Theory,Method,and Design in Anthropologies of the Internet

Abstract

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 of 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.