Leilene

What is the proper role for interactive multimedia technology in anthropological research, development and publication? The papers gathered at this web site endeavor to answer this question—a complex question, and one not easily answered. In the course of the one of the articles cited here, the author is wise to paraphrase Levi-Strauss, who always said we should to avoid the trap of thinking (or letting others think) that new technology is merely bien a manger (i.e. that the consumption of new technology is inherently good and brings its own inherent rewards). As the writer suggests, technology best serves the purposes as anthropologists when they realise it is also bien a penser. One item particularly worth reading here is Marcus Banks’s “Interactive multimedia and anthropology: a sceptical view.” Banks—a Reader in Social ft Cultural Anthropology and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge—has done more research and thinking on the role of multimedia in the teaching of anthropology than just about anyone else on the planet. His insights are invariably plentiful, hard-won, and pertinent. Banks argues, with justice, that interactive multimedia is bound, in the long run, to hurt more than help in the research and teaching of anthropology. As he says, all pure research is a linear, and thus bound to be corrupted (rather than enhanced) by invasive technology.