Videos by Mark Hobart
Media Studies is still often treated with derision by older, more established, if long-in-the-too... more Media Studies is still often treated with derision by older, more established, if long-in-the-tooth, disciplines. The lecture is a light-hearted introduction to why such attitudes say more about the speakers than about the importance that mass media has long had in the study of society and culture. Using examples from contemporary Indonesian television watched by millions of viewers, I hope to demonstrate vividly why media matter and why ignoring them is intellectual myopia. 98 views
The objects of human and social scientific study mostly concern the products of social action rat... more The objects of human and social scientific study mostly concern the products of social action rather than the practices that constitute them. Inquiry stresses notionally universalizable abstractions like system, structure, regularity, models, norms, collective representations or culture. To obtain the neat results that scholarly conventions expect requires finessing or ignoring how complex, contextual and contingent situated practices are. What are notably omitted are the daily activities of reasoning, persuading and disagreeing – how people represent and articulate the world they live in. That discussing, arguing, convincing and commenting are so everyday, commonplace and omnipresent as to be hard to grasp is no reason to pretend they are unimportant. On the contrary, they are what make the imaginaries of the human sciences possible. 10 views
The objects of human and social scientific study mostly concern the products of social action rat... more The objects of human and social scientific study mostly concern the products of social action rather than the practices that constitute them. Inquiry stresses notionally universalizable abstractions like system, structure, regularity, models, norms, collective representations or culture. To obtain the neat results that scholarly conventions expect requires finessing or ignoring how complex, contextual and contingent situated practices are. What are notably omitted are the daily activities of reasoning, persuading and disagreeing – how people represent and articulate the world they live in. That discussing, arguing, convincing and commenting are so everyday, commonplace and omnipresent as to be hard to grasp is no reason to pretend they are unimportant. On the contrary, they are what make the imaginaries of the human sciences possible. 23 views
One event had a massive impact on the development of theatre studies the twentieth century. It wa... more One event had a massive impact on the development of theatre studies the twentieth century. It was Artaud discovery of Balinese theatre at the Paris Exposition. He had long been discontent with the hidebound and text-driven parameters of European theatre. The sheer difference of Balinese theatre and dance made him realize that there were entirely alternative ways of imagining the human body, its movements and gestures, the role of sound and speech and the way that actors engaged with one another on stage.
The present piece is a reimagining of Artaud's watching the theatre performance in which he becomes progressively involved to the point of trying to take over the dancers as if he were a puppeteer. The dance follows his schizophrenia as the the action moves into his head, until he finally regains distance.
The dances follow the order on the programme that Artaud watched and all his gestures are taken from his writings. 8 views
Drafts by Mark Hobart
How do we know if things have gone wrong? We know because the media told us so. Beyond this plati... more How do we know if things have gone wrong? We know because the media told us so. Beyond this platitude, are crisis, criticism and the media related in more significant ways? If you wish to understand how a society works and what is taken for granted, you need to look at what can go wrong; and how to anticipate, judge and propose remedies for deficiencies and dangers. This requires discussing, deciding on action or inaction, communicating and obtaining support or at least passive acceptance. While the concepts might appear unrelated, they are processes constitutive of any society, or indeed any organization or assemblage. So this piece examines in some detail how crisis has been imagined, its relationship to criticism and how neither is imaginable without the mass media.
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An illustrated talk about Balinese ideas and practices to do with the nature of the human body. T... more An illustrated talk about Balinese ideas and practices to do with the nature of the human body. This is conceived in quite different terms from almost all European models as in a process of continuous transformation that is inseparable from the world about it, which is also transforming. As a result, creating a mature socially functioning person requires distinctive kinds of discipline better imagined as a relationship of command rather than controlling. The body in dance and theatre exemplifies this ideal of command over oneself. However, as everything is always transforming, such mastery only lasts for a short time.
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A summary of published and unpublished work available on my personal website.
