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EmTech Anthropology: Careers at the Frontier emphasizes anthropology's critical role at the frontier of emerging technologies (EmTech). The book explores the opportunities and challenges that arise as anthropologists venture into the territory of EmTech, pushing the boundaries of traditional academic approaches and methodologies.By sharing the stories and insights of early to mid-career anthropologists working in AI, robotics, Web3, cybersecurity, and other cutting-edge fields, the book provides a possible roadmap for future practitioners seeking to make an impact in the world of EmTech. These anthropologists demonstrate how the discipline's unique perspective and skills can be applied to address the complex ethical, social, and cultural implications of emerging technologies.The volume showcases how anthropologists can act as visionaries, innovators, and early adopters, shaping the trajectory of EmTech towards more ethical, equitable, inclusive, and sustainable futures. It highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, practical impact, and intervention in EmTech contexts while also acknowledging the need for anthropologists to challenge existing narratives and push the boundaries of the discipline itself.EmTech Anthropology: Stories from the Frontier serves as an essential resource for anthropologists, students, and professionals from related disciplines who are interested in exploring the frontiers of anthropology and emerging technologies. By offering a glimpse into the exciting possibilities and compelling insights that emerge when anthropology meets EmTech, the book inspires and guides the next generation of anthropological innovators.

Innovation is a constant in human life and organization, arising from within a context-based culture of social structures and beliefs. This book re-examines the processes, practices, and mechanisms of innovation from an anthropological perspective, offering a theory of innovation as a dynamic multidimensional system. It uses methods and stories across a broad arc of time, place, social and cultural context, and subject matter. The chapters explore the intersection of virtual, local, and global dynamics and deepen our understanding of aspects and dimensions of innovation that challenge common perceptions, particularly in business and organizational environments. The approach aims to situate innovation in an integrated view of human and non-human ecologies, and to create common ground for a new form of research and practice.

This book investigates the relationships between gestures and artefacts theoretically and historically, by analyzing different phenomena stemming from a variety of fields such as robotics, archaeology, gesture studies, anthropology, philosophy, and gestural practices like choreography, music performance, and composition. It underlines how embodiment and technology change the interplay between maker and artefact over time and appeals to students and researchers in these fields. Its goal is to enable the reader to understand that the recurring topics and questions as well as multi-level similarities are by no means accidental, but can best be understood if one pays attention to the intertwinements of materiality and cognition, praxis and techne.

Over 3 million years ago, our ancestors realised that rocks could be broken apart for sharp edges, to cut and slice meat. The discovery made for a good meal. It also changed the fate of our species and our planet.In this lively and learned book, Chip Colwell charts three great leaps in humankind's relationship with objects and belongings, from the discovery of tools to the production of endless commodities. How did we start out as primates who needed nothing, and end up as people who need everything? With colourful characters, astonishing archaeological discoveries, and reflections from philosophy and culture, Colwell's quest for answers takes readers to places both spectacular and strange: the Italian cave featuring the world's first painted art; a Hong Kong skyscraper where a priestess channels the gods; a mountain of trash whose height rivals Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty.Humans make stuff, but our stuff makes us human—and our love affair with things may be our downfall. With landfills brimming and oceans drowning in plastic, now is the time for a fourth and final leap for humanity: to reevaluate our relationship to the things that make, and could break, our world.

This book examines our understanding of technology and suggests that machines are counterfeit organisms that seem to replace human bodies but are ultimately means of displacing workloads and environmental loads beyond our horizon. It emphasises that technology is not the politically neutral revelation of natural principles that we tend to think, but largely a means of accumulating, through physically asymmetric exchange, the material means of harnessing natural forces to reinforce social relations of power. Alf Hornborg reflects on how our cultural illusions about technology appeared in history and how they continue to stand in the way of visions for an equal and sustainable world. He argues for a critical reconceptualisation of modern technology as an institution for redistributing human time, resources, and risks in world society. The book highlights a need to think of world trade in other terms than money and raises fundamental questions about the role of human-artifact relations in organising human societies. It will be of interest to a range of scholars working in anthropology, sociology, economics, development studies, and the philosophy of technology.•CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2023•

