ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social networking sites (SNS), but in the future it is likely that studies of specific digital media will have to consider the wider context of polymedia. SNS can also lead to closer surveillance—for example over the use of remittances, meeting children’s boyfriends and girlfriends and compensating for absence by imposing high degrees of control on left-behind children. The initial literature on migration naturally focuses upon the use of SNS to recover and maintain links with the homeland. The implication of such arguments is to bring SNS back to the terrain of anthropological theory and the wider ambitions of anthropology as a discipline for understanding the fundamental nature of society and culture. The sheer ubiquity of SNS means that they are likely to become an aspect of almost any area of anthropological study in the future—from economic life and religion to development studies and medical anthropology.
