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Weblogs are sweeping the political and social landscape of Iran

Published on June 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, development empowerment, internet, media, Middle East, politics, technology

Hadi Ansari, OhmyNews International

Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran’s leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people’s daily lives. Farsi has become the third most prominent language of bloggers on the Net, despite the fact that Farsi speakers around the world number just 100 million (including Afghans and Tajiks who speak Farsi). >> continue

Skypecast – Interview about Blogging in India with Dina Mehta

Ethnographic study on bloggers in California & New York

Hadi Ansari, OhmyNews International

Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran's leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people's daily…

Tsunami and Internet: Social Tools – Ripples to Waves of the Future

Published on May 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, gift economy gift giving, internet, media, technology, Us and Them

Anthropologist Dina Mehta

Today, I believe that no crisis on this scale or magnitude will ever be handled again without sms, blogs, and wikis. That social tools will become a natural extension of rapid adaptation to chaotic conditions. While traditional media was doing its job, the World Wide Web was engaged in reaching people in ways that traditional media was not – by speaking in real voices, in real time – creating this huge wave of empathy, solidarity and action. Apart from the speed of dissemination of information, the blog also had a ‘face’ – people had access and could call or email. As a result, lowering barriers to getting information. Technology with Heart. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
The Internet Gift Culture

Anthropologist Dina Mehta

Rise of armchair anthropology? More and more scientists do online research

Published on May 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, internet

Some days ago, anthropologist Kerim Friedman wrote about Armchair Anthropology in the Cyber Age?: “I predict that we will slowly see the return of the “armchair anthropologists” Malinowski so famously dethroned.” The reason: “The web offers a tremendous, and ever growing database of lived experience.”

The newspaper Age (Australia) writes more about the ongoing trend to gather research data online:

“Researchers around the world are tapping into the global reach of the internet as never before, seeking answers to a wide variety of topics, including: humour at the office, drug abuse, religious beliefs, parenting styles, mother-daughter relationships, human mate selection, extramarital affairs, fascination with celebrity and sexual boredom.

Anthropologist Daniel Fessler knows how to spice up the titles for his studies to lure web surfers. Last year, he posted a study on physical attractiveness online with the alluring title Are They Hot or Not? buried among others with titles such as Development of Gender Concepts in Infancy.

Praising online surveys over face-to-face Fessler says: “We don’t need people to engage in a lot of attempts to make a good impression, we need them to provide us with honest responses.”

>> continue

(Fessler’s answer doens’t sound convincing. It’s not that easy. The rules are the same in the online- and the offline-world. Without a good relationship to your informants you can’t write a good ethnography)

Some days ago, anthropologist Kerim Friedman wrote about Armchair Anthropology in the Cyber Age?: "I predict that we will slowly see the return of the “armchair anthropologists” Malinowski so famously dethroned." The reason: "The web offers a tremendous, and ever…

New articles on AnthroGlobe: Western Cybermythology / People of the open sea

Published on May 23, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, cyberanthropology, fieldwork / methods, internet, journal articles / papers, Pacific Oceania

Signs of activity at AnthroGlobe – one of the eldest anthropology web journals. Two new texts and they seem to work with the site layout, it seems:

Carmen Petrosian-Husa: Powerful & Powerless: The Rei Metau on the Outer Islands of Yap

Since 1982 I visited the islands of the rei metau several times. My main focus of research were the “rites de passage”, weaving, structures of authority and medicine. In due course of my research I visited all their islands and atolls and analyzed the differences in the social structures of each single atoll. The way I will describe the rei metau in this paper represents the lives and self-esteem of the people as it can be experienced today. >> continue

Darrell A. Joyce: Modern Folklore: Cybermythology in Western Culture

Throughout the years, humans have used the oral tradition of folklore and legend to share stories, entertain, and to teach moral social lessons. The purpose of this paper is to briefly look at the evolution of urban legends from their “beginnings” in the turn of the 20 th century to present day, with specific attention to contemporary urban legends, and the application of internet/e-mail communications as a medium to further spread this modern form of folklore. Also, this paper attempts to answer the question of whether or not folklore continues to exist and be propagated in today’s society. >> continue

Signs of activity at AnthroGlobe - one of the eldest anthropology web journals. Two new texts and they seem to work with the site layout, it seems:

Carmen Petrosian-Husa: Powerful & Powerless: The Rei Metau on the Outer Islands of Yap

Since…

The Internet Gift Culture

Published on May 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, gift economy gift giving, internet, persons and theories, Us and Them, websites

Cultures of Exchange and Gift economies are traditional anthropological topics. Famous are the Kula exchange in Melanesia, the Potlatch in Northwestern America, the Moka and often cited books are among others Marcel Mauss: The Gift and Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

Contrary to what many (esp. postmodernists) believe, modernisation and globalisation do not automatically lead to more individualism and “fluidity”. Internet and social software lead to the creation of new networks and to a revitalisation of cultures of exchange and gift economies.

As Judd Antin comments, Alireza Doostdar describes in his recent article “The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging” some of the ways that bloggers exchange links, trackbacks, and comments as a way of developing social networks and expanding blog readership.

Many of us know collaborative projects like the encyclopedia Wikipedia, photosharing at flickr and copyright based on sharing like Creative Commons. People help each other in online-forums and what should we all do without all the great freeware software, partly developed by the Open Source community?

One of the best places to stay informed on social software and networks is Dina Mehta’s Blog “Conversations with Dina”

There are many articles on internet gift economy.

Lars Risan: Open source movement is like things anthropologists have studied for a long time (Jill Walker)

Eduardo Navas: The Blogger as Producer. He reviews “The Hi-Tech Gift Economy” by Richard Barbrook who also has written “Giving is Receiving”

Steve McGookin: Politics, E-Mail And The Gift Economy (Forbes)

Eric Raymond: The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture

Jem Matzan: The gift economy and free software (NewsForge) (updated link)

Howard Rheingold: The Internet and the Future of Money (see also Interview with Bernard Lietaer on complementary currencies and the Internet and info on LETS – local exchange trading systems)

David Zeitlyn: Gift economies and open source software: Anthropological reflections (pdf)

Eric Lease Morgan: Gift cultures, librarianship, and open source software development

Markus Giesler and Mali Pohlmann: The anthropology of file sharing: Consuming Napster as a Gift

First Monday – Internet Economics