Massively Multiplayer Online
Collaborative Anthropology
2008 Annual Meeting
American Anthropological Association
San Francisco, CA
November 19-23, 2008

p. kerim friedman
kerim.oxus.net

ci.ndhu.edu.tw

savageminds.org

fournineandahalf.com

Turnbull’s Typewriter

Participant observation, the classic formula for
ethnographic work, leaves little room for texts.
But still, somewhere lost in his account of
fieldwork among the Mbuti pygmies – running
along jungle paths, sitting up at night singing,
sleeping in a crowded leaf hut – Colin Turnbull
mentions that he lugged around a typewriter.
Clifford 1986

the 1980’s post-literary
moment

writing as a process
which must be
examined contextually,
rhetorically,
institutionally,
generically, politically,
and historically

Clifford worries that the essays in
Writing Culture \"will be accused of
having gone too far: poetry will again
be banned from the city, power from
the halls of science\"

not far enough

We need to revisit
assumptions about the
possibilities and limits of a
post-literary anthropology in
the age of the internet.

rethinking collaboration

“in the collaborative model is
there a full give and take,
where at every step of the
research knowledge and
expertise is shared”
El Dorado Task Force 2002

How to create
“dialogic” texts?

form vs. process

production vs.
dissemination

can anthropology be
remixed?

three case-studies

wiki- bureaucratization

“ignore all rules”

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wikipedia bias

“people work on what
they want to work on”
- ethan zuckerman

“most of the people
who work on wikipedia
are white, male
technocrats from the
US and europe.”
- ethan zuckerman

What they write about:
• technology
• science fiction
• libertarianism
• life in the US/Europe

african literature anime

Wikipedia:BIAS

image ethics

Attention Field Workers: great
offense can be caused if this
material is shown to tribal
Aboriginal people. The author
strongly requests in the
interests of future research that
this not be done.
- Catherine Ellis
(quoted by Nicolas Peterson)

Don’t look!

mukurtuarchive.org

anti-social networks?

Homophily refers to the fact
that “you’re likely to
befriend, talk to, work with
and share ideas with people
who’ve got common ethnic,
religious and economic
background with you.”
- Ethan Zuckerman

readers also liked...

“MySpace has most of the
kids who are socially
ostracized at school because
they are geeks, freaks, or
queers....The goodie two
shoes, jocks, athletes, or
other ‘good’ kids are now
going to Facebook.”
- Danah Boyd

% net users by country

globalvoicesonline.org

institutional barriers to
cooperation

research guidelines

limited access

Thanks!
slideshare.com/kerim

• http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/
2004/09/28/systemic-biases-in-wikipedia/
• http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/
2008/04/25/homophily-serendipity-
xenophilia/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/arts/
13BOOK.html
• http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/
ClassDivisions.html

• Peterson, N. 2003. “The Changing Photographic
Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics.” In
Photography's Other Histories, ed. C. Pinney, and N.
Peterson, 119-145. Durham: Duke University
Press.
• Clifford, James & George E Marcus. 1986.
Introduction: Partial truths. In In Writing Culture: the
Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley:
University of California Press.