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Blogs by Mark Hobart
SOAS Blogs, 2020
Critical reflections on the use and misuse of the idea of crisis in media coverage of emergencies.
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SOAS Blogs, 2020
Critical Media and Cultural Studies reflections on media coverage of Covid-19.
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Books by Mark Hobart
There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture. Men without culture would not be... more There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture. Men without culture would not be...clever savages...thrown back upon the cruel wisdom of their animal instincts; nor would they be nature's noblemen of Enlightenment primitivism or even, as classical ...
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Public Lectures by Mark Hobart
A popular assumption is that communication is ipso facto a good thing, nowhere more evident than ... more A popular assumption is that communication is ipso facto a good thing, nowhere more evident than in ideologically-inflected claims of the miracles of Artificial Intelligence. Even supposedly critical scholars underestimate or ignore the role of power, which emerges starkly on a critical examination of theories of communication. As this talk is intended as a seminar, I concentrate on one set of issues. The difficulty in circumscribing the practices through which people engage with communication is displaced onto vain attempts to restrict inquiry to producers’ hegemonic interpretations, wrapped up as ‘science’. These problems are part of wider difficulties in explaining the ‘everyday’ (the ordinary, normal, quotidian). Mass communication studies sweeps the problems under the carpet by invoking an empty signifier, ‘the masses’. However, as Raymond Williams remarked: ‘there are in fact no masses, but only ways of seeing people as masses’. Most communication theorists exemplify communication as conquest without realizing how hegemonic their own deliberations are—a remarkable act of auto-lobotomy.
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Cultural Studies bukanlah studi budaya, tetapi sebuah kritik pasca-Marxis yang mendekonstruksi bu... more Cultural Studies bukanlah studi budaya, tetapi sebuah kritik pasca-Marxis yang mendekonstruksi budaya sebagai realitas yang salah menggambarkan aktualitas yang merupakan Imajiner yang nyaman bagi rezim kekuasaan. Di Bali, feodalisme memberi jalan kepada kapitalisme global ketika Orde Baru mengartikulasikan 'kebudayaan' untuk menciptakan penduduk yang patuh dengan senang hati merangkul pariwisata global. Budaya bukan lagi bagaimana orang yang berbeda melakukan sesuatu, tetapi komoditas standar yang dapat dipasarkan yang berpura-pura menjadi 'tradisi kuno'.
Bali sebagai surga adalah klise yang melelahkan. Pulau ini sekarang menjadi tuan rumah begitu banyak taman hiburan sampai memenuhi impian Madame Suharto tentang Disneyland. Fantasi kapitalis tentang pertumbuhan bebas biaya yang tidak terbatas sangat berbeda dari kosmologi Bali yang canggih dari Kali-Yuga, yang berakhir dengan kehancuran yang dahsyat; atau ide-ide populer dunia sebagai transformasi tanpa henti. Walaupun kebudayaan menganggap orang biasa sebagai rakyat yang masih bodoh, mereka sering kali melepaskan diri dari pengekangan ideologi kebudayaan dengan hanya mengikuti kebudayaan sebagai kehidupan sehari-hari.
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Cultural Studies is not the study of culture. It is a late-Marxist critique which deconstructs cu... more Cultural Studies is not the study of culture. It is a late-Marxist critique which deconstructs culture as ideology, as methodically misrepresenting actuality by fabricating an Imaginary congenial to the interests of regimes of power. In Bali, feudalism gave way to global capitalism as the New Order articulated its own weird concept ‘kebudayaan’ to create a submissive, even enthusiastic, populace willing to embrace global tourism, albeit at their own long-term cost. Culture was no longer how different people did things, but standardized apolitical simulacra endlessly marketable as commodities. It became kebudayaan—disseminated in slogans posturing as ‘ancient tradition’ through official and mass media monologues that silence argument and disagreement.
The cliché of Bali as paradise is worn out, as lack of planning, over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution have reached the point of irreversibility. The island now hosts so many theme parks that it fulfils Madame Suharto’s dream of Disneyland. For tourists, Bali is not utopia, but heterotopia: a place that is different, where they can behave differently.
