The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (Paperback)

~ Daniel Miller (Author), Don Slater (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Essentially thrilling ... this is the best piece of research on social uses of the internet that I have come across.' The Independent 'Now a remarkable new book has raised the discussion to a new level.' The Observer 'The book is impressive, well argued and written ... Indeed, this book is innovative and I would suggest that it is essential reading for all students and researchers examining the relationship between new internet technologies and society.' Sociology 'Represents not only an important contribution to the proliferation of writings about the Internet, but also a timely lesson in the practice of ethnography ... To use ethnography to such effect in studying this phenomenon provides a forceful argument for the role of anthropologists in understanding contemporary processes ... In imagining the Internet in this way, and Slater not only make an ethnographic study of the Internet possible, but also suggest a new avenue for theorizing it.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute ' I found The Internet:An Ethnographic Approach to be a valuable contribution ... a well-considered examination of the complex nature of the Internet'. Environment and Planning B:Planning and Design,2001 'A true gem, which I recommend to anyone who has ever spent any time on the information superhighway.' THES 'This valuable study is probably the first of many that will show how the internet is actually used in various cultures.' Future Survey 'This work provides a comprehensive analysis of the way Trinidadians engage with the Internet.' Education, Communication and Information 'Slater and Miller have been able to obtain and master very rich materials on a subject of great importance and interpret them in a pertinent way. ... This work, which shows the [internet's] impact on a given region, will help each of us to familiarise ourselves with the rudiments of it.' L'Homme 'This is easily one of the best ethnographic studies of Internet usage...This book can be recommended with enthusiasm.' The Australian Journal of Anthropology

Product Description

An examination of Internet culture and consumption. The Internet is increasingly shaping, and being shaped by, users' lives. From cybercafes to businesses, from middle class houses to squatters settlements, the authors have gathered material on subjects as varied as personal relations, commerce, sex and religion. Websites are also analyzed as new cultural formations acting as aesthetic traps. At every point, email chat and surfing are found to be exploited in ways that bring out both unforeseen attributes of the Internet and the contradictions of modern life. The material, taken from ethnographic work in Trinidad, adds depth to earlier discussions about the Internet as an expansion of space, the changes it effects to time and personhood, and the new political economy of the information age. A tie-in with the book's own website provides further illustrations.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Berg Publishers; illustrated edition edition (July 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859733891
• ISBN-13: 978-1859733899
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #641,097 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of academic thinking, July 12, 2000

By	Genevieve Bell (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

"The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach" represents the very best of academic thinking and theorizing on the subject of the 'internet'. Miller and Slater provide us with a remarkable perspective on the ways in which real people, in this case Trinidadians (at home and across all the far flung points of the globe), use the internet. I was lucky enough to read this book in draft and have been eagerly waiting for its release so that I can share it around.

Here the internet is not just about the dot.com economy and the rush to get rich, rather it is an amazing constellation of technologies that help strengthen and reinvent families, that create new idioms and icons of identity, that allow new places and spaces to be Trinidadian. The book is rich with stories of mothers who can now keep in daily touch with their daughters in the UK and the US; of messages that pass from pieces of paper to email and back to paper again as they are transmitted between households without internet access; of websites all over the world that employ the same set of coherent Trinidadian symbols to project a nation's identity onto the world screen.

This collaboration is the first, hopefully of many, between Daniel Miller - a British anthropologist whose previous work theorizing consumption is just starting to be read in the US - and Don Slater - a British sociologist who most recently conducted fieldwork in online communities in the UK. It represents the emergence and convergence of several important trends: (1) the serious study of `the internet' as a set of social practices (not just a piece or pieces of technology) that map onto real, rather than virtual geographies; (2) the possibility for new kinds of field methods that map onto these new technologies and new social practices - perhaps `fieldwork' isn't 2 years in one place anymore; and (3) the potential for collaborative research and writing across between disciplines and between diverse practitioners with a range of experiences and expertise.

As an anthropologist working in the technology industry in the US, the ways in which this book also challenges the centrality of the US as a consumer of technology is particularly helpful. As it turns out, Trinidad is a big site for the consumption of the `internet' - while everyone may not own their own computers, people are finding a variety of ways of accessing technology and their demands and desires for this new medium are instructive.

In this analysis of the internet, Miller and Slater provide not only a rich and nuanced ethnographic account of the internet in Trinidad (and beyond), but also important models for doing collaborative work, studying 'up' and across, and for using ethnography to understand technology.

Anyone working at the intersections of new technologies and social practice should own this book, and probably will. However, anyone working in the technology industry (from the dot.coms to the more traditional manufacturers) and around its extensive peripheries (from researchers to policy makers and funding bodies) should also buy this book and read it!