Digital Anthropology

327 Pages·2012·1.36 MB·English

by  Heather A. Horst (Ed.)

Digital Anthropology

Digital Anthropology
Edited by Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller
London • New York
English edition
First published in 2012 by
Berg
Editorial offi ces:
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Heather A. Horst & Daniel Miller 2012
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 85785 291 5 (Cloth)
978 0 85785 290 8 (Paper)
e-ISBN 978 0 85785 292 2 (institutional)
978 0 85785 293 9 (individual)
www.bergpublishers.com
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
PART I. INTRODUCTION
1. The Digital and the Human: A Prospectus for Digital Anthropology 3
Daniel Miller and Heather A. Horst
PART II. POSITIONING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY
2. Rethinking Digital Anthropology 39
Tom Boellstorff
3. New Media Technologies in Everyday Life 61
Heather A. Horst
4. Geomedia: The Reassertion of Space within Digital Culture 80
Lane DeNicola
PART III. SOCIALIZING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY
5. Disability in the Digital Age 101
Faye Ginsburg
6. Approaches to Personal Communication 127
Stefana Broadbent
7. Social Networking Sites 146
Daniel Miller
PART IV. POLITICIZING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY
8. Digital Politics and Political Engagement 165
John Postill
– v –
vi • Contents
9. Free Software and the Politics of Sharing 185
Jelena Karanović
10. Diverse Digital Worlds 203
Bart Barendregt
11. Digital Engagement: Voice and Participation in Development 225
Jo Tacchi
PART V. DESIGNING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY
12. Design Anthropology: Working on, with and for Digital Technologies 245
Adam Drazin
13. Museum + Digital = ? 266
Haidy Geismar
14. Digital Gaming, Game Design and Its Precursors 288
Thomas M. Malaby
Index 307
Notes on Contributors
Bart Barendregt is an anthropologist who lectures at the Institute of Social and
Cultural Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is coordinating a four-year
research project (Articulation of Modernity) funded by the Netherlands Organization for
Scientifi c Research (NWO) that deals with popular music, modernity and social chance
in South East Asia. As a senior researcher, he is also affi liated with an NWO project
titled The Future is Elsewhere: Towards a Comparative History of Digital Futurities,
which examines Islamic ideas of the information society, halal software and appropria-
tion and localization of digital technology in an overt religious context. Barendregt has
done extensive fi eldwork in Java, Sumatra, Malaysia and the Philippines and has pub-
lished on South East Asian performing arts, new and mobile media and popular culture.
Tom Boellstorff is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University
of California, Irvine. From 2007 to 2012 he was editor-in-chief of American
Anthropologist, the fl agship journal of the American Anthropological Association.
He is the author of many articles and books, including The Gay Archipelago:
Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005); A Coincidence
of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press,
2007); Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually
Human (Princeton University Press, 2008); and Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A
Handbook of Method, with Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce and T. L. Taylor (Princeton
University Press, 2012).
Stefana Broadbent is currently a teaching fellow in digital anthropology at
University College London. Since 1990 she has been studying the evolution of digi-
tal practices at home and in the workplace and has recently published a book on the
blurring of the boundaries between the two: L’Intimite au Travail (FYP Editions,
2011). Previously, she was research director and member of the Strategy Board
of Swisscom, where she started the Observatory of Digital Life. The Observatory
studied longitudinally the evolution of digital activities in Swiss households. She
has been a lecturer in ethnography and design in the Faculty of Architecture at the
Politecnico di Milano, and the Ecole Superieur des Art Decoratifs in Paris.
Lane DeNicola is a lecturer in digital anthropology at University College London.
His research interests include culture and design; spatial information technology and
– vii –
viii • Notes on Contributors
geomedia; the social and political dimensions of open design; space industrialization
in the developing world; scientifi c visualization; immersive systems and gaming.
Prior to his doctoral training in science and technology studies, he worked as a pro-
grammer and simulation designer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory,
the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Center for Space Research at MIT.
Adam Drazin is coordinator of the MA degree programme in culture, materials and
design at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. He lectured
previously at Trinity College Dublin. Drazin works principally in the fi elds of mater-
ial culture, design anthropology and the Romanian home. He has conducted design
