How do people in Britain use the internet? How do they behave online? The new Digital Anthropology Report. The Six Tribes of Homo Digitalis gives some answers.

The British communication company Talk Talk sent researchers from the University of Kent into the homes of people around the UK to ask them questions about their attitudes towards digital technology and to watch them use it. They also commissioned anthropology professor David Zeitlyn to analyse the findings.

They found that “homo digitalis” consists of Six Tribes with very different attitudes, usage patterns and modes of behaviour. Some of these tribes have embraced technology and put it at the centre of their lives. For other tribes, “the internet” is a rather frightening jungle.

The E-ager Beavers are the largest tribe by quite a distance, with 29% of the UK adult population. They use the internet heavily, but they are more passive users. They lack the confidence or the drive to get involved with uploading their own content or producing their own blogs.

The Timid Technophobes are the second largest group (23%). They have only limited internet skills and will only use it when they really need to. They still prefer to use pen and paper and prefer to send and receive letters. They don’t read blogs and are not interested in facebook either.

The tribe of the Digital Extroverts (9%) consists of people who are “always-on". They are active bloggers, use twitter, flickr etc. “Regularly updating their online profile is as much a part of their daily routine as eating.” The ability to interconnect and share data is a prerequisite.

According to Zeitlyn, your willingness to embrace technology and integrate it into your life will dictate your success in life far more than your social class will. As class structures change quickly, he writes in his analysis, the extent to which people use social networking and promote themselves online will become more important in determining their careers than what school or university they went to.

>> read the whole report (nice presentation with quiz and videos!)

SEE ALSO:

Dissertation: Why kids embrace Facebook and MySpace

Ethnographic Study: Social Websites Important For Childhood Development

Ethnographic study: Social network sites are “virtual campfires”

Interview with Michael Wesch: How collaborative technologies change scholarship

John Postill on media anthropology and internet activism in Malaysia

Cyberanthropology: “Second Life is their only chance to participate in religious rituals”

How internet changes the life among the First Nations in Canada

On fieldwork: “Blogging sharpens the attention”

Microsoft anthropologist: Let people be online at work or risk losing stuff!

From housewife to mousewive - Anthropological study on women and Internet

Ethnographic Study About Life Without Internet: Feelings of Loss and Frustration

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) and their publisher Wiley-Blackwell will be offering two months of free access to 10+ years of Anthrosource content during November and December 2009.
As a preview they invite us to view the Top 25 Anthrosource Articles of 2009 free of charge according to the AAA blog.

“It is our hope that this limited-time offer will encourage students and researchers from across the disciplines to discover anthropology’s rich legacy of scholarship as the study of humankind", the AAA writes.

The list of the Top 25 articles is interesting in itself. Here we find much stuff about islam, terrorism, genitical cutting, neoliberalism and human rights. A quite political list, in other words.

The number one hit is Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others by Lila Abu-Lughod. The article was written in 2002 and “explores the ethics of the current ‘War on Terrorism’, asking whether anthropology, the discipline devoted to understanding and dealing with cultural difference, can provide us with critical purchase on the justifications made for American intervention in Afghanistan in terms of liberating, or saving, Afghan women".

Number 7 hit is by the way Working for the Federal Government: Anthropology Careers by Shirley J. Fiske that also addresses the topic military anthropology.

A very exciting list, I’d love to start reading right away. A great idea to showcase what’s happening within anthropology. Let’s hope this will be a permanent offer!

SEE ALSO:

AAA: “Open access no realistic option”

Open Access: New alliances threaten the American Anthropological Association

Danah Boyd on Open Access: “Boycott locked-down journals”

Is it time to boycott SAGE?

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

For Open Access: “The pay-for-content model has never been successful”

Overview over Open Access Journals

The Swat Pathan have been the subject of classic ethnographies in anthropology for many years. Now they are at the centre of a bigger battle for control between Taliban, Pakistan, the U.S. etc. - a conflict that forced more than one million people to flee their homes.

What, if anything, can anthropologists contribute to understand and ameliorate the conflicts that rage in this region that in December 2008 was captured by the Taliban? In an interview with Gustaaf Houtman in the new issue of Anthropology Today, anthropologist Akbar Ahmed looks at the latest developments among the Swat Pathan.

