“Is Anthropology and Ethnography worthwhile?”
Difficulties with suspicion of intellectual voyeurism such as in Margret Mead’s "Coming of Age in Samoa”, did it sell because it was scientific or because it titillated. There is difficulties as revisionist view that it is just cultural imperialism for it seems to be a western study of people under colonial control, looking at some of Kathleen Gough’s arguments (Gough 1993). Difficulties seen from premises that the author can overcome the effect of power and inequality, for it is not poor natives writing about comparatively wealthy western scholars. Furthermore, …show more content…
Without documentation everyday things get lost, for example as a baby boomer, I know why the term “dial a number” is used for entering a phone number, and why we never asked the person we called “Where are you?”. Socially they seem minor but they were part of my experiences.
The example of the digital social society is one that is changing incredibly fast so now Anne Hornsby ethnography of surfing the net (Hornsby 1990) already seems outdated with references to BBS, Usenet and MUDs, but it does hold much about the society and the early rules that made up that society. Rules such as not typing in all capitals, have become well known, such that one uses them only in anger and new members are admonished if using them inappropriately, This so epitomises the type of rules of a society echoing others in the lectures (Lucas 2015).
The society interactions and rules are also being played out in other digital groups and social networking sites, Facebook being a prime example. Reviewing Greg Bowe’s work on romantic relationships impacted by Facebook (Bowe 2010), one can see the new digital rules of society performing the roles in breakup and attachment. Whereas once the social group was those that you lived with and were physically in contact with daily, now there are members that you may not meet other than