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Ethnographic reports about the uses of ICT in low-income communities

Published on August 1, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, internet, journal articles / papers, technology

Culture Matters points to “exciting” working papers by the Information Society Research Group about the social and economic benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in low-income communities in Jamaica, India, South Africa and Ghana: “These working papers strongly re-enforce the benefits of an ethnographic approach for the wider world”.

One of the most convincing papers is according to Culture Matters written by Daniel Miller and Heather: Horst juxtaposes conventional ICT policy making in Jamaica with ethnographic findings and uncovers that the assumptions concerning internet use held by the government as well as international NGOs diverge hugely from the realities.

Culture Matters juxtapose some of the current policies with Miller’s and Horst’s recommendations:

Instead of more computers in secondary schools invest in post-educational training for young adults
Instead of investing into expensive high-end computers invest in low-price computers without gaming facilities
Instead of creating their own content at high costs, a lot of money can be saved by creating portals which identify useful and high-quality web resources
Instead of investing in community computers, offer Internet access via individual mobile phones

Also fascinating according to the blog: the reports from Ghana by Don Slater and Janet Kwami:

Again, ethnography unveiled a huge gap between policy assumptions and actual usage. On the one hand there is the widespread belief amongst governments and NGOs that the Internet is a tool of development through information distribution.

Yet all Internet users in the Accra slum studied used the internet only for chat with foreigners (as well as some diasporic family members and friends). “There was exceptionally low awareness of even the existence of websites”. In internet cafes everybody is chatting with unknown foreigners, largely in the North but also in Asia, with a view of accumulating actual and symbolic goods (either on IM (Yahoo or MSN) or in Yahoo chat rooms).

Internet access, although widespread and popular in Accra, is not cheap – one hour costs much more than the average kid’s lunch money – but many teenagers come several times a week, for several hours, solely to chat with foreigners.

>> read the whole post on Culture Matters

>> all working papers by the Information Society Research Group

INTEL-ethnographers challenge our assumptions of the digital divide

How Media and Digital Technology Empower Indigenous Survival

Why cellular life in Japan is so different – Interview with anthropologist Mizuko Ito

Women in Cameroon: Information technology as a way out of the cultural cul-de-sac

Now online: EASA-conference papers on media anthropology

Culture Matters points to "exciting" working papers by the Information Society Research Group about the social and economic benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in low-income communities in Jamaica, India, South Africa and Ghana: "These working papers strongly re-enforce…

Timo Veikkola – The Anthropologist as Future Specialist

Published on July 2, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology, technology

Things are changing: See how an anthropologist is introduced in this story: “As many anthropologists these days he holds a strategic position inside a global corporation.” Juliana Xavier writes about Timo Veikkola – anthropologist at Nokia. His jobtitle: “Senior Future Specialist”:

As Senior Future Specialist at Nokia Design, he looks at society to comprehend how there are going to be shifts in behavior and culture that can inspire their design team. Timo is a future teller.

Veikkola was one of the speakers at an innovation conference in London (by PSFK). Juliana Xavier has been there and writes that this was the second time in less than an year that an anthropologist came to speak at a planning/marketing/advertising conference:

Last year, Bob Deutsch from Brain Sell (…) talked about treating people as people rather than as consumers. Timo talked about that as well, but also about that as a crucial part of his work at Nokia, or better saying: about how to envision the future through trends, observation and – an expression that I liked a lot – informed intuition

(…)

Timo’s trend team is composed of a diversity of people from Brazil to India, from Chile to China – everyone sitting in the same room. It is a way to cultivate the atmosphere in the office, an atmosphere of global and cultural diversity. A good observer of the present wants to be close to people, is keen to get involved and has to seek stimulation through real experience.

>> read the whole article by Juliana Xavier

Veikkola’s presentation is available online

>> Watch Timo Veikkola, Future Strategist at Nokia, on a Vision of our Future at the PSFK Conference London

INTEL and Microsoft conference “a coming-out party” for ethnography

Ethnography, cross cultural understanding and product design

Anthropology Matters – New issue out on anthropology of science and technology

Things are changing: See how an anthropologist is introduced in this story: "As many anthropologists these days he holds a strategic position inside a global corporation." Juliana Xavier writes about Timo Veikkola - anthropologist at Nokia. His jobtitle: "Senior Future…

How to save Tibetan folk songs? Put them online!

Published on July 2, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, culture traditions, internet, music, technology

More and more Tibetan folk songs are disappearing. Led by anthropology professor Gerald Roche, the Tibetan Endangered Music Project (TEMP) uses digital media to capture tunes that are being lost. The volunteer-run program aims to put all the digital songs they collect online, as a way of archiving the material for future generations, the National Geographic writes.

So far the students at Qinghai Normal University have recorded more than 250 songs, including melodies for herding, harvesting, singing babies to sleep, and coaxing yaks into giving more milk. “The goal is to digitalize the songs we record and return them to our communities,” said 20-year-old student Dawa Drolma. “We want to record as many songs as possible.”

“It is quite remarkable how much they have been able to accomplish from such a remote place, thanks to the Internet and digital recording technology,” said Jonathan C. Kramer, a professor of music at North Carolina State University who has worked with the students. “It is hard to imagine such a project even 20 years ago.”

>> read the whole story in the National Geographic

“One of the biggest challenges that we face at the moment is how to return the music to the communities it comes from,” says Roche, as there are few Tibetan communities with Internet access. “Putting it online is a start, but just a small start.” Tsering Lhamo from Ngawa, Sichuan suggests, “the music we have recorded [could be] taught in primary schools of Tibetan areas in order to preserve them.” according to That’s Beijing.

TEMP is remarkable for many reasons according this blog: its ease of growth, use of existing technology with no budget, a method of preservation by people from the culture itself, and a prospect for real use by both local and global communities.

The Tibetan Endagered Music Project has its own website at YouTube with currently five videos.

Related: On the Digital Himalaya website you can listen to music by the Laya (Bhutan and Tibet)

Multimedia Music Ethnography of Yodelling and Alphorn Blowing

How Media and Digital Technology Empower Indigenous Survival

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

“A new approach to the collection of traditional Aboriginal music”

Published on February 28, 2007 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, fieldwork / methods, music, technology

The days of anthropologists taking recordings away to Canberra where they might as well be lost to the community forever, are now gone according to ABC Radio (Australia) in a story about the National Recording Project. Its aim is to document the traditions of Indigenous Australia.

What’s different here is that performers, and language experts from the communities are recognised as co-researchers, alongside the university based musicologists, linguists and anthropologists. Instead of the music being recorded onto tapes and taken away to vast archives in the southern cities, it’s recorded digitally and is stored on solar powered local computers in remote communities.

>> read more at ABC Radio

In their paper The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia: year one in review, the authors Allan Marett, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Marcia Langton, Neparrnga Gumbula, Linda Barwick and Aaron Corn write in the abstract:

Many Indigenous performers now keep recordings of their forebears’ past performances and listen to them for inspiration before performing themselves. In recent years, community digital archives have been set up in various Australian Indigenous communities. Not only can recordings reinforce memory and facilitate the recovery of lost repertoire, they can also provide inspiration for creative extensions of tradition.

>> read the whole paper (pdf, 596kb)

There are several related papers in the Sydney eScholarship Repository

“Aboriginal knowledge is science”

How internet changes the life among the First Nations in Canada

Multimedia Music Ethnography of Yodelling and Alphorn Blowing

Aboriginees in Australia: Why talking about culture?

The emerging research field of medical ethnomusicology: How music fights AIDS

On the Roots of Ethnic Music: Identity and Global Romanticism – Open Access Musicology Journal