Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. Networked anthropology generates ethnographic data in multiple media. Anthropology is ripe ground for incredible possibilities in research but also represents a minefield of ethical and moral dilemmas. These manifestations of a networked anthropology could be new incarnations of the kind of hermeneutic violence that anthropology has perpetuated for many decades. Here it overlaps with similar advances in different subdisciplines, including visual anthropology, public anthropology and action research. The difference is that a networked anthropology produces data that is simultaneously media to be appropriated and utilized by the communities with whom anthropologists work in order to connect to others. Engaging in a networked anthropology does not have to be perpetual fieldwork, but it does entail a cognizance of the networked chains of exchange, circulation and feedback that make up the fieldwork.