The Voice of the Mountains: Radio and Anthropology

Using tape recordings, videos, and the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams, this work examines the uses of radio for development, the impact on oral culture, and the use of radio by indigenous people in Ecuador and miners in Bolivia. Few anthropologists have studied radio, and The Voice of the Mountains is unique in its approach to the field. Alan O'Connor is not committed to a single research method—ethnography—but to a question about the relationship between radio and political struggles. This work questions what is the field when studying radio broadcasting? The answer involves challenging the rules of ethnography and asking what does it mean to follow radios?