Survey for Anthropologists

The Open Anthropology Cooperative exists because back in 2009, a group of like-minded anthropologists from around the world came together to create something genuinely new using a combination of free and open technologies, social media and self-government. In 2014, we're now looking at a fairly altered media landscape. Anthropology has also moved on, with greater awareness of open access, public anthropology and academic power imbalances, all originally sources of the OAC's founding philosophies. We were occupying academic anthropology before it became mainstream!

The OAC homepage has nearly 8,000 members. Our Facebook group is catching up with almost 4,000 members joining in the first year alone. What's more, some (probably a lot) of those new FB members do not have an account or profile at the OAC network. How can we unite the two audiences and encourage more participation between platforms? What are your most meaningful interactions at the OAC and how can your experience be improved? It's time to re-evaluate, grow and develop the site. For this, we need your help.

Take the brief survey here: OAC Member Survey 2014 (Survey closes March 31, 2014)

This survey is part of an effort by a team that includes Keith Hart, Ryan Anderson, Kate Wood and myself (Fran Barone). If you're up for the challenge, you can always join the team.

You can also post any comments or questions about this survey or your ideas for future site development in the OAC forum.

Not familiar with our Facebook page? Explore the OAC on Facebook.

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Back to Anthropology

Product Reviews?

Regular readers of this blog may have been wondering about my brief foray into eyeglass reviews, like what it had to do with anthropology or academia or ethnography or any of the other usual content I post here. In fact, I have written product reviews on this blog before (see 'Product Reviews' tab above), mostly on hardware and software. There are two main reasons why I write online consumer reviews and how-tos. Firstly, I like being able to produce something useful that will draw in a wider audience, especially if I have had trouble finding something suitable or comprehensive on a topic myself.

Back when I was a PhD student, I often lamented the lack of practical hardware and software reviews for stuff I could actually afford (which wasn't much), so I gravitated towards reviewing free and open source software or hacks and workarounds to make basic computers/browsers more productive. My own field kit was mixed bag of old technology put to new uses. Rather than buying a bunch of premium and proprietary software, I immersed myself in the belief that there is almost certainly a free/low-cost way to do most tasks using one or a combination of open source or gratis software/web-based applications. The learning curve is steep, but worth it when you can't afford more. That's more or less how I got on to tech reviews and how-tos in the first place.

In a similar vein, I still notice a lack of academic-oriented reviews for products and services, especially cross-over consumer items like tablets, digital recording devices, clothing or field gear. I had trouble finding a decent academic review of the Kindle DX graphite, for instance. Most of my reading is qualitative where extensive note-taking and highlights are imperative, but other academic styles of working are very different. Plus, anthropologists need to know what's going to work for them in the field as well as the office (or lack thereof).

I was sure that I had bored readers to death with eyewear reviews, but actually my 5-post series on glasses has become the most popular on this blog to date. I'm pretty confident that they've helped people to save a lot of time, energy and money. I intend future reviews to be of more direct interest to academics, anthropologists, students, geeks or social researchers, but not exclusively. My next planned review will also be of an optical nature, but with fieldworkers in mind.

Secondly, I am working on some new research to do with media and consumerism, so consider the product reviews that appear here as a minor form of participant observation. Details will follow in the future, but there are more pressing things on my agenda at the moment. Just to be clear: I will never post pre-written "sponsored" reviews (read: robot spam) to get ad revenues and won't ever post anything that I haven't written myself and don't honestly believe. I'll also clearly state when I've been given a complimentary product sample to review.


A brief Urban Firewalls update (finally)

I designated October as my month to return to my PhD thesis to prepare it for publication. Given my highly unstable personal circumstances at present (not to mention ending the month with Hurricane Sandy and a prolonged blackout), I am actually impressed that I managed to start getting down to work. I am currently drafting a plan for the new book version which includes re-working the chapter layout and refining the ethnographic contributions, potentially adding some comparative case studies from outside of Spain, and more original material that did not appear in the PhD version. The PhD manuscript as it stands presents a detailed story about a small Catalan town and its highly localized responses to technological and urban change. By re-organizing the contents, I hope to enable the local data to interweave with a more universal story of humans and technology and contribute to a more comprehensive anthropology of the digital age. I have a new website where I'll post updates of the progress of Urban Firewalls.


New at the OAC

There have also been quite a few items of interest over at the Open Anthropology Cooperative recently. We started shaking off the back-to-school malaise with a new e-seminar and some great blog posts. In case you missed it, catch up on the seminar for "In and Out of the State" by Patience Kabamba. In his featured blog, John McCreery asks, what about society and culture have changed to make being a dick the road to failure instead of the key to success? I am surprised that no one has yet provided any ethnographic studies of bullying in the forum, but this is a question I will be returning to shortly in an upcoming blog post. The US presidential elections inspired this post about language and politics and this follow-up blog on election lessons learned. Speaking of openness, why don't anthropologists share what they know about households with economists?

