Computer-Mediated Anthropology
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An Online Resource Center |
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CMA Introduction, Part 2: A BRIEF HISTORY OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED ANTHROPOLOGY by Noah Porter, July 2004 |
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In a 1993 Annual Review of Anthropology article, Spitulnik writes: "There is as yet no 'anthropology of mass media'" (p. 293). The only Internet mention is a brief note in the conclusion which says: "In our own society the technologies of the future are here today: interactive television, virtual reality, electronic town halls, digital compression, direct satellite broadcasting, and the fax. Significantly, many of these new developments supplant the 'mass' of mass media, making them more individual and interpersonal. One wonders how they will affect our ways of relating to one another, and our ways of understanding ourselves" (p. 307). In 1994, Arturo Escobar wrote an article entitled: "Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture." In the article, he claimed that "technosociality" was one of two components of "cyberculture" (along with "biosociality"), and that technosociality refers to "computering and information technology...bringing about...a broad process of sociocultural construction set in motion in the wake of the new technologies" (p. 214). He also noted that "the literature on cyberspace and virtual reality produced by their chroniclers and practitioners is characterized by the grandiosity of its claims" (p. 214 n.8). His discussion of Internet anthropology is characterized by skepticism, as this statement also demonstrates: "The appearance of computer-mediated communicaties, such as the so-called virtual communities... Anthropological analysis can be important not only for understanding what these new 'villages' and 'communities' are, but equally important, for imagining the kinds of communities that human groups can create with the help of these emerging technologies" (p. 218). Also in 1994, Edwards wrote "Afghanistan, Ethnography, and the New World Order." He opens his article with a comment that is rather suggestive of why anthropologists may have been reluctant to study the Internet: "Anthropologists do not usually-or at least they are not usually thought to-comment on global issues. The anthropological perspective is generally assumed to be a localized one" (p. 345). His study of Afghanistan takes is multi-sited, and includes an Internet component: "Last fall, the computer center at my college hooked me up to Internet, one feature of which is a bulletin board consisting of over two thousand news groups" (p. 349). He makes several observations about these virtual communities, such as debates over who has the right to participate in the discourse, including the attempted use of Arabic languages to discourage "outsiders" from participating, and what is appropriate behavior for Afghanis and Muslims in the contemporary world (e.g. Is oral sex an acceptable practice?). He notes that "there are…striking similarities between [the contemporary concerns of Afghans and Muslims in general in the virtual community] and those that arose in the mud-walled refugee camp where I worked" (p. 350). What finally put the nail in the coffin for BBSs, BITNET, and FIDO in the mid 1990s was Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) being added to web browsers. "Now, the human memory requirements and the complexity of the technology could be hidden behind lovely colorful computer display. The computer disappeared and a new virtual reality emerged" (Dow 1999). "The main U.S. Internet backbone traffic begins routing through commercial providers as NSFNET reverts to a research network in 1994." (Triumph of the Nerds). By 1995, NSF "decommissioned the backbone, leaving the Internet a self-supporting industry" (Computer History Museum 2004). In October 1995, Farnel and Huntley wrote "Ethnography goes interactive." In the article, they explore the possibilities opened up by creating CD-ROM ethnographies. The advantages include seeing the motion of participants and the non-linear format allowing multiple audiences to be addressed. In 1996, Patricia Gonzalez wrote an article entitled: "Anthropological Research and Collaborative Computing." She saw a need to anthropology to get involved with cyberspace: "Applying anthropological approaches to studying the National Information Infrastructure (NII) is vital towards bridging the schism in technological literacy that has emerged in the United States...Because computers and computer interfaces form the critical access points for the NII, anthropological and ethnographic methods that uncover how people relate and communicate through collaborative computing systems are critical to broadening participation in the advanced, new on-line services that the NII will provide" (p. 21). Kerric Harvey wrote a similar article in 1996 entitled: "Online for the Ancestors: The Importance of an Anthropological Sensibility in Information Superhighway Policy Design." Harvey wrote: "National Information Infrastructure (NII) issues typically fall into one of four correlative categories of concerns: (a) ownership, (b) access, (c) programming, and (d) regulation. Folded into these more obvious areas of public involvement, however, is an entire battery of submerged and highly interdependent social and cultural issues, the resolution of which is critical to the thoughtful design and eventual implementation of NII technologies into U.S. culture" (p. 65). Harvey felt that in addition to these concerns, the following "guiding questions" should also gain prominence: "In what circumstances and under what conditions will the introduction of the NII (or adjunct on-line technologies) to any specific individual life or organizational culture be perceived as integration, and under what conditions will it 'read,' for the people intimate