Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the impacts of digital and technical change on the possibilities of collaborative and indigenous anthropology in remote locations, looking at the case study of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre Fieldworker Program.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1960's technological developments have enabled the rapid growth of participatory and indigenous media and a seen the establishment of a range of indigenous and participatory cultural documentation projects around the globe. One such project is the cultural documentation project of the Vanuatu Cultural Centres (VKS) Fieldworker Network, a significant and sustained project of indigenous anthropology that has contributed to the large and diverse holdings of the Vanuatu National Film and Sound Archive. Looking at recent challenges faced by the VKS Fieldworker Networks cultural documentation project, this paper will consider the ways in which digital technologies have both enabled and constrained possibilities for remote indigenous communities to actively lead and undertake their own cultural documentation work. It will discuss the potential implications of new digital divides emerging from low cost consumer digital technologies reliant on internet connectivity and 'the cloud', on the possibilities of indigenous and collaborative anthropology into the future, including how these digital divides may reverse gains made towards decolonising and collaborative approaches to anthropological research.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Warlpiri people engage with digital technology to reconnect with ancestral images and reconstitute their knowledge of places. It asks how unequal access to infrastructure and shifting notions of property are articulating with the circulation of cultural knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

While anthropologists have long used recorded and transcribed ethnographic material to construct analyses, the peoples from whom they obtained that information - and particularly the descendants of their original informants - are now increasingly turning to digitized collections of such material to interpret and affirm their place in the world. Yet, the social contexts in which the material was originally recorded— for example, regarding such things as local organization, relational personhood and practices of memory— have often been radically transformed by socio-historical processes. At the same time, people have unequal access to the infrastructure that supports new forms and circulation of cultural media. Drawing on an ethnographic case study conducted at Willowra, this paper explores how middle aged and younger Lander Warlpiri people are engaging with digital technologies to reconnect with ancestral voices (individual histories, song, myth and ritual) and images (still and moving) to reconstitute their knowledge of, and identity with, places. It asks how shifting notions of property and forms of social relatedness are influencing (and articulating with) the objectification and circulation of cultural knowledge and assertions of rights to it. In doing so, it explores how anthropologists and anthropology are implicated in this process.

Paper short abstract:

Is it possible to 'repatriate' anthropological research? This paper looks at the practical, theoretical and cultural implications of returning a lifetime of photographs and films to a specific community.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the practical, theoretical and cultural implications of returning a lifetime of photographs and films to a specific community. It traces the origins and ongoing development of a project developed at the Australian National University, Canberra, with the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Yirkala, which is centred on the digital return of audio-visual archives created by the anthropologist Howard Morphy over the past forty years.The wider project team have been working to devise a cross-culturally applicable database—using the OCCAMS platform—which can integrate multiple archive formats (text, photos, audio tapes and videos) to create a dialogic, culturally appropriate, database which is accessible for multiple users.

Paper short abstract:

Used by corporations and governments alike, algorithms are trusted as being impartial 'big data processors' that reveal deeper truths about human lives. However, when confronted with critiques from digital anthropology, such trust is revealed to be misplaced.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary governments and corporations have access to an unprecedented amount of data. The quantity of information available has grown in tandem with data processing capacity over the past two decades. Much value is placed in the impartiality of the algorithms used to process this previously unfathomable amount of data. Trusted as being neutral, 'big data' processors that reveal deeper truths about human lives, algorithms are used by corporations and governments alike to parse and contextualise data about people. However, when confronted with anthropological critiques, such trust seems unsound. But what are algorithms? How do Google, Facebook or the Australian Tax Office use them? And how are anthropologists best placed to discuss them?

Drawing on the epistemologies of both Anthropology and IT, this talk shall explore the contemporary impact of algorithms in everyday life and discuss the role digital anthropology needs to play in this increasingly data-driven world. We shall historicise concerns over the use of algorithms in contemporary contexts and discuss some of their unintended consequences, eg 'filter bubbles'. Rather than being insurmountable problems, we suggest that: (1) the most pressing theoretical and methodological concern is that of scale; and (2) stemming from the 'reflexive turn' and critiques of positivism born from mid-late 20th century scholarship, anthropology is pragmatically positioned to discuss and highlight the effect of these algorithms on contemporary, everyday life. We hope this cross-disciplinary talk will be the impetus for future discussions of the pressing need for qualitative work in an increasingly quantitative world.

Paper short abstract:

Increasingly our engagement with the state is mediated through digital infrastructures. By expanding the field of bureaucratic anthropology to the digital, this paper will explore how digital bureaucratic tools (databases, permits, online archives...) were crucial in spatialising the Flemish state.

Paper long abstract:

The digitisation of our institutional environment is often heralded as the prime antidote against politicisation. Government controlled open-access databases, online portals to apply for forms and submit paperwork or taxes, and the collection and processing of big data about society, are embraced by politicians and bureaucrats as prime drivers for democratization and cost-effective government. Because of the unique affordances of contemporary multimedia technology (e.g. so-called accountability/openness of social media), those digital infrastructures on which we rely are often conceived as 'neutral' or 'objective' mediums in our engagement with the state. Key Science and Technology studies (STS) Scholars have, however, problematised this 'black boxing' of technology in both academia and policy, and have underscored how digital tools are cultural constructs dramatically imposing regimes of truth.