Despite this fairly steady stream of new and interesting additions to the site, the subject of "stagnation" in our forums has surfaced yet again, leading us to re-question the state of affairs over at the OAC under the header The Rise and Fall of Social Networks. If you are interested in the politics of making a site like the OAC work and some of the ongoing obstacles we are facing, please join in the discussion. My response to that thread will give you an idea of where I stand on a number of issues as well as a hint at what I'm working on for the future of the OAC:

Some good points in this article, at least for thinking about a historiography of social networking sites. But then there are significant differences between social networks and academic networks, much of which have to do with return on time investment, volunteer labor and long-term objectives, not to mention power relations and status hierarchies that carry over from the academic world. Much of activity on the social web need not concern itself with aims, intentions or long-term goals. It's easy. It can keep ticking over until boredom or newness - whichever comes first - force change. Academic networks don't work exactly the same way. The OAC mixes both together, which may contribute to an identity crisis of sorts.

I don't agree with all the points made in the article about Facebook vs. Twitter. I actually think that Twitter is, on the whole, more active and powerful than Facebook. Facebook's modus operandi is outdated, the layout and structure muddled, its features are restrictive and its policies are confusing. Sure, for most users, a lot of this is irrelevant. Even Apple can convince people its products are inherently usable, which is patently untrue. Yet both of these companies are successful by closing off their markets and thereby normalizing clumsy technology and unintuitive interfaces. Twitter not so much. But I digress ...

There are probably more dead blogs on the internet than active ones. There are at least 83 million fake, unused or inactive Facebook accounts. I have emails that lapsed into oblivion over the years, websites that expired, and domains I never renewed. Is there any technology online that is not subject to simply running its course? This post, Why Are There So Many Dead Blogs, does a pretty good job of noting all the simple human factors involved. It's not only the technology that determines what network lives or dies.

Playing around on Twitter and/or keeping in touch with family on Facebook are not analogous to activity at the OAC. The first is fleeting and impermanent. The second is personal and intimate. The latter takes more time commitment, at least some critical thought, and the expectation of some kind of pointed exchange or response over time. We've tried to add site features that lower the barrier to participation (share buttons, twitter tab, RSS), but the returns on this are also quite low. The content that is uploaded without the requirement of reciprocity or response (e.g. "sharing a video", "liking" something, "listing an event"), is really incidental to any wider successes here, or so it would seem.

The more significant products of the OAC's concerted efforts - namely the Press - require investments of time and energy. They attract participants because they fit longstanding academic value models. Academics change slowly even if we'd like to think that new modes of communication make a qualitative difference to how we live and work. Hence why email has not imploded as the means for transmitting academic information. Mailing lists are still popular because they are semi-closed/private and simple. They do one useful thing well enough to stick around. In early OAC days, Twitter was a big deal for us: a real paradigm shift that led to the OAC's development in the first place. Today, no one seems that bothered to engage on Twitter. Perhaps that is a failure on our part as far as implementation, but it is more likely that Twitter no longer fills a communicative need for the OAC since circumstances have changed. The OAC Facebook page is now a bit more active, but still pretty separate from the main network.

We have had continual debates about what the site hopes to achieve or "do" - a mission statement - that would attract participants and be meaningful. Yet no one seems willing to take on a more permanent role in shaping the site. If the OAC is imploding, what's the precise cause and remedy other than lack of dedicated interest?

I have concentrated a lot on technical development at the OAC and I still believe that a deluge of content is preventing more adequate use and navigation of the site. I do agree with John that we need to streamline access to the most interesting content and like the idea of running a "best of" series that resurrects old posts to keep them alive. Instead of pushing for some "new" spark, we are likely not making best use of what we already have. I wish Ning made it easier to index and display old posts. I have sketches/ideas for site changes, but I am scrambling to keep on top of things at the moment. We don't have as strong a development team as we once did among the admins, and it really can't be done without wider interest.

We have been talking about these issues at the OAC in some form or another since the site's speedy launch in 2009. I am now committed to taking more drastic efforts to put an end to pervasive content-navigation woes in the hopes that related participation woes will also disappear. A few weeks ago, I began experimenting with site improvements for revamping the OAC's appearance, perhaps better termed "image". The OAC homepage hosted on Ning has been both a source of the OAC's successes as an academic/social network and a frustrating infrastructural barrier to expansion. I am working on some bold ideas that would involve making more dramatic changes beyond Ning. If the experimentation starts to look like an actual possibility, I will float the new ideas on-site for feedback. As I mentioned in the post above, any lasting effort cannot really be forged without wider community interest. If you can help in any way to make the Open Anthropology Cooperative a more effective, active and useful site for anthropologists to accomplish meaningful things, please volunteer your skills.


