Arturo Escobar, (1994) Current Anthropology
In “Welcome to Cyberia, Arturo Escobar provides details how anthropological research methods can be used to explore and better understand cyberculture. The fact that “technologies are bringing about a fundamental transformation in the structure and meaning of modern society” (211) warrants an anthropological approach to research. According to Escobar, to articulate an “anthropology of cyberculture” (211) we need to move away from the idea that technology is value-neutral and independent of socioeconomic and political contexts. Taking a constructivist approach, we could recognize the situated-ness of tech and its relationship to social processes in order to reveal the inter-relatedness of technology, society, and nature. Research from this perspective would result in “a multipath and multilevel evolutionary model of technological change” (212) that identifies socially relevant groups and their interpretations of the technologies they encounter to provide insight into the common uses of technologies and their adoption.
