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Ethnography 2.0: Connection, Collaboration and Contextualization in Digital Reading

Basic information
Project identifier AS-ASCDC-115-202
Conducted by Inst. of Ethnology
Director
Overview

From classical to contemporary times, ethnography has always been an important form of presentation in anthropological research. Despite paradigm shifts in writing styles and explorative methodologies, the majority of ethnographic works are largely confined to traditional modes of presentation, such as books or journal articles, leaning towards a static and unidirectional reading experience. In the digital age, apart from offering online accessibility to a broader audience, how can we integrate a greater level of interactivity and connectivity, thus transitioning to an enhanced digital ethnography, or 'Ethnography 2.0'?

Since 2021, the Museum of the Institute of Ethnology (MIOE), Academia Sinica, in cooperation with the Academia Sinica Center for Digital Cultures (ASCDC), has attempted to develop digital reading modules, leveraging the strengths of digital technology to breathe new life into ethnography. Through this process, we have identified three core elements for further development: connection, collaboration, and contextualization. These three "C"s correspond to the unique characteristics and ethical considerations embedded in the transformation of anthropological knowledge. 

This project is planned to take three years, in partnership with the ASCDC, aims to establish an Ethnography 2.0 digital reading platform. In the first year(2023), the focus lies on improving hyperlink integration and system optimization, intertwining ethnographic texts with digital collections (including artifacts and audio-visual databases) and digital exhibitions of the MIOE. Such integration of cross-genre anthropological research data serves to enrich the content, thereby making it a value-added ethnography. In the second year, emphasis shifts to collaborative reading practices. Plans include the addition of a digital conversational layer, supplement to and extending beyond the original text, enabling collaborations with indigenous communities being studied in the classical ethnography. These collaborations aim to highlight indigenous interpretations, corrections, data supplementation, and debates, thus creating a more nuanced understanding. By juxtaposing the narratives of researchers and the indigenous community, this approach addresses the ongoing discourse regarding the authority inherent in ethnographic writing. The third year focuses on reconstructing the research context, incorporating the special collections of researchers' fieldwork notes and related historical materials in the museum, to illustrate the process of anthropological data collection and knowledge production. The digital reading interface constructed in this project caters to three prevalent types of ethnographic publications—journal articles, monographs, and edited volumes, and could serve as a valuable resource for interested researchers in the future.

Find out more

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