He says, anthropologists can help in two ways - one of them is visiting Swat:

Anthropology can help on two levels. Anthropologists can use the internet, broadcast media and the press – and conferences – to argue for a strong, clean judicial and administrative structure in Swat. They can use their understanding of Swat social structure and history to explain why it collapsed and what can be done to replace it. They must not underestimate the power of outside comment on the bureaucrats and politicians of Islamabad. To their own home audiences, they can explain the significance of Swat in the larger context of Af-Pak (Afghanistan-Pakistan).

On another level, anthropologists can help by visiting Swat, in the safe areas of course, and arranging for colleagues and students to help in the reconstruction of the educational system. Girls’ schools in particular need to be rebuilt and then organized. A visit to Swat will thus not only provide moral satisfaction but also the promise of advancing anthropological knowledge of a fascinating area.

“Swat was an anthropologist’s paradise waiting to be discovered when Fredrik Barth first went there to conduct fieldwork in the 1950s", he says. “It was a remote, tiny and scenic state up in the foothills of the Himalayas in north Pakistan":

Here, the legendary Wali of Swat ruled over fiercely independent tribesmen who lived according to custom and tradition. Following his fieldwork, Barth wrote Political leadership among Swat Pathans (summary), published in 1959. In it he analysed the political alliances and networks around ‘the Pakhtun chief, with his following, and the Saint with his following’ (ibid.: 4). The book became an instant classic in the discipline and established Barth as a towering figure in it.

When Akbar Ahmed registered for a PhD in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1973 he read Barth’s work on Swat “with admiration". But Barths “neat theoretical constructions” did not match the Swat society that he knew through his wife Zeenat, who was from Swat, so he went on to research and write Millennium and charisma among Pathans: A critical essay in social anthropology that was published in 1976.

Since then many articles and several books have been written about Swat. One of the two he mentions is written by a native female anthropologist of Swat Amineh Ahmed (his daughter actually). Her book “Sorrow and Joy among Muslim Women The Pukhtun’s of Northern Pakistan” gives us, he says, “fascinating insights normally denied to men".

How has Swat changed from the time of Barth, Gustaaf Houtman asks. Akbar Ahmed answers:

Barth wrote over half a century ago. Swat then had a clear-cut political structure in place: the central authority of the Wali in alliance with the powerful Khans. Religious clerics worked for the Wali in his mosques or were hired locally by the Khans. There was little challenge to the Wali’s rule. He could impose his will on the state. He introduced compulsory education for both boys and girls. He invited Catholic nuns to open a girls’ school and gave them protection. He encouraged archaeologists to come and dig for ancient Greek and Buddhist statues and stupas. The magnificent statue of Buddha at the entrance of Swat came to symbolize the spirit of the state and its ruler.

I was fortunate in having visited Swat during the rule of the Wali, after he was removed and after his death. Over the last few decades I have seen a steady decline. The Wali’s rule was replaced by officials of the government of Pakistan. Pakistani bureaucracy became increasingly known for its incompetence and corruption. A disputed case between two parties which would have normally taken a couple of hours in the Wali’s courts would now drag on for years. The Khans too began to leave Swat for the bigger cities of Pakistan. Absentee landlords soon found their authority challenged. Their relationship with their tenants began to break down.

Why could this happen. Into the vacuum created by the disappearance of the Wali and the fading of the Khans stepped the religious clerics, he explains:

Mullah Fazlullah grew in importance over the years and gained notoriety in Pakistan through his FM radio station: to Swatis he came to be known as ‘Radio Mullah’. He thundered against the corruption and incompetence of the administration. He incited tenants against the Khans and their un-Islamic ways. He said he would bring the Sharia or Islamic law which would ensure justice and law and order for ordinary people. Swatis flocked to the Mullah’s standard. Women gave him their jewellery, with prayers that he succeed in his mission.

The Taliban now saw Swat as a safe haven and flocked to it. They came from the tribal areas in Pakistan and beyond. Soon Swatis were getting a taste of life under the Taliban. Over 200 girls’ schools were closed. The Wali’s special projects, the convent and statue of Buddha at the entrance to the state, became targets for Taliban wrath. The Taliban now felt confident enough to march into neighbouring Buner. They were within striking distance of Islamabad, the capital of a nuclear state.