This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving and diverse field of anthropological studies of technology. It features 39 original chapters, each reviewing the state of the art of current research and enlivening the field of study through ethnographic analysis of human-technology interfaces, forms of social organisation, technological practices and/or systems of belief and meaning in different parts of the world. The Handbook is organised around some of the most important characteristics of anthropological studies of technology today: the diverse knowledge practices that technologies involve and on which they depend; the communities, collectives, and categories that emerge around technologies; anthropology's contribution to proliferating debates on ethics, values, and morality in relation to technology; and infrastructures that highlight how all technologies are embedded in broader political economies and socio-historical processes that shape and often reinforce inequality and discrimination while also generating diversity. All chapters share a commitment to human experiences, embodiments, practices, and materialities in the daily lives of those people and institutions involved in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and/or use of particular technologies.Chapters 11 and 31 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

An archaeology of innovation is the first monograph-length investigation of innovation and the innovation process from an archaeological perspective. It interrogates the idea of innovation that permeates our popular media and our political and scientific discourse, setting this against the long-term perspective that only archaeology can offer. Case studies span the entire breadth of human history, from our earliest hominin ancestors to the contemporary world. The book argues that the present narrow focus on pushing the adoption of technical innovations ignores the complex interplay of social, technological and environmental systems that underlies truly innovative societies; the inherent connections between new technologies, technologists and social structure that give them meaning and make them valuable; and the significance and value of conservative social practices that lead to the frequent rejection of innovations.

Can a monkey own a selfie? Can a chimp use habeas corpus to sue for freedom? Can androids be citizens? Increasingly, such difficult questions have moved from the realm of science fiction into the realm of everyday life, and scholars and laypeople alike are struggling to find ways to grasp new notions of personhood. Posthuman Folklore is the first work of its kind: both an overview of posthumanism as it applies to folklore studies and an investigation of “vernacular posthumanisms”—the ways in which people are increasingly performing the posthuman. Posthumanism calls for a close investigation of what is meant by the term “human” and a rethinking of this, our most basic ontological category. What, exactly, is human? What, exactly, am I? There are two main threads of posthumanism: the first dealing with the increasingly slippery slope between “human” and “animal,” and the second dealing with artificial intelligences and the growing cyborg quality of human culture. This work deals with both these threads, seeking to understand the cultural roles of this shifting notion of “human” by centering its investigation into the performances of everyday life.From funerals for AIBOs, to furries, to ghost stories told by Alexa, people are increasingly engaging with the posthuman in myriad everyday practices, setting the stage for a wholesale rethinking of our humanity. In Posthuman Folklore, author Tok Thompson traces both the philosophies behind these shifts, and the ways in which people increasingly are enacting such ideas to better understand the posthuman experience of contemporary life.

Modern thought on economics and technology is no less magical than the world views of non-modern peoples. This book reveals how our ideas about growth and progress ignore how money and machines throughout history have been used to exploit less affluent parts of world society. The argument critically explores a middle ground between Marxist political ecology and Actor-Network Theory.

Techno-Anthropology is an emerging interdisciplinary research field focusing on human/technology interactions and relations, and how these can be understood and facilitated in context. Techno-Anthropology also considers how technological innovation, development and implementation can be made in an appropriate and pragmatic way in relation to understanding work practices. Techno-Anthropology has much to offer the health informatics and eHealth fields, and this book presents the work of experienced international researchers who share here how they have applied Techno-Anthropology methodologies to their research. The book is divided into three sections: ethnographic and anthropological perspectives on methodology; ethical and sociotechnical approaches; and users, participation and human factors. Topics covered include: learning the craft of Techno-Anthropology; anthropological approaches in studying technology induced errors; technology and the ecology of chronic illness in everyday life; Techno-Anthropologists as agents of change; and using rapid ethnography to support the design and implementation of health information technologies, as well as many more. Of interest to researchers and practitioners within the health informatics field as well as students and scholars, the book will inspire researchers and practitioners to examine health informatics from a new perspective.

