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.