This capitalist fantasy of indefinite cost-free growth bears scant resemblance to the sophisticated Balinese cosmology of Kali-Yuga, which ends in cataclysmic dissolution; or to Sāṃkhya, popular (and broadly Asian) ideas of the world as ceaseless transforming. Kebudayaan prioritizes an urbanized Balinese middle class worldview that dismisses ordinary people as mere masses: stupid, lacking individuality, unworthy of recognition. However, ordinary people are more likely to escape the ideological straitjacket of kebudayaan by just getting on with culture as everyday life.
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Media Studies is often dismissed by older, established (aka often moribund) disciplines as not be... more Media Studies is often dismissed by older, established (aka often moribund) disciplines as not being a 'serious' intellectual endeavour. So, for my inaugural lecture a Professor of Critical Media and Cultural Studies at SOAS, University of London in May 2010, I had fun by showing just how inadequate the self-styles serious disciplines are at interpreting what is going on and what engages one of the largest audiences in the non-Western world. Using ethnography from Bali, Indonesia, I start by questioning the supposed wisdom of conventional scholarship to show just how peculiar, hermetically sealed and even intellectually vacuous much of the scholarly work on the island is. I then turn to that favourite object of derision among self-important scholars: television. A critical analysis of a range of genres suggests that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the triviality of such popular culture is only sustainable by sheer ignorance and out-of-hand dismissals achieved by not actually knowing anything about what they opine. Engaging with Balinese and Indonesian popular culture offers remarkable surprises. I illustrate the talk with a range of slides and video clips—many of them amusing—that invite the audience to rethink their prejudices. After all, there are practices, including academic ones, far more peculiar than Media Studies.
Video of the original lecture: https://youtu.be/dvOtqRN3eqc
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Balinese Studies by Mark Hobart
Jurnal Kajian Bali, 2017
The idea of Balinese culture as a unique, largely timeless, harmonious synthesis of religion, cus... more The idea of Balinese culture as a unique, largely timeless, harmonious synthesis of religion, custom and art is remarkably resistant to historical and contemporary evidence to the contrary. Such a hegemonic vision, however imaginary, conveniently underwrites both local politics and tourism, and so national and global capitalism. Against this ideal of Bali-as-Paradise, a critical analysis suggests a quite di erent metaphor—Bali-as-a-ba le eld—in many instances to be more appropriate and accurate. To understand why the Arcadian myth has proven so a ractive to both Balinese and foreigners, we need to examine the work done by social imaginaries. Hypostatizing, essentializing, then mythologizing, a largely imaginary monolithic ‘Balinese culture’ delivers a docile population which not only accepts, but enthusiastically embraces, their increasing alienation and their subjection to the political and economic forces of capitalism.
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Jurnal Kajian Bali, Jun 30, 2011
Page 1. Bali is a Brand: A Critical Approach 1 JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 01, April 2011... more Page 1. Bali is a Brand: A Critical Approach 1 JURNAL KAJIAN BALI Volume 01, Nomor 01, April 2011 Bali is a Brand: A Critical Approach* Mark Hobart** Abstrak Kajian kebudayaan Bali kebingungan oleh karena yang dimaksudkan dengan 'kebudayaan' sangat kurang terang. ...
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Balinese State and Society , 1986
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Journal of the Indonesia circle, 1983
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Videos by Mark Hobart
The present piece is a reimagining of Artaud's watching the theatre performance in which he becomes progressively involved to the point of trying to take over the dancers as if he were a puppeteer. The dance follows his schizophrenia as the the action moves into his head, until he finally regains distance.
The dances follow the order on the programme that Artaud watched and all his gestures are taken from his writings.
