massively multiplayer online collaborative anthropology
DESCRIPTION
From the Remixing Anthropology panel at the AAA in SF, 2008. More info on the blog: http://remixinganthropology.wordpress.comTRANSCRIPT
Massively Multiplayer Online Collaborative Anthropology
2008 Annual MeetingAmerican Anthropological Association
San Francisco, CANovember 19-23, 2008
p. kerim friedmankerim.oxus.net
ci.ndhu.edu.tw
savageminds.org
fournineandahalf.com
Turnbull’s Typewriter
Participant observation, the classic formula for ethnographic work, leaves little room for texts. But still, somewhere lost in his account of fieldwork among the Mbuti pygmies – running along jungle paths, sitting up at night singing, sleeping in a crowded leaf hut – Colin Turnbull mentions that he lugged around a typewriter.
Clifford 1986
the 1980’s post-literary moment
writing as a process which must be
examined contextually, rhetorically,
institutionally, generically, politically,
and historically
Clifford worries that the essays in Writing Culture "will be accused of
having gone too far: poetry will again be banned from the city, power from
the halls of science"
not far enough
We need to revisit assumptions about the
possibilities and limits of a post-literary anthropology in
the age of the internet.
rethinking collaboration
“in the collaborative model is there a full give and take,
where at every step of the research knowledge and
expertise is shared” El Dorado Task Force 2002
How to create “dialogic” texts?
form vs. process
production vs. dissemination
can anthropology be remixed?
three case-studies
wiki- bureaucratization
“ignore all rules”
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wikipedia bias
“people work on what they want to work on”
- ethan zuckerman
“most of the people who work on wikipedia
are white, male technocrats from the
US and europe.”- ethan zuckerman
What they write about:
• technology
• science fiction
• libertarianism
• life in the US/Europe
animeafrican literature
Wikipedia:BIAS
image ethics
Attention Field Workers: great offense can be caused if this material is shown to tribal
Aboriginal people. The author strongly requests in the
interests of future research that this not be done.
- Catherine Ellis(quoted by Nicolas Peterson)
Don’t look!
mukurtuarchive.org
anti-social networks?
Homophily refers to the fact that “you’re likely to
befriend, talk to, work with and share ideas with people who’ve got common ethnic,
religious and economic background with you.”
- Ethan Zuckerman
readers also liked...
“MySpace has most of the kids who are socially
ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers....The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or
other ‘good’ kids are now going to Facebook.”
- Danah Boyd
% net users by country
globalvoicesonline.org
institutional barriers to cooperation
research guidelines
limited access
Thanks!slideshare.com/kerim
• http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2004/09/28/systemic-biases-in-wikipedia/
• http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/04/25/homophily-serendipity-xenophilia/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/arts/13BOOK.html
• http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html
• Peterson, N. 2003. “The Changing Photographic Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics.” In Photography's Other Histories, ed. C. Pinney, and N. Peterson, 119-145. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Clifford, James & George E Marcus. 1986. Introduction: Partial truths. In In Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.