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Social media and the shifting boundaries between private and public in a...
Photo posted on the Facebook profile of a research participant Facebook is designed to encourage people to reveal information about themselves, and the market model of Facebook’s founder Mark...
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Quantitative data: Our figures take shape
Getting to grips with the numbers (Photo by woodleywonderworks CC BY 2.0)There is sometimes an assumption that while anthropology represents a unique commitment to qualitative research, with all our...
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Opening doors: Rural Chinese business promotion on social media
A typical shopfront in the North China fieldsite (Photo: Gillian Bolsover) One surprising feature of QQ – the most popular social media platform in the rural Chinese town where I conducted research –...
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It’s not just about Chinese migrant workers
Chinese female migrant workers working in a local reflective vest workshop. Photo by Xinyuan Wang A question always strikes me as I write up ethnography and prepare for talks based on my 15 months of...
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Personal and public aesthetics: What I learned from my own visceral reactions...
Photo by Nell Hayes At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but over the first several months in my fieldsite in northern Chile I began to realize that one of the reasons I never quite felt...
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Why do young men from lower socio-economic classes prefer shopping online?
Photo by Shriram Venkatraman Most of us on social media have noticed the static advertisements that are displayed on the side panels or the advertisements that intrude upon the videos we watch on...
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Facebook as a window: managing online appearance
Shop window in Grano (Photograph by Razvan Nicolescu) A particularly common way that many people in the Italian field site thought about Facebook was by comparing it to a shop window (vetrina in...
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Sharing anthropological discoveries on social media: ‘marketing’ or...
Social media and engaging anthropology? (Photo: Pabak Sarkar CC BY 2.0) Over the last year, people have often asked us questions like “Surely you will market your project using social media?” or, “What...
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Ropa americana online: the local market for used clothing
A Facebook announcement from an online shop in northern Chile announces “Jackets, Vests, and Sweatshirts” Ebay, Etsy, Alibaba, and Taobao have changed the way many people around the world shop. Now,...
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What’s special about social media in small places?
‘Normal friend: ‘Wow, how beautiful you are!’ / Best friend: It’s Shrek on the phone, says he wants his face back.’ Meme shared on Facebook by Comix From the beginning of my fieldwork I kept thinking...
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Fieldwork is haunting me, thanks to WhatsApp
When is the end of fieldwork? (Photo:Merlijn Hoek CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) When is it that fieldwork finishes? Thanks to social media, the separation between being in the fieldsite and being in the library is...
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Why popular anthropology?
The core mission of anthropology is the understanding of human behaviour in a world full of cultural and historical diversity. The anthropological commitment to this immense plurality of human and...
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Teenagers on social media in southeast Italy – quantitative data
In this blog post I will take a look to the quantitative data from my fieldwork, discussing some findings from a questionnaire I conducted with students in their final two years of secondary school in...
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Nostalgia for a field Christmas
Image courtesy of shanzmataz. It’s the first time I’ve been away from Christmas in Trinidad since I started fieldwork there in 2011 (oh wait, I was home briefly in 2013). December to February is about...
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“Free Basics” – does it really matter to the poor in Panchagrami?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons: Facebook The launch of Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’, a rebranding of internet.org, has been a hot topic in India for the past few months as Facebook tries to grow its...
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They flirt, they share porn and they gossip
Image courtesy:thegillinator. The last four months of 2015 were tough. I was locking myself in a claustrophobic student carrel every day, spending 9 hours staring at a computer screen but not being...
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What does social media tell us about sociality in Grano?
‘Good morning’ message received on WhatsApp [double-click on the image to see the video].So, what does the ethnography of social media use in southeast Italy tells us? In my forthcoming book I argue...
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On the Brazilian crisis, Pentecostalism and thinking out of the bubble
Pentecostal service in the Brazilian field site. Photo by: Juliano Spyer Brazil is in the midst of a heated national debate between people in favour of, and those contrary to, the impeachment of the...
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Apple and the Smartphone market in India
Photo Courtesy: CC: Wikimedia Commons: Kārlis Dambrāns from Latvia Less than a fifth of the Indian population might own a smart phone, but India is now the second largest smart phone market in the...
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Un Manjar: Viral Chilean slang
In Chile, “manjar” is a kind of sweet sauce, similar to dulce de leche or caramel. It’s often used as filling in layer cakes or atop pancakes. It is almost universally loved for its smooth rich...
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