eanth

Anthropology and the Internet

Bibliography

Anthropologists

Other Disciplines

Daniel Martin Varisco
Chair, Department of Anthropology
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11550

Daniel.M.Varisco@hofstra.edu

Last Update June 5, 2003

Anthropologists

This is a preliminary bibliography of books and articles written by anthropologists about the internet. A recent bibliography of other relevant texts is available in Wilson and Peterson (2002).

Anderson, Jon: 2002 Transnational Civil Society, Institution-Building, and IT: Reflections from the Middle East. NMIT Working Papers http://nmit.georgetown.edu/papers/transnatcs.htm; 2001 Muslim Networks, Muslim Selves in Cyberspace: Islam in the Post-Modern Public Sphere. NMIT Working Papers http://nmit.georgetown.edu/papers/jwanderson2.htm; 1999 "The Internet and Islam's New Interpreters, in New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere." In Dale F. Eickelman & Jon W. Anderson, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.; 1999 Technology, Media, and the Next Generation in the Middle East. NMIT Working Papers; 1997 Globalizing Politics and Religion in the Muslim World. The Journal of Electronic Publishing Volume 3, Issue 1 http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/archive/Anderson.html; 1997 The Internet and the Middle East: Commerce Brings Region On-Line. Middle East Executive Reports. Vol 20, No. 12 http://www.georgetown.edu/research/arabtech/meer97.htm; 1997 Cybernauts of the Arab Diaspora: Electronic Mediation in Transnational Cultural Identities" Research on Communication and IT in the Middle East http://www.georgetown.edu/research/arabtech/anders97.htm; 1996 On the Social Order of Cyberspace: Knowledge Workers and New Creoles. Social Science Computer Review 14(1) (Spring):7-9.; 1995 New Creoles of the Information Superhighway. Anthropology Today 11(4): 13-15, August.; 1988. Arabizing the Internet. Occasional Paper No. 20. Emirates Center for Strategic Studies & Research. Abu Dhabi. http://www.ecssr.ac.ae/periodicals/03uae.occpap30.htm
Augé, Marc: 1995 Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London and New York: Verso.; 2001 Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/056767.html
Christensen, Alexander F.: 2001 The Dot.Com Side of Anthropology. Anthropology News 42:4:7.
[Author was about.com anthro editor at the time.]
Downey, G. L., Dumit, J., and Williams, S.: Date? Cyborg anthropology. Cultural Anthropology 10(2), 264-69.
Downey, G. L. and Dumit, J. (eds.): 1998 Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies. Santa Fe, NM: The School of American Research Press.
Escobar, Arturo: 1994 Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture. Current Anthropology 35:3:211-231. http://www.keywriter.org/coursework/cyberculture/escobar.html; 1996 Welcome to cyberia: Notes on the anthropology of cyberculture. In Sardar, Z. and Ravetz, J. R. (eds) Cyberfutures: Culture and Politics on the Information Superhighway. New York: New York University Press, 111-137.

Fink, Christina: 1998 Burma: Constructive Engagement in Cyberspace? Cultural Survival Quarterly 21(4): 29-33.

Forte, Maximillian C.: 2002 Another Revolution Missed? Anthropology of Cyberspace. Anthropology News 43:9:20-21.
["Why would anthropology routinely ignore one particular field site? After all, this site is populated by almost 600 million people of all ages, classes, ethnic backgrounds, personal interests and professions. This unique place has its own rules, its own cultural norms, its own educational centers, its own clubs and associations, its own economy, its own political movements, its own terrorists and its own news organizations, and yet it is totally decentralized."]: 2000 Anthropology Uncanned. Anthropology News 41:3:9-10.
[Argument for anthropological webcasting and use of IT to promote communciation of anthropology.]
Gray, C. H. and M. Driscoll: 1992 What's Real about Virtual Reality?: Anthropology of, and in, Cyberspace. Visual Anthropology Review 8(2): 39-49.; 1999 Cyborgs@cyberspace?: An Ethnographer Looks to the Future. Boulder: Westview.
Hannerez, Ulf: 1996 Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge.

Hicks, Clinton R.: 1998 Places in the 'Net: Experiencing Cyberspace Cultural Dynamics 10(1): 49-70.

