The Anthropology of Online Communities

Peterson, Leighton and Samuel M. Wilson. “The Anthropology of Online Communities.” Annual Review of Anthropology. 31. (2002):  449-67.


In this article, researchers discuss the nature of the Internet as it relates to community and user relations. They indicate that this is a topic relevant to the field of anthropology that has not received much attention in the past. Additionally, the authors contend that the Internet has not radically changed the way community is established amongst human beings. Like most technologies, the authors conclude that the Internet is a cultural product and that it is constituted through language. The authors also argue that there are many opportunities for research upon this topic within the field of anthropology and other fields. The questions the authors are working from are as follows: “How have scholars’ approached online communities and online communication in general? Is the concept of community itself misleading? How are issues of power and access manifested in this arena?” (449). The authors also contend that missing from research and discussions of new media “is the link between historically constituted sociocultural practices within and outside of mediated communication and the language practices, social interactions, and ideologies of technology that emerge from new information and communication technologies” (453).

It may initially seem unusual to consult an anthropological article for the purposes of this project, but it is pertinent in as much as we must understand the aspects of community shaped by the use of the Internet before we work to identify community-building aspects specific to the online classroom. I would argue that this is an interdisciplinary conversation in which the perspectives of those outside the field of Composition and Rhetoric can only add to the interesting and complex questions relevant to such a conversation. This article interests me and is relevant to my investigation of the way community is shaped through language and writing in an online classroom. For example, the authors state:

Such an approach involves bringing research back from cyberspace and virtual reality into geographical, social spaces, to address a variety of issues such as the ways in which new participants are socialized into online practices; how gendered and racialized identities are negotiated, reproduced, and indexed in online interactions; and how Internet and computing practices are becoming normalized or institutionalized in a variety of contexts. (453-4)

The question of how participants are socialized into online practices holds interesting implications for the study of online communities within the online classroom. Additionally, the question of how gendered and racialized identities are negotiated, reproduced, and indexed in online interactions is particularly relevant to the discussion of electronic communications as inherently postmodern, a connection that leaves much room for exploration along the lines of a discussion of an electronic pedagogy. The normalization and institutionalization of Internet and computing practices also offers a opportunity for investigation in light of concerns regarding accessibility. This article is useful for the questions it raises and the conversations it attempts to begin.