This article explores the sanctifying power of technology and digital imagery, and its use for local political action. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in northeastern Thailand, the author examines how a photograph of a tree and its presentation on a laptop computer were used to save the tree from being cut down. He shows how a unique combination of rhetorical strategy and commodity fetishism, when coupled with the digital image, rendered the tree sacred and therefore untouchable; this was possible due to the cultural identity of rural villagers, who imagine themselves simultaneously as both rural and national. © 2004, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.
CITATION STYLE
Vail, P. (2004). Making the Mundane Sacred Through Technology: Mediating Identity, Ecology and Commodity Fetishism. Visual Communication, 3(2), 129–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/147035704043037
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.