Matthew Rosen

Matthew Rosen
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Matthew verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
Ohio University · Department of Sociology & Anthropology

Ph.D.

About

13
Publications
3,129
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42
Citations
Introduction
I am a socio-cultural anthropologist. My ethnographic research centers on the study of media practices, public culture, and city life in contexts of late capitalism. I am interested in what people do and say in relation to different media of communication—including newspapers, books, and cell phones. I have done fieldwork with readers, writers, translators, editors, publishers, and educators in India and Albania.

Publications

Publications (13)
Chapter
Full-text available
This edited volume examines what the classic text The Ethnography of Reading (Boyarin 1993), and the diverse ethnographies of reading it helped inspire, can offer contemporary scholars interested in understanding the place of reading in social life. The volume brings together new research and critical reflections from an international and interdisc...
Chapter
Adopting the term, mrekullitë, or miracles, which a local interlocutor used to describe the best and rarest treasures to be found in Tirana’s outdoor book markets, this chapter approaches the observable circuit of books in Tirana as both a literal (semiotic) and figurative (back-of-the-book) index of Albanian modernity. When you’re wandering around...
Book
This edited volume examines what the classic text The Ethnography of Reading (Boyarin ed., 1993), and the diverse ethnographies of reading it helped inspire, can offer contemporary scholars interested in understanding the place of reading in social life. The Ethnography of Reading at Thirty brings together new research and critical reflections from...
Chapter
Full-text available
Reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities can move scholars of real cities to look at issues of urbanity in new and useful ways (Linder, this volume). This was certainly true for us, two differently positioned ethnographers who have previously approached Tirana, the Albanian capital, from our own distinctive anthropological perspectives. As a Tirana...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter traces a structure of feeling from the beginning of Albanian literary production in the 16th century to the 21st century formation of the Tirana-based publishing collective Pika pa sipërfaqe. The discussion in the chapter expands the idea of “the small context” of Albanian literature to include the far-reaching work of independent, soc...
Article
Full-text available
‘Business as usual’ in contemporary Albania takes place between different and conflicting systems of meaning and value. Drawing from ethnographic material collected in Tirana, Albania, this article examines the complexities of social and economic life in a city where distinct moral economies routinely clash with the capitalist principle of profit....
Article
Full-text available
The solitary reader, sitting quietly surrounded by her thoughts, is a powerful image. But reading is also a deeply social practice. From learning to read to deciding what to read next, a significant amount of literate activity takes place within specific social relationships. Drawing from ethnographic research I conducted between 2015 and 2018, thi...
Article
Full-text available
This article explores themes of chance and contingency in relation to field research I carried out in a network of outdoor newspaper libraries in Pune, India. Appearing amid the city’s transformation into a major regional hub linking western Maharashtra into the global economy, the vernacular institution of the footpath library emerges as a lens fo...
Article
Full-text available
This social thought and commentary makes an argument for ethnographies of reading in an age of widespread literacy and global communication. The choice of method I propose is to start with the concrete practices of everyday readers. To situate this proposal in a specific ethnographic context, I draw on material from my research among a community of...

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