Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to characterise the baseline elements to consider when crafting situated syllabi for digital anthropology courses in Latin America, starting with a characterization of the challenges that professionals face to, then, pinpoint useful topics to localize and strengthen the subdiscipline.

Paper long abstract:

Latin America has a history where communication and media studies and, more recently, science and technology studies have led the discussions around culture and digital technologies. Anthropology has had a background role. Ethnographic monographs are still scarce, yet dissertations are slowly flourishing parallel to graduates finding UX research and technology development jobs. Interest, both academic and applied, has surpassed the university curriculum. In this context, anthropologists face several challenges, such as finding proper literature within Latin American authors to strengthen their frameworks (1), balancing local production from other disciplines with broader conversations in anthropology (2), and dealing with the language academic divide between the Global North and South (3). Some authors have highlighted the latter point because it tends to produce a delay in perspectives and contributions, particularly regarding methods. ¿How to make a situated syllabus in this panorama? The paper proposes, first, to characterise each challenge and, secondly, to pinpoint the elements to consider when crafting syllabi for digital anthropology courses in the region. The methodology focuses on analysing secondary sources, databases from the Latin American Network of Digital Anthropology, and short interviews to make visible the educational needs as well as the hopes for strengthening the subdiscipline. Here, aspects like the weight of national policies in technology use, the discussion of communication dynamics and the digital divides around technical systems give a peculiar baseline for future teachers on the topic.