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Title page

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Acknowledgements

The earliest incarnation of what would eventually become Media Anthropology for the Digital Age arose from a series of conversations with Andrea Drugan at Polity. As the book progressed, I was provided excellent support and guidance from others at Polity: Elen Griffiths, Ellen MacDonald-Kramer and Mary Savigar. On behalf of Polity, Helen Gray copy-edited the manuscript. My thanks to them all.

My father, Raul Pertierra, offered me refuge in the Philippines for crucial weeks of intensive writing time. While the smoggy city of Manila seems an unlikely writers’ retreat, my time with Raul allowed me to write several chapters in absolute peace, only occasionally emerging to join him for delicious food and enlightening conversations. My father's patient interest in each chapter's progress, his well-stocked library and his anthropological expertise, made him the world's most overqualified research assistant as I prepared this volume. Also in Manila, with tremendous good cheer Fernan Talamayan and John Lee Candelaria provided me with excellent assistance in putting together materials for the case studies discussed throughout the book. During the same period of writing in Manila, I was kindly invited by Dr Cheryll Soriano and Dr Czarina Saloma to present chapters in progress to their students and colleagues.

Back in Australia, for many months and with much generosity, Graeme Turner offered me thoughtful and detailed commentary on several chapters. Working with Graeme over the past nine years has taught me so much about cultural studies and interdisciplinary collaboration. I would also like to thank Tingting Liu, Diana Jefferies, Jessica Whyte, Zala Volcic and Heather Horst for reading and commenting upon draft chapters. Daniel Miller's perspectives on what anthropology brings to the study of media have been an invaluable guide to me in working through the different elements brought together in this book – I thank him for his support and feedback. By reading and editing the entire manuscript, my friend and colleague Judith Pugh helped me to become a better writer. The constructive comments of two reviewers were also helpful in the final stages of writing. While this book was first proposed during my employment at the University of Queensland, by the time of its completion I had moved to Western Sydney University, and I thank both institutions for their support.

The opening sentences of this book were written in the pouring rain, sitting in my car while waiting for my daughter to finish an after-school activity. I soon confirmed that it is not really possible to write more than a paragraph in such conditions. So I would especially like to thank a number of people whose many hours of loving care for my daughter provided me with the space and time to write in recent years: Lyn Shoemark, Raul Pertierra, Karel Reyes, Jeanette Felicitas, Karla Alcala Villanueva, Alex Fortes and Roldan Samson. In different ways, big and small, their efforts made it possible for to me to care for and work on this book.