Introduction 2.0

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores contours of the emerging subfield of digital anthropology. It outlines six core themes that they identified as characterising digital anthropology, extending their earlier work on cell phones and the internet The book provides a manifesto for a particular kind of social or cultural anthropology, arguing for a holistic focus on the comparative and cross-cultural experience of digital media and celebrating the ways in which digital media could be seen to refract broader cultural and social worlds and identities, and indeed help people to better understand them. It argues that digital technologies mediate no more or less than any other cultural expression or communication, noting, “one of the major contributions of a digital anthropology would be the degree to which it finally explodes the illusions we retain of a non-mediated, noncultural, predigital world”.