cyberanthropology

I just read to articles of the book "Composing Ethnography: Aulternative Forms of Qualitative Writing" and I must say I am deeply disturbed. One, by Lise Tillmann-Healy was of her experience of bulimia, he other, by Carol Rambo Ronai was about her growing up with a mentally retareded mother. Boths writing was (would you have expected that?) very different from what one usually gets in ethnographic accounts. They frequently that they described scenes of their life, then switched to a more analytical style giving background information eg. how many young girls are bulimic. The introduction (written as a conversation betwenn the two editors) puts the essays into context, and I guess I should start reading that part a bit more careful. Still, I don't know what to think about it. Is this "scientific"? Is this "allowed"? What if I'd write in such a style?
Apart from "Autoethnography" there is also a chapter on "Sociopoetics" and one on "Reflexive Ethnography". Funny is also an "open-Ending" where a letter from the editors asks for comments on the book.

Here's a bookreview about the very book at the Forum for qualitative research.

Fiddled around with a new layout yesterday and continued doing so today. Suggestions are of course welcome.

Just found out about the International Journal of Webbased Communites The articles by T.R. Madanmohan, Siddhesh Navelkar and Sjoerd de Vries, Piet Kommers seem to be specially interesting.

Just found a very intersting link on culture-cats blog to the the gender-cyber-archive. There are essays and audio-lectures on feminist theory and it seems, it's just what I've been looking for! :-)

The other day I fired off an e-mail to Yemen, asking a couchsurfer if he'd let me stay with him for some time this summer. And he answered that I'd be most welcome to stay with him and his family! The most curious thing about him is, that he's a member of parliament, runs an ngo and seems to be a cheikh from al-Jawf. What I'm wondering is, how this influences my thesis and if it does at all. Should I change my topic, get this experience somehow into it? (at the end of the day it was all only possible because of the net...) Anyway: I don't have to worry any more if I can afford a trip to yemen this summer for improving my arabic and that's just great news!
:-)

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