cyberanthropology | antropologi.info

Plans to study anthropological online communities and Open Access movement

Published on February 26, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, fieldwork / methods, internet, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, technology, University / Academia, websites

Anthropology of anthropology: How do anthropologists form online communities? How are open access publishing and other developments that have sprung up online changing community boundaries? Soon, an anthropologist will do fieldwork among us online anthropologists. http://nodivide.wordpress.com/ is the address of the blog by anthropologist Owen Wiltshire, grad student at Concordia University, Montreal, where he writes:

I am interested in collaborative research methods, and the growth of anthropology online. (…) I’m particularly interested in open-access journals, and feel that opening up academic publishing is an enormously important step for anthropology.

(…)

Delving into the interesting colonial history of anthropology, and into discussions of globalization and neoliberal economic injustice, it’s pretty easy to see how it makes sense to make anthropological work freely available to the world that it studies.

In this way I’ll be exploring ways to study online communities – in this case communities of anthropologists. Its an exciting time for anthropology online. I’ve been following anthropology blogs for a year now, and its amazing how fast its growing. Its quite inspiring, and I think reflects a very vibrant community thats just itching to work (and fight) with each other!

So while my research proposal is extremely vague, and I’ve been made aware of this, I’m absolutely confident that the internet, blogs, and the desire to liberate anthropological knowledge from the world economy are fueling a change in anthropology, and that within this excitement I’ll find an interesting “field” of study.

In an email to me he tells that he’ll be handing in a proposal in April and hopefully be doing fieldwork over the summer. He has already been investigating the ways faculty at Concordia University use the internet in classroom, and is working on getting access to an anthropological journal to investigate the publishing world “face to face”.

Owen Wiltshire worked as a web developer for a number of years prior to studying anthropology: “I’ve always followed developments in open source – so I’m excited to see how similar developments work their way into academic culture”, he writes.

>> visit Owen Wiltshire’s blog “Just another anthro blog”

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Anthropological research: Online dating as disappointing as the real-life dating scene

Published on January 14, 2008 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, gender, internet, media, Northern America, technology

Sounds familiar: People on online dating sites are experiencing frustration because it does seem that the internet in many ways is just the same old bar scene. This is one of the findings of research by anthropologist Susan E. Frohlick. She is conducting an ethnographic study of online dating among women age thirty and above.

She says the women on the one hand gained a sense of empowerment from their online dating experiences. But they still wanted the man to make the first move and expected him pick up the tab:

Women are finding it as a useful tool to enter into the dating world, they find that it’s safe, they find that they can be a little more bold than they would in face-to-face relationships. But, at the same time, they are experiencing frustration because it does seem that the internet in many ways is just the same old bar scene.

Complaints include a preponderance of men who are looking for much younger women, as well as men who misrepresent their looks, interests or marital status, or who show little interest in moving the relationship offline, she said.

>> read the whole story on News.com.au LINK UPDATED 30.6.18

Furthermore, women are hesitant to admit that they meet men through the Internet.

Frohlick says:

One of the most striking findings so far is that there’s a huge contradiction between what women say about the popularity of online dating sites on the one hand and, on the other hand, their own sense of almost shame, and certainly secrecy about it. They talk about how it’s for losers.

Frohlick says she hopes the study will shed more light on how the online dating world might be changing women’s sexuality. She would like to find more study participants from across Canada, including women who are looking for same-sex partners.

~~>> read more in Canoe.ca~~ LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE

She is part of the project “Surfing for Love” at the University of Manitoba. The study will be completed in May, 2008, and a summary of the results will be posted online, she writes on her homepage.

Denise Carter: The Birth of a Cyberethnographer

Ethnographic research on Friendster’s online communities

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

Now open access to 39 years of the journal Folklore Forum

Published on December 3, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, interdisciplinary, internet, journal articles / papers, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, websites

Folklore Forum, a journal that is produced by graduate students at the Folklore and Ethnomusicology Department of Indiana University, has gone Open Access. From now on, 39 years of scholarship, debate, and exchange of ideas are freely accessible for everybody in the freshly digitized archives of Folklore Forum.

Their most recent volum focuses on Folklore and the Internet and includes articles on urban legends that circulate in chain letter-form as anonymous emails, and on icons and avatars as cyberart and examples of the development of folkloric art forms online.

Folklore has has always had an ambivalent relationship with mass media, Editor-in-Chief Curtis Ashton writes in the editorial:

Salvage ethnography to recover oral texts would be unnecessary if print were not invading 19th century Europe and America and depriving the Folk of their lore. (…) Though the trend has been shifting in professional meetings and journal publications, folklorists do tend to avoid the world of computers as a field for enquiry, either because of a lack of technical training or just a lack of general interest.

But as this volume demonstrates, the web has much to offer for folklorists:

I encourage our readers to consider how we use the Internet in our work as folklorists, as a object of study in an of itself, with its own discourse of traditional motifs; as a field for ethnographic research into the virtual, networked community; as a means for scholarly communication and publication; as a storage facility for the digitally compressed knowledge of the past; as a presentation space for the mutual benefit of both ethnographer and informant; as a means for reflection, rethinking how we do our work, what draws us to it, and why.

