Category: Beyond the Academy

The Asthma Files: Anthropological Learning Through Technical Practice

Erik Bigras February 5, 2013

The Asthma Files is a collaborative ethnographic project focused on the diverse ways people in settings around the world have experienced and responded to the global asthma epidemic and air pollution crisis. It is experimental in a number of ways: It is designed to support collaboration among ethnographers working at different sites, with different foci, such that many particular projects can nest within the larger project structure. This is enabled through a digital platform that we have named PECE: Platform for Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography. PECE is open source and will become shareable with other research groups once we work out its kinks. PECE has been built to support collaborative, multi-sited, scale-crossing ethnographic research addressing the complex conditions that characterize late industrialism – conditions such as the global asthma epidemic and air pollution crisis; conditions that implicate many different types of actors, locales and systems – social, cultural, political-economic, ecological and technical, (read more...)

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Ethnographic Analytics for Anthropological Studies: Adding Value to Ethnography Through IT-based Methods

Ken Riopelle January 22, 2013

Ethnographic analytics? What’s that? In short, ethnographic analytics takes advantage of today’s technology to benefit anthropological studies, and is a great example of how science and technology can come together to help us understand and explain much about society and our human condition overall. I suggest that, using the computing power of software tools and techniques, it is possible to construct a set of useful indicators or analytics to complement the five human senses for ethnographic investigation. Where did the idea of ethnographic analytics originate? How have ethnographic analytics been used and with what results? How can you incorporate them in your work? These are all questions I will address in the following short example of a recent study application in which ethnography and IT-based analytics complemented one another to produce insights about organizational innovation. In this blog, I will focus on one indicator that I have found very useful: (read more...)

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On Beyond the Academy

Patricia G. Lange October 26, 2012

Anthropology and science and technology studies have moved way beyond academic settings to tackle a range of issues, problems, and policies that are affecting people globally. This section provides a space to talk about conducting projects, research, and applied activities that impact the people whom we partner with to propose solutions to contemporary problems. We encourage contributions from practitioners, consultants, and researchers to talk about their experiences and exchange ideas that emerge from a variety of non-academic settings. Consider this a launching pad for promoting new ideas and connecting with others who are share similar interests and a passion for promoting social justice. (read more...)

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