A Digital Anthropology Reading List
Budding
🌿Last tended Nov 18, 2020
The Web
Data
Economics
Anthropology
As a
I've compiled a list of gateway drugs.
This is a collection of books, talks, documentaries, articles, and academic paper that are a mix of "essential reads," plus some of my personal picks.
It will give you a sweeping overview of what digital anthropologists tend to spend their time thinking about and researching.
Most of them aren't overly academic, so you don't need to worry about trugding through too much Foucauldian theory or references to Marxist
Books
Addiction By Design
Natasha Dow Schull
A beautiful ethnography of machine gamblers in Las Vegas. Dow Schull explores the nature of addictive relationships with machines, experiences of embodiment, and the ethics of designing technological systems.
A Cyborg Manifesto
Donna Haraway
While a bit academically dense to read, Haraway's reframing of the Cyborg is an eternal classic.
Coming of Age in Second Life
Tom Boellstroff
An ethnography conducted entirely within the virtual world of Second Life. This is widely considered the first substantial ethnography of an online community. Tom Boellstroff pioneered the idea digital spaces should be taken seriously as cultural fieldsites.
Two Bits: the Cultural Significance of Free Software
Christopher Kelty
Divining a Digital Future
Genevieve Bell & Paul Dourish
