Auerbach Twitter Anthropology For Digital Natives

2011

With the Internet anthropologists are reaching new audiences and improving the dissemination of their work. Articles and books published through scholarly presses were once the best ways to disseminate academic research, but now with the Internet this isn’t entirely true. Open access publishing, self-archiving, and even self-publishing can disseminate research better than the most prestigious anthropology journals. Established journals, not blind to this issue, are changing the ways they generate revenue from publishing research. There are alternatives to the reader-pays model which restricts access to a select few. But the Internet, beyond transforming the ways anthropologists disseminate their work between each other, has had more profound significance for engaging anthropology outside its traditional audiences. For many anthropologists, new online spaces have reinvigorated the discipline, providing opportunities to reach new audiences, to incorporate new participants, and to pres...

Digital technologies are becoming ubiquitous, fuelling massive and rapid changes in how people relate to each other, how they work and do business, and how they think about what it means to be human. To what extent do these developments challenge established notions of the self, of the field, and of the real? How can anthropology help us to understand digital technologies on a human scale? This module offers students an overview of some important theoretical and methodological developments in digital anthropology, with a focus on a range of ethnographic approaches to digital culture, from traditional ethnographies of digital technologies and media to virtual ethnographies of online environments and communities.

Searching After Method: Live Anthropology, 2020

Making “the familiar strange and the strange familiar” is what anthropology has long claimed as its expertise. The Internet and its broader technological problem space pose methodological challenges, however, for a discipline that has traditionally drawn on the authority of “being there” to ground its claims to knowledge.

Suomen Antropologi. Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. Volume 38 (1) 2013: 119-120, 2013

Media, Engagement, and Anthropological Practice: Contemporary Scholarship

A year ago, in June 2012, I attended the RAI conference on 'Anthropology in the World' at the British Museum. Its aim was, in RAI director David Shankland's words, to 'explore and evaluate the position, role, and influence of anthropology outside academia'. There were 456 participants from 43 different countries, more than half of them not based at any British university. The organization had of course been particularly keen to attract anthropologists working outside academia. 1 Not surprisingly, there were many younger colleagues among them. They used their creativity and enthusiasm to craft their own niche in the wider world. Thirty-two panels presented a spectrum of different ways to engage with the world, ranging from diplomacy, education, security studies, museum work, and business to journalism, public health, law, tourism, and government. The keynote address was delivered by Gillian Tett, who entered the crowded BP Lecture Hall virtually, on a Cloud from New York City. This Cambridge anthropologist turned Financial Times journalist addressed the problems of remaining faithful to and proud of anthropology while doing journalism in high finance circles at a time when the arrogance and hubris of the financial sector still had no limits. She offered comfort and encouragement to the tribe in the auditorium. The speakers I heard were so devoted and passionate that almost all transgressed the strict time limits. Given the number of speakers and the conference's topic, the quality and relevance of the presentations were quite diverse. One of the most striking performances was a stand-up comedy act by Australian anthropologist Grant McCall, who, in lightweight suit with pith helmet, talked about anthropologists as characters in the movies and on TV from Charlie Chan to Tempe 'Bones' Brennan. His vivid and hilarious 'show' also ran out of time. Actually, the widespread overrun on time points to a problem within anthropology more generally: the inability of many of us to communicate what we know in a brief and accessible manner. To my mind, the rich diversity in topics and viewpoints reflected a healthy state of the art, but at the same time exposed the present-day weakness of the discipline: its lack of a centripetal force and common mission. It made me think of Eric R. Wolf, who appeared to me in a dream the night before the Sunday panels, and his

Futures, 1995

Computer, information and biological technologies are bringing about a fundamental transformation in the structure and meaning of modern society and culture. Not only is this transformation clearly susceptible to anthropological inquiry but it constitutes perhaps a privileged arena for advancing anthropology's project of understanding human societies from the vantage points of biology, language, history and culture. This article reviews the types of cultural analyses that are being conducted today in the social nature, impact, and use of new technologies and suggests additional contexts and steps toward the articulation of an ‘anthropology of cyberculture’.

Social media platforms have quickly transformed communication, relationships, identities, education and power relations. These platforms have also become a popular topic for discussion and research, yet most claims made about social media are very general. This course takes an anthropological approach to social media in order to speak about the ways social media use is embedded in and reflective of specific cultural contexts. The course concentrates on content of social media rather than platforms, and also explores social media as a research method for understanding how people's lives converge in both online and offline spaces. We will consider the incredible variation in social media that emerges on different continents, among people of different class and religious backgrounds, for people with different gender and sexual identities, and among people who are differently embedded in global systems. Course Objectives Students will be able to: 1. explain key terms that are central to an anthropological understanding of social media 2. relate social media to topics of cultural and social diversity 3. relate issues in the study of social media with power relations, ideology, and social institutions 4. think comparatively in terms of both universals of social media as well as local inflections 5. apply anthropological methods to their own project 6. apply key themes, theories, and approaches of anthropology to their own analysis