Publications

To access most of my publications, including advanced drafts, see rmit.academia.edu/JohnPostill

Book series

The Anthropology of Media. Oxford: Berghahn Books. John Postill and Mark A. Peterson, editors.

Books

Postill, J. in preparation. The Cultural Effects of Media.

Postill, J. forthcoming 2018. The Rise of Nerd Politics: Digital Activism and Political Change. London: Pluto Press.

Postill, J., E. Ardevol and S. Tenhunen (eds.) forthcoming. Theorising Media and Change.

Postill, J., P. Budka and B. Bräuchler (eds.) forthcoming 2018. Theorising Media and Conflict. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.

Pink, S., H. Horst, J. Postill, L. Hjorth, T. Lewis and J. Tacchi. 2016. Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice. London: Sage.

Postill, J. 2011. Localizing the Internet: An Anthropological Account. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. See draft Introduction.

Bräuchler, B. and J. Postill (eds) 2010. Theorising Media and Practice. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.

Postill, J. 2006. Media and Nation Building: How the Iban Became Malaysian. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Paperback edition published in July 2008. See reviews.

Special issues

Postill, J., H. Horst and R. Castro (eds.) forthcoming 2018. Special issue of Media, Culture and Society, “Media, culture and change across the Pacific: current perspectives from Asia, Oceania and the Americas”.

Hopkins, J., J. Postill and M.Y. Tan (eds) forthcoming 2017. Special issue of Television & New Media, “The Internet in Southeast Asia: politics, society and culture”.

Journal articles

Postill, J. forthcoming. Political culture keywords: exploring social movements and media practices that are worlds apart. Special issue of Media, Culture and Society on “Media, political cultures and social movements”, Veronica Barassi, Alice Mattoni and Anastasia Kavada (eds.).

Pink, S. and J. Postill forthcoming. Migration as a design probe: researching digital laundry futures through transnational movement.

Postill, J., H. Horst and R. Castro forthcoming 2018. Media, culture and change across the Pacific. Introduction to the special issue of Media, Culture and Society (2018, Vol 40) on “Media, culture and change across the Pacific: current perspectives from Asia, Oceania and the Americas”, John Postill, Heather Horst and Raul Castro (eds.).

Postill, J. forthcoming 2017. The rise of nerd politics in Southeast Asia: an ethnographic account of RightsCon 2015, Manila. Television & New Media.

Postill, J., V. Lasa and G. Zhang in press. Monitory politics and the new civic movements: multidirectional surveillance during Hong Kong’s 2014 protests. Soziale Welt.

Postill, J. in press. Populism and social media: a global perspective, Media, Culture and Society.

Barbas, A. and J. Postill 2017. Communication activism as a school of politics: lessons from Spain’s indignados movement, Journal of Communication 67: 646–664. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcom.12321/abstract

Postill, J. and L.C. Epafras 2018. Indonesian religion as a hybrid media space: social dramas in a contested realm. Asiascape: Digital Asia 5, 100-123.

Postill, J. and L.C. Epafras 2017. Tweeting religion in Indonesia: when political arenas go viral. American Ethnologist.

Postill, J. 2017. Field theory, media change and the new citizen movements: Spain’s ‘real democracy’ turn as a series of fields and spaces, Recerca 21: 15-36.

Pink, S., J. Postill, K. Leder Mackley, and N. Astari 2017. Digital-visual stakeholder ethnography, Sociological Research. First Published September 1, 201. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1360780417726736

Postill, J. 2017. The diachronic ethnography of media: from social changing to actual social changes. Moment, Journal of Cultural Studies 4(1): 19-43.

Pink, S. and J. Postill 2017. Student migration and domestic improvisation: transient migration though the experience of everyday laundry. Transitions 1 (1), 13-28.

Monterde, A., M. Aguilera, X. Barandiaran, A. Calleja-Lopez, J. Postill 2015. Multitudinous identities: a qualitative and network analysis of the 15M collective identity, Information, Communication and Society. Vol. 18, Iss. 8.

Postill, J. 2014. Freedom technologists and the new protest movements: a theory of protest formulas. Convergence 20 (3), 402-418. http://con.sagepub.com/content/20/4/402

Postill, J. 2014. A critical history of internet activism and social protest in Malaysia, 1998-2011. Asiascape: Digital Asia Journal 1-2: 78-103.