to that culture, as an imposition instead? Within the parameters of the NII itself, how will the culture group members impose, adapt, or subvert their habitual ways of interacting with each other, of interpreting their unique world, and of navigating their own individual and collective roles within that conceptual universe?" (p. 67). Bonne A. Nardi wrote yet another article in 1996 calling for greater involvement by anthropologists in a short article entitled "Cyberspace, Anthropological Theory, and the Training of Anthropologists." In the abstract, she writes: "The embeddedness of advanced information technology in daily experience and human routines is often overlooked in objectified or romanticized characterizations of cyberspace and on-line interaction. To understand the human context of advanced information technology, studying the full scope of related activities is necessary. Anthropologists must be adequately trained in technical areas to affect system design. They need a strong theoretical framework such as activity theory for studying technology usage" (p. 34). Similary, Mizuko Ito wrote "Theory, Method and Design in Anthropologies of the Internet" in 1996 as well. Her abstract reads: "The study of the Internet challenges the anthropologist on many fronts. It demands a robust theoretical engagement with the technologies and semiotics of digital information and their relation to material and social realities. It calls for a redefinition of many core methodological touchstones such as 'fieldwork' and 'participant observation.' Finally, the study of the Internet requires the analyst to engage self-reflexively in the study and accountability to politics 'close to home' and entailing relations of 'studying up.' While anthropological notions of 'the field' and 'culture' are being destabilized at the core of the discipline, ethnographic approaches to new domains of media, science, and technology exhibit a resilient anthropological attention to embodied contexts of practice and everyday experience. This brief statement addresses the study of the Internet from the point of view of an anthropologist engaged with the field" (p. 24). Also in 1996, Blomberg wrote an article entitled "Designing Cyberian Landscapes." In this article, she says that Information Technology (IT) can improve working conditions if "work-oriented design" is used, defined as: "how the perspectives and concerns of workers can be brought into the design of new information technologies" (p. 18). Starting with ethnographic studies of IT workers, work-oriented design "often requires confronting unequal distributions of power" (p. 19). In June 1996, Houtman and Zeitlyn wrote "Information Technology and Anthropology." They contend that anthropology has treated the study of "cyberculture" as a distinct sub-discipline and underemphasized the impact of technology on the discipline as a whole, similar to how photography and film's impact were confined to the sub-discipline of visual anthropology. However, Houtman and Zeitlyn claim that computers can fundamentally transform data collection and manipulation, allowing for new types of analyses that would be unfeasible to do manually. Also, computers will allow for the easy exchange of information between scholars, the ability to publish online with sounds and images and less cost than print publications, and will change the subject matter of anthropology as online contexts will increasingly need to be examined for anthropologists to retain claims to holism. According to an article from Brian Schwimmer that same year, however, these calls for involvement by anthropologists seemed unlikely to happen. Schwimmer (1996) wrote: "The Internet... promises, or perhaps threatens, to transform the character of academic work. However, there has been little use or consideration of this new technology within anthropology beyond a small computer-literate group partially isolated from colleagues within a seperate sphere of communication" (p. 561). He also notes: "Only a few departments have established a substantial Internet presence. Those that have attempted some development usually include only a listing of staff members, academic programs, course titles, and calendar entries. Only three departments have made a more sustained effort: the University of Connecticut, Oxford University, and the University of Kent. All are unique in utilizing Web capabilities and multimedia hypertext displays" (p. 564). However, his article was later criticized by Ogburn (1997): "the absence of information on how recently the research was conducted it is difficult to determine the accuracy and completeleness of the information that is presented" (p. 286). She does agree, however, that "a clarion call may indeed be needed" (p. 287). Hesse-Biber, DuPuis, and Kinder wrote an article entitled "Anthropology: New Developments in Video Ethnography and Visual Sociology--Analyzing Multimedia Data Qualitatively" in 1997. The article identifies how "qualitative researchers have, in large part, avoided the use of computer programs in the analysis of their data" (p. 5) and how "few have codified their techniques" (p. 5) as problems. They then go on to say: "This article describes an exciting new multimedia feature of the computer software program HyperRESEARCH, which allows the researcher to analyze multimedia data...and discuss the implications of using and analyzing multimedia data in qualitative research" (p. 5-6). (It should be noted that while "anthropology" is in the title of the article, it is unclear whether the authors actually have an anthropological background from their biographies at the end.) In 1997, Mizuko Ito wrote: "Virtually Embodied: The Reality of Fantasy in a Multi-User Dungeon." In this book chapter, she criticizes academic writing that reifies the dichotomy between information/virtuality and materials/reality, explaing that "[w]hile I agree with the sentiment that online spaces provide opportunities for strikingly