Digital anthropology is not ethnography
Cybernetic explanation and transdisciplinarity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-7289.2021.2.39872Keywords:
Cybernetics, Anthropology, Digital media, Liminarity, SchismogenesisAbstract
The article transposes to digital anthropology Tim Ingold’s polemical argument that “anthropology is not ethnography,” reclaiming the discipline’s transdisciplinary, four fields vocation from the perspective Gregory Bateson called cybernetic explanation. It illustrates the potential of this approach by exploring how notions from classical anthropological theory may shed productive light on some of the anti-structural – unintended yet systemic – effects of platformization.
Downloads
References
Abidin, Crystal. 2021. From ‘networked publics’ to ‘refracted publics’: a companion framework for researching ‘below the radar’ studies. Social Media + Society 7 (1): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120984458.
Bateson, Gregory. 2008. Naven: um exame dos problemas sugeridos por um retrato compósito da cultura de uma tribo da Nova Guiné, desenhado a partir de três perspectivas. São Paulo: Edusp.
Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bateson, Gregory. 2019. A cibernética do “self”: uma teoria do alcoolismo. Ilha – Revista de Antropologia 21 (1): 258-90. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8034.2019v21n1p258.
Blommaert, Jan. 2019. Sociolinguistic restratification in the online-offline nexus: Trump’s viral errors. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 234, Universidade de Tilburg, Holanda.
Boellstroff, Thomas. 2012. Rethinking digital anthropology. In Digital anthropology, organizado por Heather Horst e Daniel Miller, 39-60. Londres: Berg.
Boyd, Danah. 2011. Social network sites as networked publics: affordances, dynamics, and implications. In A networked self: identity, community, and culture on social network sites, organizado por Zizi Papacharissi, 39-58. Nova Iorque: Routledge.
Bratton, Benjamin. 2015. The stack: on software and sovereignty. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Cesarino, Letícia. 2019. Identidade e representação no bolsonarismo: corpo digital do rei, bivalência conservadorismo-neoliberalismo e pessoa fractal. Revista de Antropologia 62 (3): 530-57. https://doi.org/10.11606/21790892.ra.2019.165232.
Cesarino, Letícia. 2020a. How social media affords populist politics: remarks based on the Brazilian case. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada 59 (1): 404-27. https://doi.org/10.1590/01031813686191620200410.
Cesarino, Letícia. 2020b. Como vencer uma eleição sem sair de casa: a ascensão do populismo digital no Brasil. Internet & Sociedade 1 (1): 92-120.
Cesarino, Letícia. 2021. Pós-verdade e a crise do sistema de peritos: uma explicação cibernética. Ilha – Revista de Antropologia 23 (1): 73-96. https://doi.org/10.5007/21758034.2021.e75630.
Chun, Wendy. 2016. Updating to remain the same: habitual new media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Connolly, William. 2002. Neuropolitics: thinking, culture, speed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Costa, Elisabetta. 2018. Affordances-in-practice: an ethnographic critique of social media logic and context colapse. New Media & Society 20 (10): 3641-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818756290.
Cruz, Francisco. 2020. Novo jogo, velhas regras: democracia e direito na era da propaganda política e das fake news. São Paulo: Letramento.
Douglas, Mary. 2010. Pureza e perigo. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Escobar, Arturo. 2016. Bem-vindos à cyberia: notas para uma antropologia da cibercultura. In Políticas etnográficas no campo da cibercultura, organizado por Jean Segata e Theophilos Rifiotis, 21-66. Brasília: ABA Publicações.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 2004. Bruxaria, oráculos e magia entre os Azande. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 2011. Os nuer. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Fielitz, Maik e Holger Marcks. 2019. Digital fascism: challenges for the open society in times of social media. Working Paper – Center for Right-Wing Studies. Berkeley: University of California.
Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2018. Social media and populism: an elective affinity? Media, Culture & Society, 8 (5): 745-53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718772192.
Gibson, James. 1979. The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gluckman, Max. 2011. Rituais de rebelião no sudeste da África. Série Tradução 3: 1-34. http://www.dan.unb.br/images/pdf/serie-traducao/st%2003.pdf.
Gray, Jonathan, Liliana Bounegru e Tommaso Venturini. 2020. “Fake news” as infrastructural uncanny. New Media & Society 22 (2): 317-41. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819856912.
Hacking, Ian. 1995. The looping effects of human kinds. In Causal cognition: a multidisciplinary debate, organizado por Dan Sperber, David Premack e Ann Premack, 351-94. New York: Clarendon Press.
Hine, Christine. 2015. Ethnography for the Internet: embedded, embodied and everyday. Nova Iorque: Routledge.
Horst, Heather e Daniel Miller, orgs. 2012. Digital anthropology. Londres: Berg.
Hui, Yuk. 2020. Tecnodiversidade. São Paulo: Ubu Editora.
Hutchby, Ian. 2001. Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology 35 (2): 441-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/S0038038501000219.
Ingold, Tim. 2008. Anthropology is not ethnography. Proceedings of the British Academy 154: 69-92. https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197264355.003.0003.
Ingold, Tim. 2017. Antropologia versus etnografia. Cadernos de Campo 26 (1): 222–28.
Kuhn, Thomas. 2006. A estrutura das revoluções científicas. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2013. A razão populista. São Paulo: Três Estrelas.
