Tag Archives: DANG

Making public anthropology: putting it all together

Erin Taylor recently posted this thread over at the Open Anthropology Cooperative:

It’s long been my belief that anthropologists can increase their public visibility and engagement by working together, especially cross-promoting each other’s work. The PopAnth website has been using social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn) to bring attention to articles written by anthropologists in newspapers, on blogs, in books, and so on.

Recently, I’ve had conversations with Tricia Wang (Ethnography Matters), Matt Thompson (Savage Minds / DANG) and Ryan Anderson (Anthropologies Project / DANG) about furthering collaboration. We agreed that it would be a great idea!

DANG are already bringing together all kinds of people who are interested in open access, digital anthropology, blogging, and so on. For this reason, I suggested that the DANG website might be a good place to put information that can help anthropologists in their public engagement: stuff on open access, guides to writing for the public, ideas on how to get published in newspapers, and so on.

But that’s just one idea. My question is: how do we best coordinate?

There are indeed a lot of us out there who are thinking along similar lines, and we’re often off on our own doing our own things.  This is good, on many levels.  But I also think we could use a bit of collaboration, working together, and finding ways to move the idea of a more public anthropology toward a reality. Continue reading →

Bloggers and Digital Anthropologists Unite at AAA

In late November the American Anthropological Association will convene its 112th annual meeting in little town right outside Gary, Indiana, and the name of that town is Chicago! The AAA conference gives professional anthropologists (particularly cultural anthros) a chance to preview some of the latest research in their fields, chime in at section business meetings, and hug old friends. For those of us active in the blogosphere, tweetosphere, and other technological hoohah we’re given a chance to put faces to the screen names.

Last year some of us collaborated to create what’s called a “interest group,” a club basically, within the AAA for those of interested in digital anthropology. The DANG organizational business meeting was a roaring success, ideas were floated, business cards were exchanged, hands were uhm… shaken? shook? Anyways, it was a great time and we do in fact have a tangible and official result that you can participate in at this year’s conference as a result. “Bridging digital and physical publics: Digital anthropologists’ current engagement with 21st century publics” chaired by Bonnnie Nardi (UC-Irvine) and Sydeny Yeager (SMU) is on the preliminary program for Friday morning.

DANG is grateful to the Society for Visual Anthropology who reached out to us and invited us to submit a conference panel proposal for them to review. Bloggers and other digirati: if you have this slot free in your schedule please join us at the panel so that we can make plans to socialize later. Sydeny tells me she’s interested in meeting people over lunch afterwards. In the past we’ve had great turn outs for our AAA tweet-up where bloggers and tweeters show up at a nearby pub one night. Someone will take the initiative for this in mid-November. Probably a Chicago alum. Rex, I’m looking in your general direction…

Of course not everyone has the opportunity to travel — conferences are pricey. I know! I’m still paying off my credit card from the last one. But for those of you who will be present I would invite you to take this space on Savage Minds to begin thinking about meeting up in meatspace. If you’re a blogger and will be at the conference or are presenting on topics related to digital anthropology tell us about your blog or panel in the comments section. Viva DANG!