5. Anthropology and Information Technology

David Zeitlyn The University of Kent

Computers play several different roles in contemporary anthropology. Here, some of the main trends are summarised. Some pointers to where further information may be obtained are also given.

Networks of linked computers, broadly known as the 'internet', provide a means of finding out something of what is going on in contemporary anthropology and also provide a mechanism to participate in, or eavesdrop on, email discussion lists. In these, a single email sent to a central address is automatically redistributed to all those who 'subscribe' to the service - someone asks a question or requests information about a particular subject and a debate starts. As a subscriber you receive the email without having to participate yourself and so become an eavesdropper on the discussion. It can be fascinating to see a controversial topic being debated before your eyes. Different lists are dedicated to particular subjects, so someone interested in anthropology can find one devoted to that topic. Many are dominated by undergraduate students from the USA but there are others that are UK-based. The UK list 'small-triple-a' (for details see below) is dedicated to promoting contact between professional and non-professional anthropologists and particularly wide-ranging discussion may be found there. For example, in the weeks following the death of Princess Diana the symbolic significance of royalty and of communal ritual was debated!

Other information is made available via the World Wide Web. To access this you must direct your browser (such as Netscape or Internet Explorer), go to one of the anthropology sites or run a search on the internet indexing services such as Yahoo or Lycos (to name but two of the many available). On these sites may be found data (see below) but also listings of conferences, recent tables of contents of anthropology journals, and other useful material.

The WWW is increasingly being used to make available ancillary material that does not get distributed through traditional publications on paper. Sets of field notes and field photographs as well as the full text of now out of print or archival documents are being 'published' on the WWW. These represent a valuable source of materials for teachers, or research data for students. As well as basic research data and the results of analysis, some bibliographies are available for online searching. The University of Kent at Canterbury runs the main UK anthropology web site. At this site you will find much basic data on anthropology such as general anthropology bibliographies. On behalf of the Royal Anthropological Institute the University of Kent also maintains the Anthropological Index Online. This indexes all the periodicals taken by the Museum of Mankind library (from which photocopies of articles may be ordered). Universities in the UK have free access via a service called BIDS to the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences which is a similar, more general bibliography based on the LSE library. It is not clear at the moment whether this service will be extended to schools.

Computers are increasingly used by anthropologists to analyse data that are either too complex or simply too large to be dealt with by hand. One way that they are being used is to make models or simulations of particular aspects of human life, such as how a population is affected by different regimes of agriculture or patterns of marriage. This type of approach has been used to make a bridge between the results of recent anthropology and archaeology, for instance, to examine the way that small bands of proto-humans developed as they expanded across the globe. On the other hand, computers are being used to deal with the complexity of dance and ritual where typically there is more going on than a single person with a note-book in hand can record. A video-recording of a social event can be digitised and then annotated in the computer so that different parts of it can be easily found later on. We can juxtapose different parts of a social event, or different performances of the same event in the course of trying to understand what was going on. To take an example topical at the time of writing, we could attempt to compare the funerals of Princess Diana, Winston Churchill and George VI. This could be done using traditional means, comparing texts and photos from each period. The use of multimedia technology allows a wider range of sources to be used in a controlled and systematic fashion: we can consider some of the television coverage in the same way that documents are used to justify an argument. Using digitised images allows easy access back to the source to justify the argument. They can also, in some cases, be made available either on CD or via WWW so that the data on which conclusions have been formed are available for consultation.

An increasing number of anthropologists are now examining the complex social patterns that result from people using computers in offices, laboratories, schools and libraries. Indeed, those engaged in the development of computer software and hardware increasingly use anthropologically-inspired research methods in trying to improve their existing products and develop new ones. This is generating jobs for anthropologists in the major centres of computer research and development.

ANTHRO-L for anthropology in general: send message "subscribe anthro-l your-first-name your-last-name" to: listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu. A website and archives are available at: http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/anthropology/anthro-l/index.html

Small-Triple-A for UK anthropological issues and Anthro-teach-learn for issues relating to the teaching and learning of anthropology in the UK: send a message "join x your-first-name your-last-name" to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk. Information on these mailbase lists is also available via a website at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/

http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/

CSAC Ethnographics Gallery/Intermedia Library at the University of Kent at Canterbury has links to most anthropology sites. More information is available from Anthropology Resources on the Internet Compiled by Allen H. Lutins (alleycat@ptd.net). This excellent resource is available at:
http://www.nitehawk.com/alleycat/anth-faq.html

European mirror at:
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/afaq.html (which may be slightly out-of-date)