Postill, J. 2014. Democracy in an age of viral reality: a media epidemiography of Spain’s indignados movement Ethnography 15 (1): 50-68.

Postill, J. 2013. We are the one percent: rethinking national elites as protest participants. Reviews & Critical Commentary (CritCom), 26 November 2013.

Postill, J. and S. Pink 2012. Social media ethnography: the digital researcher in a messy web. Media International Australia 145 , 123-134.

Postill, J. 2010. ‘Researching the Internet‘, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (3), 646–650.

Postill, J. 2009. ‘What is the point of media anthropology?‘ Social Anthropology 17(3), 334-337, 340-342.

Postill, J. 2008 Localising the internet beyond communities and networks, New Media and Society 10 (3), 413-431; pre-publication version

Postill, J. 2003 ‘The mediated production of ethnicity and nationalism among the Iban of Sarawak (II), 1977-1997. Borneo Research Bulletin, Vol. 33.

Postill, J. 2003 ‘ Knowledge, literacy, and media among the Iban of Sarawak: a reply to Maurice Bloch’, in Social Anthropology, Vol 11, no. 1, 79-100.

Postill, J. 2002 ‘ Clock and calendar time: a missing anthropological problem’, in Time and Society, 11, 251-270.

Postill, J.  2002 ‘Using maps and diagrams to teach a region-based anthropology’, in Anthropology in Action, Special Issue on the Uses of Visual Methods in the Teaching and Learning of Anthropology, June 2002.

Postill, J. 2002 ‘The mediated production of ethnicity and nationalism among the Iban of Sarawak, 1954-1976′ in Borneo Research Bulletin, Vol. 32.

Postill, J. 1999 ‘The impact of television and radio on rural Iban: an ethnographic report’. Sarawak Development Journal 2 (2): 91-109.

Postill, J. 1998 ‘Little by little, a national subculture is made: the role of modern media in the institutional  transformations of Iban society’, in Borneo Research Bulletin 29: 95-128.

Postill, J. 1997 ’Social Significance of Media Among the Iban of Sarawak’, in Borneo Research Bulletin 28:156.

Postill, J. 1996 ‘A Sandinist counterattack in Borneo: a late reply to Derek Freeman’ (in Spanish), in Anales del Museo Nacional de Antropologia III: 53-62, Madrid.

Book chapters

Postill, J. forthcoming. Focused fields vs. dispersed spaces: a practice theory of citizen media activism. In H. Stephansen and E. Trere, eds, Citizen Media and Practice. London: Routledge.

Postill, J. forthcoming. Digital politics and political engagement. In H. Geismar and H. Knox (eds) Digital Anthropology, 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury.

Postill, J. forthcoming. Location technologists: the politics of digital media in a ‘special region’ of Indonesia. In Rowan Wilken, Gerard Goggin & Heather Horst, eds, Location Technologies in International Context.

Postill, J. and M. Peterson in press. Anthropology of media. In P. Barbaro (ed) Cultural Anthropology: UNESCO Encyclopaedia of Life Supporting Systems (EOLSS). Paris: UNESCO.

Postill, J. and S. Pink (2017) Social media ethnography: The digital researcher in a messy web. In K. Hughes, J. Coulton, J. Goodwin, and J. Hughes (eds.), Contemporary Approaches to Ethnographic Research. New Delhi: Sage.

Postill, J. and K. Saputro 2017. Digital activism in contemporary Indonesia: victims, volunteers and voices. In R. Tapsell and E. Jurriens eds, Digital Indonesia: Connectivy and Convergence. Singapore: ISEAS.

Postill, J. 2017. Remote ethnography: studying culture from afar. In The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography. Eds. Larissa Hjorth, Heather Horst, Anne Galloway and Genevieve Bell. London: Routledge, pp. 61-69.

Postill, J. 2016. The multilinearity of protest: understanding new social movements through their events, trends and routines. In Othon Alexandrakis (ed). Impulse to Act: A New Anthropology of Resistance and Social Justice. Indiana University Press, pp. 192-210.

Postill, J. 2016. Freedom technologists and the future of global justice. In State of Power 2016. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. (Spanish translation: Los internautas de la libertad y el futuro de la justicia global).

