"Digital Anthropology 2nd Edition explores how human and digital can be defined in relation to one another within issues as diverse as social media use, virtual worlds, hacking, quantified self, blockchain, digital environmentalism and digital representation. The book challenges the moral universal
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of the digital by exploring emergent anxieties about the global spread of new technological forms as well as highlighting the productive contribution of the digital to new concepts and practices. In this fully revised edition, Digital Anthropology reveals how the intense scrutiny of ethnography can overturn assumptions about the impact of digital culture and reveal its profound consequences for everyday life around the world. Combining the clarity of case studies with an engaging style that conveys a passion for new frontiers of enquiry within anthropological study, this will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in theory of anthropology, media and information studies, communication studies and sociology. With a brand new introduction from editors Haidy Geismar and Hannah Knox, as well as the original introduction by Heather Horst and Daniel Miller, in conjunction with new chapters on hacking, and digitizing environments, amongst others, and fully revised chapters throughout, this will bring the field-defining overview of digital anthropology fully up to date." (Publisher description)
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"When the Aboriginal Programs Unit of Australia’s ABC television began in 1988, every Indigenous person involved was a trainee under the direction of a Euro-Australian professional. They bore the burden of collective selfrepresentation in a televisual wasteland virtually devoid of Indigenous voice
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s. In 2011, Sally Riley (Wiradjuri) became head of the ABC’s Indigenous Unit, with plans to create innovative work that “comments on our own problems, our own issues”. Riley’s projects demonstrate how far Indigenous tv has come in 25 years; new productions expand beyond the burden of representation carried by the first generation, showing the complexities of daily life for diverse aboriginal subjects and audiences, enlarging the national imaginary through the local stories they tell. If the neighborhood of Redfern was known historically as the urban center of aboriginal political action in Australia, the show Redfern Now, has become an innovative site of cultural activism both on and off screen." (Abstract)
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"This book brings together several key anthropologists working with digital culture to demonstrate just how productive an anthropological approach to the digital has already become. Through a range of case studies from Facebook to Second Life to Google Earth, Digital Anthropology explores how human
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and digital can be defined in relation to one another, from avatars and disability; cultural differences in how we use social networking sites or practise religion; the practical consequences of the digital for politics, museums, design, space and development to new online world and gaming communities. The book also explores the moral universe of the digital, from new anxieties to open-source ideals. Digital Anthropology reveals how only the intense scrutiny of ethnography can overturn assumptions about the impact of digital culture and reveal its profound consequences for everyday life." (Publisher description)
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"Whether discussing Maori cinema in New Zealand or activist community radio in Colombia, the contributors describe how native peoples use both traditional and new media to combat discrimination, advocate for resources and rights, and preserve their cultures, languages, and aesthetic traditions. By r
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epresenting themselves in a variety of media, Indigenous peoples are also challenging misleading mainstream and official state narratives, forging international solidarity movements, and bringing human rights violations to international attention. Global Indigenous Media addresses Indigenous self-representation across many media forms, including feature film, documentary, animation, video art, television and radio, the Internet, digital archiving, and journalism. The volume's sixteen essays reflect the dynamism of Indigenous media-making around the world. One contributor examines animated films for children produced by Indigenous-owned companies in the United States and Canada. Another explains how Indigenous media producers in Burma (Myanmar) work with NGOs and outsiders against the country's brutal regime. Still another considers how the Ticuna Indians of Brazil are positioning themselves in relation to the international community as they collaborate in creating a CD-ROM about Ticuna knowledge and rituals. In the volume's closing essay, Faye Ginsburg points out some of the problematic assumptions about globalization, media, and culture underlying the term "digital age" and claims that the age has arrived. Together the essays reveal the crucial role of Indigenous media in contemporary media at every level: local, regional, national, and international." (Back cover)
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"Increasingly, Pentecostal, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and indigenous movements all over the world make use of a great variety of modern mass media, both print and electronic. Through religious booklets, radio broadcasts, cassette tapes, television talk-shows, soap operas, and documentary film
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these movements address multiple publics and offer alternative forms of belonging, often in competition with the postcolonial nation-state. How have new practices of religious mediation transformed the public sphere? How has the adoption of new media impinged on religious experiences and notions of religious authority? Has neo-liberalism engendered a blurring of the boundaries between religion and entertainment? The vivid essays in this interdisciplinary volume combine rich empirical detail with theoretical reflection, offering new perspectives on a variety of media, genres, and religions." (Publisher description)
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