The Pakistani military was alarmed, as was the US administration. The Pakistani army launched a military operation and Washington promised financial and military aid. As a result almost the entire population of Swat fled to neighbouring districts in the south. Swat was then sealed off from the outside world and an ominous silence descended upon it. Reports suggested that Swat society was being turned upside down.

Swat has seen the dramatic decline and collapse of all the pillars of authority over the last decades. Today’s Swat has neither the authority of the Wali nor that of the central government that replaced it, nor of the Khans. The Taliban, who dominated Swat for a few months, giving a taste of their brutal administration, have also been toppled. The only authority in Swat today is the army. There are already rumours of mass graves and extra-judicial killings in Swat. Some blame the Taliban, others the army. Neither is popular.

This is only an excerpt of the interview. Unfortunately it is available online for subscribers only. Just found out (via media/anthropology) that it is a free article. Read Swat in the eye of the storm: Interview with Akbar Ahmed here (pdf).

Anthropology Today has by the way started up at forum for readers and authors at http://anthropologytoday.ning.com/ And the Swat Pathans have their own Facebook group - a global network “to unite against the stereotypical portrayal of Swatian and to let the world know the true beauty and harmony of the people and area".

Akbar Ahmed is an active blogger. He runs his own blog called Latest News and Commentary by Akbar Ahmed and has also started a (group) blog about his recent project Journey Into America, a new book and film, an anthropological study of American identity as seen through the eyes of Americans – both Muslim and non-­ Muslim (is also reviewed in Anthropology Today).

In my archive, I found also an interview with anthropologist Saadia Toor about the situation in Swat.

SEE ALSO:

Back from Lahore: Terror and Open Access

Anthropological activism in Pakistan with lullabies

Akbar Ahmed’s anthropological excursion into Islam

My most recent post Army-Anthropologists call Afghans “Savages” received a lot attention, so it might be necessary to write a new post after the debates in the comment field and via email.

It seems that the Sydney Morning Herald reporter misunderstood. The part about the The Zadran who are called “utter savages” and “great robbers” who live in a country that was “a refuge for bad characters” is not written by contemporary Human Terrain Team (HTT) army anthropologists. The quote is 90 years old!

As I was told, the HTT-report was quoting an old British ethnography “to highlight the terrible quality of historical documents on the area".

If you google “Zadran” and “utter savages”, Google Book Search directs you to ‪Historical and political gazetteer of Afghanistan ‎Volume 6
by India. Army. General Staff Branch, Ludwig W. Adamec (1985).

Adamec compiled his data from a 1919 British ethnographic survey.

The HTT-report quoted this book extensively - but as I was told - in order to question such notions as the Zadrans as savages.

I hope this is correct. For there are other researchers who use the same sources less critically.

Googling “Zadran” and “Savages” directed me also a a kind of fact sheet about the Zadranby the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies, Naval Postgraduate School that states:

They are probably a very small tribe living in very small villages; some of them cultivate the little land they have, but they appear chiefly to depend on their flocks for subsistence. They live, some in houses and some in tents. It was said that they are “great robbers”, and their country was formerly refuge for “bad characters”.

Here, these 90 years old characteristics are presented as facts.

What kind of institution is the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies?

Here is an extract from their self-description:

The Program for Culture & Conflict Studies (CCS) conducts research in support of United States initiatives in Afghanistan.  Our research provides comprehensive assessments of provincial and district tribal and clan networks in Afghanistan, anthropological assessments of Afghan villages, and assessments of the operational culture of Afghan districts and villages. 

(But although they conduct “anthropological studies, none of their researchers seems to be an anthropologist)

Then I stumpled upon a comment by a former army HTS-anthropologist researcher in Afghanistan on the Open Anthropology blog. He writes:

“These insurgents are throwbacks to the Stone Age with very different ideas and convictions than we have. (…) Want to talk to them about gay rights, women’s rights, democracy, live and let live, respect for the rights of others, etc. with these insurgents? Go ahead!”

