Digital Anthropology Digital Anthropology Edited by Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller London • New York English edition First published in 2012 by Berg Editorial offi ces: 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © Heather A. Horst & Daniel Miller 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 0 85785 291 5 (Cloth) 978 0 85785 290 8 (Paper) e-ISBN 978 0 85785 292 2 (institutional) 978 0 85785 293 9 (individual) www.bergpublishers.com Contents Notes on Contributors vii PART I. INTRODUCTION 1. The Digital and the Human: A Prospectus for Digital Anthropology 3 Daniel Miller and Heather A. Horst PART II. POSITIONING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2. Rethinking Digital Anthropology 39 Tom Boellstorff 3. New Media Technologies in Everyday Life 61 Heather A. Horst 4. Geomedia: The Reassertion of Space within Digital Culture 80 Lane DeNicola PART III. SOCIALIZING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY 5. Disability in the Digital Age 101 Faye Ginsburg 6. Approaches to Personal Communication 127 Stefana Broadbent 7. Social Networking Sites 146 Daniel Miller PART IV. POLITICIZING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY 8. Digital Politics and Political Engagement 165 John Postill – v – vi • Contents 9. Free Software and the Politics of Sharing 185 Jelena Karanović 10. Diverse Digital Worlds 203 Bart Barendregt 11. Digital Engagement: Voice and Participation in Development 225 Jo Tacchi PART V. DESIGNING DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY 12. Design Anthropology: Working on, with and for Digital Technologies 245 Adam Drazin 13. Museum + Digital = ? 266 Haidy Geismar 14. Digital Gaming, Game Design and Its Precursors 288 Thomas M. Malaby Index 307 Notes on Contributors Bart Barendregt is an anthropologist who lectures at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is coordinating a four-year research project (Articulation of Modernity) funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientifi c Research (NWO) that deals with popular music, modernity and social chance in South East Asia. As a senior researcher, he is also affi liated with an NWO project titled The Future is Elsewhere: Towards a Comparative History of Digital Futurities, which examines Islamic ideas of the information society, halal software and appropria- tion and localization of digital technology in an overt religious context. Barendregt has done extensive fi eldwork in Java, Sumatra, Malaysia and the Philippines and has pub- lished on South East Asian performing arts, new and mobile media and popular culture. Tom Boellstorff is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. From 2007 to 2012 he was editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist, the fl agship journal of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of many articles and books, including The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005); A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007); Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008); and Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method, with Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce and T. L. Taylor (Princeton University Press, 2012). Stefana Broadbent is currently a teaching fellow in digital anthropology at University College London. Since 1990 she has been studying the evolution of digi- tal practices at home and in the workplace and has recently published a book on the blurring of the boundaries between the two: L’Intimite au Travail (FYP Editions, 2011). Previously, she was research director and member of the Strategy Board of Swisscom, where she started the Observatory of Digital Life. The Observatory studied longitudinally the evolution of digital activities in Swiss households. She has been a lecturer in ethnography and design in the Faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, and the Ecole Superieur des Art Decoratifs in Paris. Lane DeNicola is a lecturer in digital anthropology at University College London. His research interests include culture and design; spatial information technology and – vii – viii • Notes on Contributors geomedia; the social and political dimensions of open design; space industrialization in the developing world; scientifi c visualization; immersive systems and gaming. Prior to his doctoral training in science and technology studies, he worked as a pro- grammer and simulation designer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the Center for Space Research at MIT. Adam Drazin is coordinator of the MA degree programme in culture, materials and design at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. He lectured previously at Trinity College Dublin. Drazin works principally in the fi elds of mater- ial culture, design anthropology and the Romanian home. He has conducted design anthropology work with HP Labs, the Technical University of Eindhoven and Intel Ireland, mostly exploring material culture with a view to critical design approaches. Prior to lecturing at Trinity College Dublin, he ran his own sole-trader consultancy business. His current research interest is on the cultures of openness and home- making for people who have moved from Romania to Ireland. Other interests include the material culture of intentionality, cultures of design and the more appropriate use of ethnography in innovation. He recently guest-edited a joint special edition of Anthropology in Action and the Irish Journal of Anthropology on ‘Anthropology, Design and Technology in Ireland’ and has published in Ethnos and Home Cultures, among other places. Haidy Geismar is assistant professor of anthropology and museum studies at New York University. Her research focuses on issues surrounding value and materiality, using museums as a fi lter. Her research interests are intellectual and cultural prop- erty, the formation of digital objects and most broadly the ways in which museums and markets infl uence and engender relations between persons and things. Since 2000 she has worked as a researcher and curator in Vanuatu and Aotearoa, New Zealand, England and the United States. Faye Ginsburg is founder and ongoing director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University, where she is also the David Kriser Professor of Anthropology, and codirector of the Center for Religion and Media and of the NYU Council for the Study of Disability. She is an award-winning editor/author of four books, including Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain and Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media in the Digital Age, which is still in press. She is cur- rently carrying out research on cultural innovation and learning differences with Rayna Rapp. Heather A. Horst is a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University and the co-director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She is the coauthor (with Daniel Miller) of The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication (Berg, 2006) and (with Ito et al.) of Notes on Contributors • ix Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (MIT Press, 2010). She is currently writing an ethnography focused on digital media and family life in Silicon Valley. Her current research examines com- municative and monetary ecologies in the Caribbean and Pacifi c. Jelena Karanović is adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Trained in cultural anthropology, French studies and computer science, Karanović pursues research on new media ac- tivism, information rights, media ethnography, media and globalization, France and Europe. Her book manuscript, in preparation, explores the experiences and dilemmas of French free software advocates as they reinvent civic engagement around digital media. By drawing on twenty months of fi eldwork conducted online and offl ine in 2004 and 2005, she analyses how prime vehicles of free-market globalization— intellectual property law and digital media technologies—have invigorated public debates about European integration and the transnational political economy. Her work brings anthropology into dialogue with media studies, science and technology studies and European studies. Her 2010 article, ‘Contentious Europeanization: The Paradox of Becoming European through Anti-Patent Activism’, appeared in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. Thomas M. Malaby is professor and chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has published numerous works on games, practice and indeterminacy. He is continually interested in the ever-changing rela- tionships among institutions, unpredictability and technology—especially as they are realized through games and gamelike processes. His most recent book, Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life (Cornell University Press, 2009), is an ethnographic examination of Linden Lab and its relationship to its creation, Second Life. He is also a featured author at the blog Terra Nova. Daniel Miller is professor of material culture in the Department