What's in a Dedication? On Being a Warlpiri DJ

Abstract

This article reports on the operation of the Pintupi Anmatyerre Warlpiri radio network, established by the Warlpiri Media Association in the north‐west of Central Australia in late 2001. It traces the history out of which the network emerged and considers the distinctive approach taken to broadcasting by a group of young Warlpiri women. In exploring the on‐air invocation of particular forms of social relations, I argue that radio has come to play an important role in facilitating expressions of Warlpiri sociality across an expanding social field. At once a driver of social transformation and the transcendence of localism, as well as the glue that might bind people to each other in a changing world, the activity occurring around the Warlpiri Media Association provides a window onto the multiple challenges and choices faced by Warlpiri people in the present. This article is most particularly interested in how Warlpiri youth are negotiating these challenges and choices. The final section considers whether this new radio network might be understood in terms of the emergence of a new public sphere.

Desert networks: A conceptual model for the impact of scarce, variable and patchy resources

“…Fostering social norms that then facilitate the efficient activation of wiry ties when needed is another means to reducing transaction costs. There are numerous examples of activities that build positive social norms such as dustWatch (Leys et al, 2008), Warlpiri radio (Hinkson, 2004), and sport (e.g. Tonts, 2005).…”

A Subject Deferred: Exposure and Erasure in an Ethnographic Archive

“…The subsequent Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies research fellowship of Eric Michaels and his work with Francis Kelly and others at Yuendumu led to the first of numerous, groundbreaking anthropological interventions that refigured media for anthropology, foregrounding the emergence of a different sort of television when configured by Warlpiri interests and sensibilities, while also remaking anthropology in projects that foregrounded Indigenous interests and the aspirations for collaboration of the anthropologists involved. Some of the better known such projects include Faye Ginsburg's long‐term work across Australia and Canada (1991, 1994), Melinda Hinkson's work with Warlpiri Media Association (Hinkson ), Jennifer Deger's research and video production in Gapuwiyak with Yolngu people (Deger ), and Beth Povinelli's work with Karrabing – in both filmic and archival modes (Povinelli ; see also Lea and Povinelli ). Even as these projects differ, all offer accounts that are attuned to their institutional conditions of possibility.…”

Dichotomous identities? Indigenous and non‐Indigenous people and the intercultural in Australia

“…Reflecting on particular kinds of subject matter which might ‘show signs of ways forward’ for anthropology into the contemporary, Lea (: 187) identifies the analysis of technology use and forms of multimedia as realms where anthropologists are locating fruitful avenues of enquiry. However, while noting the work of Christen (), Dalley (), Deger (), Fisher (), Hinkson () and Kral () in this area, to restrict the focus of analytical attention to the use of the technologically new offers a no less perilous means of interpreting the binary between tradition and modernity or, indeed, in the construction of relationships with those comprising the broader society . While the modernity seemingly captured in digital radio, laptops, mobile phones and social networking sites offers a seductive contemporaneousness, it is important to emphasise that less technologically new things are similarly contemporary.…”