New to anthropology: PopAnth

The launch of PopAnth in September marks an exciting move forward for anthropology online. PopAnth presents snapshots of anthropological knowledge for popular audiences in online magazine format. It was formed out of a discussion about public anthropology over at the OAC. The team, including some OAC veterans, has really embraced the idea of opening anthropology and making it more publicly engaging. The articles are fun to read and really distill worthwhile talking points about what anthropology is and what it hopes to discover about people. Greg Downey over at Neuroanthropology sums up the motivation and intentions behind PopAnth, including samples of recently submitted articles and how to get involved.




Image from hongkiat.com

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Henry Mayhew's anthropology

Mayhew vividly captured the lives of the working class poor in London in the late 19th century. Philip Swift brings the importance of this work right up to date:

No armchair theoriser, Mayhew's work took him into the streets and into the lives of poor Londoners: the lives of silk-weavers and street poets, costermongers and prostitutes, cab drivers and rat catchers, and he documented their experiences without romanticism. By his extensive practice of quoting his informants directly, he gave authority to their experiences, and these testimonies are electric for the same reasons, accounts that are still sparking today, over a century and half later.

He concludes his interpretation of Mayhew's journalistic-ethnographic method with a scathing appraisal of Britain in 2010, accompanied by a plea for more relevant and activist anthropology:

London in November, and the cold leaks in through the windows, but our current politics is more chilling still. With the coalition government in power now in Britain, a systematic attack has been launched against the poor. In the face of apparent economic crisis, the new government seeks to place the blame on the size of the state. It looks to carve up and contract out the public sector, to reduce benefits and other support services, and to privatize higher education. This is politics as demonology, in which the bankers are the angels – highly mobile, righteous and untouchable. The poor, by contrast, are characterised as indolent, deceitful and sinful, victims of their own 'lifestyle choice' (in the words of our Chancellor). History threatens to concertina in upon itself, creating ominous overlaps. The massive student protest in London last week was compared to the Chartist demonstrations of the mid-19th century. And on the letters page of my newspaper today, a correspondent asks, 'How long before we see the return of the workhouse?'

Mayhew's verdict returns with a vengeance: 'That which is said by the economists to be the greatest possible benefit to the community is a gain only to the small portion of it termed the moneyed classes'. Perhaps, then, we will need new Mayhews, to carry out their activist anthropologies across the country, bearing witness to the realities of poverty, in order – as he said – to better reckon with the 'perils of the nation'.

I highly recommend that you read the rest of Philip's blog post. You can also check out Keith Hart's follow-up, which throws Marx into the mix.

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Facebook: Divine or Mundane? (Part 2)

Some more highlights from the ongoing discussion with Daniel Miller at the OAC. These comments build on my previous entry with a focus on the use of Facebook and the web in memoriam.

See my previous blog post and read Daniel's reply for context.

I agree, Facebook can give rise to new social dramas and activities due to its efficacy on a number of levels, which does initially strike us as being brand new. But to me its "newness" is more because of the old things that it combines in new-ish ways.

This is still a fresh and only marginally constructed argument for me. Apologies if it appears disjointed, but I am taking advantage of this forum to float some new ideas. I certainly agree that the degree of change Facebook has fostered is worth sitting up and taking notice of. Yet I believe that there are two points of continuity - rather than disjuncture - worth keeping in mind to make sense of its novelty: first, its relationship to earlier (and lingering) manifestations on the web, and secondly, to offline sociality. I'll continue with the example of mourning to illustrate.

FB is not the first - and is presently not the only - site on the Internet where memorialization has taken(takes) place. Apparently, this is common now in Second Life and WoW, Myspace, etc, and I have memories of it from Livejournal, IRC and websites in the late 90s/early 2000s. I argued earlier that, overall, the web has characteristics that are ideal for co-optation for religious-like activities, including memorialization. Those features include potential permanence of text and imagery, speed and democratic access, design and aesthetics, ease of construction of memorials and pages that can be dynamic and amended by many. Other characteristics are particularly important for what they share with offline equivalents, like wakes, funerals, newspapers, scrapbooks and posters: co-presence, collaboration and record-keeping.

