Radio is the most widespread electronic medium in the world today. As a form of technology that is both durable and relatively cheap, radio remains central to the everyday lives of billions of people around the globe. It is used as a call for prayer in Argentina and Appalachia, to organize political protest in Mexico and Libya, and for wartime communication in Iraq and Afghanistan. In urban centers it is played constantly in shopping malls, waiting rooms, and classrooms. Yet despite its omnipresence, it remains the media form least studied by anthropologists. Radio Fields employs ethnographic methods to reveal the diverse domains in which radio is imagined, deployed, and understood. Drawing on research from six continents, the volume demonstrates how the particular capacities and practices of radio provide singular insight into diverse social worlds, ranging from aboriginal Australia to urban Zambia. Together, the contributors address how radio creates distinct possibilities for rethinking such fundamental concepts as culture, communication, community, and collective agency.

'Radio Fields' employs ethnographic methods to reveal the diverse domains in which radio is imagined, deployed, and understood. Drawing on research from six continents, the volume demonstrates how the particular capacities and practices of radio provide singular insight into diverse social worlds.

The results are presented for a 13-month experimental investigation of anomalous propagation on two overland transhorizon paths at 185. 75 MHz. The anomalous signals, 15 to 42 dB above the long-term median and persisting 1 to 6 hours, are described and their possible modes of propagation are reviewed. Surface search radar was found to be a most promising method for monitoring the surface refractivity conditions conducive to high fields. The extrapolation of the experimental results to other regions is discussed and re commendations for further study are included.

With the invention of telecommunications technologies in the late nineteenth century, the radio-electric spectrum became a tool for rethinking the world in which we live. The emission of radio waves did away with physical distances, crossing borders and cultures and acting as a powerful catalyst for trade. Moreover, the radio spectrum is the invisible infrastructure on which our information and communication technologies have been built. The history of its scientific discovery and how it was gradually colonized by the media, the military complex, and activists and hackers is one of the most fascinating stories of the twentieth century. The future uses of the radio-electric spectrum in the twenty-first century and its new potential are being decided now, with the end of analogue TV broadcasting worldwide marking the most important transformation of uses in the radio-electric space in decades. This catalog sets out to examine these issues and shed a little light on the most intriguing stories about the radio-electric spectrum.