new social formations, I am wary of the tendency to view the virtual as a radically disjunctive and purely imaginary space that lacks consequentiality, location, or materiality" (p. 88). Also in 1997, Schwimmer wrote "Hypertext structures and ethnographic comparison as implemented in 'Kinship and Social Organization: An Interactive Tutorial." Multilayering and Multistranding are two new modes of non-linear, computer-mediated ethnographic writing he identifies as beneficial to several problematic areas of ethnographic representation, similar to Farnell and Huntley (1995). In 1998, Glenn Davis Stone wrote an article called: "Anthropology: Implications for Form and Content of Web-Based Scholarship." The purpose of the article is "to highlight the coming change and to explore how the new medium can be used to create different kinds of scholarship, not to address the myriad larger questions raised by this transformation" (p. 10). Also in 1998, David Zeitlyn presented a paper entitled: "Anthropology Nine Hundred Years After the Invention of Hypertext." In the paper, he notes two significant implication of hypertext for anthropology. First, hypertext can "make explicit some of the routes to their summary conclusions" and thereby increase the empirical basis for one's arguments. Second, as class sizes increase, anthropological pedagogy must increasingly rely on teaching about anthropology through readings that "[isolate] students from the primary experience of doing anthropology." Hypertext might be a technique which could be "developed to convey the immediacy of experience to individual students however large and heterogeneous a group they may comprise." In May 1998, Brian Schwimmer presented "Rationale and Romance in the Anthropology of Cyberspace" at the CASCA/AES annual conference. In this article, he drew a comparison between the problems that urban anthropology faced to the ones that cyberanthropology was currently facing. These problems included studying the exotic for its own sake, lack of contextualization, and a lack of comparative research. Like Wilson and Peterson (2002), he criticizes the online-offline dichotomy as encouraging research that ignores the cultural context that Internet use occurs in. Also in May 1998, Ian Ferguson completed his thesis entitled: "Sacred Realms and Icons of the Damned: The Ethnography of an Internet-based Child Pornography Ring." He explains his reasons for taking on such a controversial topic as follows: "this thesis present a case study of human adaptation to a particular environmental domain in cyberspace. In doing so, it examines the formation of a virtual community and its patterns of settlement within IRC as well as assesses the nature and dynamics of criminal threats within this community" (1998, Chp. 1). In his literature review, he found that there are few social scientific works that "provide in-depth examinations of illegal pornography and criminal organizations. Although a few works touched on the topic… there was no evidence of anything written from an anthropological perspective" (Chp. 2). Ferguson describes the difficulties of gaining access to a virtual community where highly illegal activities take place, and also how he negotiated a plethora of thorny legal and ethical issues. One surprising finding by Ferguson was that some of his informants claimed to be teenagers who were sexually interested in other teens, rather than fitting the stereotype of adult sexual deviants interested in minors. Also noteworthy was the reaction to his study by other anthropologists: "I have also been accused by some for getting on the proverbial bandwagon and choosing a 'flavour-of-the-month' topic" (Chp. 8). Steve Mizrach published the electronic document "CyberAnthropology" in 1998. This short web page provides guidelines, including theoretical underpinnings and appropriate research questions, pertinent to the practice of cyberanthropology. He mentions a redefinition of community to fit virtual communities, Donna Haraway's cyborg theory, and studying "memes" and identity. In 1999, Terry Redding edited and wrote NAPA Bulletin 19: Applied Anthropology on the Internet: Communication and Innovation. He gave an illuminating review of how the Internet was being used thus far: "The applications are many, and a review of anthropology's scholarly literature demonstrates the many needs that the Internet can help fulfill. For example, applied anthropologists have for decades felt a need for a more public voice on a variety of issues. These include public and international policy (van Willigen, Rylko-Bauer and McElroy 1989:xi; and Weaver 1985:103), public education, public participation in social impact assessment and social action (see Scheinfeld 1987:4; and Schensul 1987), and engaging the research community in a dialogue (Warry 1992:156), to name a few. Additionally, anthropologists have urged their colleagues to speak up on issues of public importance about which the discipline has something to say (e.g.: Givens 1991:1; Haas 1996:S1; Hess 1992:31; Jordan 1992:33; Lett 1987:2; McDougall 1992:33; Stewart 1964). I propose the Internet is emerging as a valuable tool in achieving these various ends (demonstrated in subsequent chapters)." Also in 1999, David Hakken asked in the title of his Anthropology News article: "Should the AAA Intervene in the Cultural Construction of Cyberspace?" In this visionary article, Hakken spells out what concerns anthropologists have had about embracing the Internet, and gives strategies for improvement. This same year, he also wrote Cyborgs@Cyberspace?: An Ethnographer Looks to the Future. In this book, Hakken is critical of the assumptions that a Computer Revolution (CR) is talking place, and calls on ethnographers to study Advanced Information Technologies (AIT) critically and empirically, rather than simply accepting "computopian" or "computropian" thought (that is, believing computers will bring revolutionary changes to society, all beneficial