In the late 1990s, when people still made personal websites by entering basic HTML on Geocities and "guestbooks" were proto-Facebook "walls", scrawling personal messages, eulogies and obituaries in memoriam was fairly common behavior. "Web rings" linked individual pages to a broader network, where mourners could share their memorials. I remember a pet memorial web ring in particular from the late 1990s. Web rings never had Facebook's built in connectivity – this was enabled by evolved design infrastructure later on – but it shows that the early web (Web 1.0) was not merely comprised of people shouting into the dark all alone. People specifically sought to link up their individual creations to something bigger (back to Keith's post above), to give them lasting presence. This was especially the case with memorials.

Creating an interactive "page" (shrine or monument) to memorialize a loved one is therefore not new to the web. I made some when I was in school and, more recently, I saw a standalone page that a web designer had made dedicated to his baby daughter who died a year earlier. He had accumulated many images and messages from friends, family and other inspired international visitors sharing similar stories of loss. At the time, I noted that the timestamps on the messages revealed that once the father (who had designed the page) had added a link to his new Facebook profile, the condolences had mostly been ported to the new platform, but both the standard website and the Facebook page continue to co-exist, with bursts of activity around the anniversaries of the child’s birth and death.

This shift to Facebook – not just for mourning, but for a lot of activities – is where I find a great deal of significance. People have chosen to transport their extant activities to this new, and increasingly ubiquitous, platform. Mourning on Facebook adds one especially noteworthy element akin to, but well beyond web rings: Facebook comes with a built-in, active and captive audience. The barrier between participant and spectator is broken down even further.

Whereas I see the earlier and contemporaneous versions of memorials on single-author websites as personal micro-dramas, perhaps the key is that Facebook more easily turns them into macro-dramas. And, in line with Web 2.0 breaking down barriers to user participation by eliminating the need for specialist coding knowledge, more people can contribute without much effort. Nevertheless, it is still largely close friends and family who participate in the elaborate and ongoing memorialization.

Finally, that Facebook does all these things now doesn't obviate the need for the "old way" of doing it, even if it can heighten the intensity of the mourning. People regularly turn their homes, walls, bodies, clothes, towns and cities into memorials dotted with shrines, candles, imagery, midnight vigils, notes, messages. I risk repeating myself, but it would seem more unusual to me if humans did not avail themselves of every potential use of Facebook and the Internet to extend their mourning practices in meaningful ways in line with our emotional need to express our remorse and remembrance as we feel that our loved ones deserve. Facebook is not a place apart; it's a part of where many people live.

Update: New addition(s) after the jump.

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Facebook: Divine or Mundane?

An intriguing discussion is underway right now (Nov 1-12) over at the Open Anthropology Cooperative, in response to Daniel Miller's working paper An Extreme Reading of Facebook. For archival purposes, I'll paste my contributions here. This is actually the first time in a long time that I have discussed some of the things in my PhD thesis (submission in under 2 weeks!). I will expand on a lot of these ideas soon, but I present a few thoughts here in line with Miller's three "extreme" propositions about Facebook:

1) That Facebook radically transforms the premise and direction of social science.
2) That Facebook is a medium for developing a relationship to god.
3) That Facebook, like Kula, is an ideal foundation for a theory of culture mainly because Facebook and Kula are practically the same thing.

What do you think? Don't forget to visit the discussion forum to see the intervening posts and to add your own two cents.

My posts:

Daniel, thanks for your thought-provoking paper and for embracing our relaxed forum by advancing these new and relatively extreme propositions.

I want to stay with the idea of community for the time being and offer some fodder for comparison. From 2007-9, I conducted fieldwork on Internet use in a small town in northern Catalonia. Facebook was rather sparse on the ground there when I arrived, but became more relevant towards the end of my research and I focus on several case studies of Facebook usage patterns in my PhD thesis (Urban Firewalls: place, space and new technologies in Figueres, Catalonia). I am planning to share much of this elsewhere on this site in the near future, so what follows is merely cursory.

In particular, I'd like to address the contention that Facebook (or Facebook-related behavior) may be responsible for a resurrection of classical ideas of community; or at least, that Facebook may be bundled up with a resurrection of "community" via it and other mediated channels that offer enhanced networking capabilities. I share your and Postill’s (p.4) assessment that care must be used by analysts when referring to the slippery concept of "community" and the related semantic nightmare, so I appreciate your trying to move beyond it. You use Alana as a localized example of what community can mean, and I think this is where we can continue to find importance in the concept.

In Catalonia, I found a great deal of discussion about community and, especially, a perceived lack of "community" sentiment among residents in the city of Figueres. The main cause, people argued, was recent immigration (an increase from 7 to 27% of the population made up of foreign migrants in less than 8 years) and a concurrent decline in public sociality, which they linked together alongside a general feeling of fragmentation and disengagement. This fear over a potential or ongoing loss of community by the majority Catalan population was in some ways greater than the evidence to support it, but in other ways, it simply fulfilled its own prophecy.