Lakoff, George. 2009. The political mind: a cognitive scientist’s guide to your brain and its politics. Nova Iorque: Penguin Books.
Laterza, Vito. 2021. Could Cambridge Analytica have delivered Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory? An anthropologist’s look at Big data and political campaigning. Public Anthropologist 3 (1): 119-47. https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-03010007.
Latour, Bruno. 1994. Jamais fomos modernos: ensaio de antropologia simétrica. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34.
Leirner, Piero 2020. O Brasil no espectro de uma guerra híbrida: militares, operações psicológicas e política em uma perspectiva etnográfica. São Paulo: Alameda Editorial.
Lempert, Michael. 2014. Imitation. Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 379-95. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurevanthro-102313-030008.
Luhmann, Niklas. 2016. Sistemas sociais: esboço de uma teoria geral. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.
Lury, Celia e Sophie Day. 2019. Algorithmic personalization as a mode of individuation. Theory, Culture & Society 36 (2): 17-37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418818888.
Macy, Joanna. 1991. Mutual causality in buddhism and general systems theory: the dharma of natural systems. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Maly, Ico. 2018. Populism as a Mediatized Communicative Relation. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 213. Universidade de Tilburg, Holanda.
Marres, Nootje. 2018. Why we can’t have our facts back. Engaging Science Technology and Society 4: 423-443. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2018.188.
Marres, Noortje e David Stark. 2020. Put to the test: for a new sociology of testing. The British Journal of Sociology 71 (3): 423-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12746.
Miller, Daniel e Don Slater. 2004. Etnografia on e off-line: cibercafés em Trinidad. Horizontes Antropológicos 10 (21): 41-65. https://doi.org/10.1590/S010471832004000100003.
Miller, Daniel, Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes et al. 2019. Como o mundo mudou as mídias sociais. Londres: UCL Press.
Mirowski, Philip. 2006. Machine dreams: economics becomes a cyborg science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nadler, Anthrony e Lee McGuigan. 2017. An impulse to exploit: the behavioral turn in data-driven marketing. Critical Studies in Media Communication 35 (2): 151-165. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2017.1387279.
Nagle, Angela. 2017. Kill all normies: online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. Londres: Zero Books.
Oliveira, Diego. 2015. A técnica como modo de existência em Gilbert Simondon: tecnicidade, alienação e cultura. Dois Pontos 12 (1): 83-98. https://doi.org/10.5380/dp.v12i1.36861.
Peirano, Mariza. 2014. Etnografia não é método. Horizontes Antropológicos 20 (42): 377-391. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-71832014000200015.
Procházka, Ondrej e Jan Blommaert. 2019. Ergoic framing in new right online groups: Q, the MAGA kid, and the deep state theory. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 224. Universidade de Tilburg, Holanda.
Rifiotis, Theophilos. 2016. Etnografia no ciberespaço como “repovoamento” e explicação. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 31 (90): 85-98. https://doi.org/10.17666/319085-98/2016.
Santos, Nina. 2020. Novos caminhos da informação: mediação e visibilidade nos protestos brasileiros de 2013. XXIX Encontro Anual da Compós. Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, (UFMS), Campo Grande.
Seaver, Nick. 2017. Algorithms as culture: some tactics for the ethnography of algorithmic systems. Big Data & Society 4 (2): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2053951717738104.
Seaver, Nick. 2019. Captivating algorithms: recommender systems as traps. Journal of Material Culture 24(4): 421-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183518820366.
Sinha, Subir. 2017. Fragile hegemony: social media and competitive electoral populism in India. International Journal of Communication 11: 4158-80.
Strathern, Marilyn. 2018. O efeito etnográfico e outros ensaios. São Paulo: Ubu Editora.
Thompson, William, org. 1990. Gaia: uma teoria do conhecimento. São Paulo: Gaia.
Turner, Victor. 2013. Processo ritual: estrutura e antiestrutura. Petrópolis: Vozes.
Varis, Piia. 2020. Trump tweets the truth: metric populism and media conspiracy. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada 59 (1): 428-43. https://doi.org/10.1590/01031813683411620200406.
Velho, Otávio. 2001. De Bateson a Ingold: passos na constituição de um paradigma ecológico. Mana 7 (2): 133-40. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-93132001000200005.
Wagner, Roy. 2011. A pessoa fractal. Ponto Urbe 8: 1-14. https://doi.org/10.4000/pontourbe.173.
Wagner, Roy. 2017. A invenção da cultura. São Paulo: Ubu Editora.
Warfield, Katie, Crystal Abidin e Carolina Cambre, orgs. 2020. Mediated interfaces: the body on social media. Nova Iorque: Bloomsbury Academic.
Wiener, Norbert. 1948. Cybernetics. Scientific American 179 (5): 14-19. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1148-14.
Wiener, Norbert. 2017. Cibernética ou controle e comunicação no animal e na máquina. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Civitas – Journal of Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The submission of originals to this journal implies the transfer by the authors of the right for printed and digital publication. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. If the authors wish to include the same data into another publication, they must cite this journal as the site of original publication. As the journal is of open access, the articles are allowed for free use in scientific and educational applications, with citation of the source (please see the Creative Commons License at the bottom of this page).