Postill, J. 2016. What does anthropology have to say about social media and activism? In Durrenberger, E. P., and Erem, S. Anthropology Unbound: A field guide to the 21st century, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Postill, J. 2015. Public anthropology in times of media hybridity and global upheaval. In S. Abram and S. Pink (eds.) Media, Anthropology and Public Engagement. Oxford: Berghahn.

Postill, J. 2015. Fields: Dynamic configurations of practices, games, and socialities. In V. Amit (ed.) Thinking Through Sociality: An Anthropological Interrogation of Key Concepts. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 47-68.

Amit, V. with S. Anderson, V. Caputo, J. Postill, D. Reed-Danahay, and G. Vargas-Cetina 2015. Thinking through sociality: the importance of mid-level concepts. In V. Amit (ed.) Thinking Through Sociality: An Anthropological Interrogation of Key Concepts. Oxford: Berghahn.

Postill, J. 2014. Spain’s indignados and the mediated aesthetics of nonviolence. In P. Werbner, K. Spellman-Poots and M. Webb (eds) The Political Aesthetics of Global Protest: Beyond the Arab Spring. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 341-367.

Monterde, A. and J. Postill 2014. Mobile ensembles: The uses of mobile phones for social protest by Spain’s indignados. In G. Goggin and L. Hjorth (eds.) Routledge Companion to Mobile Media. London: Routledge, pp. 429-438.

Postill, J. 2012. Localising the internet beyond communities and networks. In C. Hine (ed.) Virtual Research Methods. London: Sage. Reprinted from Postill (2008), see above.

Postill, J. 2012. Digital politics and political engagement. In H. Horst and D. Miller (eds) Digital Anthropology. Oxford: Berg, pp. 165-184.

Postill, J. 2010. Introduction: Theorising media and practice. In B. Bräuchler and J. Postill (eds) Theorising Media and Practice. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.

Postill, J. 2010. Running cyburbia: new media and local governance in Subang Jaya. In Yeoh Seng Guan (ed) Media, Culture and Power in Malaysia, London and New York: Routledge.

Postill, J. 2010. The Dayak Festival as a media ritual. In Yeoh Seng Guan (ed) Media, Culture and Power in Malaysia, London and New York: Routledge.

Postill, J. 2009. Dramas, fields and threads: exploring sociality in a Malaysian cyberdistrict. In M. I. Srinivasan and R.R. Mathur (eds) Ethnography and the Internet: An Exploration. Hyderabad: Ifcai University Press.

Postill, J. 2008 The mediated production of ethnicity and nationalism among the Iban of Sarawak, 1953-1976. In Z. Ibrahim (ed) Representation, Identity and Multiculturalism in Sarawak. Bangi: Malaysian Social Science Association and Dayak Cultural Foundation.

Postill, J. 2005. Internet y epidemiología cultural en Malaisia: reflexiones desde la antropología cognitiva. In Ardevol, E. and J. Grau (eds) Antropología de los Media.  Seville: AA.EE.

Prefaces and afterwords

Postill, J. 2016. Prefaci. El compromís literari en la modernitat: Del període d’entreguerres al postfranquisme (1920–1980). Montserrat Corretger, Pompeu Casanovas and Vicent Salvador (eds.). Tarragona/Melbourne: Publicacions Universitat Rovira i Virgili and RMIT University.

Essays, working papers etc.

Postill, J. 2012. Participatory media research and Spain’s 15M movement, Cultural Anthropology, August 2012.

Postill, J. 2011. The unevenness of social change. Media and Social Change, 3 June 2011.

Postill, J. 2010. Publicity begins at home, Anthropology & Publicity, 4 Nov 2010.

Postill, J. 2008. What is practice theory?, media/anthropology, 30 Oct 2008.

Postill, J. 2007 Field theory and the political process black box: analysing internet activism in a Kuala Lumpur suburb, antropologi.info blog.

Postill, J. 2005 Media anthropology in a world of states. Working paper to the EASA Media Anthropology e-Seminar Series, 19-26 April 2005.

Reports

Postill, J. 2005 Community Forums and News in Subang Jaya – Malaysia. Report commissioned by the UK Local E-democracy National Project, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

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