell, Jordan B. Kinder, Burç Köstem, Cindy Lin, Emily Ng, Lisa Parks, Anne Pasek, Esther Peeren, Nicole Starosielski, Ishita Tiwary, Hunter Vaughan, Ayesha Vemuri, Megan Wiessner, Assatu Wisseh
Media Rurality / Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney 1
Part I. Extractive Mediations
1. Green Data Capitalism and Its Rural Extractions / Megan Wiessner, Anne Pasek, Nicole Starosielski, and Hunter Vaughan 41
2. Scenes of Extraction: Mediating Rurality, Wilderness, and Hinterland in Dutch and Chinese Film / Emily Ng and Esther Peeren 65
3. Imperial Wireless: Energetic Mediation at Marconi’s Connemara Station / Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie 88
4. Mediated Extraction: The Production of Dark Ruralities in the Atlantic World / Assatu Wisseh 113
Part II. Practicing Rurality
5. Mediating the Periphery: Metabolism and Technicity on the Outskirts of Istanbul / Burç Köstem 133
6. Domestic Solar Media in Rural Tanzania: Toward an Energy-Media Matrix / Lisa Parks 157
7. Hong Kong in Siliguri/Dhulabari: Exploring Media Objects and Border Towns / Ishita Tiwary 179
8. The Preservation of Embodied Masculinity in Rural Tech-Altered Workplaces / Jenna Burrell 200
Part III. Political Ruralities
9. Gas Can Imaginaries: On the Politics of Combustion, Anti-Urban Resentment, and Playing Indian at the 2022 Freedom Convoy / Jordan B. Kinder 227
10. Where the Market Dares Not Tread: Mapping Rural Broadband in the United States / Christopher Ali 252
11. The Virtual Fire / Cindy Kaiying Lin 277
12. Embankment Economies, Soaking Ecologies, and the Conservation Zone of Kaziranga / Ayesha Vemuri 296
Acknowledgments 323
Contributors 329
Index 333
