Cyberanthropology

Abstract.  This paper challenges traditional explorations of online communities that have relied upon assumptions of trust and social cohesion. In the analysis presented here, conflict becomes more than just dysfunctional communication and provides an alternative set of unifying principles and rationales for understanding social interaction and identity shape shifting within an online community. A model is advanced that describes the systematic techniques of hostility and aggression in technologically enabled communities that take the form of contemporary tribalism. It is argued that this tribe-like conflict embodies important rituals essential for maintaining and defining the contradictory social roles sometimes found in online environments. This research offers a critical interpretive perspective that focuses on the link between identity shape shifting behaviours and the power relations within an online financial community. The analysis reveals how conflict between positions of power can help to align the values and ideals of an online community. With this study we seek to motivate a re-examination of the design and governance of online communities.

Virtual Shamanism and the Sacred-Cyber-Space
A. Airò and W. J. Costello V
Abstract:

Sacred space has typically been understood as a physical location with specific characteristics and qualities, which differentiate it from mundane (profane) space. Chosen to represent the link between mortals and gods, a sacred space usually undergoes specific “architectural events” (Jacobs, 2007). These events include enclosing the space through stone circles or walls, and imbuing it with spiritual or religious significance. Verses from the Quran, written on mosque walls, or frescoes in Christian churches, depicting the Stations of the Cross, demonstrate this ascription of religious significance to reinforce the sanctity of the space. Shamanistic practices call for a similar process in order to deem a space sacred. The construction of tents, teepees or yurts prepares a space for ritual and, just as church bells or a call to prayer announce when to engage in prayer, time and sacred space are unified in shamanism by using the lunar calendar.  Antithetical to the civilized and highly organized setting of a church or mosque, shamans generally choose a forest clearing for a ritual site. The woods have always acted as an initiation spot where young boys are brought by the tribe’s shaman to be reborn as men and warriors. In choosing a sacred space, shamans designate the center of the space, first by digging the omphalos and then setting the axis mundi, which allows the shaman to traverse the three levels of the universe. The shaman then performs his or her function “as an intermediary between a worldly and a spiritual or supernatural world with the aim to help people of his society.” (Schlottmann, 2007). The fact that shamans travel cross-dimensionally for the betterment of their society is, in fact, integral to their role in the community. Upon request, a shaman will attempt to make contact with the spiritual world and try to resolve “an imbalance due to transcendental powers” (Schlottmann, 2007) This communal need of shamanic intervention is stunningly depicted in the short film “The Shaman” (2015) directed by Marco Kalantari. Set in a dystopic future, a long-fought war rages between two groups of humans. Instead of engaging in person-to-person combat, each group commands intelligent machines of death and destruction. However, both sides also employ shamans who are used to cross over to the “Netherworld” where they engage the machines’ souls in psychological warfare. Only in this cyber-spiritual world can these shamans hope to convince the machines’ souls to change sides. Coincidentally, it is also only in cyberspace that you can access this film. Gazing through the computer display, we now have the ability to journey away from our terrestrial dimension and into one decidedly more virtual. This mode of accessing the virtual realm mimics the liminal threshold made of water, which shamans often cross during their passage into the spiritual world. This connection is made eerily apparent by the fact that most displays used today (either LCD or LED) work by shining light through liquid crystals. While the virtual world has been described as being a “spaceless space” (Castells 1996) this has no bearing on its capacity to be used in a sacred event. In place of tangible materials, digital code defines the parameters of cyberspace. As shown by S. Jacobs (2007), virtual churches and temples exist online, which replicate the experience of physically visiting these sacred spaces. Jacobs details the versatility of these sites in allowing visitors to go through the stages of religious practices, namely cyberprayer and cyberpuja, at their leisure. Referring to this new phenomenon as “asynchronous” cyber-ritual, Jacobs demonstrates how our concept of time has drastically changed as a consequence of “computer-mediated communication” (Jacobs, 2007). Thanks to the Internet, one simply needs to search “shamanic ritual” on YouTube to find a plethora of videos dedicated to guiding users through asynchronous cyberséance. Meanwhile, Facebook groups and websites like Reddit also host thriving communities of cybershamans and their followers. Yet while extremely useful, these avenues do not preserve the sensation of a collective “live” religious experience. Given the technological advances since Jacobs’s research, we intend to demonstrate the evolution in this realm of “synchronous” cyber-ritual, and specifically in reference to cybershamanism. Services such as Facebook Live, Periscope and Skype along with super-fast cellular networks have given us the ability to broadcast our lives in any place and any time. In response to our initial satisfaction with worldwide asynchronous communication, today we see an increased focus on simultaneously spending our most valuable resource—time. In the modern sacred cyberspace, time has become the universal binding structure, reinforcing spiritual significance not through “architectural events” but through temporal ones. Finally, we will give our tentative predictions on how developments in virtual reality may signify the coalescence of traditional sacred space and the new location of the shamanic cyberséance of the 21st century.

