Subject: CASTAC - Panel (Heath) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 02:54:42 -0500 To: CASTAC-L Deborah Heath (heath@lclark.edu) **LATE-BREAKING CALL FOR AAA PAPERS** Organizer: Deborah Heath (Lewis and Clark) Chairs: Erin Koch (New School), Barbara Ley (UCSC), and Michael Montoya Walker (Stanford) Fieldwork on (the) Line: Impressions of Virtual Ethnography The vast explosion of internet use by groups as diverse as scientists, medical clinicians, support groups, and corporate salespeople (re)configures a range of new social relationships. Such configurations shape the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge on-line. With their focus on cultural formations and transformations, anthropologists who do work in and about virtual spaces are in a unique position to comment on these processes. At the same time, conducting field research on-line affords a critical rethinking of anthropological "field methods." This session is intended as a contribution to the discussion of problems and possibilities raised when anthropologists undertake internet-based field research. We encourage participants to engage in a range of methodological, ethical, political and theoretical issues: In what ways is webwork (dis)similar to *conventional* research practices? How does the internet constitute a fieldsite? How do we (and our interlocutors) connect the virtual populations we are interacting with to embodied populations? In what ways do we remain accountable to our "informants?" How do we situate internet research within the democratic and embodied populations? How do we situate internet research within democratic or celebratory ideologies, the "promise of monsters" with respect to technoscience? This panel stems from over nine months of individual and collective "webwork" conducted as part of an anthropological research project regarding human genetics. We welcome papers on a broad spectrum of issues related to on-line fieldsites and how we study them. All abstracts must be received by March 23, and should not exceed 250 words. Please send abstracts to Michael Montoya Walker at either of the following addresses: e-mail: mmontoya@leland.stanford.edu snail mail: Michael Montoya Walker Department of Anthropology Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2145 **********************************************************************