Summary: Networked Anthropology | 9780415821742 | Collins, et al

Read the summary and the most important questions on Networked Anthropology | 9780415821742 | Collins, Durington

• 0 Introduction

• Why do the authors consider “network” as an appropriate metaphor for their work?

  They see their work as a collaborative tool to create effective connections between different groups to work on the production of meaning.

• The authors identify 7 central components: process, connection, cross-platform, collaborative, recursive, long-term, and ‘not for everyone’. What do each of these mean for a Networked Anthropology?

  
  Process: Articulate your work while it's in progress so through collaboration meaning can be produced.
  
  Connection: It's different from either: no one seeing your work or everyone seeing your work. You form your own network of followers and stuff you follow.
  
  Cross-platform: By using different platforms you cancel out the biases and shortcomings of each.
  
  Collaborative: You give away some of the control which results in your immediate collaborators having direct impact on your work.
  
  Recursive: You get immediate feedback through comments or analytics.
  
  Long-term: You establish connections.
  
  Not for everyone: It doesn't work for every field site.

• They identify 6 central questions that address the network in relation to: ecologies, existingnetworks, publics, media, time, and ethics. What are the core issues that these questions address?

  Ecology: What are peoples networks (both online and offline) already?
  
  Existing networks: How can they join already existing networks?
  
  Publics: What is the public of the networked media?
  
  Time: How do networks change over time?
  
  Ethics: What are the ethical considerations?

• 1 Anthropology confronts a networked world

• The authors begin this chapter discussing the “networked self” or more generally a networked life. How do they characterize this life and what are the positive and negative implications? (p11-13)

  A single self that gets reconfigured in different situations as people reach out, connect, and emphasize different aspects of themselves. It can be liberating. It is also noted that one's connections all flow together into highly instrumental networks.

• How does this networked life challenge conventional notions of the anthropological field site? (p14-19)

  Conventional notions of anthropological field sites were often that these sites were isolated from the outside world or rest of the system. E.g. islands of urban neighboorhoods from the rest of the city.

• If a networked anthropology is characterized by online media activities, why do the authors frame the 1898 Torres Straits expedition as an early example of this? (p19-22)

  They made recordings in the field and circulated these with their informants.

• What three qualities does the Mass-observation project share with Networked anthropology? (p23-24)

  1. Establish connection between contributors
  2. Democratizing the tools for ethnographic investigation
  3. Value those qualities as genuinly anthropological
     

• What do they mean by, “The work of anthropologists in the digital age can be characterized as a struggle to reconceptualize the anthropological project in the context of new technologies, digital worlds that extend ‘anthropologist’, ‘fieldsite’, and ‘informant’ in various ways across different sources of agency, both human and non-human”?

  The digital age is not fundamentally different from human life before, it's just an extension in much way. So the same methods, in other expression.

• 2 Networked ecologies

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• How do (online) networked ecologies facilitate a “public anthropology”? (p26-34)

  Available for public outside the academic circles.

• What are some of the problems with the term “public anthropology”? (p41)

  It's not specific, there isn't 'one public'. It's a networked public: connected to eachother not in the same way as through mass media.