Hoopes, Campbell, Keen: 1998 Quick View Guide to Internet Anthropology 2.0. Mayfield.
Ito, M.: 1996 Theory, Method, and Design in Anthropologies of the Internet. Social Science Computer Review 14(1) (Spring): 24-26.
Jacobson, David: 2002 On Theorizing Presence. Journal of Virtual Environments 6:1. www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/V6/presence.html; 2001 Presence Revisited: Imagination, Competence, and Activity in Text-Based Virtual Worlds. CyberPsychology & Behavior 4:6:653-673.; 1999 Impression Formation in Cyberspace: Online Expectations and Offline Experiences in Text-Based Virtual Communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/jacobson.html; 1999 Doing Research in Cyberspace. Field Methods 11:2:127-145. http://www.unet.brandeis.edu/~jacobson/Doing_Research.html; 1996 Contexts and Cues in Cyberspace: The Pragmatics of Naming in Text-Based Virtual Realities. Journal of Anthropological Research 52:4:461-479. http://www.unet.brandeis.edu/~jacobson/Contexts_and_Cues.html

Mantovani, G.: 1995 Virtual Reality as a Communication Environment: Consensual Hallucination fiction, and Possible Selves. Human Relations 48(6): 669-684.

Mizrach, Steve: Lost in Cyberspace: A Cultural Geography of Cyberspace. Electronic document. http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/lost-in-cyberspace.html. Accessed May, 2003. [article written ca. 1996]

Nardi, B. A.: 1996 Cyberspace, Anthropological Theory, and the Training of Anthropologists. Social Science Computer Review 14(1) (Spring): 34-35.

Picciuolo José Luis, Díaz Raúl, Alonso Graciela, Espinosa H. Oscar Mauricio, Sarraméa Adriana, Faura Richard, Lobeto Claudio: 1999 Antropología del Ciberespacio. Argentina: Librería Abya-Yala {see: http://www.naya.org.ar/biblioteca/resenias/ciberespacio.htm]

Polly, Jean Armour.: 1998 Standing Stones in Cyberspace: The Oneida Indian Nation's Territory on the Web. Cultural Survival Quarterly 21(4):37-41.

Read, Dwight W. & Nicholas Gessler: 1996 CYBERCULTURE. In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, edited by David Levinson and Melvin Ember. Henry Holt & Co., New York, Volume 1, pages 306-308. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/gessler/cv-pubs/96cyber.htm

Schwimmer, Brian: 1996 Anthropology on the Internet: A Review and Evaluation of Networked Resources Current Anthropology Volume 37, Number 3. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/articles/intro.html

Sherry, J.: 2002 Land, Wind and Hard Words: A Story of Navajo Activism. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Uimonen, Paula: 2002 The Internet and Globalization. Pacific Telecommunications Review Volume 23, Number 3
2001 Transnational.Dynamics@Development.Net Internet, Modernization and Globalization. Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell International. [see http://www.i-connect.ch/uimonen/thesis.htm]

[Abstract: "The exponential growth and global expansion of the Internet has led many people to believe that the Internet is ushering in a new era, the information age, and a new social form, the information society. By equating the development of new information technologies with the evolution of a new informational social order, these notions reflect the primacy awarded to science and technology in representations of modernity. From an anthropological perspective, this visionary belief in technology-induced progress is instructive of the extent to which technological development is a result of culturally mediated social agency. And it is the ways in which different actors interpret the meaning of the Internet that this monograph is concerned with, the characteristics of which are analyzed in terms of the broader processes of modernization and globalization.
Approaching Internet development in terms of cultural management, this study focuses on the social dynamics underlying its expansion in developing countries. Individuals actively involved in this process form the ethnographic basis of the analysis. Positioned within different organizational frameworks, the activities and perspectives of these Internet pioneers provide an emic understanding of the culture of networking. Representing the social and cultural embeddedness of the Internet, the culture of networking is a subculture that is both related to and diverges from dominant cultural forms. In this investigation, the focus lies on the dynamic interrelations between the culture of networking and existing power relations, at international and national levels.
The research is based on multi-sited and translocal fieldwork in Geneva (international discourses and activities), Southeast Asia (regional and national case studies) and cyberspace (translocal site). Relying on a variety of investigative techniques, the research has been carried out from 1995 until the present."]: 1998 Cultural Encounters in Cyberspace. Electronic document, http://www.i-connect.ch/uimonen/culture.htm. Accessed June, 2003. [Paper presented in a virtual conference organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on "Internet in Asia: Cultural Diversity", Cyberspace, March 1998.]