anthropology work with HP Labs, the Technical University of Eindhoven and Intel
Ireland, mostly exploring material culture with a view to critical design approaches.
Prior to lecturing at Trinity College Dublin, he ran his own sole-trader consultancy
business. His current research interest is on the cultures of openness and home-
making for people who have moved from Romania to Ireland. Other interests include
the material culture of intentionality, cultures of design and the more appropriate
use of ethnography in innovation. He recently guest-edited a joint special edition
of Anthropology in Action and the Irish Journal of Anthropology on ‘Anthropology,
Design and Technology in Ireland’ and has published in Ethnos and Home Cultures,
among other places.
Haidy Geismar is assistant professor of anthropology and museum studies at New
York University. Her research focuses on issues surrounding value and materiality,
using museums as a fi lter. Her research interests are intellectual and cultural prop-
erty, the formation of digital objects and most broadly the ways in which museums
and markets infl uence and engender relations between persons and things. Since
2000 she has worked as a researcher and curator in Vanuatu and Aotearoa, New
Zealand, England and the United States.
Faye Ginsburg is founder and ongoing director of the Center for Media, Culture
and History at New York University, where she is also the David Kriser Professor
of Anthropology, and codirector of the Center for Religion and Media and of the
NYU Council for the Study of Disability. She is an award-winning editor/author of
four books, including Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain and Mediating
Culture: Indigenous Media in the Digital Age, which is still in press. She is cur-
rently carrying out research on cultural innovation and learning differences with
Rayna Rapp.
Heather A. Horst is a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of
Media and Communication at RMIT University and the co-director of the Digital
Ethnography Research Centre. She is the coauthor (with Daniel Miller) of The Cell
Phone: An Anthropology of Communication (Berg, 2006) and (with Ito et al.) of
Notes on Contributors • ix
Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with
New Media (MIT Press, 2010). She is currently writing an ethnography focused on
digital media and family life in Silicon Valley. Her current research examines com-
municative and monetary ecologies in the Caribbean and Pacifi c.
Jelena Karanović is adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture
and Communication at New York University. Trained in cultural anthropology,
French studies and computer science, Karanović pursues research on new media ac-
tivism, information rights, media ethnography, media and globalization, France and
Europe. Her book manuscript, in preparation, explores the experiences and dilemmas
of French free software advocates as they reinvent civic engagement around digital
media. By drawing on twenty months of fi eldwork conducted online and offl ine
in 2004 and 2005, she analyses how prime vehicles of free-market globalization—
intellectual property law and digital media technologies—have invigorated public
debates about European integration and the transnational political economy. Her
work brings anthropology into dialogue with media studies, science and technology
studies and European studies. Her 2010 article, ‘Contentious Europeanization: The
Paradox of Becoming European through Anti-Patent Activism’, appeared in Ethnos:
Journal of Anthropology.
Thomas M. Malaby is professor and chair in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has published numerous works on games,
practice and indeterminacy. He is continually interested in the ever-changing rela-
tionships among institutions, unpredictability and technology—especially as they
are realized through games and gamelike processes. His most recent book, Making
Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life (Cornell University Press, 2009), is an
ethnographic examination of Linden Lab and its relationship to its creation, Second
Life. He is also a featured author at the blog Terra Nova.
Daniel Miller is professor of material culture in the Department of Anthropology,
University College London, where he recently established a programme in digital
anthropology. Relevant publications include Tales from Facebook (Polity Press,
2011), Migration and New Media: Transnationalism and Polymedia (with M.
Madianou, Routledge, 2011), The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication
(with H. Horst, Berg, 2006) and The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (with
Don Slater, Berg, 2000). Other recent books include Blue Jeans (with S. Woodward,
University of California Press, 2011) and Consumption and Its Consequences (Polity
Press, 2012).
John Postill is an anthropologist (PhD University College London) who specializes
in the study of digital media. A senior lecturer in media at Sheffi eld Hallam University,
he is the author of Localizing the Internet (2011) and Media and Nation Building