In this article, we offer an account of the strategy that parents in Southern Peru undertake to control the " excessive " gaming of their sons. With this strategy, parents attempt to reconstruct the " networks " or " channels " through which parents and sons attend to, monitor, and are made communicatively available one to another, a strategy that requires them to – among other things – disassemble competing networks of socialization. Our analysis of this ethnographic material requires us to provide a theory of the role that the " phatic function " plays in processes of language socialization [language socialization, phatic function, digital gaming, parenting, Peru].

This paper understands the production and use of maps as a closely entangled process of spatialisation, and analyzes social practices into which maps are embedded, by which they are configured, and through which they emerge. What exactly happens when something is “mapped”? This is followed by a discussion of three key concepts that we believe are fruitful for the examination of digital processes in the field of mapping. Finally, these concepts are applied to examples from current research projects showing that maps are not "facts" but political.

This paper is a part of frontier research: Are smart cities or sustainable cities an option? The present conceptual paper explores opportunities provided on relevant aspects on information based rural development apart from classical knowledge transfer in the context of new programs of education and lifelong learning in a way that can be applied in all countries, not only in Europe. The proof of concept is Global Village of Kirchbach – Styria in Austria, but its interpretation requires a complex system of analysis. Whereas European authors on such issues promise to imply planning, learning and implementation theory for the sole known flagship project, a profound analysis is searched for in a way that is known in Latin America by the profound analysis of a society even if it is a “learning region” or what the EU calls a “Leader Region”. This analysis has been done between 2005 and 2009 including visits at the stakeholders and makers in Kirchbach, the institutional analysis of the society of that village, the real concept behind what has been presented as rural development by education and the socio-economic structures that are needed to support the process but beyond the horizon of a university-centred analysis. The present draft paper is just an adumbration of these processes, due to the author’s own involvement in these processes and innovations.
Any contributions and commentaries are welcome.
Sto Domingo, Monday, June 8th 2015 – Sto Domingo, 8 de Junio de 2015

Cyber-anthropology for the first time is defined as a concept and a new field of study aimed at the analysis of human’s reciprocal relations with the computer-generated (CG) world evolved as a result of technological progress. In the cyber-era, traditional man-machine interactions have come to the point of  becoming a force that has the potential to transform the human race. Digital interactions and embodied virtual agents, although not a part of the natural human habitat, have become necessary elements of people’s surroundings and life conditions. As a theoretical construct, Cyber-anthropology is concerned with the merger of natural and artificial worlds mediated by the human imagination, as well as compatibility between people and virtual and embodied forms of digital life that they have created. As an empirical study, Cyber-anthropology deals with the psychophysiology and psychophysics, semantic and semiotics of human engagement with computer-generated reality that is viewed as a Complex Interactive System. In brief, Cyber-anthropology is defined as a study on how humans are influenced by the artificial world that is produced by technological evolution. In a broad sense, Cyber-anthropology is the science of investigating physiological, psychological, and socio-cultural phenomena that occur as a result of interactions between human mind-body systems and an inanimate CG-reality.