in the former and all detrimental in the latter). In July 1999, Gordon Fletcher presented "…Methodological Madness? You, Me and Virtual Ethnography" at the annual Australian Anthropological Society conference. In this paper, he argues for particularism in the study of cyberspace and criticizes "boundary-first" approaches. He points out that cyberculture and mainstream culture cannot be separated, as evidenced by refrigerators with Internet connectivity, websites advertised on the sides of buses, and television programs increasingly using the look and feel of websites. He also criticizes virtual ethnographies that are "focused upon the use of a particular 'site'…and the observed interactions between participants. The consequences of this focus is a resultant, but possibly unintentional, detachment from the machinations of cyberculture 'beyond' the boundaries of the research site." He mentions that in his own research on Internet chats, "[m]any of the participants do not confine themselves to any particular 'topic-based' chat space", and therefore, he contends that "these particular spaces are better understood as a form of social intersection." In addition, Misty L. Bastian wrote "Nationalism in a Virtual Space: Immigrant Nigerians on the Internet" that same year. In the article, she describes how Nigerian immigrants throughout the world are constructing a "virtual Nigeria" in cyberspace. In the article, she traces the historical trajectory of different Nigerian virtual communities as they merged and fissioned under various circumstances. She concludes that "we should not be surprised to find that the technoligcal tools of late modernity (and even postmodernity) are utilized to keep a contemporary diaspora like that of the Nigerian immigrants...from complete fragmentation," but, "[a]t the same time, we should not be surprised to see that such a disapora still contains its historically constituted interal divisions" (1999). Also in 1999, Jacobson wrote "Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectations and Offline Experiences in Text-Based Virtual Communities." In this article, he contends that: "Although researchers have emphasized the difficulties involved in impression formation in computer-mediated communication, people in the text-based virtual communities of cyberspace do develop images of one another. These impressions are based not only on cues provided, but also on the conceptual categories and cognitive models people use in interpreting those cues" (1999a). (I would criticize his article, however, on the grounds of advancing technology making more information about the other person available, people learning how to more realistically evaluate information gathered in virtual contexts after years of online interactions, and the possibility of people acknowledging the gaps in their understanding about online friends/lovers rather than immediately filling in the gap with some sort of stereotype.) Jacobson also write "Doing Research in Cyberspace" that same year (1999b). In this article, he discusses some ethically and legally problematic issues of doing research in cyberspace. These issues include what should be considered public space in the Internet and therefore not requiring informed consent, and also whether copyright law is applicable to researchers wishing to quote online informants. Forte (1999) presented "From Smoke Ceremonies to Cyberspace: Globalized Indigeneity, Multi-Sited Research, and the Internet" at the 25th annual meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society. In this paper, he discusses how he helped an the Carib construct a website, and describes a parallel between this process and their cultural construction of a smoke ceremony, drawing upon cultural elements at a both a local and global level. He writes: "they both afford their practitioners the ability to gain recognition and to represent themselves in certain manners. Similarly they both act as smoke screens, in part, somewhat obscuring the origins and processes of the reconstruction of Carib identity." In 2000, Rhonda S. Fair wrote "Becoming the White Man's Indian: An Examination of Native American Tribal Web Sites." In the article, she notes how Native American websites that are intended for outsiders use more stereotyped images of Native Americans. She further notes that while capitalism plays a role in making it more advantageous to present themselves in this way, Native Americans also may freely borrow each other's aesthetic traditions, just as Americans might wear clothes designed in Paris. Particularly noteworthy to this historical review is how she opens her article: "The Internet and the World Wide Web are now major sources of information and communication, yet little research examines the use and impact of these technologies. In fact, we are still waiting for 'cyber-anthropology' or an 'anthropology of the Internet' to develop" (p. 203). Ma Angels Trias i Valls writes: "In September 2000 the department of Anthropology in Lampeter faced a serious dilemma. The national crisis in student funding meant our student numbers plummeted to the point we could not retain existing staff members. The only steady, -- and successful -- sources of recruitment were from distance learning programs within the University. The decision was made to introduce e-learning programs within the Univeristy. The decision was made to introduce e-learning as a new venue for exploring teaching and learning anthropology and for attracting new students" (2002: 43). Also in 2000, Barkin and Stone found: "Anthropologists have begun to take their subject to the web. Has this change brought about a sea change in the form of anthropology? Our recent survey of web-based anthropology finds that although there are important innovations taking place in scattered corners of the web, there has in general been little evolution in the nature of the scholarly product to capitalize on the capabilities of online delivery" (p. 125). |