Drafts by Mark Hobart
Blogs by Mark Hobart
Books by Mark Hobart
Public Lectures by Mark Hobart
Bali sebagai surga adalah klise yang melelahkan. Pulau ini sekarang menjadi tuan rumah begitu banyak taman hiburan sampai memenuhi impian Madame Suharto tentang Disneyland. Fantasi kapitalis tentang pertumbuhan bebas biaya yang tidak terbatas sangat berbeda dari kosmologi Bali yang canggih dari Kali-Yuga, yang berakhir dengan kehancuran yang dahsyat; atau ide-ide populer dunia sebagai transformasi tanpa henti. Walaupun kebudayaan menganggap orang biasa sebagai rakyat yang masih bodoh, mereka sering kali melepaskan diri dari pengekangan ideologi kebudayaan dengan hanya mengikuti kebudayaan sebagai kehidupan sehari-hari.
The cliché of Bali as paradise is worn out, as lack of planning, over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution have reached the point of irreversibility. The island now hosts so many theme parks that it fulfils Madame Suharto’s dream of Disneyland. For tourists, Bali is not utopia, but heterotopia: a place that is different, where they can behave differently.
This capitalist fantasy of indefinite cost-free growth bears scant resemblance to the sophisticated Balinese cosmology of Kali-Yuga, which ends in cataclysmic dissolution; or to Sāṃkhya, popular (and broadly Asian) ideas of the world as ceaseless transforming. Kebudayaan prioritizes an urbanized Balinese middle class worldview that dismisses ordinary people as mere masses: stupid, lacking individuality, unworthy of recognition. However, ordinary people are more likely to escape the ideological straitjacket of kebudayaan by just getting on with culture as everyday life.
Video of the original lecture: https://youtu.be/dvOtqRN3eqc
Balinese Studies by Mark Hobart
The present piece is a reimagining of Artaud's watching the theatre performance in which he becomes progressively involved to the point of trying to take over the dancers as if he were a puppeteer. The dance follows his schizophrenia as the the action moves into his head, until he finally regains distance.
The dances follow the order on the programme that Artaud watched and all his gestures are taken from his writings.
Bali sebagai surga adalah klise yang melelahkan. Pulau ini sekarang menjadi tuan rumah begitu banyak taman hiburan sampai memenuhi impian Madame Suharto tentang Disneyland. Fantasi kapitalis tentang pertumbuhan bebas biaya yang tidak terbatas sangat berbeda dari kosmologi Bali yang canggih dari Kali-Yuga, yang berakhir dengan kehancuran yang dahsyat; atau ide-ide populer dunia sebagai transformasi tanpa henti. Walaupun kebudayaan menganggap orang biasa sebagai rakyat yang masih bodoh, mereka sering kali melepaskan diri dari pengekangan ideologi kebudayaan dengan hanya mengikuti kebudayaan sebagai kehidupan sehari-hari.
The cliché of Bali as paradise is worn out, as lack of planning, over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution have reached the point of irreversibility. The island now hosts so many theme parks that it fulfils Madame Suharto’s dream of Disneyland. For tourists, Bali is not utopia, but heterotopia: a place that is different, where they can behave differently.
This capitalist fantasy of indefinite cost-free growth bears scant resemblance to the sophisticated Balinese cosmology of Kali-Yuga, which ends in cataclysmic dissolution; or to Sāṃkhya, popular (and broadly Asian) ideas of the world as ceaseless transforming. Kebudayaan prioritizes an urbanized Balinese middle class worldview that dismisses ordinary people as mere masses: stupid, lacking individuality, unworthy of recognition. However, ordinary people are more likely to escape the ideological straitjacket of kebudayaan by just getting on with culture as everyday life.
Video of the original lecture: https://youtu.be/dvOtqRN3eqc
The seminar will address some of the issues surrounding argument, whether as argumentation or disagreement. Problematically Western philosophers have claimed monopoly over rationality, everything else being ‘primitive thought’, defective or otherwise lacking. It is far more interesting to treat reasoning as cultural. Equally regressive are stereotypes (e.g. ‘the Chinese mind’), which function as ideological Imaginaries that inhibit critical inquiry.
