Posts Tagged ‘Anthropology 2.0’
Your virtual you
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Global on september 15th, 2009
There is a debate in Swedish news media regarding diseased peoples facebook profiles, do we honour them by letting the profile remain as a virtual bversion of the deas person, or is it simply disrespectful? In the infomation age – death is no longer definite. I have previously ecountered virtual cities in the anthropological article by Khosravi and Graham (in Reordering Public and Private in Iranian Cyberspace, 2002) .The example in the article is a city destroyed by war is virtually existing online. This online virtual sphere is becoming more and more emergent to research, I stress the concept Anthropology 2.0 because I believe that there is so much to be investigated in what we call ‘cyberspace’. Further reading on cyberspace research I recommend is of course one of ,my favourite books ‘Coming of age in Second Life’ by Tom Boellstorff, 2008 and ‘The Internet – an ethnographical approach’ by Miller and Slater, 2000. Please let me know if you have any more tips for further reading.
Anthropology 2.0
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Global, India, Popular culture on september 10th, 2009
Conducting my research in Delhi in November and December 2008 I did a classical anthropological fieldwork in an upper class market in South Delhi. I choose a popular cafe as my field and all my initial meetings with informants took place there. On the initial meetings, hanin out with girls at the cafe I began too see a pattern. They kept asking me if I was to be found on the social networking site Facebook. My group of informants where to a large extent engaged in this social network site, actually I did not encounter any South Delhi girl who where not found on Facebook…
I created a Facebook profile. I concluded my research days logging in to the Facebook chat where I always found someone of my informants. The social network profile became a tool of great utility for me, facilitating me in keeping contact with informants on a regular basis. Time of the day when we did not find actual time to meet me in real life we could spend time online chatting on Facebook. I thought about call these meetings to have taken place in virtual time, since the take place virtually not phisically, but I see the philosophical contradiction in time being virtual since time is actual…
The distinction virtual life and real life is problematic since virtual life is real life, but I choose to separate these two types of meetings based on the different of these events. Tom Boellstorff is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, who recently conducted researched online for the book Coming Of Age in Second Life. Bearing Boellstorff in mind I was not afraid to use modern world tools in my traditional anthropological research.
Facebook as a tool helped me to gain the data necessary needed to be able to describe and contextualize, and the best part is, my research is passively active even though we are not meeting in real life since we live on different continents. We are constantly connected thought ICT. This is the main advantage of conducting research in the information age.
This is Anthropology 2.0 – The modern day researcher using Social network sites as research tools. Anthropology 2.0
Technology is culture!
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology on april 27th, 2009
Christopher Kelty in his book 2bits, claims that Free Software is an expression of culture in the sense that culture, as well as Free Software is an ongoing ever changing process. What differs culture and Free Software is that the latter threaten and presupposes a reorientation of power and knowledge as we know it and that availability modificability and reusability are the main ingredient in this process of reorientation. Neither the Free Software or the platform that the internet constitutes are stable and unchanging concepts, therefore they are two concepts that are in process of reorientation 24/7. The culture of Free Software builds on the past and reconfigures its features in an eternal process of modification. ‘modificability is a way of making flexible, modifiable infrastructures like the internet as safe as permanent, inflexible ones like roads and bridges’ (Kelty 2008:12). The public sphere of Free Software has its basis in the social imagination of its creators, re-inventors and users.
On this note I would like to stress the parallel to the concept of Free Software and the concept of culture. Both have a shared meaning, ethics and moral as its core. And culture is always related to history, the past is in the present and culture is also being reinvented and has a changing character with the shared concepts of meaning at its core. The same can be said about Free Software. Availability, reusability and modifiability are at the heart of the reorientation that makes Free Software so radical.
Networks, ICT:s & Anthropology
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology, Popular culture on februari 17th, 2009
In the interaction with Information Communication Technologies (ICT:s) our abilities to expand our ego-centred networks are powered. Anthropologically speaking changes in technology lead to change in social structures in the modern network society. The societies of today are enabling social units amid ICT to interact anywhere, at anytime and Urban life can be very fast when all units are constantly connected through ICT:s.
This connectedness gives us a whole new set of possibilities for interaction. The urban society has room for a varied set of social structures and can be described as an infinite web of relationships (Hannertz 1980:172). I think with Ulf Hannertz that since networks constitute the fundamental patterns of life it should be one of the major methods for anthropologists to understand the complexities of modern urban societies to use networks as analytical tools.
The flexibility of the human networks is complex; the urban networks are uniquely integrated across age, gender, class and geographical boundaries. And an exiting multifaceted field of research
The journey
Posted by Johanna in Anthropology on januari 16th, 2009
I will blog about anthropology in everyday life, on my projects, plans and thoughts. I want to be a part of popular culture in Sweden, in the world. Therefore I would like to share my experiences and my ongoing journey throgh life. So bookmark and come with. Anthropology 2.0.
Life is a journey.
Each day is a journey.
Each blog is a journey.
Welcome to follow me on my journey!
