Moral Atmospheres - (Religion, Culture, and Public Life) by Timothy P a Cooper (Paperback)

About the Book

Timothy P. A. Cooper examines the diverse and coexisting moral atmospheres that surround media in Pakistan, tracing public understandings of ethical life and showing how they influence economic behavior.

Book Synopsis

Lahore's Hall Road is the largest electronics market in Pakistan. Once the center of film and media piracy in South Asia, it now specializes in smartphones and accessories. For Hall Road's traders, conflicts between the economic promises and the moral dangers of film loom large. To reconcile their secular trade with their responsibilities as devoted Muslims, they often look to adjudicate the good or bad moral "atmosphere" (mahaul) that can cling to film and media.

Timothy P. A. Cooper examines the diverse and coexisting moral atmospheres that surround media in Pakistan, tracing public understandings of ethical life and showing how they influence economic behavior. Drawing on extensive ethnographic work among traders, consumers, collectors, archivists, cinephiles, and cinephobes, Moral Atmospheres explores varied views on what the relationship between film and faith should look, sound, and feel like for Pakistan's Muslim-majority public. Cooper considers the preservation and censorship of film in and outside of the state bureaucracy, contestations surrounding heritage and urban infrastructure, and the production and circulation of sound and video recordings among the country's religious minorities. He argues that a focus on atmosphere provides ways of seeing moral thresholds as mutable and affective, rather than as fixed ethical standpoints. At once a vivid ethnography of a market street and a generative theorization of atmosphere, this book offers fresh perspectives on moral experience and the relationship between religion and media.

Review Quotes

...an insightful exploration of the complex interplay between media, morality, and public life in Lahore, Pakistan. Timothy Cooper's ability to blend anthropological theory with empirical research makes Moral Atmospheres a must-read and ensures it will be a key reference for years to come.-- "Material Religion"

This brilliantly textured ethnography...is well written and accessible for a range of readers...it would be ideal for scholars and advanced students who are interested in media studies, globalization, and everyday practices of Islam in South Asia.-- "Choice"

Moral Atmospheres is a groundbreaking examination of the entanglement of diverse actors in the creation, circulation, and reception of visual and moving-image media in Pakistan. This outstanding work seamlessly weaves together anthropological fieldwork conducted in Lahore with insightful analyses from contemporary media studies. The author deftly employs the concept of mahaul (atmosphere), demonstrating the multifaceted implications of media infrastructures in fostering relations across different religious and moral communities, navigating state regulations, and engaging with market intermediaries. Cooper tracks the volatile infrastructural and social dynamics of the media landscape, offering original insights into the relays between media, faith, culture, and capitalism in a postsecular framework. This study not only establishes itself as a defining contribution to the field of media studies in Pakistan but also makes a significant methodological intervention in media studies of the global South.--Iftikhar Dadi, John H. Burris Professor, Department of History of Art, Cornell University

Moral Atmospheres describes the world of traders who distribute Pakistani film and music yet see both as Islamically impermissible and morally repugnant. Mining this contradiction in fascinating ways, Cooper shows how media are moral as well as technical infrastructures, providing an innovative contribution to the study of religion and media.--Brian Larkin, author of Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria

This brilliantly layered book examines the permissibility and morality of film recording and distribution amid shifting public demand in Pakistan. Deftly linking discussions of informal media with Lahore's architectural history and atmospheric conditions, Cooper has written a riveting ethnographic account of Hall Road traders that carefully attends to their social lives and interactions.--Rahul Mukherjee, author of Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty

Convincingly bringing together the anthropology of ethics and morality with the aesthetic experiences engendered by the consumption and circulation of various genres of Pakistani film and video, Moral Atmospheres is a sophisticated and extraordinarily rich study.--Patrick Eisenlohr, author of Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World

About the Author

Timothy P. A. Cooper is an anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.