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Theme Specific Information (Smart Phones)Ìý
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This module will examine the nature, usage and consequences of smartphones. It is based on the five year ASSA project (The anthropology of smartphones and smart ageing), with material delivered by four of the researchers on that project. It will start with an examination of the anthropology of media and early forms of mobile phone. It will then consider ways in which we may define, theorise and understand the nature of the smartphone, including areas such as App culture and the forms of intimacy and anthropomorphism involved. Most of the course will concentrate on regional case studies to understand the meaning use and consequences of the phone for particular populations based on ethnographic research. The module will have a strong comparative element considering the smartphone in many different regions. It will also consider the political economy, infrastructure behind smartphones and the potential benefits and problems associated with smartphone use. The aim is also to give students a sense of what it is like to be involved in a collaborative and global research project.
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Indicative Topics

• Discourses around the consequences of smartphones on society
• Ethnographic evidence for how people use smartphones
• The nature of comparative and collaborative research in digital anthropology
• Theories of the smartphone.
• Applied uses of smartphone research e.g. for health

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Learning Outcomes

• The experience of a course that is based on our own ongoing research.
• A sense of how collaborative and comparative research works within digital anthropology.
• The experience of carrying out weekly group projects that allow students to undertake their own research inspired by the previous week’s teaching
• Leaning about smartphones including theories of the smartphone, substantive ethnographic evidence and the application of smartphones to applied including health outcomes.Ìý

Indicative Teaching Delivery

• Weekly two hour seminars that include a lecture component as well as the discussion of lectures and readings. Ìý
• In class presentation of weekly projects based on students own research following up the topic of the previous week.

Additional information:

ASSA The Anthropology of Smartphones, Smart Ageing and mHealth