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Online Research Project: Children & fire

Published on July 30, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, youth

Anthopologist Dan Fessler tells us about a new research project “Children and Fire” and asks us to participate and be informants >> read more in antropologi.info Forum

Anthopologist Dan Fessler tells us about a new research project "Children and Fire" and asks us to participate and be informants >> read more in antropologi.info Forum

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

Technologies of the Childhood Imagination- new text by anthropologist Mizuko Ito

Published on May 11, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, fieldwork / methods, internet, journal articles / papers, media, technology, youth

Mizuku Ito has published a new text, a keynote speech she gave at “Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media”. Ito is involved in the new research project on “Digital Kids”.

From her introduction:

“I’ve been trying to develop ways of studying, from an ethnographic perspective, processes that are more commonly pursued from a macro sociological perspective, such as the relationships between production, distribution, marketing and consumption. The work I’ll be describing for you today is based on several years of fieldwork in Tokyo, focused on the period between 1999 and 2001.”

“Rather than see centralized and highly capitalized sites as the sole sites of cultural production, I have been looking at the activity of children and young adults as sites of not only consumptive activity — that is, buying, watching, and reading centrally produced media — but also productive activity – not only reinterpreting these texts, but actually reshaping and recreating related media content and knowledge and selling and trading those locally created products.”

From her conclusion:

“I would suggest that media mixes such as Pokemon and
Yugioh are tied to a changing politics of childhood. I think part of the appeal of these media mixes for children and young adults is that it explicitly recognizes entrepreneurism and connoisseurship in children’s culture, traits that, by some cultural standards, are not considered appropriate for children. In part, these media mixes are becoming ambassadors for a Japanese vision of childhood internationally.”

>> continue

Mizuku Ito has published a new text, a keynote speech she gave at “Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media”. Ito is involved in the new research project on "Digital Kids".

From her introduction:

"I've been trying to develop ways…

UPDATED: Ethnographic Study on "Digital Kids"

Published on April 17, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, media, technology, youth

Linux Electronics

A University of California, Berkeley, professor is spearheading a team just awarded $3.3 million to study “digital kids.” The study will document how youth from ages 10 to 20 are using new digital media to create and exchange knowledge, assess how these phenomena affect learning, and encourage use of its conclusions for the improvement of schools.

Principal investigators include anthropologist Mizuko Ito, who has studied youths’ use of digital media in the United States and Japan.

Half of the ethnographic study’s research sites will be online and include the use of blogs, new online play sites such as Neopets and online games. The other half will include sites like libraries, community centers, game centers and after-school programs that have digital media. >> continue

UPDATE: Judd Antin (University of California Berkeley!) has more information. He writes – among others: “There is practically no research on how youth in the United States use, perceive, and value ICTs. It’s a gigantic gap. We aim to fill it. (..) Educational technology has been stagnant since about 1990. There have been practically no new developments in teaching software. Through our study we hope to provide the ammunition to develop educational software that works, and which capitalizes on the new, digital, networked environment in which many kids are growing up. >> continue
He also points to the research project’s homepage

LINKS UPDATED 5.1.2023

Linux Electronics

A University of California, Berkeley, professor is spearheading a team just awarded $3.3 million to study "digital kids." The study will document how youth from ages 10 to 20 are using new digital media to create and exchange knowledge,…

New book critizises ethnographic methods in market research on children

Published on April 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, corporate & business anthropology, ethics, youth

D. Murali in the The Hindu Buisiness Line

“Children have become conduits from the consumer marketplace into the household, the link between advertisers and the family purse,” writes Juliet B. Schor in his book “Born to Buy”. Marketers have “set their sights on children” — not for the odd trinket and toy as in those good old days, but also for the big money that this niche group can yield by influencing buying decisions.

What is depressing is the amount of specialised research that companies unleash on children. “They’ve gone anthropological, using ethnographic methods that scrutinise the most intimate details of children’s lives. Marketers are videotaping children in their private spaces,” laments Schor. Quite shockingly, “Researchers are paying adults whom kids trust, such as coaches, clergy, and youth workers, to elicit information from them”? Prying happens online too.

The last chapter springs a hope that childhood can be decommercialised, though the job is not going to be easy. Some of the changes that Schor proposes involve Government regulation of ads and marketing. >> continue

D. Murali in the The Hindu Buisiness Line

"Children have become conduits from the consumer marketplace into the household, the link between advertisers and the family purse," writes Juliet B. Schor in his book "Born to Buy". Marketers have "set their…

Beyond Ethnic Boundaries? Anthropological study on British Asian Cosmopolitans

Published on February 25, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, Europe, fieldwork / methods, Us and Them, youth

Anthropologist Cicilie Fagerlid (University of Oslo) has recently published her thesis about young British Asians on the web. In her introduction, she writes:

“Society cannot remain a society if people feel excluded on basis of what characterises them as a category. The imagined category Britishness must not exclude the imagined category Asianness. How is the interface between recognition for difference, societal belonging and individual freedom played out?

This thesis is based on 11 months fieldwork among, roughly, 30 British Asians, aged 20 to 30, in London in 1999. With the anthropological focus on the micro level, on the experiences of socially and culturally embedded individuals, I hope to show how Britain, step by step, is moving in the direction of a cosmopolitan society.

By focusing on the individual negotiation, the diversity that appears indicates that their British Asianness can be contained by neither an old idea of Britishness nor essential traits of Asianness.”

>> download the thesis (459 kb, pdf) (updated with copy)

Anthropologist Cicilie Fagerlid (University of Oslo) has recently published her thesis about young British Asians on the web. In her introduction, she writes:

"Society cannot remain a society if people feel excluded on basis of what characterises them as a category.…