Fri, 04 Jan 2008
mana'o
The Mana'o Project is "an experimental open access anthropology repository." It is just some months old, but there already are items as far back as 1891, including some classics. Of course the frequency of items gets bigger and bigger as you get closer to the present day. Additionally the topics are tell-tale in some respect, too. Below I listed what generated a search according to my current focus of interest. Alas, it would be premature to deduce, that the things "cyber" have conquered whole anthropology, because those working on said topics of course are the first to publish their texts online and as open access. Anyway, don't get deluded by my list below, there is a wealth of other topics there already. Go and read, and join, and upload.
 
Article
 
Golub, Alex and Lingley, Kate (2007) “Just Like the Qing Empire:” Internet Addiction, MMOGs, and Moral Crisis in Contemporary China. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media . ISSN 1555-4120
 
Malaby, Thomas M. (2007) Beyond Play: A New Approach to Games. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, 2 (2). pp. 95-113. ISSN 1555-4120
 
Malaby, Thomas M. (2006) Coding Control: Governance and Contigency in the Production of Online Worlds. First Monday, Special Issue #7 . ISSN 1396–0466
 
Malaby, Thomas M. (2006) Parlaying Value: Capital in and Beyond Virtual Worlds. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, 1 (2). pp. 141-162. ISSN 1555-4120
 
Kelty, Christopher (2005) Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics. Cultural Anthropology, 20 (2). pp. 185-214. ISSN 0886-7356
 
Kelty, Christopher and Landecker, Hannah (2004) A Theory of Animation: Cells, L-systems, and Film. Grey Room (17). pp. 30-63. ISSN 1526-3819
 
Chan, Anita (2004) Coding Free Software, Coding Free States: Free Software Legislation and the Politics of Code in Peru. Anthropological Quarterly, 77 (3). pp. 531-545. ISSN 0003-5491
 
Brown, Glenn Otis (2004) Commentary. Anthropological Quarterly, 77 (3). pp. 575-580. ISSN 0003-5491
 
Golub, Alex (2004) Copyright and taboo. Anthropological Quarterly, 77 (3). pp. 521-530. ISSN 0003-5491
 
Kelty, Christopher (2004) Culture's Open Sources: Software, Copyright, and Cultural Critique. Anthropological Quarterly, 77 (3). pp. 499-506. ISSN 0003-5491
 
Coombe, Rosemary J. and Herman, Andrew (2004) Rhetorical Virtues: Property, Speech, and the Commons on the World-Wide Web. Anthropological Quarterly, 77 (3). pp. 559-574. ISSN 0003-5491
 
Coleman, Gabriella (2004) The Political Agnosticism of Free and Open Source Software and the Inadvertent Politics of Contrast. Anthropological Quarterly, 77 (3). pp. 507-519. ISSN 0003-5491
 
Book Section
 
Nardi, Bonnie and Ly, Stella and Harris, Justin (2007) Learning Conversations in World of Warcraft. In: 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE, 79a. ISBN 9780769527550 ; 0769527558
 
Kelty, Christopher (2005) Free Science. In: Perspectives on Free and Open-Source Software. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 415-430. ISBN 0-262-06246-1
 
Conference or Workshop Item
 
Golub, Alex (2007) Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Care, and Digital Subjectivity. In: 106th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, November 28 - December 2, 2007, Washington, DC. (Unpublished)
 
Nardi, Bonnie and Kallinikos, Jannis (2007) Opening the Black Box of Digital Technologies: Mods in World of Warcraft. In: 23rd EGOS Colloquium, 5-7 July 2007. (Unpublished)
 
Thesis
 
Levant, Efe (2007) “Just Like IRL”: Play, Spatiality and Sociality in Online Fantasy Games. Masters thesis, University College London.

initially via entry at antropologi.info

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 | 15:07 | category: /literature | permalink
unanthropology
During this year's summer term I am going to offer an advanced seminar I christened "Ethnologie enzyklopädisch", roughly translated "Sociocultural Anthropology encyclopedia style". The widely visible result of the seminar shall be a completely overworked entry Ethnologie—and maybe changing of items closely linked to it—within the German version of the Wikipedia. The rationale behind the project consists of a row of strategical thoughts and didactical ponderings.
 
First of all the Wikipedia is widely consulted and read, an empirical piece of reality not to ignore. Hence for the sake of the discipline we simply have to make sure that the entry on it is not only accurate, but state-of-the-art. Or, as Lord Nelson would put it: Academia expects every anthropologist to do his duty. The current entry "Ethnologie" is not to my satisfaction, so something has to be done. Especially because not only the "wider public," but also students of anthropology use the Wikipedia. This leads me to the next point, because "know your tools" is an indispensable rule. In my mind students nowadays simply have to be informed about the principle, the system, and the inner workings of Wikipedia, and although about the adjoined controversy and discussion.
 
While working on and maintaining the entry DeFRaG at the English version of Wikipedia, I came into close contact with a lot of the so-called policies. The latter are a great repository of fundamentals of precise academic writing—especially encyclopedic writing, of course—, in other words usable as a didactic means. To a certain degree at Wikipedia all that which happens behind closed doors at the traditional encyclopedias happens in public. A chance not to be bypassed in teaching, in my opinion.
 
Now, via Warauduati I was redirected to Maximilian Forte's Open Anthropology and there I found an entry on the Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia's satirical pendant. The entry Anthropologist there simply is hilarious, Ethnologie in the German version of the Uncyclopedia to a certain degree, too. Well, I won't redirect my seminar to the Uncyclopedia, but writing satire is apt to sharpen once intellect and furthermore, the Uncyclopedia can be used as a kind of overpressure valve for the seminar's crew. I will force the attendants to form task groups, and I know that a lot of unimaginable jokes are coming up, when working within a group. Jokes are valuable, now there is a place to dump them and thus prevent them from vanishing into oblivion.
 
P.S.: For those into computer games and being able to read German, check out the Uncyclopedia entries Counter Strike and Counter-Strike.

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 | 13:46 | category: /cyberanthropology | permalink