SCHOOL of INTERNATIONAL SERVICE
American University · Washington, D.C.
PHD STUDENT Lauhona Ganguly
Lauhona Ganguly
Field: International Communication
E-mail: lauhonaganguly [at] yahoo.com
Research and Background
Lauhona is currently teaching graduate courses in International Communication at The New School, New York and holds a cross-departmental appointment as Adjunct Faculty with the Film and Media Studies Division and International Affairs Division. She has also taught at the School of International Service, American University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University and the City University of New York, New York. Lauhona has also worked in the television industry, including the Discovery Communications (U.S.A) and Trans World International (India). She has also worked with non profit groups in designing communicative strategies in support of social justice and development programs, in the United States and India. She is fluent in Bengali, English and Hindi, and has limited conversation skills in Punjabi, Urdu and Spanish.
Lauhona specializes in International Communication. Her research and professional interests include: global media industry, South Asian media, international relations, political-economy, cultural studies, development communication and television and film production.
In particular, her dissertation research examines the emerging significance of private satellite television, since the 1990s, as a socio-political force, in India. How does the television industry in India mediate the political economic transformations in the country as India moves towards privatization and liberalization? How does television provide a social space where audiences negotiate social change and socio-cultural uncertainties inherent at a moment of transition? What are the illustrative practices that signal a new market driven social milieu as India transforms from a state-centralized economy to a privatized and de-regularized economy.
The differences in material and socio-cultural power that lies at the heart of India’s emergence on the world stage often raises doubts about India’s ability to fulfill its potential role, as a stable democracy and competitive economy, in international affairs. This dissertation will enable policy makers and scholars understand the patterns of social change impacting India’s future as a global power. The private television industry is located at a crucial moment of historical, political and economic change, to investigate the ruptures and continuities in cultural practices as underlying patterns of social change. The television experience and entertainment programming in particular, provide a unique vantage point in this research to explore social change in the context of everyday lived experience, as opposed to institutional or state level analysis. The dissertation builds upon Stuart Hall’s ‘encoding-decoding’ model for communication research, Bourdieu’s dialectical framework for cultural practice and Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony to theoretically connect the television experience to social change. A multilevel methodological framework incorporates ethno-methodologies of watching-television-with-viewers for socio-cultural specificity of audience centered evidences and structural understanding of political and economic mechanisms for institutional evidences. Three reality-game shows will be analyzed, specifically, to empirically and theoretically connect the unprecedented popularity of reality shows in India with the global media industry practices of franchising program formats for local adaptations and the embedded social-structural relations of power in a global political-economy.
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Shalini Venturelli (Chair), American University; Dr. Marwan Kraidy, University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Arvind Rajagopal, New York University
ABD April 2006; projected completion of dissertation July 2008
Dissertation title (tentative): Prime Time India: A Study on the Emerging Significance of Private Television Industry and its Impact on Cultural Practices and National Identity in India