This book focuses on the meaning and experience of digital practice, emerging from work in the world of business and drawing on recent anthropological thinking on digital culture. Tom Maschio suggests that the digital is a space of a new "story culture" and considers the lived experience of new technologies. The chapters cover: storytelling in journalism and business with the new technology of virtual reality, the emerging meanings of social media and community building in the digital space, the uses and meanings of visual imagery online, and the cultural meanings of smartphone technology use and the "mobile life." The book incorporates ideas from humanistic anthropology and phenomenology in order to bring business problems into alignment with human concerns and desires, and to show the application of anthropological ideas to real-world issues. As well as anthropologists, the book will be valuable to business students and professionals interested in the digital realm.

Virtual Identities and Digital Culture investigates how our online identities and cultures are embedded within the digital practices of our lives, exploring how we form community, how we play, and how we re-imagine traditional media in a digital world. The collection explores a wide range of digital topics – from dating apps, microcelebrity, and hackers to auditory experiences, Netflix algorithms, and live theatre online – and builds on existing work in digital culture and identity by bringing new voices, contemporary examples, and highlighting platforms that are emerging in the field. The book speaks to the modern reality of how our digital lives have been forever altered by our transnational experiences – one of those key experiences is the pandemic, but so too is systemic inequality, questions of digital privacy, and the role of joy in our online lives. A vital contribution at a time of significant social and cultural flux, this book will be highly relevant to those studying digital culture within media, communication, cultural studies, digital humanities, and sociology departments.

Virtual Reality Über das Eintauchen in neue, von Menschen geschaffene Wirklichkeiten. Mit Beiträgen von Marc Bodmer, Jennifer Beck, Neal Hartman, Tina Sauerländer, Peggy Schoenegge, Maike Thies, Wolfgang Ullrich, Matthias Zehnder und Annina Zwettler. Sechster Band der erfolgreichen Reihe "Edition Digital Culture". Virtual Reality war schon früh auf der Wunschliste der Computerentwickler. Der Traum von der Überwindung der flachen Bilderwelt ist alt und taucht bereits in barocken Kirchenkuppeln auf. Das Zauberwort heisst Immersion, das Eintauchen in eine künstliche Umgebung. Die Digitalisierung hat diesen Traum für Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft nun in greifbare Nähe gebracht.Die zweisprachige Publikation beleuchtet das Potenzial der neuen Formen von Immersion im Bereich der Kultur mit Beispielen aus Film, Fernsehen, Museen, Kunst, Bildung, Unterhaltung und Gaming. Projekte wie Birdly, Desktop Jacob Burckhardt Digital oder das Werk von Mélodie Mousset werden vorgestellt. Seitenblicke auf die Industrie (Medizin, Architektur) ergänzen die Darstellung. Ein umfangreiches Glossar im Anhang erklärt die wichtigsten Begriffe.

Now in its ninth edition, The Cultural Dimension of Global Business continues to provide an essential foundation for understanding the impact of culture on global business and global business on culture. The highly experienced authors demonstrate how the theory and insights of cultural anthropology can positively influence the conduct of global business, examining a range of issues that individuals, teams, and organizations face as they work globally and across cultures. The cross-cultural scenarios presented at the end of each chapter allow students of business, management, and anthropology alike to explore cultural differences while gaining valuable practice in thinking through a variety of complex and thorny cultural issues. The fully updated ninth edition offers: • An expanded focus on international perspectives, and greater insight into China and its emergence as a global economic power • Consideration of team interactions in complex global environments, including virtually, while recognizing that individuals have critical influence on business processes and outcomes • New methodological tools with reflections and exercises to inspire readers to begin thinking and acting globally, offering guidance on identifying salient features of an international business or partnership, adjusting to novel or unexpected circumstances, and capturing the perceptions and behaviors of global businesspeople • New chapters on understanding one’s own organizational culture as a precursor to conducting business globally, additional material to enhance business partnership interactions, and strategies for integrating the global into local operations • Discussion of the wide-ranging disruptions facing people and business around the world and the ways in which the global pandemic affected business processes and practices • Further resources via the Instructor & Student Resource, www.routledge.com/cw/ferraro2, including links, blogs, and videos, an instructor’s resource manual, and a section on relevant cultural sources.