Recreating First Contact explores themes related to the proliferation of adventure travel which emerged during the early twentieth century and that were legitimized by their associations with popular views of anthropology. During this period, new transport and recording technologies, particularly the airplane and automobile and small, portable, still and motion-picture cameras, were utilized by a variety of expeditions to document the last untouched places of the globe and bring them home to eager audiences. These expeditions were frequently presented as first contact encounters and enchanted popular imagination. The various narratives encoded in the articles, books, films, exhibitions and lecture tours that these expeditions generated fed into pre-existing stereotypes about racial and technological difference, and helped to create them anew in popular culture. Through an unpacking of expeditions and their popular wakes, the essays (12 chapters, a preface, introduction and afterward) trace the complex but obscured relationships between anthropology, adventure travel and the cinematic imagination that the 1920s and 1930s engendered and how their myths have endured. The book further explores the effects - both positive and negative - of such expeditions on the discipline of anthropology itself. However, in doing so, this volume examines these impacts from a variety of national perspectives and thus through these different vantage points creates a more nuanced perspective on how expeditions were at once a global phenomenon but also culturally ordered.

What impact has technology had on cultural meanings, values, and symbols? This anthropological exploration shows how technologies produce novel and sometimes jarring realignments among cultural institutions.

Virtual War and Magical Death is a provocative examination of the relations between anthropology and contemporary global war. Several arguments unite the collected essays, which are based on ethnographic research in varied locations, including Guatemala, Uganda, and Tanzania, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the United States. Foremost is the contention that modern high-tech warfare—as it is practiced and represented by the military, the media, and civilians—is analogous to rituals of magic and sorcery. Technologies of'virtual warfare,'such as high-altitude bombing, remote drone attacks, night-vision goggles, and even music videoes and computer games that simulate battle, reproduce the imaginative worlds and subjective experiences of witchcraft, magic, and assault sorcery long studied by cultural anthropologists.Another significant focus of the collection is the U.S. military's exploitation of ethnographic research, particularly through its controversial Human Terrain Systems (HTS) Program, which embeds anthropologists as cultural experts in military units. Several pieces address the ethical dilemmas that HTS and other counterinsurgency projects pose for anthropologists. Other essays reveal the relatively small scale of those programs in relation to the military's broader use of, and ambitions for, social scientific data.Contributors. Robertson Allen, Brian Ferguson, Sverker Finnström, Roberto J. González, David H. Price, Antonius Robben, Victoria Sanford, Jeffrey Sluka, Koen Stroeken, Matthew Sumera, Neil L. Whitehead

Radio is the most widespread electronic medium in the world today. As a form of technology that is both durable and relatively cheap, radio remains central to the everyday lives of billions of people around the globe. It is used as a call for prayer in Argentina and Appalachia, to organize political protest in Mexico and Libya, and for wartime communication in Iraq and Afghanistan. In urban centers it is played constantly in shopping malls, waiting rooms, and classrooms. Yet despite its omnipresence, it remains the media form least studied by anthropologists.Radio Fields employs ethnographic methods to reveal the diverse domains in which radio is imagined, deployed, and understood. Drawing on research from six continents, the volume demonstrates how the particular capacities and practices of radio provide singular insight into diverse social worlds, ranging from aboriginal Australia to urban Zambia. Together, the contributors address how radio creates distinct possibilities for rethinking such fundamental concepts as culture, communication, community, and collective agency.

Technologies of the allied warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as remote-controlled drones and night vision goggles, allow the user to “virtualize” human targets. This coincides with increased civilian casualties and a perpetuation of the very insecurity these technologies are meant to combat. This concise volume of research and reflections from different regions across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, observes how anthropology operates as a technology of war. It tackles recent theories of humans in society colluding with imperialist claims, including anthropologists who have become involved professionally in warfare through their knowledge of “cultures,” renamed as “human terrain systems.” The chapters link varied yet crucial domains of inquiry: from battlefields technologies, military-driven scientific policy, and economic warfare, to martyrdom cosmology shifts, media coverage of “distant” wars, and the virtualizing techniques and “war porn” soundtracks of the gaming industry.

Dans son Essai sur les techniques dans les sociétés pré-machinistes, André-Georges Haudricourt, figure marquante de l'anthropologie française, nous communique ses réflexions sur la marche, le lancer, le portage, l'utilisation de l'eau, du vent, et bien d'autres gestes observés dans de nombreuses sociétés. Cet ouvrage inédit se présente comme un manuel ; l'essai présenté et commenté par Jean-François Bert est accompagné d'articles inédits de l'ethnologue.

Science and technology studies, cultural anthropology and cultural studies deal with the complex relations between material, symbolic, technical and political practices. In a Deleuzian approach these relations are seen as produced in heterogeneous assemblages, moving across distinctions such as the human and non-human or the material and ideal. This volume outlines a Deleuzian approach to analyzing science, culture and politics.