Maximilian Forte, editor of Open Anthropology, comments:

One of the things achieved by the new imperialism is an ideological expansion: the high civilizations and monotheistic religions, such as those of Islam, were the focus of Orientalism in the 1800s and much of the 1900s. So called “primitive tribes” were a concern of the kind of Savagism at the heart of early anthropology. What statements like yours do is to combine/confuse the two, and that is novel. Now there are no other civilizations, no competing ideas of complex society, it’s just “us” and the rest are “savages.”

There we have the term again! Savages!

UPDATE: I’ve found the book in question - the Historical and Political Gazetteer of Afghanistan, Volume 6, in our library and found out that the quote about those “utter savages” is even older. The book refers to Mountstuart Elphinstone, who lived between 1779 and 1859 and later became the Governor of Bombay. The whole quote goes like this:

Elphinstone says their manners etc resemble the Wazirs, and Broadfoot, those of the Kharotis, from which we must infer that they are utter savages, and, as Elphinstone says more like mountain bears than men.

According to the Gazeteer of Afghanistan, the Zadran “are of no importance whatever, and only in the case of the Dawar route being used to Ghazni…".

And here from the preface of the 1985 version som general information about the Gazetteer of Afghanistan:

This work is based largely on material collected by the British Indian Government and its agencies since the early 19th century. In an age of Imperalism, Afghanistan became important as the “Gateway to India” and an area of dispute between the British and Russian empires. It is therefore not surprising that much effort was expended by various branches of the British Indian government to amass information regarding the country’s topography, tribal composition, climate, economy, and internal politics.

Thus, an effort which began with military considerations in mind has now been expanded and updated with maps and data complied by both Western and Afghan scholarship to serve the non-political purpose of providing a comprehensive reference work on Afghanistan.

SEE ALSO:

Cicilie Fagerlid: Ethnography under colonialism: what did Evans-Pritchard think of it all?

Sheds light on the collaboration between science and colonial administration in Naga ethnography

Jack Goody: “The West has never been superior”

Cooperation between the Pentagon and anthropologists a fiasco?

Anthropology and CIA: “We need more awareness of the political nature and uses of our work”

Military spies invade anthropology conferences?

The dangerous militarisation of anthropology

READ THE COMMENTS BELOW - AND THE UPDATE “Army-Anthropologists don’t call Afghans “Savages”

Do you want to know what anthropologists who work for the US military in Afghanistan write about the people America is at war with? I resist to believe it but according to the Sydney Morning Herald they call some Afghan societies “utter savages".

Here is an excerpt from the report:

“The Zadran have been written up as a small tribe, but they are the biggest in the south-east. Their manners resemble the Waziris [who straddle the nearby border with Pakistan] and the Kharotis [also concentrated in the east], from which we may infer that they are utter savages. They live in small villages … they are great robbers and their country was a refuge for bad characters.”

Sydney Morning Herald correspondent David Brill who has travelled to Afghanistan’s south-east talked to an anonymous American analyst who refuses to endorse the report’s terminology and can’t believe what he is reading there.

Thomas Ruttig, a member of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, is also “shocked by the anthropologists’ assessment of the locals as savages” and says:

“I have been working in Afghanistan for 25 years. They might look like savages, but they have a sophisticated political understanding. ‘There is great hostility to the Americans, but it is not because the people are savages.”

The ‘’savage’s'’ point, and Ruttig’s, is that America’s military tactics have created so much local hostility that it has become difficult, if not impossible, for the locals to accept the US presence and what Washington calls “aid". The “savages” told Ruttig that they had no option but to join a tribal uprising after a controversial civilian “casualty” (meaning the locals were killed by Americans)

>> read the whole story in the Sydney Morning Herald

A few days ago, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson explained Why the war in Afghanistan cannot be won (by the Americans, I assume)

PS: Maybe this issue makes more sense when we remember what the researchers in militarized institutions like the Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation write about “Americas enemy”.

UPDATE: Much new information: “Army-Anthropologists don’t call Afghans “Savages”

SEE ALSO:

Humain Terrain anthropologist attacked in Afghanistan has died

How the Human Terrain System anthropologists think

Cooperation between the Pentagon and anthropologists a fiasco?