Varisco, Daniel Martin: 2002 September 11: Participant Webservation of the "War on Terrorism." American Anthropologist 104:3:934-938.; 2001 Anthropology, the Web and the War on Terror. Anthropology News (December) http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/daniel_m_varisco/wtccom.htm#ant; 2000 SLAMMING ISLAM: PARTICIPANT WEBSERVATION WITH A WEB OF MEANINGS TO BOOT. Working Papers from the MES. http://www.aaanet.org/mes/lectvar1.htm; 2000 E-ethnography: On Line but Not Out of Sight. Anthropology News 41:7:5.
Wilson, Samuel and Leighton C. Peterson (2002) "Anthropology of Online Communites" Annual Review of Anthropology 31:449-467
["Abstract: Information and communication technologies based on the Internet have enabled the emergence of new sorts of communities and communicative practices-phenomena worthy of the attention of anthropological researchers. Despite early assessments of the revolutionary nature of the Internet and the enormous transformations it would bring about, the changes have been less dramatic and more embedded in existing practices and power relations of everyday life. This review explores researchers' questions, approaches, and insights within anthropology and some relevant related fields, and it seeks to identify promising new directions for study. The general conclusion is that the technologies comprising the Internet, and all the text and media that exist within it, are in themselves cultural products. Anthropology is thus well suited to the further investigation of these new, and not so new, phenomena."]
Zeitlyn, David and Gustaaf Houtman: 1996 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, JUNE. http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/rai/AnthToday/zhout.html
Zurawski , Nils.: 1999 Among the Internauts: Notes from the Cyberfield. Cybersociology Magazine, #6. http://www.cybersociology.com/
["Introduction: Despite the catchy title - and to calm all true anthropologists -, the Internet is certainly not a 'field' as were Malinowski's Trobriands back in the early days of this century - and many other places thereafter. But to study the Internet and its relation to societies, groups or individuals it is neither enough to simply view it as a technology that 'does' something with people, nor to negate the idea to view it as a field of research, which to a certain extent has a feel like the classical fields of anthropology.
In my dissertation I was focusing on Culture and Identity in relation to the Internet and the question that interested me especially was 'how do culture and identity influence the use and perceptions of the Internet? I belived that looking from that angle would shed more light on the relation between cultural identity and the uses of technology then from the opposite. Taken as an technology, the Internet is neither bad nor good for a society and its culture in general. Technology doesn't 'act' in itself, neither are the people willingless objects, but much more creators and social actors which employ the technology according to their needs."]
Other Disciplines
This is a preliminary bibliography of selected books and articles written about the internet or ethnography of internet use, but by scholars in disciplines other than anthropology. This is more a list of things to check than an endorsement of specific texts.]
Cavanagh , Allison: 1999 Behaviour in Public? : Ethics in Online Ethnography. Cybersociology Magazine, #6. http://www.cybersociology.com/; 1995 The Ethnography of an Electronic Bar: The Lesbian Cafe. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24(3): 270-298.

DiMaggio, P. et al.: 2001 Social Implictions of the Internet. Annual Review of Sociology 27:307-336.
Herman, Andrew and Thomas Swiss, editors: 2000 The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge.
[Review: http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/readers/abstracts/18/18-1%20Rowe.html.]
Hine, Christine M.: 2000 Virtual Ethnography. Sage.

Jones, Steve, editor: 1999 Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Kendall, Lori: 2002 Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mann, C. and Stewart, F.: 2000 Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online. New Technologies and Social Research Series.. London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishers.
Markham, Annette: 1998 Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space (Ethnographic Alternatives , No 6). Altamira.
Mason , Bruce and Bella Dicks: 1999 The Digital Ethnographer. Cybersociology Magazine, #6. http://www.cybersociology.com/
["Abstract: Hypermedia offers ethnographers a powerful new medium for authoring. Its potentialities suggest various levels of convergence with the concerns of critical theory and post-paradigm ethnography. Nevertheless, the project of authoring academic ethnographic hypertexts is fraught with difficulty, not least due to the difficulties of formulating a new rhetorics which can offer the same persuasive power as the conventional printed narrative. Hypertext opens up particular kinds of authoring innovations, such as the linking together of data, analysis and interpretation in the same medium, and the juxtapositioning of materials in written, visual and aural forms. A new multi-semiotic ethnography is becoming possible through digital technologies, which will have to develop new ways of ordering academic argumentation and analysis. We argue that finding creative means of assembling narrative sequences will be germane to the 'art' of hyper-authoring for ethnography, as it has been for the book and the film (although in different ways). We offer some insights from our own experiences of constructing an 'ethnographic hypermedia environment' as a means of illustrating some of these dilemmas."]
Miller, Daniel and Don Slater: 2000. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg. [see http://ethnonet.gold.ac.uk/index.htm]
["On the basis of perhaps the first regional study of the Internet, this book challenges concepts of virtual reality. Instead, it investigates how the Internet has become part of people's lives - from the middle class to squatters, from popular culture to ecommerce in Trinidad. Clearly written for the non-specialist reader, it offers a detailed account of the complex integration between on-line and off-line worlds."]
Rheingold , Howard: 1994 The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Harper Perennial. Online at: http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/index.html

Return to Anthropology and the Internet