As contemporary scholars, journalists, and commentators have indicated, mobile digital devices promote a constant shift of attention between the world around us and the stimulations afforded by screen-based interfaces. Investigating these uniquely contemporary hybrid interactions, Melanie Chan posits that while digital technologies are part of a long and historic trajectory, they nonetheless may instigate new forms of corporeal practices and experiences. How might continuous engagement with mobile devices and associated software impact our perception of sensory embodied experience? Drawing upon existing scholarship around mobile media and new media, Digital Reality explores digital technologies as phenomena (observable items such as such as smart-phones, handsets, consoles, head-mounted displays and goggles) in the light of theories of reality and corporeality. In so doing, the book highlights the qualitative dimensions of our sense of aliveness, movement, and interaction within a range of environments (virtual, real, or hybrid). Ultimately, the book illuminates how our sense of shared, objective reality changes due to hybrid forms of reality.

This second edition of Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset serves as a primer for practitioners who want to apply ethnography to real-world challenges and commercial ventures. Building on the first edition, each chapter now includes a section focusing on practical advice to help readers activate key insights in their work. The book’s premise — that the thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their practice have strategic value beyond consumer insights — remains the same. Using real-world examples, Hasbrouck demonstrates how a more holistic view of an organization can help it benefit from a deeper understanding of its offerings within dynamic cultural contexts. In doing so, he argues that ethnographic thinking helps organizations increase appreciation for openness and exploration, hone interpretive skills, and cultivate holistic thinking; allowing them to broaden perspectives, challenge assumptions, and cross-pollinate ideas between differing viewpoints. Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset is essential reading for managers and strategists who want to tap into the full potential that an ethnographic perspective offers, as well as those searching more broadly for new ways to innovate. It will also be of value to students and practitioners of applied ethnography, as well as professionals who would like to optimize the value of ethnographic thinking in their organizations.

EmTech Anthropology: Careers at the Frontier emphasizes anthropology’s critical role at the frontier of emerging technologies (EmTech). The book explores the opportunities and challenges that arise as anthropologists venture into the territory of EmTech, pushing the boundaries of traditional academic approaches and methodologies. By sharing the stories and insights of early to mid-career anthropologists working in AI, robotics, Web3, cybersecurity, and other cutting-edge fields, the book provides a possible roadmap for future practitioners seeking to make an impact in the world of EmTech. These anthropologists demonstrate how the discipline's unique perspective and skills can be applied to address the complex ethical, social, and cultural implications of emerging technologies. The volume showcases how anthropologists can act as visionaries, innovators, and early adopters, shaping the trajectory of EmTech towards more ethical, equitable, inclusive, and sustainable futures. It highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, practical impact, and intervention in EmTech contexts while also acknowledging the need for anthropologists to challenge existing narratives and push the boundaries of the discipline itself. EmTech Anthropology: Stories from the Frontier serves as an essential resource for anthropologists, students, and professionals from related disciplines who are interested in exploring the frontiers of anthropology and emerging technologies. By offering a glimpse into the exciting possibilities and compelling insights that emerge when anthropology meets EmTech, the book inspires and guides the next generation of anthropological innovators.

This book argues for the study of consumption and its relationship with media images, particularly advertising, from a cultural perspective. Focused on Brazil, it draws on decades of research by the author and engages with theory and concepts from a range of classic anthropological works. The chapters examine how advertising professionals view their craft, the resistance to capitalism amongst native Brazilians, images of women and their bodies in magazines, and the case of the first soccer player to become a national media celebrity. Rocha supports the study of consumption as a classification system that materializes culture and creates relations between people and goods. The book presents advertising as a mode of magical thinking that mediates the passage from the machine-driven sphere of production to the humanized sphere of consumption, converting meaningless impersonal things into goods that have name, origin, identity and purpose. It will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and others working on advertising, marketing, communications, and consumer research.

This book takes readers into stories of love, loss, grief and mourning and reveals the emotional attachments and digital kinships of the virtual 3D social world of Second Life. At fourteen years old, Second Life can no longer be perceived as the young, cutting-edge environment it once was, and yet it endures as a place of belonging, fun, role-play and social experimentation. In this volume, the authors argue that far from facing an impending death, Second Life has undergone a transition to maturity and holds a new type of significance. As people increasingly explore and co-create a sense of self and ways of belonging through avatars and computer screens, the question of where and how people live and die becomes increasingly more important to understand. This book shows how a virtual world can change lives and create forms of memory, nostalgia and mourning for both real and avatar based lives.

How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization.