Wiltshire, Owen
o.wiltshire@gmail.com
nodivide.wordpress.com
Why do anthropologists blog?
A mini ethnography, a story, and a field report.
Abstract
In the past few years Anthropologists have increasingly taken up blogging. The anthropology
blogsphere is a rapidly growing community that has created a new space for all levels of the
anthropological hierarchy to express themselves. It has also opened doors to engagement with those
outside anthropology. Within debates surrounding traditional publishing formats, this report examines
the ways blogs might work to allow anthropologists to reflect and discuss more, while officially
publishing less. It is an exploration into the culture of publishing in anthropology, and the reasons
anthropologists do, or do not, blog.
Why do Anthropologists Blog?
Habitus
What is anthropology? That highly depends on who you speak to. It has in my experience,
changed drastically each semester, with each new teacher. Succeeding in anthropology relies on the
flexibility of the student to assume new roles. It is from this flexible position that I engage the
question “Why do anthropologists blog?” And through this engagement I will integrate our class
discussions, readings, and other ideas that formed the motivation for the question.
I would like to begin with a formal apology – an apology for my caustic nature – whereby I
engage ideas through conflict. Where much of this ethnography works to challenge the classical
emphasis on scientific methodology, it is by no means an attack on science or on ethnography. It is
simply an attempt to engage the intellect more naturally, building on the idea discussed in class that
there is a place in ethnographic research for ones own intuition. I have an inherent distaste for
scientific formalities, and believe that it is this need for formality can trap one's creative potential. At
the same time, I hope the reader will find humor in the way I have made the participants interviewed
anonymous, having asked them to sign consent forms. This was the result of the culture of fear that
has developed in anthropology, whereby research can have very harmful effects on those participating
in it. Looking back on this now, I believe it was unnecessary and perhaps a bit comical. I've decided
not to give informants fake names,and have simply left them unidentified – masking their age,gender,
income and various other dimensions that could also be very interesting had a larger number of people
been involved.
What is ethnography? That is another tough question, from which I form the introduction to
this story. Ethnography, the genre of writing which I am trying to conform, is a highly contested genre.
Defining such terms as ethnography and anthropology becomes a game of power in which the student
is but a pawn. Pawn's however, are my favorite chess piece – and it is a liberating position from which
to speak. Ruth Behar discusses the way anthropologists fight to define and locate ethnography in her
essay “Ethnography in a Time of Blurred Genres” (2007). She writes:
“If those of us who see or desire or dream of an “art” of ethnography are just a small minority in
our discipline, might we be better off simply writing memoir or creative nonfiction or travel
writing or chronicles or poetry? Beyond anthropology and a few academic disciplines, like
education or composition and rhetoric, the genre of ethnography remains a mystery. Those who
think they know what ethnography is tend to associate it with the social sciences and the careful
scrutiny of social systems, rather than with artful forms of creative writing.” (Behar. 2007)
This quote expresses the tensions ethnographic writers work within. This mini-ethnography is
not art, as Behar might have it, but rather a compromise, an experiment and an exploration into
ethnographic methods. This is not a rejection of anything, but rather an adoption of everything I can,
to achieve a well thought out investigation into academic blogging. In this way it continues the
ethnographic tradition of weaving academic debates into the telling of a story – in this case a story
about academics and the culture of blogging. But this is also a field report, and as the much criticized
old timers in anthropology always said, fieldwork sometimes depends on luck – in that interesting
insights develop about numerous topics, some not related at all to ones own research question. I could
ignore these insights, but instead I will present them as part of this story at the expense of
entertainment and enjoyment. In this way, if you feel so inclined, (and I certainly do not), feel free to
call this paper scientific.
In the process of this research, I have learned that ethnography structures the story long before
a topic is selected. It influences every question and every insight. On this issue, of structure and
action, I delight in the work of Loic Wacquant, who writes “theory is not a “text” separate from the
empirical object at hand but the set of principles that guide the very construction of that object at
every step” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992 in Wacquant 2005). I have tried to approach this research
through casual conversation – relying on peoples interest in the topic to generate interesting and
valuable conversation. At the same time, I experimented with statistical surveys, albeit in such a small
scale no statistical results are presented here.
A Tale of Entry
My goal, a class assignment, was to write a mini ethnography. This could have been a story
about fair trade coffee, and how it is consumed – but I wanted this research to be of interest not only
to me, but to the people involved in the research. My first step into this project was a disaster – the
owners of a nearby fair trade cafe expressed little interest in my research idea – and so began my
quest for a new topic. Having been working on a thesis proposal that dealt with how anthropologists
share and distribute knowledge, I began to follow anthropology blogs and found them to be very
refreshing, offering casual yet thoughtful insight. I also started a blog (nodivide.wordpress.com), to
discuss and share ideas surrounding my main thesis proposal.
In this way I am not the classic participant-observer writing about others, but rather an
anthropology student, who blogs, writing about anthropologists and blogging. There was never a
thought about “going native” as I started out there. While some feel that this prior engagement, and
closeness to the topic make proper social analysis impossible, I build on the perspective put forward
by Loic Wacquant – that “... like the social agents she studies, the ethnographer is a being of flesh and
blood endowed with embodied skills and visceral knowledges that are a resource for, and not a
hindrance to, social analysis.” (2006) My experiences as a blogger and as an anthropology student
formed the basis for my conversations with other students and with teachers, about blogging and the
culture of publishing in anthropology.
The Story
On the question of, why do anthropologists blog, there are more answers than this story can do
justice - and hundreds of anthropological bloggers could answer these questions themselves, and
many have. But perhaps there is a place for answering these questions again, in my own way, as a
means of shedding light on the broader culture of publishing in anthropology. In this way, I will try to
focus the story, to examine how blogging relates with other forms of anthropological publishing. I will
look into what makes blogging different, how people are making use of it, and their reasons for doing
it. I draw on blog posts, interviews, and a small survey to contribute to the growing conversation
surrounding this research question.
Understanding the publishing economy
“I have these anthropology projects involving students and I want to publish a book out of their
reports ... and I couldn't get a publisher, to publish people without names. And therefore what we
did in the end, was we posted it on the ... website.”
“Right now for example there has been a lot of retraction by a lot of presses to publishing
anthropology. It is rare now that they will publish a monograph, which saddens and frightens me,
since it means a lot of new stuff is not going to get out there. Given that I'm drawn back to the idea
of the blog, and putting things on the web directly and if thats the direction of the future I can see it
happening.”
“It's connections some times. Or the writing style that will convince these reviewers.”
-Anthro Prof
It's impossible or at least difficult “to publish people without names” in traditional
anthropology journals. Blogging and other forms of self publishing play a key role in distributing
material that is rejected by journals and academic publishers, based on content, quality, or perhaps
style. This points to one of the recurring topics in my interviews – prestige. With all sorts of
anthropology blogs popping up online I noticed a significant number of them are coming from
graduate students. In this way blogging has opened up a space for people to share ideas at different
stages in the academic hierarchy. In many ways it does away with the hierarchy altogether, as
discussions are formed with the knowledge of a public audience. I certainly feel empowered and
engaged within the anthropology blogsphere. In this way blogs are a unique site for anthropological
discussion that weave debates through a broader hierarchy of anthropologists. Blogs also provide new
ways of speaking in anthropology, speaking to broader audiences.
Building connections
Ah yes, the blogsphere – for blogs do not exist as independent isolated spaces. The multiplicity
of blogs form the blogsphere. It is an online community certainly with its own subcultures –
anthropology being one of them. What is interesting is the way the blogsphere is more fluid than
traditional academic publishing. Blogs are more exposed, and designed to form links of interest which
quickly breech typical anthropological boundaries. Politics, commentary, joking, casual and formal
conversation are all appropriate in the blogsphere. Certainly languages, nationalisms, and other
boundaries are continued – but as Lorenz Khazaleh (antropologi.info) and Alexandre Enkerli's
(enkerli.wordpress.com) blogs reveal – bloggers often work to break down national and language
divides by writing in multiple languages – drawing interest and creating links between previously
unconnected speakers. It makes such differences more visible. Where one would never see alternative
anthropologies within Anthrosource in the blogsphere it is harder to miss them (especially when
multiple languages sit side by side).
Further connections are made between anthropologists – and alongside all the interesting
conversations, it's quite apparent that there is also a lot of handshaking going on! Increasingly self
publishing is a way for academics to be known. In this way blogging is a community building exercise
– where bloggers actively promote other blogs they find interesting. Rarely do conversations locate
themselves on one particular blog – bloggers respond to conversations on other blogs on their own,
and then integrate other related posts/discussions.
Blog style
I have been participating in the blogsphere over the past six months, spending a lot of time
catching up with the fast growing community. Blogging enjoys a freedom of style. Three blogs serve
to illustrate the different ways anthropology is made public – Lorenz Khazaleh's, with a strong
journalism background has worked to publicize and promote hundreds of anthropology pages. His site
translates interest across languages and across disciplines. Maximillian Forte's blog,
openanthropology.wordpress.com serves as his own experimental site – where he produces very
thoughtful insights on decolonizing, and opening up anthropology. Savage Minds works as a
community, bringing multiple writers together on one blog. By having multiple writers the site almost
always has something new and interesting being discussed – the frequency of posts means new
content is there to be read every day. Many discussions take place on Savage Minds, moving from
other blogs to the Savage Minds forum where a larger community takes part in the conversation.
Alexandre Enkerli's blog is a fantastic example of how “academic thought” can be made “casual” at
no expense of quality. It spans across an enormous range of interests, and across two languages,
challenging boundaries like few others.
Within these different styles it is interesting to see how communities form around them. There
have been debates as to what extent blogs like this have become a civil society for anthropology. I
think it does create this kind of outlet, for those willing to participate within it. One writer for Savage
Minds, “Oneman”, aka Dustin Wax writes:
“It’s been invaluable to have this kind of forum, away from the main channel of academic
thought—the journals and academic presses that are our disciplinary mainstream, even if
many of them have lower readerships than Savage Minds. So valuable, in fact, that I felt it
absolutely necessary to include Savage Minds in my “Acknowledgements” when I published
Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War.”
-Dustin Wax (aka oneman), http://savageminds.org/category/history-of-anthropology/
This shows how much value is given to blogs, and open discussion. I hope to investigate this
dichotomy between blogging and the journals further, as part of a larger investigation into the way
anthropologists share knowledge.
As I was wrapping this report up, Savage Minds completed a survey asking for a break down
of its visitors – these results have since been released and I have to thank Savage Minds and the power
of the blogsphere for sharing information so quickly! According to their survey “Who reads Savage
Minds?” , available at (http://savageminds.org/2008/04/28/who-reads-savage-minds/) 30% of its
visitors are anthropology grad students (which coincides with what I had observed with anthropology
blogs I've been visiting in general), then 17% anthropology professors, 14% undergrad major
anthropology, and 9% masters students from other programs. I think all the exposure its getting from
outside the discipline is pretty encouraging of broader interdisciplinary conversations. I would say
more about this but this report is due the day after the results were released. Try that in a journal!
Prestige
In this way prestige is developed through online conversation – with some writers managing to
build names for themselves online. This came up in an interview, whereby a sense of solidarity was
felt within one interviewee when she encountered a person at a conference who she had been exposed
to in conversations online. Personally I have become more aware of personalities in the blogsphere,
than I have in traditional journals. Of course many of these prestigious bloggers, like those on Savage
Minds which I read regularly, go by nicknames – like Strong and Rex – and at the time I sat down to
write this, I hadn't yet associated them with their full names, Thomas Strong and Alex Golub. It is
almost like there is a tug of war going on in the anthropology blogsphere between formal and informal
styles. I wonder if this is a result of adapting to blog culture, or rebelling against journal culture.
There certainly is an element of prestige that develops within blogging – but to what extent
that prestige carries over into the anthropological hierarchy is up to debate – one professor I
interviewed admitted that hiring practices are formalized such that peer reviewed publishing was
central to getting tenure. This fed into a survey question I prepared that asked about which
anthropology journal's were most prestigious – to which no students had an immediate answer. Of the
ten people I asked to fill out the survey, four went off to ask a friend the name of an anthropology
journal - perhaps revealing some embarrassment of not knowing. When asked if they pay attention to
the journal that a class reading comes from almost everyone said no! In this way online access to
journal articles through databases like Anthro Source does a very poor job of developing a journals
identity among students. The databases are known, but the journals carried within them are not. Based
on my limited conversations it is only among professors that there is an awareness of particular
academic journals. This might be revealing of the disinterest academic journals have with student
work – probably based on the need to filter and produce a reputable/prestigious body of knowledge. It
also shows how little prestige journals have with students (understandably, due to limited exposure).
Of over a dozen students I spoke with only two had ever attempted to publish anything. I
wonder if perhaps blogging works as a practice space. As one interviewee stated: “anthropologists
should publish more”, arguing that publishing was the production of the reflection done by the
anthropologist. But others felt that there is an overproduction, a problematic “publish or perish”
publishing culture in anthropology which led to generic productions in traditional journals. Perhaps
blogging is the middle ground – allowing anthropologists to produce and reflect more while
“publishing” less.
But if this is to be the case then perhaps prestige will be redistributed online – just as Lorenz
Khazaleh argued in his series of six interviews with anthropologists. Khazaleh interviewed Thomas
Eriksen who stated:
“The symbolic capital associated with the Internet and Internet Publishing is fairly low. It
should be a political cause for academics to heighten it, both through using the Internet for
one's own publications and by increasing the prestige of the Internet by using it actively.” -Thomas Eriksen in an interview with Lorenz Khazaleh
(http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/anthropology.php&p=1278&more=1&c=1&
tb=1&pb=1)
But as the interviews and surveys I held point out, the symbolic capital associated with traditional
publishing journals among students is equally low! The identity of Anthrosource was very strong
however. In two contrasting discussions, I examined the difference in perspectives between students
and professors in terms of their feelings towards Wikipedia, to get an idea how online sources are
used:
“What do you think about filtering content , and journals? Do you find you get quality material
assigned to read, consistently? Are blogs really worse quality? I can imagine with blogs so much
of it will be unfiltered it would take forever to read through it, but maybe thats good, what do you
think?
Well it could be good for different things... I'm a big fan of wikipedia for example, and anyone can
write on it, and usually I find its very useful. But we don't take the material as seriously as a
proper encyclopedia, so its probably similar kind of relationship between blogging and academic
journals. It's great to find all this easy to access material, but you can't trust it. You can't trust a
blog the same way you can trust something published academically. And even then, wikipedia,
there are people involved in checking that things are accurate, and if they are missing sources, so
probably you can work out some similar system blogging.
-Anthro Student
“I wonder how Google and these other kinds of search engines are structuring our knowledge in
the protocols they call up our knowledge. I know when I search and it comes up with Wikipedia,
I'm not happy about that. I would like to get to other kinds of sources. Probably what I need to do
is take one of these courses on how to navigate the web beyond google so I can get effective
information from the web, but I haven't and I trust books more.”
-Anthro Prof.
But blogs and wikipedia are very different things. In conversations I had with students, the lack
of prestige of Wikipedia was largely associated with its anonymous nature, in that it is hard to track
down who said what. But not all blogs are anonymous like Wikipedia, and certainly prestige carries
over from traditional academic journals to the blogsphere, but not necessarily vice versa. When
reading blogs like Savage Minds, Antropologi.info, or Openanthropology.wordpress,com, all run by
qualified academics, I take the whole debate with a grain of salt, as obviously a lot of unrefereed
material is of very high quality. But it does beg the question, is it not enough that a blogger has a
Ph.D. In anthropology? How can self published material establish its credentials? Until such questions
are answered the questionable prestige gained from writing in blog form might actually prevent
professors from entering the medium. When we consider how much time blogging takes, and the
demand to publish in prestigious journals takes up that “professional” time. So blogging creates an
interesting, unrefereed space, that opens up a conversation space for all levels of the academic
hierarchy, but challenges traditional means of establishing credibility.
Filtering knowledge
For critics of the peer review system in anthropology, blogging is hailed as democratizing
force for anthropological publishing. But is it fair to lump blogging in with all forms of self publishing
online?
Where traditional academic journals establish strict guidelines for academic writing,
blogging enjoys no such controls. Erkan Saka points out, building on the work of Matheson (2004 in
Saka 2006) that blogs are themselves a means of filtering the vast amount of information online –
bloggers highlight sites they find interesting, and communities develop these shared interests. Some
bloggers do this amazingly well – like Lorenz Khazaleh, who has brought many interesting sites to my
attention. It is through his blog that I found Erkan Saka's fantastic essay on blogging – even though I
have been to Erkan's site previously, somehow I missed it, so it helps to have sites linking and
channeling content. I value the journalistic style of Khazaleh and Saka very much, and agree that
blogging works to filter through immense amounts of content available online. At the same time, there
are different kinds of blogs – some having a more journalistic quality, covering other blogs, and others
are more self absorbed. So it works to publish material, and to filter material, and as a result it creates
a very eclectic mix of styles in the blogsphere.
Public engagement
“I just think its the way academia has a way to just close itself off from the rest of the world...”
-Student
“Well I definitely think we should publish online. If you could get more people interested in reading
these things it would open the minds of a lot of people... if they were interested in reading it... which
would take a kind of opening to begin with... but I think its important to look into all the ethics, to
protect identity of people... because when you hand it in to a professor you know nothing will ever
happen with the material, but online it won't pass through the university and won't be controlled...
so maybe you would lose some of the protection of the rights of informants.”
-Student
“Once I changed the language I used to ask questions, then I started getting useful
answers and ideas.”
-Student discussing the use of a pop culture forum for asking
questions related to her research.
One thing anthropological blogging does is it makes ideas accessible to a larger audience. In
the above quotes, a student I interviewed discusses the way she felt anthropology was an open minded
discipline, with progressive ideas. She saw the public as being more closed off, and less interested in
the liberal perspectives put forward by anthropology. Public engagement would be of interest to those
outside anthropology. But others feel that anthropology is a very inclusive discipline where jargon
filled language and a changing world have isolated anthropology. In this light anthropology needs to
change. Everyone attending the focus group agreed that jargon made academic writing inaccessible.
One interviewee discussed the way she learned to rephrase questions related to her research to make
more sense on a forum dedicated to pop culture. It's not that the ideas were impossible to
communicate, but they required translation to generate interest and response.
Blogging as a research tool
Erkan Saka was one of the first bloggers who picked up on my blog and very kindly linked and
opened the door to people finding my own. In his paper “Blogging as a Research Tool for
Ethnographic Fieldwork” (2006), Erkan Saka discusses the way he uses the blog to record his
fieldwork:
“Moreover, I argue throughout my paper that new media with a particular emphasis in
blogging will have even larger consequences for the discipline of anthropology. In order to
substantiate my main argument I focus on these issues: a) Blogging might be a remedy to the
anxiety of being in ‘after the fact’ that is shared by many anthropologists. Blogging takes place
in the present tense while actively engaging with ‘the fact’; b) blogging brings immediate
feedback c) not only from the limited scholarly circles but from a wider public/audience d)
which exposes the ethnographer to a much more effective issue of accountability. Moreover, e)
blogging urges to see motives in a more regular sense, thus creates a strong sense of regularity
f) that forces the ethnographer to produce on a regular basis g) with a constant appeal to
narrate what would normally remain fragments of fieldnotes.”
He points out that journal publications are locked down, not through access fees, but also in the ability
to write in a timely fashion. Due to the long times involved in publication it is hard to stay relevant to
current issues. Saka points out that blogging has a characteristic of being timely and present with no
delays in publication. Also, he points out that it demands regular writing. I completely agree with him,
and feel that starting a blog encouraged me to write more, especially when I received interest from
readers. I also can't agree more with the issue of accountability – especially when one associates ones
own name with the blog (as I certainly wrote things I am not accountable for, anonymously!). Erkan
Saka uses his blog to record his fieldwork – which is the same reason I started my blog. By writing
field notes publicly, they become “open access fieldnotes”, which invite feedback, and it demands
more attention to the project.
So there are many reasons anthropologists blog. A restrictive publishing environment gives
little voice to students. Not only that, but anthropology journals have ignored students and perhaps in
doing this they have missed out on generating a name for themselves. As more and more material
becomes freely available online, it becomes a matter of knowing where to look – and my small survey
of students revealed that journals are not well known. One Ph.D. Student taking a class in
anthropology admitted they had no idea which anthropology journals were prestigious, saying “I'm not
an anthropologist!”. Why should these prestigious anthropology journals only be known to
anthropologists? It is perhaps for this reason many bloggers are working to engage people from
outside the discipline. The blog is a fantastic way to invite feedback during the research process itself.
But not all anthropologists blog, and in the discussions feeding this essay a number of
positions were put forward as to why online publications are problematic. For one, not everyone is
technically inclined – although blogging has become as easy as using a word processor. Many simply
do not spend that much time online, and continue to prefer books.
Wheres the time?
One professor I interviewed does not blog but promotes his peer reviewed publications through
his website. He does not spend much time surfing the internet, and feels that it lacks interactivity, but
he admits he hasn't spent the time necessary to learn how to use the internet to its full potential. He
feels the economic realities in academic publishing have made it harder to get ideas “out there” as
certain forms of publishing have become increasingly restricted (like the publishing of books), he sees
blogs and other forms of online publishing taking on a greater role, but does not see himself having
the time to blog. At the same time he expressed his feelings that anthropologists should write more:
“My feeling is that academics should be publishing a lot more than they do. That is the result of
their reflection. When I see people publishing only two articles a year I feel they are lazing, when
you consider the salaries they are getting. So I have a problem with that. Including myself,
sometimes I can't believe the lack of productivity, even though I know with the work world its even
worse than academia, but publish or perish, its true up to a point. If your going to get tenure you
have to have evidence of publication, but once you have that there is no pressure and all that goes
away and you get it after four or six years which is the critical time.”
-Anonymous anthro prof
So where does blogging fit in? Blogs form a new site for anthropological thought and reflection, but
do not yet count as a real publication space. I asked one blogger, who has written volumes on his
blog about open access publishing, if he had any formal publications under his name. He responded
that he did not, and when I asked why, he stated that he wishes there was more room for other kinds
of writing in anthropology. Among numerous bloggers I have spoken to, there seems to be an
appreciation for new forms of writing anthropology. So within the discussions I engaged in, it
became apparent that there were was a question of language and content. Are formal academic
productions suitable for public consumption? Can anthropology be done in the same way on a blog,
as it is in a journal? Should it?
On the issue of privacy
One of the more interesting challenges blogging presents is the lack of a safety net – blogging
is a social exercise not a private one. Also, there are degrees of “publicness”. Information can be made
public, but without publicity and other connections the material will remain inaccessible. So blogging
can challenge boundaries between public and private, as well as between professional and casual.
Some people are willing to share their work, but they would prefer to do so anonymously,
which coincides with the use of pseudonyms. On the use of pseudonyms however, there are different
reasons for anonymity. Some bloggers are working to encourage public engagement by being less
formal, and others are using pseudonyms to maintain privacy. For example, the bloggers on Savage
Minds have pseudonyms, but they provide their real names on a separate page for those interested.
The pseudonyms in this sense conform with the larger blogging culture, as opposed to continuing
academic formality.
This shows how bloggers have a number of strategies available to them to maintain privacy. In
the focus group I held we discussed how people will use a variation of spelling on their name when
they write online so that when employers or other people try and find them on Google, they will
remain hidden. At the same time, the controls and rules in academia provide a safe space where
students know what is expected – ie: you won't have people writing you anonymous hate mail of the
kind danah boyd discusses in her blog post “Why Aren't Blogs a Safe Space?” (2004):
“One thing that we’re missing as disconnected souls reading each other’s words is a shared
social structure where we can intuitively understand when to critique and when to support.
The blog world too easily lends itself to a forum for attacking each other, purportedly to
critique ideas. How often are anonymous critiques truly constructive? How easy is it to tear
apart someone you don’t know? Stanley Milgram learned that ages ago… if you feel like your
responsibility is to critique, you can do so infinitely, regardless of how another might feel.
And the further removed you are from witnessing the horrific reactions, the more you can
continue on. Sometimes, i think we’re all a bit sadistic.”
-danah boyd
So in this way, blogging is liberating in one sense – in that it is unrefereed, authors can express
themselves as they please, anonymously or with their real name, and readers can respond in the same
way. Sometimes, as danah boyd found out, the comments readers leave are not always constructive –
whereas hopefully in academic journals the comments do try to be constructive. Being attacked in
public is certainly one reason why anthropologists might not want to blog especially when engaging in
controversial topics. The necessity of rules came up in my discussions as well – with many expressing
the need for certain amounts of formality that do not necessarily exist in the blogsphere.
“There are certain rules in academia, ... Maybe some of them are stupid and redundant, but a lot
of them are there for a reason.”
-Anthro Student
“Theres a lack of transparency in the publishing world... there are lots of barriers, and hoops to
get through but theres a pretense of responsibility and mutual respect which is there at the same
time.”
-Anthro Prof.
But back to privacy – in the discussions about Tibet on Savage Minds, I mentioned my friend was
working for Students for a Free Tibet, organizing protests and helping with the Tibetan cause in
Dharamsala. Afterwords my heart sank as I thought about how putting her name out there could
seriously jeopardize her ability to get a visa in India. Thankfully, her name is all over the place
already, so when I asked her about it she was very happy I had posted the information. It shows how
blogging, and writing in public, demands a certain sense of responsibility in terms of maintaining
peoples privacy.
Owning ideas
“How much do the people, the ethnographic subjects, want information public. Because
there are various reasons for wanting, or not wanting, records to be made of your
culture. When I was among the Bongo Bongo, there were concerns of appropriation and
cultural theft. And they wanted to regain control over the way in which their culture has
been turned into information for lots of outsiders to consume. So I respected that. So I
don't think many anthropologists would just post everything online. They would be
censoring their material that way. Why is that? Because these are very hierarchical
societies, they are not about democratic exchange of information, but work on the
efficacy of secrecy. It's an important value, secrecy. If you factor that in, how does that
effect the sharing of information...
-Anonymous Anthro Prof.
This brings up an interesting parallel to this research project, as that I look into anthropological
culture, I have found that it too is very hierarchical. Among students a common concern I came upon
in discussions was the fear of having ideas stolen. Some felt the need to keep their ideas private until
they had actually produced a final work. (Dear reader, these generalizations have been formed from a
very small survey of students, and in no way try to be representative of anything in general.) This
however also came up in two discussions with honor students, who stated they would not post
proposals and ideas online before publishing to protect their ideas. On this issue, I feel that blogging is
a way to prevent the stealing of ideas. Blog posts are as permanent and bring more exposure than any
academic proposal. Once the ideas are written on a blog, I do not see how someone can “steal them”.
If someone used such ideas without crediting me, at least I would have a reference to show that they
are my ideas too! Perhaps this fear of having ideas being stolen reveals a lot about the political
hierarchy in academics.
I think open writing like that done on blogs works against intellectual theft but it demands a
willingness to collaborate – as by sharing ideas early on in the project other people will certainly add
to it, and it will be harder to produce a work filled with purely ones own ideas. It seems to demand
much more back and forth as normally occurs in conversation. In this way much of the analysis is
distributed over all the discussants. I encouraged and allowed interviewee's to do their own analysis
surrounding blogging, and I have incorporated that into this paper.
Anonymity is nothing new in anthropology, as peer review is often done in an anonymous
fashion, but blogs allow anonymous commentary as well. On this issue I have a confession to make –
from the comfort of ones home, masked behind a fake name, it is possible to forget ones own writing
standards. Writing publicly can be very embarrassing and as I have learned through participation in
the blogsphere it is also permanent. Having posted material that offends myself in terms of quality I
am much more careful with what I write (especially on other peoples blogs!). Given that anthropology
is a discipline of learning, anonymity in the blogsphere is helpful in terms of practicing writing for an
audience. At the same time, having posted my real name on my blog, I find identifying myself
encourages me to produce something “better”.
Blogging in the classroom
“We were encouraged to share our assignments on Moodle but I don't think anyone did.”
“I really like this idea, of having a class that has a blog and where all students are encouraged to
post their assignments online. I think it would be really beneficial to have your peers read your
stuff and give you constructive criticism on how you could improve it.”
“Would you guys bother to read all the classes papers? Imagine trying to read thirty other
papers...”
“If we just tried to communicate with each other, it brings it back to the whole language thing,
maybe the words would be more “real” since you are communicating with the whole class and not
just a teacher...”
“just those bad papers, that you throw together the night before and you want to take them to the
grave with you... that would be very embarrassing having to share that...”
“a lot of it is your own personal relationship with the material”
Another very interesting aspect of blogging is the way teachers make use of it in classrooms.
Debate arose as to what kind of assignments would be appropriate to share. Many felt it sharing it
would increase the quality, but others were honest in admitting that they can not always produce
material they would feel good sharing. As an experiment in authorship, Dr. Forte had his
Cyberethnography students write up blogs about the class he was teaching. By using access controls,
where users must login to read the material, the blogs were made available only to those within the
class. This kind of restricted access shows how it is not simply a matter of writing “publicly” and
“privately”. Blogs are used in all sorts of different ways. Students in this way write for each other, and
are able to develop opinions surrounding a reading based on responses from the entire class. It also
prepares students to expose their work, which again was one of the recurring issues that came up in
interviews when I asked if people were happy to share their work. In this way I see blogging as a
space to practice engagement with ones writing, where one writes for both a professor and fellow
students.
In our class discussions we discussed the idea of writing our mini-ethnography for particular
audiences, and some classmates argued that they write for themselves – not for others. So in this way
there are different motivations behind the study of anthropology altogether, which certainly alter the
way blogs are used and received. Also, I concur with some of the people I interviewed who would be
quite upset if all class assignments were made available online. On this question of sharing
assignments, I found out that honors student essays are made available in the Anthropology reading
room at Concordia University – but in interviewing the students working there I also found out they
were very rarely accessed. I suspect this is because few know about them and perhaps they aren't
considered cite able sources of information. In our focus group discussion we talked about how public
exposure led to more serious writing – where many felt they would write higher quality assignments
knowing that other people would read them.
Do blogs threaten journals?
“Do you prefer particular journals over others? How do you establish credibility in what your
reading?”
-“I usually use Anthrosource – and I like to stick to books.”
-“I like Jstor and Ebsco... but in Sociology and anthropology we can kind of bring anything in, so
thats probably why we have such a hard time pinning down a specific journal.”
“Do you pay much attention to the journal itself?”
-“Not at all... I just look at the name of the article and read the abstract, and if the idea is good I'll
use it.”
Could the blogsphere threaten traditional publishing? I think self publishing will continue to
grow – but blogs are being used in creative ways, even by “traditional” journals. Online databases
make searching through material easier, but do not yet provide a means of interacting, or commenting
on the material. But change is happening - many journals are now incorporating blogs to develop
community around the content. Blogging shows how conversations work to build community and
there will be an ongoing battle on the internet over where these discussions take place. Many
corporations are also blogging, and it is no longer simply associated with individual self publishing. In
many ways it represents a community conversation style.
Further Erkan Saka writes that blogs largely depend on traditional media, and do not compete
with them - arguing that blogs have a journalistic quality. So I suppose the confusion I am developing
here is between blogging as a specific style of writing and blogging as a space for self-publishing
anthropology.
While much anthropological blogging works to report on anthropological debates and
developments, the blogphere is also filled with interesting “thought”. For those engaged in these
discussions within highly interested communities, I wonder if perhaps journal publications would then
serve only for the purposes of gaining prestige (ie, everything is being said in conversations
elsewhere, but is “proved” in journals. This is quite hypothetical, and just me trying to analyze my
own experience getting caught up in blog discussions and debates to an extent never offered to me
elsewhere. Looking beyond my own experience, from the opinions gathered from others, not
everyone enjoys public engagement. Blogging may not be for everyone, but it certainly is catching on.
Reflections
What's the field site in this research? I explored participation through my own blog, and
reading and writing on numerous other anthropology blogs. I also discussed blogging, sharing
information, and public engagement with a focus group of six students, and multiple interviews with
students and one professor – all at Concordia University. I found talking with students to be very
rewarding, and I found more student blogs in this way than a search for “concordia blog” would
produce – due to the way so many people have anonymous sites. Further, I did have a Malinowski
“imponderable” moment having chosen to take the stairs from the 11th floor and ended up passing the
following writing graffiti'd on the wall:
“Save Concordia – SOSCONCORDIA.BLOGSPOT.COM”
This blog serves as a host for some Concordia activist's manifesto – perhaps related to one of the
student elections. It shows in a way I would have never guessed, how blogs are being used to voice
perspectives from students within the academic hierarchy.
But getting back to the nature of data and analysis, I also explored the difference between
analyzing categorized data to find patterns of significance in contrast to balancing a range of opinions
and perspectives. By categorizing my conversations and observations, I did stumble upon the idea that
journals carried a limited amount of prestige with students. This led to discussions about how well
publishers “get ideas out there” and that worked to structure very interesting follow-up conversations.
The survey formed an interesting discussion point to gather ideas.
I think it is true, and I don't think we discussed this in any of our class readings, that there are
ways to distribute analysis around a research question. When interviewing anthropologists about
academic blogging, it's hard to add to what they have to say – in this way I tried to simply gather and
present different perspectives within a very limited research framework. I found this distributed
analysis was also apparent in the focus group, where everyone built on each others ideas and input. I
was lucky to have found a motivated group of students to take part, and I know such is not always the
case, but certainly there are degrees of analysis happening at different stages of the research and I
wonder if it is not odd to have a strong dichotomy between “data” and “analysis”. In fact, this strong
dichotomy might even work to limit the amount of analysis participants are allowed to do.
Further this relationship between field notes and the final production is something I think
people should be more critical of. The data in this study is not my “field notes”, it is my thoughts and
observations, along with other peoples thoughts and observations, compiled in a way to create a story
about publishing culture. Since the field is so close to me, it would be absurd to write everything down
and restrict myself to those notes. If, for some strange reason, I was to only to read blogs for two
weeks, and never read them again, then perhaps the note taking style of Malinowski would be
appropriate – but if I can be so bold as to say it, anthropologists should relax and emphasize less this
notion of “fieldwork”. The most important anthropological method I used in this research was that of
participant observation, where I engaged actively in the topic of interest. Has my work suffered in
terms of analysis as a result?
As a mini ethnography, this report is based on a very limited number of interviews and
conversations – as well as on a few months participating in the blogsphere. As a result, I have not tried
to look into sociological tangents like gender, or age. These certainly are interesting, but within the
limits of this “mini-ethnography” I think it would actually be irresponsible to go generalizing about
gender participation based on such a small sample. I did try to interview an equal number of men and
women among the student group, and I acknowledge that I am a gendered actor and that this does
influence the way I engage people – but I have tried to leave all the ethnographic baggage behind me,
and for this reason I haven't incorporated a lot of the hissy fits ethnographers get into when they
discuss method.
Lastly, I am motivated by the response of everyone involved to continue working on this
research question. I intend to incorporate and build on it within my upcoming thesis work. I think the
most successful aspect of this research was finding a topic that interested everyone involved, it made
conversations quite lively and I suspect raw transcripts of those conversations are more informative
than this report, but hopefully I have succeeded in doing some analysis on top of all that was said.
Conclusion
Why do anthropologists blog? This research explored the way publishers have not worked to
market academic journals to students. Online access through Anthrosource doesn't develop much
prestige for individual journals distributed within it. This line of discussion showed how blogs are an
important space for opening up discussion within the anthropological hierarchy. My small survey
revealed that students had a hard time identifying a prestigious journal in their field, and the survey
from Savage Minds shows that graduate students make up a large percentage of the readership. In my
exploration of blogs I found a number of graduate students writing them. So perhaps the limited
distribution of academic publishing contributes to the desirability of the blogsphere.
Anthropologists also blog to make connections. For those involved, there certainly is an active
online community that works and promotes each other. Posting ones reflections online works to
develop interest and feedback in the topic one is researching. Blogging in this way is an important
research tool.
To balance out all my blogger bias, I tried to explore why anthropologists might not blog. On
this question I explored questions of privacy, and of peoples comfort sharing academic work. I also
explored issues of engagement, learning that for some people academic work is a very personal
exercise that they may not want to share publicly. Further, discussions brought out the reality that
everyone produces terrible quality material from time to time, and that it would be very embarrassing
if they had to share it. Also many bloggers use pseudonyms to protect their identities online. Some
people just don't want to be represented on Google. My own experiences writing online has led me to
be very aware of how permanent writing can be. It can be very strange writing for an unknown
audience, and perhaps it is not desirable for all forms of academic thought. The use of access controls,
as provided by Moodle, or the blogs in the Cyberethnography class, create interesting spaces for
practicing engagement. Another anthropology professor discussed the way societies he had studied
were hierarchical, depending on secrecy and not necessarily the democratic exchange of knowledge –
but as my interviews revealed many students worry that ideas can be stolen, and this is perhaps
another reason people might have to not blog. Anthropologists in this sense are a hierarchical
organization too, and secrecy is indeed a reason many do not feel comfortable sharing or discussing
their ideas. The most obvious answer to the question, and perhaps the most frequent, was of course the
issue of time, second only to not feeling that one has anything important or new to say (but hey, can't
we all reinvent the wheel a little?)
Blogging creates a space for all levels of anthropologists (and non anthropologists) to engage
in anthropology. As a medium it demands more engagement than traditional academic publishing
formats. Where some participants in this study discussed the difficulty distributing ideas in book and
journal format, due to limited resources, the blogsphere shows how easy it is to spread ideas – begging
the question, why have academic journals done so little to distribute their work to students interested
in the work? I believe self publishing, and internet communication technologies will put pressure on
journals to catch up. I always wondered why I never saw an interesting anthropology journal sitting in
our reading room – but from this investigation, and my main thesis research I have realized journal
publishers have isolated themselves and failed to promote their identity and material outside the upper
echelons of anthropologists – they have made their material inaccessible even to the people interested
in it. Yes, I can access it through Anthrosource, but this is a poor means of marketing and developing
interest in a particular journal. They do not exist simply out of course, and unless journals work to
promote their identity among students I sincerely think fewer and fewer academics will feel the need
to frequently publish in them. As I mentioned earlier, blogs may very well be an important place for
anthropologists to think and reflect more, while publishing less.
A big thanks to everyone involved in this project. I have learned a lot, and very much enjoyed
my experience talking to bloggers and anthropologists. I hope the conversations that fed into this
report stimulated and engaged those who aren't blogging, to someday explore it, and for those who
read this far into my field report – thank you for your interest. Please let me know how this production
can be improved, as I do not intend to leave this report in this form, and rather hope to build on it
using my blog as space to share and develop it. In this way, this report is not intended to remain as it
is. I welcome others to participate, edit, add, and rework it so that it doesn't sit, unchanged and unread,
in some inaccessible journal! In the spirit of Bruce Lee, “absorb what is useful, discard what is
useless, and add what is uniquely your own”.
And while all the sources I cite in this research, all the readings from our Ethics and Ethnography
class, and in my life, have guided and positioned this research, I decided to avoid rehashing old
debates and instead I have let all of that angst go.
A big thanks to the following blogs:
The Savageminds.org team,
http://savageminds.org/category/history-of-anthropology/
http://savageminds.org/2008/04/28/who-reads-savage-minds/
Maximillian Forte.
Openanthropology.wordpress.com
Alexandre Enkerli
enkerli.wordpress.com
Erkan Saka
erkansaka.net
Lorenz Khazaleh
www.antropologi.info
Saka, Erkan. 2006. “Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork.”
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgf3br9b_6f47gdh
boyd, danah. 2004. “Why blogs aren't a safe space?
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/01/19/why_blogs_arent_a_safe_space.html
Khazaleh, Lorenz. 2004. “Six Anthropologists on Anthropology and the Internet”
http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/anthropology.php&p=1278&more=1&c=1&t
b=1&pb=1
Ruth Behar. 2007. “Ethnography in a Time of Blurred Genres.”
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ahu.2007.32.2.145?prevSearch=wacquant+ethnography
(Accessed April 21, 2008).
Wacquant, Loic. 2005. “Shadowboxing with Ethnographic Ghosts: A Rejoinder.” Symbolic
Interaction. Volume 28, No. 3. pp. 441-447
Why do Anthropologists Blog?
 Public engagement – feedback from beyond the discipline
 Less formal – much broader range of style, more complex ways of manipulating knowledge
(video, text, dynamic content)
 Community, feedback. Enjoy discussing ideas with others.
 Prestige – great place to get known, at least by other anthro bloggers
 Younger generation growing up with online publishing – not worried about privacy as much
 Perhaps an escape from work/professionalism when reflecting on anthropological ideas
A Counter Perspective:
Why Don't Anthropologists Blog?
 Fear that their work isn't good enough
 Do not want to have their name associated with it
 Generally not part of internet culture – accessibility
 Lack of time – anthropology is a professional topic – there aren't many “amateur
anthropologists” - although this is one thing many bloggers want to change
 Fear of having ideas stolen – desire to “own” ideas.
 Prefer traditional publishing mediums – books
 Desire for more filtered knowledge
 desire to maintain privacy outside of work