By connecting STS perspectives on technology with the growing literature ethnographically exploring bureaucracy and paperwork, this paper will explore how digital infrastructures shape certain subjectivities and normalise specific political hierarchies and standardisations. Using ethnographic data collected at the Flemish Heritage Agency, this paper will trace how a digital permitting and auditing system connected to a standardised heritage database and archive not only spatialized the Flemish state (part of Belgium) but also normalised cultural assumptions encoded by database developers and bureaucrats in those information infrastructures. In this study both users and producers of digital governmental infrastructures were studied.

Paper short abstract:

Point hacks and Prize Pigs represent online 'Communities of Practice' which support consumers to take advantage of corporate marketing in the forms of point promotions and promotional competitions respectively. This paper questions the status of these communities in relation to the state.

Paper long abstract:

Neoliberalism's effects, such as labour precarity and inflation, have captured the anthropological imagination for over two decades. The relationship between neoliberalism and digital practices, however, remains underexplored. This paper will examine two online 'communities of practice', Point Hacks (people who collect promotional points) and Prize Pigs (serial entrants of promotional competitions). As I explore, via digital observation and auto-ethnography, these groups thwart the intention of the companies that offer such promotions: to incite purchase, foster brand loyalty and to build databases for use in future promotions or research. At the same time, these communities answer the call of neoliberal discourse as regards to entrepreneurship and the creative management of the household budget. This finding leads me to argue that these communities both work for and against state discourse regarding austerity. In examining these communities, this project sheds new light on the ambivalent relationship between neoliberal discourse and digital practices.

Paper short abstract:

The archive of the Aboriginal Artists Agency from the 1980s is a significant collection documenting a key historical period of Indigenous art history. This paper will explore how the database OCCAMS is helping to organize, repatriate and facilitate rich ethnographic information about this archive.

Paper long abstract:

The archive of the Aboriginal Artists Agency (AAA) from the 1980s is a significant collection documenting a key historical period of Indigenous art history. The AAA was responsible for copyright clearance of Indigenous art across Australia, the production of significant Indigenous music albums and Indigenous performance tours across Australia and the world. This paper will explore how the research database OCCAMS is helping to organize, repatriate and facilitate rich ethnographic information about this archive as it is being deposited into the National Library of Australia (NLA).

Research databases are a different tool than databases that are strictly collection-based. This paper will briefly tease out the different types of databases and how they are used in relation to Indigenous collections. The majority of the presentation however will be based around how OCCAMS is facilitating the move of the AAA materials into the NLA and how anthropological methods are capturing contemporary Indigenous understandings about the legacy of the AAA in OCCAMS. This paper will present an understanding of how anthropology is engaging with digital tools as well as its traditional methodologies, all combined in new and innovative ways.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore some of the ways the social media platform Facebook is used by Aboriginal people in Central Cape York Peninsula, with attention paid to the particular 'public' arena created by Facebook and expressions of tribal identity and corporate group membership.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological engagement with social media is a recent development, as is anthropological attention to the diverse ways in which Indigenous Australians utilize social media. Indigenous people in the remotest regions of Australia have now largely breached the 'digital divide', with the ubiquitous use of smart phones and ever-increasing internet access leading to Facebook becoming the most popular social media platform (Carson 2015; Kral 2011). In this paper, I explore the use of Facebook among Aboriginal people living in Central Cape York Peninsula, where it has become one of the most effective means of communication between individuals, families, and the broader world. Following the work of Miller et al (2016), I argue that understandings of social media should necessarily be context-dependent, and that sociality online is related to offline sociality, with particular 'genres' of communication and discourse pre-existing social media platforms. Drawing on participant observation and interview data, I also argue that Facebook is an extension of the local public domain but with the capacity to engage an ever-broader public. In this 'new' public arena, existing at a time in which native title/land claims have been largely successful, Facebook has created the possibility for a unique genre of expression of 'tribal' identity and corporate group membership. I argue that such expressions of corporate belonging and identity are unprecedented: in their visual nature, in their speed and scope in reaching both intended and unintended audiences, and the ways in which such expressions can be strategically fashioned, controlled, and conformed to.

Paper short abstract:

In last few years,Social media platforms have been quite influential in shaping political space in India. It is an attempt to ethnographically situate the digital political space in India on Facebook and analyse its impact on the actual political space in India.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an examination of digital political space on social media, its generation, dynamics and impaction on actual political space. Digital political space not only mirrors the actual space, but has become a source of power itself to shape the political space across the nation. With over 200 million users, Facebook has become a digitized routine social activity, especially among youths. Social networking has people inventing their virtual selves for a public gaze, often dissimilar from their physical selves. The observations, both qualitative and quantitative, reflect an anthropological gaze on visible online data in public domain only, in order to avoid the noise between virtual and physical worlds. Four strands of political activities have been analysed in the paper 1). Using Identities (such as national, subnational, religious, caste etc.) for uniting and dividing 2). Propagation of Fake news to disseminate a false rhetoric 3). Differing political narratives of same event, as per their leanings on left-right spectrum. 4). Sharing 'Offensive' media to generate tensions. Combinations of methods are used to generate momentum, which often leads to changes in actual political space. In January 2016, a scuffle over freedom of speech between the state and student ricocheted in the digital political space, leading to protests across the nation. In July 2016,a case of atrocity on lower caste members over beef, lead to escalated online protests, which ultimately resulted in a pan-India anti-caste movement across the nation.