Contemporary Comparative Anthropology – The Why We Post Project

ABSTRACT

This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemination which make explicit a series of steps from a baseline of popular dissemination which stresses the uniqueness of individuals, through books and journal articles with increasing degrees of generalisation and comparison. Following this structure leads us up through analysis to the creation and employment of theory. This allows us to make comparisons and generalisations without sacrificing our assertion of specificity and uniqueness. We illustrate this argument though a recent nine-field site comparison of the use and consequences of social media in a project called ‘Why We Post.’

KEYWORDS:

• Comparative anthropology
• theory
• social media
• dissemination
• digital anthropology

Acknowledgments

As should be clear from the content, this paper represents a highly collaborative engagement over many years by 10 individuals working as a team. Firstly, the anthropologists who conducted the fieldwork, Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes, Tom McDonald, Daniel Miller, Razvan Nicolescu, Jolynna Sinanan, Juliano Spyer, Shriram Venkatraman, Xinyuan Wang. Also, Laura Haapio-Kirk helped write much of the dissemination materials. This paper was written by Daniel Miller. As always we are also entirely indebted to a multitude of anonymous informants across our nine fieldsites. We have made extensive use of Haidy Geismar’s critique of an earlier version of this paper, and we are grateful to the readers of the journal for their comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Miller has published several examples of this genre.

Additional information

Funding

Primary funding for this project came from the European Research Council grant SOCNET Project 2011-AdG-295486. The participation of Dr Nell Haynes was funded by the Interdisciplinary Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile. The participation of Xinyuan Wang was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. No part of this project received commercial funding.