>> visit Folklore Forum

As a sidenote: In the most recent entry here on antropologi.info I wrote about how folkore can enrich anthropology, see “Take care of the different national traditions of anthropology”

2006 – The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

antropologi.info survey: Six anthropologists on Anthropology and Internet

Why were they doing this work just to give it away for free? Thesis on Ubuntu Linux hackers

Published on September 7, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, cyberanthropology, gift economy gift giving, internet, journal articles / papers, technology, Us and Them

It all started when anthropologist Andreas Lloyd (University of Copenhagen) was browsing on the Internet looking for a new laptop computer and ended up installing the free Windows alternative Linux. Two years later, he finished his master thesis “A system that works for me” – an anthropological analysis of computer hackers’ shared use and development of the Ubuntu Linux system.

The thesis is a study of the Internet Gift Economy. Linux is developped by computer geeks saround the world, collaborating over the Internet, building a computer operating system in their spare time, which can be downloaded, installed, used and modified completely for free. It is among the biggest and most complex engineering projects ever conceived and built:

Based on more than 2 years of daily use of the Ubuntu Linux system and 6 months of online and in-person fieldwork among the developers working to develop and maintain it, this thesis examines the individual and collaborative day-to-day practices of these developers as they relate to the computer operating system that is the result of their labour.
(…)
A group of Spanish computer scientists measured the size of a Linux system similar to Ubuntu, and found that it contained around 230 million lines of source code. When they translated this into the effort spent on writing this code using a standard software industry cost estimate model, they found that it would correspond to almost 60.000 man-years of work (Amor-Iglesias et. al. 2005). By comparison, it took an estimated 3.500 man-years to build the Empire State Building in New York, and 10.000 man-years to build the Panama Canal. This immense effort makes modern operating systems such as Ubuntu among the biggest and most complex engineering projects ever conceived and built.

So the anthropologist was curious to learn more about how the hackers collaborate to build such an intricate system, and to learn why they were doing all of this work just to give it away for free.

How do you do fieldwork among hackers around the world? He explains:

I joined the Ubuntu on-line community on the same terms as the Ubuntu hackers, contributing to and using the same system, sharing their experiences with the system, and meeting them in-person on the same terms as they do at the conferences at which they gather, experiencing the same social and technical means and limitations through which they develop the system.
(…)
In order to do participant observation in this on-line space, I began contributing to the system by writing the system help and documentation, rather than the system itself due to my lack of technical understanding. In this way, I could take part in shaping Ubuntu alongside other community members while slowly developing a feel for the everyday exchanges and work in the community.

His thesis is by the way neither dedicated to any girl friend nor his parents:

In the true digital spirit of this work, I dedicate this thesis to Rosinante, the laptop on which I first experienced the Ubuntu system, and which was my faithful companion during my fieldwork and the writing of this thesis, only to bow out a week before tsafe for so long.

>> download the thesis

(Links updated 11.1.17)

SEE ALSO:

The Internet Gift Culture

Open source movement is like things anthropologists have studied for a long time

Open Source Fieldwork! Show how you work!

Gift economies and open source software: Anthropological reflections

Why you always get a present you don’t want – Social Sciences and Gift-Giving

Mobile phone company Vodafone gets inspired by traditional Kula exchange system

Open Source Anthropology : Are anthropologists serious about sharing knowledge?

2006 – The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

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

Published on June 17, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, internet, religion cosmology, technology

You can light virtual candles for Shabbat, teleport to a Buddhist temple or consult the oracle for some divine guidance. In Second Life, an online virtual universe with 3.7 million users, religious diversity and participation have skyrocketed. For some people, Second Life is their only chance to participate in religious rituals according to the Washington Post.

Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff is going to publish a book on “cybersociality” in Second Life called “Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human.” The avatar of the anthropologist (Tom Bukowski) has an office there, “Ethnographia,” where you can visit him. These emerging virtual worlds pose fundamental challenges to anthropological theory, he writes on his website. “We are witnessing the birth of a significant new modality of human interaction.”

He expected — but hasn’t found any evidence — that Second Life would foster relationships among far-flung members of minority faiths. But the game does seem to be sparking community among followers of more mainstream faiths like among Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Washington Post also writes about Yunus Yakoub Islam who is writing his dissertation on religion in Second Life and runs Second Faith, an educational resource about religion in Second Life. Islam believes he’s the only Muslim in his village in England and uses Second Life to interact with more than 200 members of the game’s Islamic Society.

>> read the whole story in the Washington Post

>> Interview with Tom Boellstorff in the Second Life Herald

>>Anthropologist Grant McCracken: Second Life: the new Disney or vaporville?

>> Anthropologist Alexander Knorr: Second life creation. A guide to in- and offworld online resources

Ethnographic Skype

Ethnographic Flickr

Ethnographic Study on “Digital Kids”

The Internet Gift Culture

The Birth of a Cyberethnographer: The MU5 is to Blame