Considering argument as a cultural practice raises intriguing questions. What forms of rhetoric, styles of reasoning and disagreement are recognized, approved, permitted or prohibited in different contexts, by whom, under what circumstances? Across Southeast Asia, how far do modes of arguing – whether, say, in politics, the mass media, public debate or privately – differ between societies, classes, ethnic groups, genders or by generation or religious affiliation? Is ethnography singularly suited to such an investigation? Drawing on my research in Bali, I shall examine some of the issues that arise. For purposes of comparison, during discussion I would like to invite participants to draw upon their expertise from elsewhere in the region to develop these initial thoughts.
Theory –GDAT–, realizada en la Universidad de Manchester
el 30 de noviembre de 1996
To consider these issues, I draw upon nine years’ ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia. Over five decades I have been obliged to confront the consistent disjuncture between empirical evidence and whatever were the current state-of- the-art theory and methods. Addressing the problems has required shifting from Social Anthropology and Area Studies to Cultural and Media Studies by way of Post-structuralism. The talk reflects on how these peregrinations might be relevant to young researchers.
It is helpful to start by reviewing what we understand by knowledge and its purposes; and what theory and methods might look like in the human and social sciences. However, this does not fully explain the disjuncture, which requires at least two further, related considerations. First, our models remain Eurocentric: they are ill-equipped to address how others constitute, evaluate and comment on their lived worlds. So we risk hegemonizing – rather than understanding – others. Second, our approaches, which presuppose structure, system and regularity, cannot cope with contingency, uncertainty and the vicissitudes of everyday practice. A function of conventional disciplinary theory and methods is to hide recognition of these difficulties. In conclusion how might research students square the circle of meeting institutional disciplinary expectations while not being intellectually naïve?
A review of six major issues shows these to be more serious and systemic than conventional disciplinary problems. In effect Communications and Media Studies rest upon a whole series of impossibilities.
In the excerpts of the theatre play examined, together with comments afterwards both by the actors and by members of the audience, are analyzed in detail to examine their views of what was going on. A major theme was the right of different recognized religions to practise freely under the Indonesian constitution. Religion is the most widely adopted idiom of ethnic difference and conflict. So, the extensive references to religion in the play made all sorts of statements about the nature of development processes in Indonesia, about the relative access of different groups to resources and the dangers of growing ethnic division, the jealousy felt by their Muslim neighbours to the growing affluence of Balinese and the hatred of which Balinese feel themselves to be the target. Using the example of a past Balinese king who, although Hindu, promoted the welfare and religious freedom of all his subjects equally, the actors were arguing for a model of mutual tolerance against an implicit antagonistic and destructive one. They were also being directly critical of government for failing to achieve this on behalf of all the people concerned. In this analysis, it is ignorance, sloth and avarice which are the sources of hatred. Government officials were being accused of all three and warned of the dire long-term consequences of not doing their public duty.
The argument in the play was an elegant reflection on the dangers of imagining differences as rival interests, not as complementary ways of living. What is distinctive though is that the idiom, the language and the moral argument were distinctly Hindu Balinese, but engaged issues around development, ethnicity and hatred from a quite distinct and almost totally unconsidered point of view.
Two years later I asked the same group of people whether subsequent events had confirmed or challenged their original views. On various grounds, their earlier argument seemed, if anything, more cogent. For example, the theme of the disarticulation of the majority of Indonesian people had begun to be taken up as an issue on national television. Despite widespread political violence in Indonesia, the villagers were clear that apocalypse had only just started.
This is the original version with an afterword contrasting Hall's and Laclau's theories of articulation.
Publication View. 5027861. A Balinese village and its field of social relations / (1979). Hobart, Mark. Abstract. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of London, 1979.. Includes bibliographical references.. Microfilm (positive).. s. Publication details. Download, http://worldcat.org/oclc/28790445 ...