Broadcasting, space, and sovereignty in India

Abstract

This article posits that a spatial discourse can be discerned in broadcasting and media policies in India that has framed nationalism, globalization, sovereignty, and citizenship. Through a range of spatial practices, India’s nation-state has historically elaborated two overlapping modalities of power: national sovereignty from 1947 to 1990, and governmentality since 1991. To understand the spatial discourses and the modalities of power we need to move beyond methodological nationalism: that is, explanations that treat state as a container and a fixed entity, where social relations are organized within territorially bounded national spaces. The article demonstrates that the spatial discourse of the state can be grasped through a transnational framework that considers national and international as part of the wider global field of relations.