Short description:

Using a range of case studies from across the globe, 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.

Long description:

Digital Anthropology, 2nd Edition explores how human and digital can be explored 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 prevailing moral universal of ?the digital age? by exploring emergent anxieties about the global spread of new technological forms, the cultural qualities of digital experience, critically examining the intersection of the digital to new concepts and practices across a wide range of fields from design to politics.

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 case studies with theoretical discussion in 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 an abridged version of 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.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction 2.0

Haidy Geismar and Hannah Knox

PART I: Positioning

2. Six Principles for a Digital Anthropology

Daniel Miller and Heather Horst

3. Rethinking Digital Anthropology

Tom Boellstorff

PART II: Socializing Digital Anthropology

4. The Anthropology of Mobile Phones

Heather A. Horst

5. The Anthropology of Social Media

Daniel Miller

6. Diverse Digital Worlds

Bart Barendregt

7. Disability in the Digital Age

Faye Ginsburg

8. Devices and Selves: From self-exit to self-fashioning 

Natasha Schüll

PART III: Politicizing Digital Anthropology

9. Digital Politics

John Postill

10. Traversing the Infrastructures of Digital Life

Hannah Knox

11. Blockchain

Bill Maurer

12. Digital Economy and Labour

Ilana Gershon and Iris Bull

PART IV: Designing Digital Anthropology

13. Design for and against Digital Anthropology

Adam Drazin

14. Museum + Digital = ?

Haidy Geismar

15. The Role of the Digital Anthropologist in Citizen Science and Public Participation Mapping Projects: A case study or two

David Jeevendrampillai with Gillian Conquest

16. Digital Futures Anthropology