call for papers - "how to approach the digital?"

2020-08-10

Since the popularization of the Internet in the 1990s, a field of study on the Internet and the digital has been developing - in the humanities as a whole and in anthropology specifically. The studies are characterized by multidisciplinarity, methodological diversity and a thematic explosion, which say a lot about the various uses that people make of the technological apparatus and digital platforms. These practices, uses and meanings are not opposed to reality. Rather, they are different dimensions of social reality, which may be increasingly confused and intertwined. Precisely because of this, and even more so in a social reality that shows itself to be extremely unequal, access to digital technologies and the Internet does not take place in a homogeneous and egalitarian way but is determined by the intersection of different social markers of difference. 

Thus, we are facing a field of studies that allows us to raise a multitude of questions, ranging from the terminology to be used to issues that take into account factors such as the properties, structures and cartographies of the digital.

With this in mind, this dossier is interested in reflections on theory, methods and research ethics in research that take into consideration the Internet and the various uses of the technological apparatus, in order to illuminate possible paths for beginners and veterans in the subject.

The special issue is organized by Beatriz Accioly Lins, Carolina Parreiras and Tânia Freitas. Contributions can be sent until September 30, 2020, through the website. 

We welcome articles, preferably ethnographically based, on the following topics (but not necessarily restricted to them): 

  • research methods, qualitative or quantitative;
  • ethnographic and case studies; 
  • reflections on research ethics;
  • new approaches to/from digital research;
  • structures and cartographies of the digital; 
  • review and theoretical balance that includes well-defined thematic axes or different theoretical-methodological traditions, chronological or national regimes.