Anthropology and CIA: “We need more awareness of the political nature and uses of our work”

“Anthropology = Smarter Counterinsurgency”

The dangerous militarisation of anthropology

Thesis: The limits of youth activism in Afghanistan

War in Iraq: Why are anthropologists so silent?

France banned burqas in public schools in 2004. Now, a parliamentary commission is investigating a possible ban on burqas in public places and anthropology professor John Bowen was asked to testify on this matter, Student Life and New York Times report.

As far as I know, anthropologists aren’t very visible in public debates in France.

Bowen is the author of the book Why the French don’t like Headscarves.

According to Bowen only a few hundred women in France wear burqas. A ban, though, could potentially have a profound impact on some of those women which means they would dissappear from public spaces and stay at home.

Bowen considers it highly unlikely that a ban would ever pass. “I think that French politicians will find that it would be absurd to create a set of clothing police to decide whether what a woman is wearing on the street counts as a burqa or a niqab…or just a headscarf.”

>> read the whole story in Student Life

>> Interview with Bowen in French on nonfiction.fr

I’ve collected some Bowen related links on my earlier post Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves. There are several papers on Bowen’s website.

SEE ALSO:

Thesis: Hijab empowers women

Lila Abu-Lughod: It’s time to give up the Western obsession with veiled Muslim women

Phd-Thesis: That’s why they embrace Islam

(LINKS UPDATED 5.1.2021) A friend of mine sent me a link to the website of the Norwegian migration researcher Jørgen Carling www.dragoeiro.comIt has an unusually nice design, but what I’m even more impressed about is the section “Research findings”. Here, he lists selected findings from his own research on migration in a very simple but convincing manner like

“It is misleading to say that the ‘total effect’ of labour emigration is either positive or negative for a given country.”

or

“We are living in an era of involuntary immobility”

followed by a short explanation and link to the relevant publication.

I haven’t seen something like this on other websites, it looks like a great way to present one’s own research - and it might be even a good exercise for the reasearcher: What have I learnt through my research? What has anthropology taught me? Yes, what would you answer?

Today, ResearchGATE has launched a new Self-Archiving Repository. “This will make full-text articles available to the public, for free - the first application of its kind worldwide", ResearchGate claims in their press release:

Currently, there is no way for researchers to access millions of publications in their full version online. ResearchGATE is now changing this by enabling users to upload their published research directly to their profile pages (a system called the “green route” to Open Access).

ResearchGATE is not only a place to publish, but also a place to interact with other researchers. There are lots of features, looks interesting. The service is free and of course one is starting to wonder what the business modell is as it is not backed by universities or institutions: Will ResearchGATE end up like the anthropology repository Manao that after less two years in business went offline?

I asked Claudia Saalbach from ReseachGATE, and she confirmed that they “do not plan to charge the user for our service". But they “hope to get first revenue from our scientific job board, which was launched a week ago.”

ResearchGATE was launched in May last year and has already 140 000 members, among them several hundred anthropologists. I looked at some profiles, but it seems that you have to be a member to see all the details - a bit like facebook and less open than the profiles in the Open Anthropology CorporationCooperative.

ResearchGate is not the first of its kind, see the posts at the Open Access Anthropology blog EduPunk Repositories and In Search of Anthropology-Friendly Subject Repositories.

Owen Wiltshire has followed the recent developments closely. In his most recent post, he offers his help to reopen Manao under a new name (“The Open Anthropology Self Archiving Repository”). Multiple universities should be invited to participate:

Libraries could contribute, and benefit from the openness, by contributing a little time to help catalog entries and ensure copyright issues are dealt with properly. This is important because almost every university is currently developing its own institutional self-archiving repository, and due to this a lot of work is being redone over and over. Institutional repositories are also important, but they also tend to suck for the very same reasons Mana’o did – they can never get enough manpower.

Open Access News is reporting regularily about repositories, some of the recent news are On sustainable funding for repositories, Report on libraries and repositories and A new model for OA repositories

SEE ALSO:

Already lots of publications in the open access anthropology repository Mana’o

essays.se: Open access to Swedish university papers

ScientificCommons.org - The Open Access Search Engine

Open Access Anthropology in Africa - an introduction