Zephyrin_xirdal [1], currently assistant professor [2] at the Department of Anthro- pology [3] in Munich, provided his audience [4] with a definite abstract of his project – an ethnography of cyberculture. Highly interesting and relevant, and not only for anthropologists, why I am also featuring his long standing work here…
Abstract
„The project is based upon longlasting and sustainable anthropological fieldwork, which essentially happens within conceptual spaces of interaction spanned by the infrastructure of the Internet. Central concepts of the methodological access are thick participation (Spittler) and multisited ethnography (Marcus). For being able to grasp the sociocultural phenomena empirically observable online, genuine anthropological research methods are evaluated and then transposed to the new fields. Building upon this, and upon the fieldwork results, a systematic basis for the establishment of a new subarea of anthropology—’cyberanthropology’—is created. Within the framework of the thus designed subarea, and starting from existing models (Escobar), ‚cyberculture‘ is newly conceptualised as consisting of the four elements technology, cybernetics, sociocultural appropriation, and cyberpunk. From those the principle of appropriation (Beck) is the central research paradigm of the whole project. The reach of the developed concept of culture enables us to recognize online mediated interaction as embedded into a larger whole—as an aspect of certain ‚Lebenswelten,‘ which are of crucial importance for contemporary politics, economy, and society. The project renders the culture of this ‚Lebenswelten‘ understandable, and it is shown that transnational technoludic online communities of practice, which are in the focus of the fieldwork, not only constitute a technological, but also a sociocultural avant-garde of present time.“
Good luck with the writing process !!!