In connection with this, people often used Facebook and other web forums as a platform to argue that something needed to be done to fix the situation; to bring community back to the city. In my thesis, I address how attempts were made to mobilize Facebook members to these ends via various forms of local activism that traversed online and offline channels. More significant in my view is that in discussing local community on/via Facebook, city residents were literally confirming, debating and re-writing what it means to have community and how to resurrect it.

Of course, young people depicted small town life there as oppressive and old-fashioned (not unlike Alana), whereas older people saw it losing integrity and values. This is nothing new anywhere. But both young and old(er) participants online and younger and older residents in the city were all saying virtually the same thing about this lack of community. Facebook turned out to be an ideal platform for people to talk about these things and to maintain ties with others with whom they already shared a sense of closeness (family and friends).

Meanwhile, only a tiny minority of the city as a whole actually had Facebook accounts, but parallel and identical conversations about community were taking place in my offline interviews, on the street and in offices and schools and pubs. This has led me instead to the conclusion that Facebook is not so extreme as to be likened to a deity or a model for culture itself; rather Facebook is another (contiguous) place. Sometimes it's a town hall meeting, sometimes it's a party, or a political rally, or an after-school hangout, etc. So can Facebook resurrect community? Its potential to do so is contingent upon localized understandings not only of what community is, but how to achieve it, and who gets included/excluded. Viewed from specific places, Facebook is only one part of the story.

[...]

Daniel, In Keith's review of your book Stuff, he notes that your recent work has drawn on data from throughout your career to shed light on new debates. I recall that both the dynamics of Kula and of religion appeared in another context in The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (with D. Slater) and it seems like a natural progression to take them further now, given the confluence of many new channels available on the web at present, usefully encapsulated in Facebook as archetype.

Religion (like Kula, as Keith also notes) is fairly analogous to many parts of online social behavior that combine elements of the unknown, the transcendental, and a public presentation of the self via Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other avenues for self-flagellation that more and more come to resemble a "confessional". During my fieldwork, I definitely understood among my informants a sense of needing to constitute oneself "as a moral being" (according to local and cultural norms) on Facebook and the web in general. Although this was unanimously a-religious, it was often imbued with other symbolic forms of worship, like nationalism and sport.

The key features of the web itself – its openness, ease and multiple channels of communication, speed of sharing news and data, and general in-between-ness of place and time – lends itself to being co-opted for religious-like activities. It is therefore no surprise that Facebook does the same. (As an aside, I once wrote a paper as an undergrad comparing the Internet to millenarianism. It was mostly in fun, but all the tell-tale signs were there.)

One area which seems to be getting some attention now is funerary and mourning rituals online, with Facebook and other social media accounts of the deceased converted into sites of prolonged mourning or shrines. In life, SNS users construct elaborate reflections of their corporeal selves in their profiles, and these live on, preserved, as an open channel after death. For many, continuing to post to a Facebook profile of a dead friend or relative is no more or less efficacious than leaving flowers or saying a prayer beside a tombstone. (See here and here for more).

Fame, audience, friendship, mourning – none of these are new on the web any more than they are new to people. What follows may seem to be an extreme assertion in itself, but Facebook doesn't really do anything especially new or especially better than its earlier and contemporaneous incarnations on the web, it just does it all at once and perhaps faster/with less effort. It's a combination of email, instant messaging, chat, photo-sharing, status updating, presence-casting, life-streaming, gaming, etc. Once we see Facebook for what it is – mundane rather than special – we can better understand how it morphs into interesting things well beyond its technical parameters.

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c0/\/\m|_|N1C4710n

A blog post was added to the OAC sometime last week by M. Izabel introducing "Jejemon", an evolving Filipino web/hybrid linguistic phenomenon that has been causing quite a stir among linguistic elitists and traditionalists:

The current hot cultural issue in my country is the "jejenese" of the "jejemons". Jejenese is the electronic language or sociolect used in sending electronic texts by jejemons, who are usually teens who share unique language codes, virtual experience, and unconventional worldview influenced by their use of technology such as cellphone and computer. Jejemon is a combination of "jeje" from "hehe", an expression when someone laughs, and "mon" from the video game, "pokemon" … [rest of post no longer available]

The Jejemon movement has attracted a strong following of "Jejenese" as well as a backlash against them by so-called "Jejebusters". A quick search on Google pulls up Facebook groups for and against, as well as various sites extolling, bemoaning and analyzing this interesting script.

