Description
The political economy of banned book circulation raises several opportunities to make an intervention into ongoing debates about media resistance, materiality, and knowledge exchange across regional, national, and international contexts. In this project, we ask questions such as "what constitutes a banned book, what is the relationship between banned books and academic freedom, and how are banned books sustained over time and across different contexts?" We answer this question as a research team situated within the University of Cambridge's Centre of Governance and Human Rights Academic Freedoms Research Network with two interrelated aims. First, we provide map out the localities in which books become banned and preserved over time, demonstrating its relevance towards tracing trajectories of media resistance. Second, we chart a novel conceptual framework on the political economy of banned books to speak to broader discussions on symbolic struggles surrounding different media forms through various political transitions. Taken together, we propose banned books as a case study for understanding how media resistance is inspired, shared, and contested, and as a locus for broader discussions on academic freedoms.
