The advent of social media offers anthropologists exciting opportunities to extend their research to communities in fresh ways. At the same time, these technological developments open up anthropological fieldwork to different hazards. Networked Anthropology explores the increasing appropriation of diverse media platforms and social media into anthropological research and teaching. The chapters consider the possibilities and challenges of multimedia, how network ecologies work, the ethical dilemmas involved, and how to use multimedia methodologies. The book combines theoretical insights with case studies, methodological sketches and pedagogical notes. Drawing on recent ethnographic work, the authors provide practical guidance in creative ways of doing networked anthropology. They point to the future of ethnography, both inside and outside the classroom, and consider ways in which networked anthropology might develop.
The advent of social media offers anthropologists exciting opportunities to extend their research to communities in fresh ways. At the same time, these technological developments open up anthropological fieldwork to different hazards. Networked Anthropology explores the increasing appropriation of diverse media platforms and social media into anthropological research and teaching. The chapters consider the possibilities and challenges of multimedia, how network ecologies work, the ethical dilemmas involved, and how to use multimedia methodologies. The book combines theoretical insights with case studies, methodological sketches and pedagogical notes. Drawing on recent ethnographic work, the authors provide practical guidance in creative ways of doing networked anthropology. They point to the future of ethnography, both inside and outside the classroom, and consider ways in which networked anthropology might develop.
Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.
This Handbook of Visual Communication explores the key theoretical areas and research methods of visual communication. With chapters contributed by many of the best-known and respected scholars in visual communication, this volume brings together significant and influential work in the discipline. The second edition of this already-classic text has been completely revised to reflect the metamorphosis of communication in the last 15 years and the ubiquity of visual communication in our modern mediated lifestyle. Thriteen major theories of communication are defined by the top experts in their fields: perception, cognition, aesthetics, visual rhetoric, semiotics, cultural studies, ethnography, narrative, media aesthetics, digital media, intertextuality, ethics, and visual literacy. Each of these theory chapters is followed by an exemplar study or two in the area, demonstrating the various methods used in visual communication research as well as the research approaches applicable for specific media types. The Handbook of Visual Communication is a theoretical and methodological handbook for visual communication researchers and a compilation for much of the theoretical background necessary to understand visual communication. It is required reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in visual communication, and it will be influential in other disciplines such as advertising, persuasion, and media studies. The volume will also be essential to media practitioners seeking to understand the visual aspects of how audiences use media to contribute to more effective use of each specific medium.
This collection of original articles, a companion to the authors’ Participatory Visual and Digital Methods, illustrates how a variety of innovative techniques are being used in various field projects across disciplines and geographic locations.
The first edition of All Tomorrow’s Cultures explored the legacy of futures-thinking in anthropology and marked the beginning of a resurgence of interest in anthropological futures. The new edition has been updated to reflect some of the outpouring of work since then, particularly in science and technology studies and in anthropological analyses of indigenous futures. In addition, Collins has updated the final chapter to expand the field of anthropological possibility in an age of both despair and hope.
Multimodal Methods in Anthropology develops several goals simultaneously. First, it is an introduction to the ways that multimodality might work for students and practitioners of anthropology, using multiple examples from the authors’ research and from the field. Second, the book carefully examines the ethics of a multimodal project, including the ways in which multimodality challenges and reproduces “digital divides.” Finally, the book is a theoretical introduction that repositions the history of anthropology along axes of multimodality and reframes many of the essential questions in anthropology alongside collaboration and access. Each chapter introduces new methods and techniques, frames the ethical considerations, and contextualizes the method in the work of other anthropologists. Multimodal Methods in Anthropology takes both students and practitioners through historical and contemporary sites of multimodality and introduces the methodological and theoretical challenges of multimodal anthropology in a digital world. Like multimodality itself, readers will come away with new ideas and new perspectives on established ideas, together with the tools to make them part of their practice. It is an ideal text for a variety of methods-based courses in anthropology and qualitative research at both the undergraduate and the graduate level.
Since the first worldwide protests inspired by Peoples’ Global Action (PGA)—including the mobilization against the November 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle—anti–corporate globalization activists have staged direct action protests against multilateral institutions in cities such as Prague, Barcelona, Genoa, and Cancun. Barcelona is a critical node, as Catalan activists have played key roles in the more radical PGA network and the broader World Social Forum process. In 2001 and 2002, the anthropologist Jeffrey S. Juris participated in the Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance, one of the most influential anti–corporate globalization networks in Europe. Combining ethnographic research and activist political engagement, Juris took part in hundreds of meetings, gatherings, protests, and online discussions. Those experiences form the basis of Networking Futures, an innovative ethnography of transnational activist networking within the movements against corporate globalization. In an account full of activist voices and on-the-ground detail, Juris provides a history of anti–corporate globalization movements, an examination of their connections to local dynamics in Barcelona, and an analysis of movement-related politics, organizational forms, and decision-making. Depicting spectacular direct action protests in Barcelona and other cities, he describes how far-flung activist networks are embodied and how networking politics are performed. He further explores how activists have used e-mail lists, Web pages, and free software to organize actions, share information, coordinate at a distance, and stage “electronic civil disobedience.” Based on a powerful cultural logic, anti–corporate globalization networks have become models of and for emerging forms of radical, directly democratic politics. Activists are not only responding to growing poverty, inequality, and environmental devastation; they are also building social laboratories for the production of alternative values, discourses, and practices.
An essential core textbook that leads the reader from Social Anthropology's foundational approaches and theories to the fundamental areas that characterise the field today. Taking a truly global and holistic view, it includes a wide range of case studies, touching on topics that both divide and connect us, such as family, marriage and religion. Fully updated and revised, the third edition of this popular textbook continues to introduce students to what Social Anthropology is, what anthropologists do, how and what they contribute, and how even a limited knowledge of anthropology can help people flourish in today's world. This is an inviting, engaging and enjoyable text that has established itself as a comprehensive introduction to social and cultural anthropology. Written in an accessible style, and including a wide range of pedagogical features, it is ideally suited to new or prospective students seeking to better understand the discipline and its roots. New to this Edition: - Includes a new chapter on the role of social and cultural anthropologists and the specific methods they use in a fast-changing world - Features a number of new first-hand accounts to explore difficult concepts through people's real world experiences - Updated sections for further exploration, including books, articles, novels, films and websites
This book theorizes the roles of optimism in anthropological thinking, research, writing, and practice. It sets out to explore optimism’s origins and implications, its conceptual and practical value, and its capacity to contribute to contemporary anthropological aims. In an era of extensive ecological disruption and social distress, this volume contemplates how an optimistic anthropology can energize the discipline while also contributing to bettering the lives, communities, and environments of those we study. It brings together scholars diverse in background, career stage, and theoretical approach in a collective attempt to comprehend the myriad intersections of anthropology and optimism. The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have recently underscored the larger, longer-term catastrophes of climate change, ecosystemic collapse, social injustice, and antipathy toward scientific knowledge and those who produce it. In this context, exceedingly few anthropologists feel comfortable observing and documenting passively while their research communities face unrelenting waves of (un)natural disasters. We need to act. But we also need to hope. Discontent with the state of the world and cultural anthropology’s turn to increasingly positive, future-oriented, and engaged work have converged to unleash a courageously optimistic anthropology. This book is a timely springboard for this impactful and emergent approach.