As shown by M. Izabel in her post and according to Wikipedia, Jejenese has its own alphabet (jejebet), which is rendered in these examples:

Filipino: "3ow ph0w, mUsZtAh nA?" translated into Filipino as "Hello po, kamusta na?, translated into English as "Hello, how are you?"
English: "i wuD LLyK tO knOw moR3 bOut u. crE 2 t3ll mE yur N@me? jejejejeje!" translated into English as "I would like to know more about you, care to tell me your name? Hehehehe!"
aQcKuHh- means me/ako
lAbqCkyOuHh- means I love you
yuHh- means you
jAjaJa- garbled words conveying laughter
jeJejE- a variation of jAjaJa; conveys sly laughter
iMiszqcKyuH- means I miss you
eEoWpFhUeEhsxz - means hi/hello

I couldn't help but immediately associate this Jejenese/Jejemon with elite hacks. My response to the post and subsequent exchanges no longer appears on the OAC, so I would like ro recreate them here to keep a record, as well as to add additional items which I intended to include in a later reply before the post (and M. Izabel, temporarily) disappeared. (This post is therefore not a detailed analysis, but a point of departure.)

My original response:

Jejenese looks somewhat like 1337 h4x (elite hacks or “leetspeak”, a hybridized ASCII English substitute borne of online gamer exchanges), crossed with text message shorthand used on mobile phones/instant messaging platforms and a smattering of Lolcat.

In these and similar cases, hyper-conservative and hyper-liberal interpretations of any detrimental or enriching impact on standardized language are overstated and misguided. It’s people using linguistic codes. Technological influence notwithstanding, it’s nothing new. Some of the created forms will stick; others will drop away or not catch on because they are too confusing, time-consuming or incompatible with existing modes of transcription (e.g. keyboards at present are not suited to touch-typing many symbols interspersed with text).

I agree about the dynamic nature of culture and language. The evolution of written language – even given technological influences – is notably less dramatic and considerably more gradual. Jejenese and leetspeak evolve parallel to, and as part of, the other spoken and written languages that we use in informal and formal communication. (I think it’s a stretch to call all web-based substitute alphabets “languages”, although I recognize that the distinct grammars and syntax in more elaborate cases might justify this among linguists.)

So, for example, many non-leetspeakers on the web (an increasingly off the web) recognize the term “pwned” without requiring an in-depth knowledge of leetspeak and its quirks. “Pwned” becomes part of gamer English, then web English, then offline English, etc, and is also absorbed into other languages via its web presence, rendering leetspeak dictionaries redundant. It’s no longer “just” leetspeak. In short, what we are witnessing is not an evolution of a new web language, but an unavoidable expansion of whatever language(s) the newly “hacked” alphabet is based on (English, Chinese, Spanish, French, etc, or a mixture of slangs and dialects).

The resulting linguistic hybrids are also usually subject to considerable codeswitching, even in the online chat environment: when and with whom is it appropriate to converse using this alternative script? At some point, all practitioners are required to drop into more formal (universal, shared, recognized) scripts to be understood within a given speech act. Even committed 1337 h4xx0rz will drop out of 1337 (leetspeak) to talk about serious things. Not to mention that these “languages” incorporate numbers and symbols (&|/\@#$^) that are notoriously difficult to “speak” aloud. Spoken conversations take a lot of effort to sustain.

Because they are based upon hacking existing (contemporaneous) languages, the ability to read/decipher web substitute alphabets/scripts like leetspeak and jejemon is more widespread than actual fluency or inclination to write in it all the time. Casual use is not entirely organic, but a product of calculated, direct transcription. Eventually, fluent “speakers” are able to make unique expressions and styles beyond simple substitution. The resulting dynamic script is not entirely “new”, but is dependent upon existing linguistic and grammatical forms (even if just to adjust and contest them). One can therefore not wholly replace the other, not least of all because English and jejemon and leetspeak are all evolving simultaneously and borrowing from each other.

I wouldn’t say that any of this is equivalent to cave paintings [as M. had indicated in her original blog post] because while the use of these codes is a type of symbolic representation of a shared concept, much like a drawing, it is firstly an alternative representation of a “word” (or its component phonetic parts) which then signifies the concept. So there is that double-layer processing which depends upon literacy, not just imagery.

Not all sectors of society embrace/understand new slang or symbolic language at the same rate. What I find most interesting as an anthropologist is how some people find slang, texting and other informal speech so severely repugnant, while others embrace it as liberating for humanity. People love inventing exclusive codes and jargons, but we naturally dislike being excluded. Playing with language is probably what humans do best. It makes us feel free, but the flipside is that it disturbs us immensely at the same time.

