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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropology of technology | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology_of_technology | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:06:30.454498+00:00 | kb-cron |
Spurring the development of AoT in the 2000s is the stunning penetration of advanced technologies throughout the world and across social divides. Most behaviors of interest to anthropologists are increasingly mediated by technologies. At the same time, there is an urgent need to develop anthropological understandings of the cultural shaping of new and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence. An increasing number of female scholars across anthropology and posthumanities such as Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, Gabriella Coleman, Kit Kat Braybrooke and Silvia Lindtner have also called for a centering of feminist, posthuman, decolonial and postcapitalist perspectives in contemporary anthropological inquiries of the sociotechnical. Anthropological studies of phenomena such as cell phone use, postgenomic sequencing, and artificial intelligence require significant methodological innovations, with anthropologists increasingly involved as consultants in design processes. Anthropological studies of digital movements such as creative commons, open access, and free/libre open-source software (FLOSS) are also increasingly integral to understanding the impact of hacker, maker and developer cultures on contemporary society - "the critical dynamics of which anthropology is especially suited for examining". The maturity, diversity, and growth of AoT today in socio-cultural anthropology is attested by the 2022 publication of the Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology, the first major effort to assess the field's status in a variety of areas. The papers grew out of a conference on assessing the anthropology of technology as it deals with new and emerging technologies, ranging from digital technology, new modes of human reproduction, and food infrastructure. As a result, ethnographies of non-industrial technologies, as is archaeology, are lacking in the Handbook.
== Founding scholars == Marcel Mauss André Leroi-Gourhan Bronislaw Malinowski Pierre Lemonnier Marcia-Anne Dobres Susan Leigh Starr Bryan Pfaffenberger Michael Brian Schiffer Tim Ingold
== References ==