Payal Arora, in conversation with Tina Harris
09 april 2019On the 9th of April (16:00) Athenaeum Boekhandel, AISSR and Harvard UP proudly present a conversation between Payal Arora and Tina Harris at Athenaeum Boekhandel Roeterseiland (Roetersstraat 41, Amsterdam). Arora and Harris will discuss how they, as anthropologists, can understand what role internet plays in the lives of people across the globe.
Places are limited, so please register by sending an email to [email protected]. The event will be followed by drinks.
In the book The Next Billion Users, digital anthropologist Payal Arora examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East—home to most of the world’s internet users—and discovers that what they are doing is not what we imagine.
After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, Payal Arora assesses real patterns of internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. She finds Himalayan teens growing closer by sharing a single computer with common passwords and profiles. In China’s gaming factories, the line between work and leisure disappears. In Riyadh, a group of young women organizes a YouTube fashion show.
This event brings together the author of the book Payal Arora and respondent Tina Harris, both anthropologists who have done extensive fieldwork in Asia. What role can anthropologists play in understanding internet usage, both globally and locally? What role does the internet play in the lives of people across the globe?
Of course there will be ample time for questions.
About the speakers
Payal Arora is the author of the award-winning Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0 and Dot Com Mantra: Social Computing in the Central Himalayas. She is Associate Professor in the School of History, Culture, and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Arora recently became a member of the newly formed Facebook Committee Social Science One, formed to independently assess social media’s impact on elections.
Tina Harris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and is a member of the AISSR Moving Matters research group. Her main research interests include aviation, infrastructures, globalization in Asia, and the movement of people and goods across borders. She has conducted field research in Tibet, Nepal, and India.
Read an excerpt from The Next Billion Users on Athenaeum.nl.