M. had replied something to the effect that (I'm paraphrasing from memory) leetspeak and Jejenese are actually very different, because leetspeak is used to provide both secrecy and brevity, while Jejenese is more playful and not about abbreviation at all. She also indicated that Jejenese is never spoken, only written, and it is therefore based on imagery and audio-visual representation that is somehow analogous to cave drawings. I'm still not convinced on these points.

Although it is a product of Filipino culture, Jejemon shares many features with older and current web slangs and codes. I suspect there are fewer differences in the uses and purposes of both leetspeak and Jejenese, and that they share more than just numerical substitution. "3110" could be hello in either script, but number-for-letter substitution is nothing new in technologically mediated human communication. It has been popularly utilized at the very least since numerical beepers (pre-dating the text-capable pager) were the trendiest form of communication when I was a kid.

The leetspeakers I've encountered are mostly not "hackers" per se, in the sense of having the required skillset to perform actual "hacks" on other computers or networks, although they do subscribe to a symbolic techno-culture of hacking as an ethos (much more on this to come in future posts). In this respect, they do not often use leetspeak to convey secrecy or brevity, but the opposite: to perform and widely convey specialist knowledge, a badge of belonging to what is actually a fairly varied subculture of tech geeks. Leetspeakers are often young tech and web fans who therefore use it playfully and intermittently.

Furthermore, writing things out in 1337 is more laborious than quick abbreviation and its cumbersome grammar makes lengthening simple statements part of the "fun". For instance, "You win" may be lengthened and transcribed as "y0u 4r3 t3h w1nZ0rz!1!!1", or more elaborately, "Y0|_| ar3 73|-| winz0Rz!1!1". The grammar and syntax is inventive and unique, but there are rules. So there is more going on here than brevity or secrecy alone, as I imagine is the case with Jejemon.

Jejemon is a web/mobile technology phenomenon for sure, but one that has quickly crossed between public and personal domains, traversed domestic and political fields, and stirred up a mini-storm of generational confusion and class controversy (especially surrounding the "proper" use of English). Markers of identity which are borne of online media rarely stay locked into a single communication channel, but spread, mix and continue morphing into new configurations.

Despite reflecting a confluence of many media types and channels, its simple and mundane use as a personal shorthand for communicating with friends shines through for Jejemon "speakers". At some level, then, both 1337 and Jejemon are equally about secrecy and brevity and the creation of in- and out-groups. Fluent speakers can keep their conversations free from undesirables like adults, parents or authorities. But creating secret languages to keep parents in the dark predates computer-mediated communication.

More significantly, Jejemon appears to be directly related to class relations in the Philippines. There are definitely culture-specific online-offline contrasts that the above comparison is overlooking and I'd like to learn more about the (on-the-ground and on-the-web) class dynamics behind it. Is leetspeak also subject to "class" differentiation, and do these classes come from offline social structures or are they generated online?

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XP: OAC logo design competition launched

Cross-posted from the OAC:

One item which has been pending since the creation of the OAC one year ago is an iconic logo representing the Open Anthropology Cooperative. There have been debates about the form and function of our activities here and the atmosphere and structure of our discussions. The OAC potentially means something distinct to each of us, but we are now at an important stage in moving forward, with the aid of the entire membership, to solidify our purpose and our role within the anthropological community. It seems fitting to launch a logo design competition to mark our one year anniversary and to give all members an opportunity to contribute to the identity of the site which we have each helped to construct.

The admin team would therefore like to encourage design submissions for a logo to represent the Open Anthropology Cooperative. If chosen, your design will appear on the header of this page as the official logo as well as on other OAC-related sites and initiatives, including the OAC Press. It will help to solidify our identity and recognition of the OAC on the web. The theme and style of the design is open. Feel free to be inspired by the Cooperative’s diversity of membership, its ambitious aims in promoting wider participation in anthropological discussion, encouraging cooperation and inspiring innovation, or any other experiences that you’ve had here.

The deadline for submissions is July 28, 2010. Voting on designs which meet the specifications detailed below will begin after that time.

Read more about how to submit your design and join in the conversation here.

In addition to your logos, we need your ideas for a reward for the winning designer! You can also reply to the thread if you have some suggestions or skills to add to a collaborative effort, but are unable to design it by yourself. What kind of logo would you like to see at the OAC? Something slick and minimalist? Something more colorful and techno-funky? Share your ideas with us.

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Announcing: Reviewers and Editor(s) needed for new Book Reviews

An interesting offer from SAGE Publications to advertise new anthropological releases on the Open Anthropology Cooperative has been presented by OAC member Harriet Baulcombe.

Inspired by the possibility of giving all members the opportunity to engage with new and innovative works in anthropology, the admin team proposes that we go beyond advertising new titles and encourage the establishment of an OAC Reviews section. In a continued spirit of interaction and collaboration, we are therefore looking for volunteers to take on the role of OAC Reviews Editor as well as a team of book reviewers. The team will have the continued support of the admins in getting started, setting up a new forum for OAC Reviews-related discussion and organizing the reviews process.

