The Newbie Anthropologist

Abstract

Christian Wach

October 17, 2012

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Author’s note: this is my dissertation, exactly as I wrote it in 1997. Now in Commentpress format.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 This essay examines what kind of models might appropriately describe the activity of the people involved in the electronic channels of communication of the Internet, and investigates how these models fare in practice through ethnographic research. It considers two different kinds of communicative activity; mailing lists, and conferencing and newsgroup systems, and addresses the dynamics of these existing ‘cyberspace communities’, rather than make predictions about those to come. The Internet is considered as an ‘open’ system for non-local groupings and associations, in which the concepts and language of complexity have considerable, though not unique, descriptive power. Some of the implications of the alternative social contructions of knowledge that these groups make possible are explored, and their impact upon fieldwork and theory is reflected upon.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Christian Wach – 12th May 1997