You can read (and respond to) the full announcement here.

Almost one year ago, just as the OAC was experimentally setting up on Ning, I ventured that with enough like-minded individuals, we could come together to efface the boundaries between official academic channels and the informal 'academy' already mixing freely and collaboratively around the web. Less than a year since its launch, membership now well exceeds 3,000 anthropologists, enthusiasts and interdisciplinary researchers. Many OAC members have been inspired to take on additional responsibilities within the network by running groups, launching their own blog series in addition to building up networks of professional and informal contacts.

Along with our active forums, groups, member blogs, the OAC Press, and Seminar series - and in light of continuing discussion about the future of the OAC and its role within anthropology as a whole - a book reviews section will add yet another diversifying element to our efforts. The opportunity to host book reviews has exciting potential to allow more people to take part in collaboration between members as well as academic publishers. If it proves successful, our reviews and our network of researchers can have a wider impact on the dissemination of anthropological knowledge to a broad audience.

We'd would really like to hear from new voices who would like to devote time to organizing an initiative with large scope and room for expansion. Feel free to publicize this call for reviewers around your respective departments or use the invite function if you're already a member. If you haven't visited the OAC yet, but book reviews sound like something you want to take part in, join us and have a look around. The site is easy to use, friendly and these volunteer positions – like the Cooperative itself - are open to all.

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Open Anthropology Cooperative (Update)

The OAC now has an excellent homepage hosted at NING, a just-add-water social networking platform that I hadn't even heard of until now. I'll probably review it in full at a later date, but it's incredibly simple to use and has all the features needed to develop a fully functioning online social network.

The Cooperative has quickly grown to over 200 members from many different locations and backgrounds. Members can create their own profile pages with a variety of content widgets and layout tweaks. Groups are simple to form for focused discussion and can be in any language. Hopefully more regional languages will appear to reflect the diversity of anthropology around the world. You can watch the activity and contributions of members from the homepage in real-time and any member can add photos and videos to the public pool or comment on any user, group or discussion page. There's even a built-in simplified IRC client for chat.

Haven't convinced you to join yet? It's like Facebook, only better. For anthropologists.

The social features are excellent in their present state, but there is also plenty of room for the Cooperative to grow and take on new tasks. Have a look at Lorenz Khazaleh's post for more information on suggested directions and features that the Cooperative may absorb in due course.

I've become a strong advocate of the OAC because I feel that such a network is long overdue, especially for a discipline like anthropology. Being able to connect to other researchers in a few clicks without the awkwardness of formal channels is more than a little refreshing.

Here is my page at the Open Anthropology Cooperative.

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Open Anthropology Cooperative

Several anthropologists have encouraged the formation of an Open Anthropology Cooperative to engage in anthropological discussion and collaboration away from the restrictions of formal academic management. It looks as if all of the tools which have (relatively) long been at our disposal - wikis, blogs, interactive social networking platforms - will be put to the excellent task of opening up the discipline to students, faculty and non-academics alike. I look forward to the next stage of development which will be the implementation and organization of a web platform upon which the Cooperative can grow.

I'd like to see the OAC become a comfortable channel for discussion which does not intimidate amateurs or first-year undergraduates, yet remains useful for doctoral students, fieldworkers, lecturers and specialists in all fields. Broad is good. I also hope that it will become truly international (and multilingual) and incorporate students and departments thus far not so evident in the anthropology blogosphere and consequently missing out on some outstanding knowledge dissemination. Above all, I'm interested in furthering digital anthropology, which I am pleased will have a strong base in this cooperative effort.

In my opinion, there is no reason for an invented divide that reduces web-based academic content to a second-rate substitute for formal (read: expensive, elaborate, bureaucratic) channels. Why not overlap "open" and "official" academia until they are one and the same? If the technology and demand can sustain it - which I believe they can - making anthropological and ethnographic knowledge freely available should be a priority. This can reflect back heavily upon the academic method itself, both in theory and in practice.

How about an online/offline seminar series, bridging the gap with web-based multimedia, in-person meet-ups, etc? Crossing over from the lecture hall to the web, sharing teaching and learning materials, creating new bodies for peer revision and publication are all possible and positive outcomes. Breaking down the publishing barrier and enabling actual feedback with established anthropologists can only help to aid in the development of better research and analysis.

The key to success, as always, will be participation. Visit the (temporary) forum on Keith Hart's The Memory Bank website to learn more, to follow the progress of the OAC and, of course, to contribute.

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